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.
yeah, usually it just stays alpha until it changes. :) no biggie for me though, stability is most important factor personally, even though the autosave is amazing in blender, i still rather not lose work. 2.79 is stable as a rock. Though even that you can crash with viewport cycles rendering when changing shader settings haphazardly :D
right call to delay it anyhow. personally i don't need the new ui layout, i work fullscreen mode without t and n panels and only bring those out when there is specific thing i do where i don't get those from fullscreen mode.
@theluthier Why thank you, you're very kind, I try my best! Bit of a delayed response but better late than never I suppose.
Here is the video I mentioned that I found in the chat for this week's livestream, about setting up blueprints to use in 2.8. 2.8 has gotten rid of the old "background images" function, presumably because it was very memory-intensive and incompatible with the 3D viewer upgrade they did.
This video explains how to set up background image objects in 2.8, for now. They may add a more convenient or better system as 2.8 is developed.
I thought I'd make a post about the video reel and use that opportunity to ask you a few questions.
First, would you like me to do this every week? I'll be happy to do that, I just want to be sure that everyone is cool with it. And second, do you have any recommendations for improving it? As I mentioned in the chat, this is the first time I made this kind of a video. Also the first time I used Blender's video sequencer. My whole preparation was to binge-watch a few tutorials from this series and off I went. :-) That means there is lot that could be done better - don't be afraid to let me know in the comments.
For those of you who are interested, here is my current process:
1. Open all homework threads, find the final submissions and download them
- I'll be doing this on Monday, around 3 pm CEST (that should be Monday for everyone)
- You can help me a lot by clearly marking your final render and making it easy for me to find it.
2. Normalize the size of the images
- The video has its own resolution settings (1920x1080 by default) and all images need to somehow fit there. If they have non-standard size they are going to get distorted. To prevent that from happening I scaled the images and put them against a neutral background.
3. Put people's names on the images
- I used Krita's text tool for this part. I think I got a good system going, but it is still very prone to errors. I'll do my best to avoid any author-artwork mismatches, but... you know, stuff happens.
4. Create set of short animations, 5 images per video
- I've added some fade transitions between the images. Using the 5-image format makes it easier to re-render if I make a mistake. I have a template for this, so it goes surprisingly fast.
5. Put the short animations together
- Here I add some extra transitions and fade in and fade out. I also add a music track and keyframe its own fade in and fade out.
That was a lot longer than I thought it would be, but maybe it will help people who are interested in this part of Blender (it doesn't get covered very often).
jakeblended 
sadicus I see what you're asking now about merging within a threshold. The tool you want is in Edit Mode, Vertex > Remove Doubles. That will merge all vertices that are close enough to each other, based on a merge limit / threshold.
shiennar Personally if you have the time to spare and want to do it I say go for it, it was a really nice surprise and I hope to see it some more.
@theluthier about linking and Collections - linking does appear to be how you put a single object into multiple collections. Instead of using M to move it to another collection, Shift-M links an object to another collection. The link isn't a duplicate object, it just serves as a placeholder for that object in that collection, that you can use the collection features on (turning visibility or selectability on and off for example). Think of it like a shortcut in your operating system. You can also link an object into another collection by dragging it in the outliner to the collection you want to link it in, and holding Ctrl before dropping it.
Selecting a linked object in a collection is the same as selecting the "original" object, there's no distinction. So there is no special need to keep track of what collection the "real" object is in versus which collections it's only "linked" in. They are all the same object.
So let's say you have a Cube in Collection 1, and you want it to also be in a Collection 2. So you hit Shift-M > New Collection, name it Collection 2 and hit OK, and now in your Outliner, Cube is in both Collection 1 and Collection 2. Now let's say some time later on you decide you don't want the Cube to still be in Collection 1 after all. In the Outliner just go to Collection 1, right-click the Cube, and choose "unlink", and bam - now it only exists in Collection 2.
shiennar I loved the video surprise! Very well made I would say, couldn't tell it was your first time :)
thecabbagedetective I think not just by attending, but by making posts in the chat stream too you get some amount of points for each thing you post.
Missed the early part of the stream but watched it in the youtube playback.
It felt very inspirational, Kate. Loved it!
I personally don't get too hung up on XP. When I see my gallery start to fill up, then I know I'm getting it. Until then, I'm just learning and having fun (IN 2.79 mwah haha)
If someone needs a lot of reference images and wants to save the time to open every image manually every time I can really recommend the program PureRef. It's free and you can store as much images side by side as you want. Very useful and I've been using it for quite a while now.
jakeblended Thanks for the video!! You just saved my a lot of time of digging..
If I spent as much time working on my scenes as I did constantly refreshing the forum page I'd probably have Week 4 done by now.
@theluthier I've got a question about the final homework assignment (maybe a bit early to ask already sorry for that), since we're going all out is it also allowed to do some post processing with a program like Krita or Photoshop? 'Cause I'm much more comfortable with those than with the compositing in Blender..