I'm teaching a course in Blender...

In two and a half weeks I will be teaching an evening course in Blender consisting of six classes, three hours each. Last I heard about six people had enrolled and they were expecting more. Some other people who work at the training institution will be sitting in on the course. So it’ll be relatively big (the computer lab they have is only built for 12 people at the most!)

It’s very short and I can’t assume that any of these people have prior 3D skills! So it’s only an introduction. I want to give them a relatively solid look at the basics like modeling and texturing, a sense of how to animate things, and just let them know about a whole range of other features so they at least find out how much they don’t know yet :stuck_out_tongue:

In order to make it fun, I want them to produce five segments of abstract animation (starting from the second class), which they will put to music. This gives them something to show their friends/family when they’re finished.

So far I’ve created a mind map in VYM (a linux mind-mapping program), and exported it to HTML. If you scroll down, you get the same information in straight text:

http://lisa3d.org/Blender/course_outline.html

Tell me what you think! Also, as I’ve written here, I want an easy but spectacular exercise to take them through in the first class - something where they can just follow all my clicks (I’ll be using a projector), and out will pop a satisfying render at the end. I’ll be looking through all the tutorials to find something like this, but does anyone have a suggestion?

(Note: I am only being paid on an hourly basis for the time I spend teaching. I don’t get paid extra for the time I spend preparing course material. So I won’t profit from any suggestions people make here for the course. You’ll just be helping to give Blender a good name!)

Hello Lisae,

Strange coincidence, i’m going to start a course in Blender, at the end of October. It will be larger than yours, 45 hours total divided in 15 classes with 3 hours each. Of course, it will be also an introduction to Blender, after all, this is a very powerfull program that needs hundreds (or thousands) of hours to talk about everything that Blender can achieve.

Your outline looks great, and i really like the idea of a project done in the course (i had this same idea, although i was thinking of something more modest, that the students would do a small animation of a few seconds, maybe a minute as the upper limit). How long will the animated sequences made by the students be?

The only thing is that i think it is a very dense course for 18 hours, specially when the students are newbies to the world of 3D…

In the first class of my course i intend to talk about Blender, the Blender Foundation, it’s history, maybe show Elephant’s Dream (guess that one will be almost a must have in showing off Blender :D) and put them working right ahead with Blender, first working with the interface and then creating a simple scene with primitives and Boolean operations.

The first exercise will be making a house, inspired by James Chronister’s “Blender Basics” course but i will add other props to the scene like trees using primitives.

I discussed my course outline with other Blender Educators, at the Blender Education’s mailing list, and a suggestion they made is to concentrate more effort in modelling and animating (my first idea was to try and talk about almost everything), so i will try to dedicate one third to modelling, one third to animation, and a third of the course to discuss materials, lighting, some special effects and the project.

By the way, why don’t you try the Blender Education’s mailing list to ask for help and comments?

I wish you the very best of luck with your course and i believe you will inspire more people into the wonderful world of Blender eheh

you actually include a lot of information for those 6 classes.
it might make sense to shorten that. maybe focus during the
class sessions on the basic important things like modeling,
texturing, and than animation. because to understand it they
need practice and that will require time.

additional information which you do not necessarily need lecture
about could be presented in form of a document which they could read
out of class. maybe with a small written instruction/tutorial you can help
them understanding it.

how are you going to provide your students the visual input for what they have to model and to texture? I found it very useful to require my students not only to sketch but also to 1. take a camera and take photos of the objects and 2. at least finding reference images. and that applies to objects as surfaces structures. it helped them a lot to understand what they are actually seeing and thus being able to reproduce it.

lisae, In order to cover all that material in 18 hours, you are going to be talking for 18 hours straight. Your students will have no time to play with the software and they will be upset. Especially students with no 3D experience, they will need to practice, make mistakes, be corrected, try again, etc. etc. They are not coming to hear you lecture. Trust me. The sooner you can get them pressing keys and moving the mouse, the better.

History of Blender: boring, who cares?
What is Open Source software? boring, who cares?
The structure of the Blender community: for the length of the class, YOU are the Blender community, save this for class 6.
How to contribute, who uses professionally, what has been done… see above.

