From Self Taught to learned - how to evolve?

[Shredder565]

Are there any good books on softimage or maya to try that are easy to understand and make things easy to remember?

The problem with not having patience for a college that teaches softimage, or programs like it is that you don't care about the other classes you'd have to take in order to learn the one that you DO care about.

When you guys make suggestions on here, i'm kind of ashamed to say 99% of the time that i don't even have an idea on what is being said ;o).

All I know are the basics.

I can model a decent enough figure out of a sphere.
I can color it ok (color blindness not withstanding)
I can set up a basic skeleton.
I figured out shape animation on my own,

but that is about it. just the basics.

I don't do texturing. I don't do advanced lighting. i don't do effects. i don't do ice..

there has to be a way to expand past the basics, but keeping it simple.

what is out there?

[Draise]

I am pretty much self taught in all things 3D. I can't say I'm great, but always learning.

Pluralsight, through Visual Studio with Microsoft if giving away 3 months free. I have been using it and.. unabashedly have been saving the videos for later like a madman. Lots of cool stuff there. There's a forum post here about it.

What kind of art/animation/style do you want to learn? That might help you finetune your learning direction.

[Bullit]

As the time goes by i think the learning for the sake of leaning is not a good approach at least for me.

I need to have a project.

I think this reveals also that i don't find much pleasure for the tools that we work. I mean moving a point for the sake of moving a point to follow a tutorial just brings me boredoom.

[mc_axe]

Is not necessarily so bad to be self taught, there is no college that can cover all, OK i carry some bad habits, i have to admit but is not what keeping me back. Just go for new skills and you will evolve automatically on previous ones when you come back to them. Also dont forget to check what ppl do nowdays, what pipelines ppl use etc, giving up on an old method in favor of a better one is hard sometimes but is key to evolution.

But honestly im also in the state of maximum boredom when it comes to expanding my knowledge in random directions.
I see it like someone has to spend like 80 hours to get a spherical approach on the basics of skill X instead making a couple hours session with a guy that already way beyond basics on skill X. Im shy as well to make Skype sessions but im 2 old and BORED for this s&it after all rrawwrr tests mic .

--

If its not a matter of stamina go the classic way reading documentation then external help from tutorials online courses wiki forums etc.

[Shredder565]

As the time goes by i think the learning for the sake of leaning is not a good approach at least for me.

I need to have a project.

I think this reveals also that i don't find much pleasure for the tools that we work. I mean moving a point for the sake of moving a point to follow a tutorial just brings me boredoom.

agree so much with the project part. it forces you to improve.

hence, ten years of turtles.


and yeah on the boring too. that's why i hope to find something short form and easy to remembe.r

[Rork]

I think most of us are self taught for the best part, as manuals was all there was at some point.
Nowadays there are plenty of training websites, video's on YT and Vimeo to watch and learn.

But doing some kind of (small) project is the best way to learn stuff, and concentrate on the new things you want to learn.
Lighting, texturing, shading etc., do it in small steps, as with the ever expanding features of 3D apps, you quickly get side-tracked otherwise..... ;)

There's no perfect way to learn and remember stuff, everybody does it in their own way.
Repetition is the key to get it 'stuck' in the brain I guess, and to get comfortable with new areas of the application.

Never be afraid to ask questions, the answers might lead you into new and exiting projects

rob

[NNois]

Yep,
Most of us are self taught.

Yes the ONLY way is to work actually for a client project or replicating one.

But the most important thing when you actually learn is Solving Problems. You have to force you to actually found the necessary ways to meet the quality you decide on the first step.
For example your Ninja Turtle episodes aren't a good way to actually get better because, excuse me, you don't meet a good visual quality, nor animation, nor visually pleasant characters.

You need first a good eye, next a sence of lightning, and exigency even if it's a personal work.

So to resume, taking some art school class too, will give you a sence of art and next to that will give you the "feeling" to make you better.

