Announcement #5 (9/4/18): This class if officially over. See page 26 for the closing post and don't forget to fill out the questionnaire!
Announcement #4 (8/27/18): REMINDER that this week's stream is on Wednesday, NOT Tuesday. I'm out of the office Monday (8/27) and Tuesday (8/28) but will be back in full grading force on Wednesday.
Announcement #3 (8/6/18): New way to Submit Homework. Please create a unique forum thread to contain all your homework submissions for the month, rather than everyone submitting in this main thread. More info on page 12.
Announcement #2 (8/7/18): Zsolt has done it again. He's prepared the report card document for this month. Feel free to monitor your grades there throughout the next 4-5 weeks.
Announcement #1 (8/6/18): Class is officially in session!
**Experienced Blender users are Welcome! Clarification about involvement on page 2 of this thread.
Welcome to the CGCookie Class: Getting Started with 3D Modeling & Blender 2.8! If you're interested in computer graphics, 3D modeling, and you're new to Blender / new to Blender 2.8, this class is where you need to be.
This "Class" format invites all Citizen members to focus together on a particular topic/skill for a month. Participation looks like this:
WHEN? The class will take place from August 6th - September 4th.
Abstract: The goal this week is to simply get familiar with the application. We’ve all been there: Opening Blender (or any 3D package), gazing at all the crazy UI, trying to orbit in the viewport, crying...Ok, maybe you were stronger than me and didn’t cry. But the reality is 3D software is daunting. There’s SO MUCH to digest especially when you’re a beginner.
This first week we’re going to overview Blender 2.8 and 3D from an absolutely beginner perspective. What is Blender for? What can it do? Wait, this isn’t a juicing seminar?
Goal of the Week: Get comfortable with Blender 2.8's UI, viewport navigation, creation and position objects.
Pre-recorded course to watch:
Week 1 Live Event (Remember to RSVP!)
Homework:
Abstract: Enter the world of mesh modeling: The oldest form of building 3D objects with your computer. We’ll discuss the technical art of “pushing and pulling verts” as modelers often call it. Welcome to this wild, geometric world!
Goal of the Week: Practicing editing a polygonal mesh's components to create a custom 3D model.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 2 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: Digital sculpting is the more artistically intuitive method of 3D modeling. If pushing and pulling verts felt like the hard way of doing things, sculpting will be a welcomed alternative!
Goal of the Week: Practice digital sculpting.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Article to Read: Big Idea: Digital Tablets
Week 3 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: At this point, you've been introduced to the key 3D modeling methods. Meaning that you have the tools you need to MODEL STUFF! This is where practice will make perfect. This is where you build stuff.
Goal of the Week: Be inspired to continue modeling and spend the week modeling or sculpting a challenging object.
Pre-recorded courses to watch: Modeling in Blender Learning Flow
Week 4 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
This thread is reserved for CG Cookie Citizens that are participating in the "Getting Started with 3D Modeling & Blender 2.8" class. Its purpose is to serve as central communication for all participating Citizens (excluding Hobby plan Citizens) to ask Kent and fellow participants questions and to post homework. As the instructor of the class, Kent will be monitoring this thread on a daily basis (especially Mon-Thurs) throughout the month of Auguest to review homework and answer questions.
Free members are welcome to observe the thread but please respect that communication and participation is reserved for Citizens.
Just finished catching up in this thread and peeking in at the homework submissions. Once again, LEGIT advice and help is being exchanged both in this main thread and in individual threads. Way to go team!
I'll continue logging grades tomorrow so keep an eye on the report card doc if you're interested. Week 2 is upon us!
All right, got my Week 1 homework thread in.
I'm a little concerned about a potential issue I've noticed, which is that all our individual homework threads have effectively pushed all other forum threads all the way back to like page 3! I'm hoping that isn't causing too much an inconvenience for non-class-takers using the forum.
jakeblended Yeah I didn't really think about that side effect...and it would also mean non-homework threads will remain on page 2 or 3 the rest of the month. I'll see what Wes thinks lol
Does anyone know how I can move objects out of collections? Once I move them in they seem to be stuck there forever. Dragging them out of the collection in the Outliner doesn't work for me.
Edit: Nevermind, looks like you need to select the objects and press M to move them. 😆
bbsdwerbeagentur To do that simply select the objects you wish to move, hit M and then hit "Scene Collection" to move them out of all collections.
nekronavt thecabbagedetective Thanks. Figured that out seconds after I asked. Damn it feels like I'm learning a completely new program.
bbsdwerbeagentur If you think of Collections like layers in 2.7, moving things from one collection to another works almost the exact same way. :)
You can also put things in more than one collection at the same time btw. For simple scenes like the ones we're making I suppose there isn't too much use for that ability; but for far more complex ones it could be quite useful I think.
Sadly, but not entirely unexpectedly, Blender 2.8 did not make the targeted beta release of August 12 (yesterday). A new target of "before the end of October", i.e., in time for this year's Blender conference, has been set and the expected full RTM of Blender 2.8 has been moved to early 2019. You can read more about the changed roadmap at the dev blog here.
Instead, as of yesterday Blender is now in state "2.8 alpha 2", as you'll see if you download the newest build. Apparently there's just so much different that it's taking a little longer than they'd hoped to crush all the bugs - and there's also the fact that new features, big and important ones too, have actually been added during the alpha, which of course come with their own bugs that need squished.
I am not too terribly disappointed by this news; I don't think it affects the class very much, as all the basic functionality is still there and working for the most part. I will still complete the class with 2.8 but I will wait until the end of the month to decide whether I will stick with 2.8 after all considering the moved-back development time. I still might.
jakeblended Ahh... well, actually considering it still crashes when adding a torus I think this is a smart move of the developers. I rather they take the time to make it really good. Torn about the switch to 2.8 too, kinda fallen in love with it! but since I still have many many courses to do (where I probably need addons for, and all the files are for 2.79) I guess I will still be using 2.79 after all. But nothing is stopping me to use 2.8 for personal projects on the side 😉 Thanks for sharing the news!
ssmurfmier1985 on problems like with the toruses: I only download new builds every few days, not every single night; but I do keep the last three "versions" I've downloaded around just in case of little bugs like this. Whenever I download a new 2.8 build, I delete the oldest one I have, so I always have three. In this case, my project NEEDED toruses, no choice; and I was able to use one I still had from the end of July that was able to create toruses with no problems.
I don't think you can go back and download older versions of the 2.8 builds; saving a couple of older versions is a habit you have to develop for yourself when you download new ones, if you decide to do that.
jakeblended I did keep a couple of old ones, never thought about them anymore though! Good tip, I need a torus in my project for week 2 so I'll try with an old one 😊 thanks!!
Well, at least they're not rushing to put out something half buggy. I respect that. I'm actually really enjoying 2.8 once I got over the learning hump, so I might stick with it. The UI is also better imo. If the bugs get really bad before release, I can always revert back to 2.7.
jakeblended Early 2019? That's kind of sad. Even though I couldn't add a torus in my primitive exercise either without making it crash after a while and I have trouble to continue working on another scene because it crashes every time I want to scale a cube (it actually drives me nuts) I already got used to Alt+A and the cool new shading features. 😭I was hoping for a more stable version soon and looking forward to October. But I guess it's worth waiting longer if they need the time to fix all the bugs and to work on new features.
jakeblended Not so bad, I'd rather them delay it and have it be stable after all. Not to mention aside from the Collections system and a few QoL things there's not really much that makes me go "Okay I gotta switch to 2.8 NOW," so I'm content to wait.
jakeblended Blender 2.8 alpha 2...sigh. This will certainly be a talking point during tomorrows stream 😐
@theluthier I'm not a dev, but it is the very first time I've ever seen the designation of "alpha 2" for a software state...
nekronavt ha!
It's okay though. I am NOT a software developer, and I have absolutely no idea how hard it is to develop something as common as Blender. I've never even seen an "open alpha" for a major piece of software before; but it's awesome that the Blender devs are doing it, and I think it's just an unfortunate side-effect that that open-ness also means that sometimes we have a front-row seat for setbacks like this. 2.8 is already pretty darn amazing in so many ways, so I won't let it dampen my excitement.