Take your animation project, decide what needs to be taught to do the project, then cut everything else. Nurbs or polygons? decide and cut. Box modeling or poly by poly? decide and cut. Procedural or UV? decide and cut. Realistic shading or toon? decide and cut. You get the idea. Work backwards from the end product.

Your students want to learn how to do for themselves. Start the class with your Second Class. Estimate that they will be able to learn 3 to 5 tools in the course of 3 hours. By learn, I mean they will know how to use them and remember the hot keys or where to find them using the menus. Which 3 to 5 tools are essential?

I’d say the ADD menu; mode switching with the TAB key; box and circle select with Bkey; extrude; and changing the view with the mouse or the numpad. Teach them these things right off the bat, then let them play with them for a while. Have them make a simple house, a tree, a tennis raquet, whatever. Three hours, pfff, gone before you know it.

Next class: Xkey delete menu; scale and rotate widget; vertex, edge, face select mode; Draw type; adding materials.

Each subsequent class, add a few more tools. Add just the tools they will need to do the animation project. Particles, fluids, compositing? invite them back for the intermediate class in January.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, I am nothing but supportive of your efforts to teach Blender, but if that were my syllabus and the course was two weeks off, I’d be in a major panic.

Your students are not coming to the class to learn about Blender. They are coming to learn to use Blender. It’s a crucial distinction. If they are pressing keys for 2 1/2 hours for every half hour of listening to you talk, they’ll leave happy campers. If the ratio is reversed, they will be frustrated and unhappy, and you won’t be invited back to do the sequel. Not something I’d like to see happen. The more courses in Blender out there, the better.

Believe me, for a beginner, the best thing you can do is give them permission to ignore 90% of the interface, and show them which 10% to use right away.

Good luck.

i agree with orinoco.

i just assumed that the people who will come are older and this lecture is more a road show.

You’re right, Claas. These will be adults, probably people who already work in film production somehow, and who want to see what Blender is capable of. That’s why I want to show them Blender’s whistles and bells. They won’t have time to learn any actual 3D skills, which is why the “project” they will be doing is completely abstract. I’m not going to be getting them to model any specific objects from photos or drawings.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I’ve been teaching the 3D component of an animation diploma at this institution for the past three years, which they use 3D Studio Max for. I teach 18 classes of 3 hours each, twice a year (with different students) for that course. By the end of that, my students are creating characters from their own design, texturing them, rigging them, animating them, lighting them and rendering them, often with background props as well.

Partly, I want this course to help the people who run training at this institution to see that they can actually use Blender for a lot more of their 3D needs. They don’t have a lot of money. Blender would help them get a lot more out of their budget.

Anyway, this is the blurb for the course, which I didn’t actually have any say over:

BLENDER is a new open source software that is quickly becoming popular with the new and professional animator. This introductory course provides a practical overview of the program’s interface, 3D modelling, lighting, texturing, animation and rendering. Throughout the six sessions students will be introduced to the 3D pipeline, which covers the major areas of 3D and it’s uses within the professional animation industry.

The students have paid on the basis of this advertising, so I have to cover all of that.

Bellboy - I didn’t know there was a Blender Educators mailing list! Thanks for the heads up :slight_smile:

Orinoco - I will be talking for a lot of that time. They really can’t accomplish anything practical in six weeks. I don’t want anyone coming out of this course with even the faintest idea that they are ready to do a character animation or model a car. They’re not going to learn how to do any of that. They’re just going to play around with Blender and make silly, pretty things. I want Blender to charm them!

I just want to point out, as well, that my course outline will determine what notes I will be writing up to hand out to the students. All of that will be in there for sure. But the way I teach depends a lot on how much the students seem to be enjoying themselves, and I do tend to improvise a lot when I’m actually in front of a class. My Max course changes and evolves every time I teach it. So if I do see the students’ eyes glazing, you can bet I will be skipping things left and right!

Also, for a lot of those “intro to” and “very brief intro to” sections in my outline, I will just click around a bit while they’re watching on the projector screen, and they will get to see that a particular feature is there. I think a big problem with learning Blender is that a lot of features kind of get hidden away because they don’t advertise themselves very well in the interface. So many newbies come to these forums saying “I wish Blender had this feature”, only to find out that it already does. So I want my students to leave knowing full well what Blender’s feature set is, and keen to learn how to use them.

