Fun ways to teach Blender 3D

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Hey folks.

I’ve been teaching Blender 3D quite a lot the last couple of years and having great fun doing so. But, a lot of the time it can be difficult to teach students all these abstract concepts… unwrapping, weight paint, armatures, meshes, objects, ambient occlusion… shees… you know… it’s great fun, but we don’t always have the time to get in deep enough.

Now during my last class I came up with a novel little way to show my students the relationship between 2D and 3D before going into uv-unwrapping. It really helped, was a lot of fun, and a great break in a week of being stuck behind a computer.

I wrote a small article/tutorial about it here: http://www.alienhelpdesk.com/tutorials/teaching_uv_unwrapping

I was wondering whether anyone else had fun exercises for teaching these somewhat odd and sometimes complex concepts. I’m really interested in hearing how you get this stuff across! So please do share.

Thanks
Dolf

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Thanks Dolf for sharing that inspiration :slight_smile: Looks like a very creative and participatory way to make the 2d to 3d transition!

3

nice idea. i never teached anyone blender, but i thought, when i have to do that and i explain how to place and scale objects, i would give my students as homework to create an object with only 10 cubes ( inspired by the 10 cubes-thread in this forum)

4

it looks a fun way to learn unwrapping :yes: i wonder if the students can expand their task to a more complex assignment like making a simple robot from paper cubes. and they can add a maybe…a wire inside the cube that represent as a bones or armatures. and in the end, they can paint the robot in addition for learning uv painting stuff.

5

That’s a very good idea. It might be worth reposting it here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=171163&page=2

6

Thanks guys,

Dim: Yes I did see that thread, but started this one because though very interesting… the discussion over there is rather theoretical and in depth going into methodology. I’m talking about something simpler saying “here’s something fun I have my students do, which works”, and “have you got something similar?”.

Marty: true the 10 cube challenge is a real fun thing to have a bunch of people do. There’s an important question or two a teacher has to ask before giving his students a task though: “what are they learning by doing this”, and of course “is this something I need to teach them”…

7

suggestion: Have them number the faces right-side up (relative to box orientation) so when they unwrap they can see how faces “turn” when laid out UV