32 Min.
Blender Canvas 009 — How I Get the Most from Tutorials blendercanvas.com » Podcast
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- Technologie
I love Bartek Skorupa's tutorials on CG Cookie. They are so full of great tips and tricks I often don't hear mentioned anywhere else. He had a great one this last week on creating a procedural wood texture as part of the Shader Forge tutorial series on CG Cookie. But his tutorials are not the easiest to follow nor are they for the faint of heart. I've learned to do 5 steps with his, in particular, and other tutorials that help me get the most out of them.
While I'm going to be mentioning video tutorials a lot in this episode (and post), the same techniques work just as well for written tutorials and books. And not just for learning Blender, either. I've used these same 5 steps to help improve my drawing over the last couple of weeks (something I didn't mention in the podcast).
Believe it or not, these steps are very simple, but if you apply them, you'll find yourself getting even more out of the tutorials you watch.
1. Watch the tutorial all the way through.
The temptation is to jump right away into trying to do the tutorial. Unless you are refreshing your knowledge on a particular area or seeing how someone else does something you already know how to do so that you can see the difference to what you do, I would highly recommend NOT doing this the first time you watch the tutorial. Instead, the first time you watch a tutorial, try to get a feel for what techniques and tricks you're going to learn by watching the tutorial. Write down any questions you might have. Take notes if you want. But don't start trying to work through the steps. Not yet.
There's a number of reasons for this. It can be easy to assume that you know what is coming next and wind up doing something completely wrong. (Ask my wife about the first time she made cheese enchiladas.) By watching the video all the way through, you can see all the steps in the order they happen.
After having watched a number of Bartek's tutorials in the past, I knew I needed to watch it all the way through before trying to copy him. When I came across the wood tutorial, I watched it completely before I moved on.
2. Watch the tutorial again, pausing and reviewing any parts as necessary.
Bartek's videos are chocked full of explanations and tips. To fully appreciate them takes several viewings. You can't just get it all by watching it once unless you already have a solid grasp of much of what he talks about.
He goes through the material so fast at time that I had to pause the video several time so that I could catch up my work to what he just did. A number of times, I missed what he just did in trying to do things as he did it in the video without pausing and had to replay what he did so I could get it right. A few times, I had to replay it 3 or 4 times (or more) before I figured out what it was he did and why.
And it's not just Bartek's tutorials I do this with. I do it with almost all the tutorials I watch. Sometimes, they do something quickly because it is something that is covered in another tutorial. Sometimes, they're trying to get things done in a certain time frame, so they have to keep moving to fit in all they have to fit in within the time allowed. That's why pausing and rewinding can be helpful.
3. Ask questions.
If you tried to do Bartek's wood texture tutorial, you may have encountered the same problem that I did. Partway through the tutorial, I had done everything exactly as he had done and had all my settings similar (if not exact) to what he had. But I wasn't getting anything close to the same result. No matter what I tried, I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting the results he got.
What did I do? I went to the comments section and asked a question. It turns out that he had started out with a default cube that was scaled 50% in both the X and Y directions and then had that scale applied. Now, I'm not sure exactly what my dimensions or scale were on the "block" I was trying to texture,
I love Bartek Skorupa's tutorials on CG Cookie. They are so full of great tips and tricks I often don't hear mentioned anywhere else. He had a great one this last week on creating a procedural wood texture as part of the Shader Forge tutorial series on CG Cookie. But his tutorials are not the easiest to follow nor are they for the faint of heart. I've learned to do 5 steps with his, in particular, and other tutorials that help me get the most out of them.
While I'm going to be mentioning video tutorials a lot in this episode (and post), the same techniques work just as well for written tutorials and books. And not just for learning Blender, either. I've used these same 5 steps to help improve my drawing over the last couple of weeks (something I didn't mention in the podcast).
Believe it or not, these steps are very simple, but if you apply them, you'll find yourself getting even more out of the tutorials you watch.
1. Watch the tutorial all the way through.
The temptation is to jump right away into trying to do the tutorial. Unless you are refreshing your knowledge on a particular area or seeing how someone else does something you already know how to do so that you can see the difference to what you do, I would highly recommend NOT doing this the first time you watch the tutorial. Instead, the first time you watch a tutorial, try to get a feel for what techniques and tricks you're going to learn by watching the tutorial. Write down any questions you might have. Take notes if you want. But don't start trying to work through the steps. Not yet.
There's a number of reasons for this. It can be easy to assume that you know what is coming next and wind up doing something completely wrong. (Ask my wife about the first time she made cheese enchiladas.) By watching the video all the way through, you can see all the steps in the order they happen.
After having watched a number of Bartek's tutorials in the past, I knew I needed to watch it all the way through before trying to copy him. When I came across the wood tutorial, I watched it completely before I moved on.
2. Watch the tutorial again, pausing and reviewing any parts as necessary.
Bartek's videos are chocked full of explanations and tips. To fully appreciate them takes several viewings. You can't just get it all by watching it once unless you already have a solid grasp of much of what he talks about.
He goes through the material so fast at time that I had to pause the video several time so that I could catch up my work to what he just did. A number of times, I missed what he just did in trying to do things as he did it in the video without pausing and had to replay what he did so I could get it right. A few times, I had to replay it 3 or 4 times (or more) before I figured out what it was he did and why.
And it's not just Bartek's tutorials I do this with. I do it with almost all the tutorials I watch. Sometimes, they do something quickly because it is something that is covered in another tutorial. Sometimes, they're trying to get things done in a certain time frame, so they have to keep moving to fit in all they have to fit in within the time allowed. That's why pausing and rewinding can be helpful.
3. Ask questions.
If you tried to do Bartek's wood texture tutorial, you may have encountered the same problem that I did. Partway through the tutorial, I had done everything exactly as he had done and had all my settings similar (if not exact) to what he had. But I wasn't getting anything close to the same result. No matter what I tried, I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting the results he got.
What did I do? I went to the comments section and asked a question. It turns out that he had started out with a default cube that was scaled 50% in both the X and Y directions and then had that scale applied. Now, I'm not sure exactly what my dimensions or scale were on the "block" I was trying to texture,
32 Min.