Hmmm… I haven’t had a look at them myself yet. I’ll check them out as a possibility.
Most of the people I’ve talked to about Blender have wanted to know where it came from and why it’s free. Why wouldn’t I explain that first?
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…
This isn’t going to be a course on how to model human heads, etc. I won’t have time to give them those skills. In my Max course I teach edge looping in a lot of detail. I don’t believe in setting people up with half-baked modeling skills and pretending that’s good enough.
Most of the geometry they make in this class will be based on primitives and modifiers. Purely abstract.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf
Kinda of like having an " i-Lecture " is what we do at Murdoch University.Murdoch? Do I know you?
Uh . . . Murodch south street campus, Perth, WA, Australia?
Yeah, I haven’t seen you though.
I’m a first year student this year (almost over :P).
Don’t tell me you’re teaching Blender at Murdoch!?
Nope, at FTI. But my boyfriend studies at Murdoch, my ex-flatmate used to study there (still works in the library), and her boyfriend was doing his phd there as well as lecturing until recently. I can think of other people I know who are studying there or used to study there.
It does depend on the group, and the nature of your course, but an introduction to the idea of free/open source software is a very, very good idea. That’s fundamentally what sets Blender apart, and understanding why it’s free is the key to understanding why Blender isn’t just a toy that comes inside a cereal box.
My introductory Blender classes are very different, they have so far been for first year computer science students, and one of the main thrusts of the course is to get them to understand what free software is and its potential.
I save ED for the end of the course, because showing that right off the bat would only discourage them anyway. When people are first struggling to figure out how to rotate a cube, watching something like that is not really as inspiring as one might think it should be.
All in all I think it’s a very good looking course. As you say, much more of an in-depth course on Blender itself rather than a tutorial course on how to use Blender… but I think that courses like yours are a really good idea.
I say leave the history in too.
I did not read all posts but I agree with Orinoco completely…Thats It !!!
Wow - I’m also just beginning to teach a course in blender. I don’t have itquite as mapped out as you (nice to recognise another VYM user 
) because I’m one of those teachers who melds the lessons around the immediate needs of students (sounds strange… my school aims for “gifted education” which makes that approach more acceptable than it would be elsewhere).
Anyway, my kids have done PovRay Modeller before although I’ve warned them Blender is very different to the point that the prior knowledge may even be a hinderance. So far I have got them curious and all wanting to do it by showing them Elephants Dream and various blender created shorts found on these forums.
If structured lessons are what you like, I have also found a blender student manual you may like to download and use… http://www.tinyurl.com/pfddr
For me, I will be giving them various challenges and let them work out most of their own learning, after showing how I might do it, and then letting them help each other. Such tasks would include…
- Making a simple creature using the monkeyhead (suzanne?) This is the kind of approach from PovRay they are used to.
- Making a simple house by extruding aplane and making a roof
- Adding colours => add a different colour to the roof of the house. Advances students can make extra colours for windows & doors.
- Bump mapping: Making a “maori carving” by UVmapping a bump map onto a wqooden slab. (requires Gimp / Inkscape skills)
- Animation like in the blender manual gingerbread man tutorial.
…by this time I expect we will be struggling for time to fit in anything before the year ends.
Let’s steal each other’s ideas 
Thanks for the link! The manual looks far too in-depth for this course, however. I don’t expect artists to read that much text, it’s just not what we do.
I’ve got the first two classes more mapped out now. Timing out the first one, all the talking really does happen in only the first 30 minutes (the history of blender, what is open source, etc. etc.). I have 45 minutes for learning the interface, an hour for the first exercise, and time at the end to discuss our “assignment”. So it’s really not as dense as people seem to think from looking at my first mind map!
I’ll post a second draft of the course when I have some more things nailed down.
Well, I finally have the first two classes all ready to teach! I have a new version of my VYM online, and if you scroll down under the image you will find that the first and second classes are fleshed out in a lot more detail with timings for each section.
http://lisa3d.org/Blender/course_outline3.html
Both also have a link to a pdf that has the notes I will hand out to the class and a list of shortcut keys to go with the material we’ll be covering.
There is also an avi to demonstrate what we will be doing in the first class using the array modifier (as well as mirror and subsurf):
http://lisa3d.org/Blender/Lesson01.avi
Hopefully most students will move a little beyond what I’ve done there, but it will be the basis of the exercise.
I still intend to do my version of the exercise they will complete by the end of the course. I have between now and Wednesday night!
I decided that it’s best not to flesh out the rest of the course until I see how well these first two classes go. I am teaching on Wednesday and Thursday nights over three weeks, so I have a weekend in between every two classes in order to do more planning.
When I taught a week-long ( 5 day ) course in Blender, I found that the students interest was kept high during the initial familiarity period, using the Game Engine - especially due to the fact that they were in and out of in-game and modelling mode within seconds just by pressing P ( no rendering times ).
When their interest is up and they are used to the Blender UI, you can show them more involved ( detailed modelling ) and time consuming ( rendering ) tasks.
Here’s the URL that might help…
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_the_Game_Engine
Regards…
Mal
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier.
It may be too late for the first class, but could be helpful for the rest of the course.
Instead of discussing your plans with “us”, why aren’t you discussing your plans with the students who are taking the course ? 
I’m going to guess that most (all ???) of them have online access ??
Setup a blog page somewhere if you don’t have one already, and you can set the course up according to their interests.
Or you could even start a thread right here on B.A 
They could also use the page to post questions/suggestions/comments etc in between your classes, which will provide you with topics of discussion for the next class.
Another “obvious” (now anyway idea (that some of the students may have already done) : was their any information mailed/emailed out to them on where to download Blender / read the Blender wiki ? I know when I was in school I always liked to get a “head start” and would read ahead
Mike
Hey that’s a pretty cool effect
I can create the first “static” pose by using the array modifier and then duplicating the object (is that how you did it ?). I don’t know how you did the “decreasing size” of the “nodes” though. And I have no clue on how you animated that? Is there an armature in there ? If so or even if not, while “flashy” this seems pretty advanced for a first class 
I hope it’s simpler than it looks
Mike
If the course starts after December, I’d use the sculpt and retopology tools for teaching modeling (and possibly use booleans or metaballs for the base mesh) A new user can learn those far faster and easier than vertex or box modeling.
LetterRip
malCanDo - I don’t want to get into the game engine too much in this course. I think most of the people who have enrolled will be more interested in pre-rendered graphics, because the training institution is primarily based around film and TV.
Mike - At this point I have no idea who has enrolled! And they are most likely to be adults with jobs during the day who don’t necessarily want to spend their spare time on the computer. This is an evening course, it’s not “school”. But after the first couple of classes I will discuss with them how they’re finding the course and report back here.
I’ve found it useful to have this thread, partly because I’ve never taught Blender before and found it a little initimidating, and partly because it has helped push me towards being clear and concise with my course notes and outline (communicating it to other people always helps me with that). Plus the critiques and experiences of other people have been valuable
As for the little animation, there is no armature in there. I described it step by step in the notes.
Create a cylinder and orient it correctly.
Apply the array modifier.
Create an empty, and type its name into the array modifier for an object based displacement.
Scaling the empty will create the tapered effect, because all the objects get scaled that amount in a cumulative way.
Apply the mirror and subsurf modifiers as well.
Animate the empty rotating one way and then the other. This curls up the cylinders.
Create a new empty and parent the cylinder and first empty to it. You have to do this to preserve the animation in the local space of the cylinder (ie. in the parent space).
Use Alt-D to duplicate the whole setup a few times and rotate them to make the star.
Add a colour and render it out
LetterRip - The course starts this Wednesday! But it doesn’t matter, we’re not going to learn how to model in any detail. Like I’ve said a few times, I’m teaching Blender, not 3D skills.
Ok, sorry I missed that you said there was a link to the notes in your post.
I went back and grabbed the pdf … but …
I’m probably a good test subject, I know my way around the Blender interface pretty well, but I have focused on animation and haven’t done much modelling, and haven’t used the array modifer much and never with an Empty in the Object offset field, so for all intents and purposes I was starting from (almost) scratch.
I didn’t get anywhere trying to follow the instructions in that pdf.
However … after trying to follow the instructions there, I then tried again using your instructions in your previous post (I hadn’t looked at those instructions yet, while I was attempting the PDF notes).
This time I got it to work easily. I suggest you revise your notes using the instructions from your previous post.
One caveat, is your use of the word apply. I would change that to add, as the modifiers have an Apply button, which as you probably know do something very different than your intended meaning.
Also, instead of “orienting it correctly”, if you start with a top view, press ALT-C,C to put the cursor at the origin, the cylinder will get created “oriented correctly” … or alt-g, alt-r … just a thought to maybe make things easier.
Also, in your PDF you had “add a symmetery modifer”, which AFAIK there is no symmetry modifer ?
Again, that’s a neat effect, and thanks for explaining it
Mike
Oh, sorry. The notes are written to accompany my class, where I will be showing the students step by step with a projector linked up to my computer. I didn’t put much detail into them because I didn’t expect anyone to try the exercise with no input from me! But I’ll make those changes because they are good points.
The symmetry modifier is what we use in 3DS Max all the time. It’s difficult to get out of the habit of using terms from the software you’re most familiar with.
Ya that’s what I figured
But if the instructions are clear, (which your second set are), then I think it will make it easier for you instead of having to check/help everybody.
Check out my little animation
http://www.4shared.com/file/5458970/af855841/fishies.html
Mike