All I can say is that if you can do what is in your VYM, you are a genious. 18 hours of Blender and you want to teach the Game Engine, NURBS and nodes? Ambitious…

If you do want to show these subjects, this is my proposition: at every course, teach one hour things you think they can understand and apply. Then tell your students that the next hour is for them to work with what they just learned. And use the last hour to show how how “powerful” Blender can be, but telle them you don’t expect them to really understand.

Durations subject to changes, you get the idea…

Looks really nice. As for an initial example, perhaps something using the array modifier? That’s a very simple thing you can do with just a cube, put in a few ipos and get some pretty cool results quickly. If your emphasis is going to be on abstract renders, especially, that could be a nice one.

As SunnySky pointed out, it’s ambitious. But if your students are motivated and you can expect them to do the assignments on their own time it should be doable.

Any chance of recording the lecture and uploading it to Photobucket or something?

Good way for the students to try the tutorial again after class in their own time if they wish to.

It’ll also allow other students to watch and learn Blender without being in the class room I suppose. But not sure if that’ll fit into your ideal way of teaching.

Just a suggestion, please ignore if you find it not necessary :slight_smile:

Wolf

Sorry, I guess I haven’t made this clear.

I’m not going to teach NURBS, just explain what they are (and why I’m not going to teach them). I will only teach polys.

I won’t teach the game engine. Where I’ve said “a very brief intro” or “intro to” or “a taste of” in my notes, that’s just what I’m giving them. I’ll show them something (using a projector hooked up to my computer), and I have no doubt that there will be a couple of advanced students who will play with them for the exercises at the end of the class, but I won’t teach them.

If you do want to show these subjects, this is my proposition: at every course, teach one hour things you think they can understand and apply. Then tell your students that the next hour is for them to work with what they just learned. And use the last hour to show how how “powerful” Blender can be, but telle them you don’t expect them to really understand.

Durations subject to changes, you get the idea…

Well, I am doing that with the 2nd and 3rd hours reversed (and actually, I think they’ll have more than an hour to play at the end of the class, given that the “intro” parts are going to be really quite short). But the students I’ve had in the past have enjoyed seeing spectacular things before they have some time to play around with the software, because it gets them excited and interested, and I find that their frustration level is reduced when they know how much fun they can potentially have as they climb the learning curve!

Anyway, I will be fleshing out my VYM a bit tonight after having all this input. I will clearly mark the areas that are going to be pretty much “demonstration only”, and I will expand on the more basic, fundamental areas. I will make the second draft of my outline much clearer. So I do appreciate everyone’s input :slight_smile:

That is a great idea! I had actually thought of that when I first started mentally planning this course, but it completely slipped my mind when I was writing the first draft. Thanks for reminding me :slight_smile:

I have thought about doing a podcast or something, but the students are paying for the class and they might feel a bit annoyed if it goes out on the internet for free. It’s a little bit tricky on a technical level as well. I don’t know, I’ll think about it.

Hi lisae,

Sounds like fun !

I looked over your “mind-map”, and it gave me some ideas. I’m thinking of trying to do something similar to what your course,… don’t worry, I’m ~8,000 miles away in Toronto :slight_smile:

I would lose all the “intro to Blender / what it means / history” … blah blah blah. Once everyone arrives in the class, I would greet them, introduce yourself and then say “Without further ado…” and show E.D. :slight_smile:

Next after talking about that movie for a few minutes, show another video of 30secs - 1minute that you have put together, explaining it will be the type of thing that they will be able to produce by the end of the course. (I would suggest that it’s something that takes YOU no longer than about 2-3 hrs max to create. Or you might have a “polished” version and a “semi-polished” (2-3hr effort, explaining the “semi-polished” one is the one they’ll be aiming for, with the 'polished" version something they can continue to work for after the course on their own

Having seen the end result, I would have them load up a copy of the scene, so they can see it on their machine. You can then talk about basic navigation zooming/ etc, and the interface while they follow along.

