I’m not really sure where to post this but I’m new to Blender and modeling in general. I wasn’t really sure what to start with and got some books on Maya 2011 at first. Maya is a killer tool and the book is great but it might be a bit much for a n00b like me to start with. I started playing around with Blender and it seems a bit more intuitive to me (as intuitive as such software can be :P). A couple of months ago I picked up a subscription to CGCookie and went through the Blender “getting started” tutorials, as well as some other random, small projects. I think I’ve made OK progress for a beginner.
I wasn’t sure what kind of tutorial path to take next, so I bought Jonathan Williamson’s book, “Character Development in Blender 2.5.” Great book. I really love his presentation and instruction style. It makes the projects much easier to understand and follow. At this point, I’m at the end of chapter 8 and my model is coming along better than I thought it’d look. I’m obviously nowhere near finished, though.
What I am interested in is some assistance/training. I’m not sure if Mavenseed is abandoned or not. I tried contacting them a couple of weeks ago and never got a response. Eventually I plan on actually taking coursework through a school (I’m kind of eyeing Full Sail at the moment, but still very much undecided), but I think a one-on-one training thing like Mavenseed might be really helpful to get over some of the initial obstacles.
So does anyone know if Mavenseed is still around or if Jonathan Williamson still offers training for hire? If not, does anyone have other recommendations for me to look into?
Just a few days ago I saw Jonathan on IRC and asked him if he thought he’d be available for Mavenseed in the next couple of weeks. The answer was “only after the Low-poly character series is done”, which is planned somewhere in September. With that series and the new CGCookie site launch and a bunch of other projects I guess those guys are really busy at the moment, hopefully it’ll be better soon.
@Frank 82: It’s kinda tricky to advise on training without knowing what area of training you’re looking for, but you’ve already found some of the best Blender resources on the net, by the looks of it.
If you’re going for general modeling then the tutorials by Jonathon Williamson about modeling the female body are truly brilliant for understanding topology, anatomy, and for improving your poly-by-poly modeling workflow. I think the head and hand tutorials might still be available for free. I know what you mean about this teaching style. Imo, his videos are possibly better than his written tutorials. In the videos you can really see the dynamics of the process and understand the power of Blender from the speed of the workflow. There are also quite a few free tutorials on modeling from BlenderCookie.
Searching the net for topology tutorials can help if you’re interested in organic modeling, or searching for architectural modeling techniques might help if you’re more interested in environment modeling. If you’re more interested in the pure art of CG then learning about compositing and lighting will be of use to you.
If you have an interest in modeling game characters or are wondering about the sculpt/retopo workflow then the Low Poly Character Training Series that Jonathon is working on now (mentioned by Fax) looks to be pretty good. It’s still available for preorder for $32 for the next couple of weeks including the discount of 40%, but preorders will stop about 2 weeks before release. Release is set for end of September so you’ll have to decide pretty fast if this meets your interests to get the big discount. Based on my previous modeling improvements with Jonathon’s video tutorials, I pre-ordered this quite soon after it was initially announced. I’ve had this cute but very skinny zombie chick bugging my subconscious for a while and although the sculpt/retopo workflow would be ideal for this, I have no experience of it. The tutorial also includes prepping the model and exporting to Unity which might mean that you don’t get the full value from the series depending on your interest in this area. I’m not sure if this would interest you given the details from your post, but am looking forward to it myself.
@Fax: Good point, I didn’t think of that actually. It’s good to know that he has plans to do the Mavenseed thing once everything settles down for him because I will probably end up using that service.
@FunkyWyrm: Also a good point, I probably should have clarified that a bit. heh. I’m most interested in character modeling, although I suppose as a beginner it wouldn’t hurt to play around with other things as well. I did some simple projects from BlenderCookie like the steampunk-ish telescope. It came out pretty well, although I had some difficulties because the tutorial was based around an older version of Blender and I was using 2.5, so it required some tinkering around to find what I needed in some cases. When it came time to apply the texture to the leather portion of the telescope I kind of improvised and got more or less the same result because that’s where I ran into a lot of differences between the video’s version and the version that I’m running. The first one I started was Jonathan’s tutorial on modeling the female head but I realized that as my first tutorial project, that may have been a bit much. I got through the third part and decided to try working on some others to get a better familiarity with Blender and the basics.
I didn’t know about the preorder for that character training series but that sounds like a good deal. I’m definitely going to preorder it. The more help I have, the better! The Unity part isn’t a waste because I have actually been interested in playing around with that too. I had never heard of it until I started looking into learning Blender.
My apologies for the late reply to your Mavenseed inquiry, I believe it was you that I just emailed back yesterday. Mavenseed is definitely still around, and like Fax said, I will be available for one-on-one training again soon as the Lowpoly Character Series is released. I would be happy to help you out in any way that I can!
Hey Jonathan! Thanks for responding! I didn’t receive an email reply from you yet but I’m glad to know that you’ll be available once you’re done with the character series.
I’m planning on preordering the lowpoly character series once CG cookie comes back up.
I’m obviously nowhere near finished, though.
The Unity part isn’t a waste because I have actually been interested in playing around with that too. I had never heard of it until I started looking into learning Blender.