[Shredder565]

I think most of us are self taught for the best part, as manuals was all there was at some point.
Nowadays there are plenty of training websites, video's on YT and Vimeo to watch and learn.

But doing some kind of (small) project is the best way to learn stuff, and concentrate on the new things you want to learn.
Lighting, texturing, shading etc., do it in small steps, as with the ever expanding features of 3D apps, you quickly get side-tracked otherwise..... ;)

There's no perfect way to learn and remember stuff, everybody does it in their own way.
Repetition is the key to get it 'stuck' in the brain I guess, and to get comfortable with new areas of the application.

Never be afraid to ask questions, the answers might lead you into new and exiting projects

rob

With small projects, i find i never finish them. maybe it's my OCD, or lack of attention span, or the feel of 'need to get stuff started so it feels like i'm accomplishing stuff'...
but if i start a small project (C3P0/R2, Proton Pack), I wind up either putting it on the back burner for a long time, or just never finishing it.

also, with what another poster said, sometimes I too feel like i'm too old and tired to learn new stuff. that's why i was pissed softimage got retired. maybe ten years ago i could have had the attention span to try and learn maya or re learn max..but not so much now .

oh well, maybe i'm not too far off the learning track as it is .

[Shredder565]

Yep,
Most of us are self taught.

Yes the ONLY way is to work actually for a client project or replicating one.

But the most important thing when you actually learn is Solving Problems. You have to force you to actually found the necessary ways to meet the quality you decide on the first step.
For example your Ninja Turtle episodes aren't a good way to actually get better because, excuse me, you don't meet a good visual quality, nor animation, nor visually pleasant characters.

You need first a good eye, next a sence of lightning, and exigency even if it's a personal work.

So to resume, taking some art school class too, will give you a sence of art and next to that will give you the "feeling" to make you better.

I tried to get into art classes. they wouldn't take me because they didn't think my stuff was good enough. but, chicken and the egg, isn't that WHY you sign up for art classes SO your stuff can get good enough?

Story of my life.

hence why i started this repetition stuff to try and force myself to improve.

[Hirazi Blue]

Like Draise already suggested: sign up for free at Pluralsight: look here. They still offer a lot of valuable Softimage training...
And although I admire your tenacity in sticking to your Turtles-project, a change of pace and some new (smaller) projects would be helpful to regain your focus...
;)

[Shredder565]

Like Draise already suggested: sign up for free at Pluralsight: look here. They still offer a lot of valuable Softimage training...
And although I admire your tenacity in sticking to your Turtles-project, a change of pace and some new (smaller) projects would be helpful to regain your focus...
;)

Believe me, i know ;o).

I'm getting bored with the full episode thing. I've met all the challenges i set out for myself, so it's time for new challenges.

I'll check out the link.

[Daniel Brassard]

Other than Pluralsight, check those three threads

https://www.si-community.com/forum/v ... =22&t=1306
https://www.si-community.com/forum/v ... 51&start=0
https://www.si-community.com/forum/v ... =22&t=1470

Books I would recommend, they are basic but useful:

Autodesk Softimage 2014: A Tutorial Approach
https://www.amazon.com/Autodesk-Softima ... =softimage

SOFTIMAGE XSI 5: The Official Guide (Revealed Series)
https://www.amazon.com/SOFTIMAGE-XSI-Of ... =softimage

Experience XSI 4: The Official SOFTIMAGE XSI 4 Guide to Character Creation
https://www.amazon.com/Experience-XSI-O ... =softimage

I still have my old books and DVDs that came with XSI 4, they have become quite invaluable as reference over time. The DVDs are now available on youtube (Production DVDs, see second thread listed above).

And

That brick of a book if you are still on the mental ray bandwagon:

Mental Ray for Maya, 3ds Max, and XSI: A 3D Artist's Guide to Rendering
https://www.amazon.com/mental-ray-Maya- ... mental+ray

Lighting and Rendering

Digital Lighting and Rendering (3rd Edition) (Voices That Matter) by Jeremy Birn
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Lighting ... mental+ray

Texturing

Digital Texturing and Painting by Owen Demers
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/07357 ... Q45SWSD82E

Hope that help.

[nicole]

.
.
.
somehow you need to protect yourself from Artschool, which sometimes tends to organize you,
in your stead, so nice to develop a sub-culture that touches to everything related to thinking,
and thinking foremost your medium of election (if its 3d digital?)- and how it comes related to other
mediums (geography-other and archeology-other) so i would suggest instead than undertaking courses in
an art school,
besides going from time to time to a Cinema Museum of your home town,
or to visit the other Historical Gardens (Art Collections),
i thus suggest to actually go read selected litterature ( why not in a Public Library?),
like as it comes to my mind today: Elie Faure's History of Art,and his The Spirit of the Forms (intensely poetic studies of
artstructures as they spanned in his collective mind across various cultures and creatures on Earth,
if written in early XX Century the artistic essays come still of high interest for a contemporaneous curious mind)-
or why not to have a peek at: for instance, Gilles Deleuze's Logic of Sensation, which comes to you with a study of different kinds of tackling Aesthetics and Painting:
was it either Optical, was it rather Haptic, was it a Mixes of them, across different 'periods' times (Greeks, Egyptians, Cézanne, Bacon,...)
and what with relations with intense questions affecting thoughts, like repetition and différences in color handling, the becoming animal, the role of photography in painting, and even
as it was written in 1981, a (somewhat) early evaluation of computer drawing's possibilities for painting.
.
.
as a general note i would say that most of the time artschools, driven artsociety is only interested by parcels, parts, bits of you.
when those past times, say humanists readings (among other life studies) can offer you a unique opportunity to escape from artschool abuse, any systematisations, to keep and recover control of your body and mind.
it eats time of course, because you then need loads of times to forge & grow your own critical mind, but its highly rewarding in sensation, which is art after all..
it is thus highly combinable with the practice of a digital art. and in my imagination it can well empower you to an original way of tackling any new technology and "be creative" in a way of your own...

[myara]

3D is a digital representation of what we used to do manually. The media is different but the required knowledge is still the same as the analog way.

So if you make a movie, to make it Top Quality you'll need sculpting, animation, acting, direction, lighting, photography, and a lot of skills besides the CGI knowledge.

Besides rigging and FX, everything has a direct counterpart in the analog world. And as hard as it may look, learning your software is the easy part. Training your eye, your taste and learning how to use it to create cool stuff is harder. And for that I think learning the analog basics is the best way.

It will be impossible to master everything so I suggest you to focus on one or two at a time.
For example, if you are going to focus on modeling, then anything related to drawing and sculpting will improve your skills. I do agree that you should go to some sort of Art School, not to be an artist, or expand your creativity, but to practice and train your artistic eye. And for that an experimented teacher would make your path easier.

For you, knowing how to use your pencils from H to B won't be as important as to be able to capture what you see in your paper. Modeling is the same, you'll just do it with a mouse and pen tablet and in 3D space.

Anatomy Knowledge, painting, drawing, even makeup and fashion knowledge can help your modeling a lot. And it's fun.

Some people even learn pantomime to improve their animation skills. I haven't tried that by myself. I went to a Blizzard seminar where the expositor explained how her hobby making costumes and cosplay helped her a lot when Marvelous Designer came out, and how she applied that knowledge to Zbrush too. It was pretty awesome. Anyway, the more knowledge you have in your head, the better.

Since I don't really have much time to get out of my office, what works for me is to dedicate a few hours per day to try something new, experiment with the software, scripting, ice, zbrush, illustration or whatever. Something that can or can not related directly to my current Project.

Have fun !

[Daniel Brassard]

Good advice Myara.

You echo the same topics covered in this class I recently took at CGMA. Was worth every pennies.

http://www.cgsociety.org/training/cours ... ter-artist