As for “spectacular” and “easy” … I don’t know if that’s possible, but something that you might find interesting is “mouse IPO recording” as described in this thread http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=75484

You could have another scene prepared, with just a cube and 4 empties attached as hooks to the corners. Have them load that scene, and show them the mouse recording technique, then play some music and have them create ‘dancing’ cubes / rugs / sacks.

As for the progress / layout of the course, you might ask them what everybody is interested in covering first, if there’s no preference, just go ahead with your plan.

Check my “Best of Blender” thread for links to all the best rigs that have been created by the artists here.
You might inlcude them on a CD, “just for fun”, with the proviso that building anything like them is beyond the
scope of the course.

Mike

Well, I mean if you’re going to record the lecture, just record the projector, I’m not asking to actually film the students or something.

Kinda of like having an " i-Lecture " is what we do at Murdoch University.

If they don’t want their voice to be broadcasted over the Internet then I’ve got nothing more to say.

lisae,

it just came to my mind. you said you want to adv blender to people who also have 3d skills. why dont u use files from ED as an example for your class as well? i am curious if thorough using those scene files they will better get an understanding of blender powerful animation tools because they can relate directly to the visual quality of the movie models and animations.

LOL. Go ahead. Teach them Blender’s history and they’ll head straight to the door. Why do people tend to think that teaching something had to be in chronological order? Why not head straight to the interesting, action part? So interesting in fact that students will automatically ask about the extra details later, such as the subject matter’s history. Start by adding a cube, subdivide it, move vertices around, extrude surfaces, apply subsurf 2, smooth it out, then render it. Ask them what specific object they want to model; a human head, a computer mouse, house…

Warn them first that this is not a standard windows app or so; selecting is right-clicking instead of the usual left-clicking…

I agree, that’s why I suggested starting by showing the finished animation, and working backwards. Hopefully that will give people some ideas on what they might like to do.

Mike

Murdoch? Do I know you? :stuck_out_tongue:

Perhaps I will show ED earlier, but I really want to spend a couple of minutes talking about the history of Blender, since I’ve been using it since 1998 or so! I’ve watched a lot of Blender’s history unfold, so it’s a personal interest thing for me. It will give them a chance to see why I, personally, love Blender as much as I do!

But also, bear in mind that the first thing I will be doing is showing my own showreel and talking about what I do. I didn’t put that on my course outline because it’s kind of a given for me. So I think it’s a good segue to move from talking about myself to talking about my own history with Blender.

Next after talking about that movie for a few minutes, show another video of 30secs - 1minute that you have put together, explaining it will be the type of thing that they will be able to produce by the end of the course. (I would suggest that it’s something that takes YOU no longer than about 2-3 hrs max to create. Or you might have a “polished” version and a “semi-polished” (2-3hr effort, explaining the “semi-polished” one is the one they’ll be aiming for, with the 'polished" version something they can continue to work for after the course on their own

That’s a good idea :). I’ll put together an example sometime this week and post it up here.

Having seen the end result, I would have them load up a copy of the scene, so they can see it on their machine. You can then talk about basic navigation zooming/ etc, and the interface while they follow along.

I dunno, I find that it’s best to stick with spheres and cubes in the very beginning, because too much visual input is intimidating for new students. They get flustered just learning to use the middle mouse button as more than just a scrollwheel!

As for “spectacular” and “easy” … I don’t know if that’s possible, but something that you might find interesting is “mouse IPO recording” as described in this thread http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=75484

I haven’t checked the link, but if you mean mocap using the mouse, that’s something I generally demonstrate with my Max class after I’ve taught animation. I want to do the same thing with the Blender course in maybe the fourth or fifth class. It’s a bit complex to do at the beginning.

As for the progress / layout of the course, you might ask them what everybody is interested in covering first, if there’s no preference, just go ahead with your plan.

I do usually have a chat with the class before I start my Max course, so I’ll be doing that with this one, partly to learn everyone’s names and backgrounds, see if there is anyone with prior 3D skills, etc. But I can’t really tailor the course to individuals because it’s so damn short!

Thanks for your input :slight_smile: