Comments on: cmiVFX announce 'Blender Organic Modeling Techniques video'

By: borgesian

borgesian — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:40:29 +0000

Hello!

I have bought this video, and have five comments regarding it, one good, one already said, one about something I missed, and two very bad:

1) The material is excellent. I can see that there is a lot to be learned from it. In the first few minutes I watched new concepts that I could put to work right away on my models, and that was just the basic stuff! Now I am going over part 5 of 17, looking forward to the more arcane Blender things that are ahead (which, for me, a noob, is almost everything).

2) Just as Held said above, it was somewhat disappointing to see the rear legs appear completely formed. Maybe for most people extruding legs is trivial, but for me, at least, is quite a challenge. Sebastian has a rough model of the body in one hour; it took me much, much longer to make a simpler one of a fish because I'm a noob. Watching how he did it here would have been very interesting to me. True, there is the modeling of the front legs later on, and that would have been ok by itself, were it not for what I describe below in comments 4 and 5.

3) What I am missing so far in this video are some insights about edge-loop topology; how it works, why he uses it, etc. I know that it is highly desirable to have good edge-loops, but it is the detailed insight that I am missing. For example: there is a moment in which Sebastian links the backbone with the rear leg using a diagonal face. Why? What does this accomplish?

4) Now, the problem I am having is two-fold: the player is stopping all the time to load the video. Sometimes it even gets so bad that it goes something like this: Sebastian starts saying "I think this edge needs…" The player stops to load for 5, 10 or 15 seconds. Then it starts again. Sebastian continues with "to be moved to…" The player stops to load for 5 or 10 seconds. Then it starts again. This is very frustrating.

5) Worse still, is the other thing I'm experiencing: I hear Sebastian talking, giving instructions, indicating problematic areas on the model, selecting and moving stuff, BUT I can not see any of this because the image is frozen on the player; it remains static there for 3, 5 or 10 important, seconds whilst Sebastian continues talking and modeling.

I have sent an email to cmiVFX regarding my problems viewing the video, so I really hope that there is a way to fix them. Because this tutorial is really worth every cent I paid for it… as long as I eventually get to watch it correctly on my computer.

Regards,

Borgesian

By: DenisM

DenisM — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:57:09 +0000

In case someone is looking for the reference image:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mammuthus_columbi_Sergiodlarosa.jpg

By: sebastian_k

sebastian_k — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:02:33 +0000

actually, held, that was my fault. hopefully there is a way to fix it.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:02:09 +0000

I got the email from cmiVFX about the video. It looks great. I've used them before and can vouch that the online player is good. You can use the player to watch it how many ever times you need to. Is there an accompanying download? I've purchased the scripting video and there was a zip download of the scripts from the video – didn't know if their was a download that included the blend files.

By: sebastian_k

sebastian_k — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:34:41 +0000

hey held!
sorry for that. i did not do the editing of the video. i'll ask them why they cut that out. thanks for the hint!
cheers,
sebastian

By: Held

Held — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:21:09 +0000

Hi Sebastian,
I've watched the part on box modeling and so far i really liked it.
However, at around minute 20 the legs just appear. Why did you leave this part out? I would have really liked to see how you created them.

By: sebastian_k

sebastian_k — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:58:02 +0000

For everybody who wants to checkout the quality on cmiVFX and if it's worth purchasing, they've just put up a free Blender Introduction Tutorial that I've recorded for them. It's about 25 min and gives a very quick and rough overview about interface, viewport navigation, basic modeling tasks and UI-customization to get you started with Blender. But I would think that this is rather boring for the common blendernation-reader ;-)
All you need to do is to go to http://www.cmivfx.com/cmi_vod.html, register, launch the player and go to the category "blender" where you'll find the video.
And btw, don't forget to check out Jason van Gumster's awesome compositing video that you'll find under "free tutorials"!
Cheers, Sebastian

By: sebastian_k

sebastian_k — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:56:14 +0000

@jose: thank you very much!
good to hear! :-)
well, yeah, having visuals is cool, but soo much work… for 5 hours that would simply take too much time.
thanks for the feedback!

By: sebastian_k

sebastian_k — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:53:31 +0000

no, it is only in the online player. but let me tell you, the online player really rocks! you can easily access every chapter separately, or view it all in 1 go, you can scrub back and forth, it's really cool. and well, i think that way they can control pirating a bit better.

cheers,
sebastian

By: jose

jose — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:52:09 +0000

Hi Sebastian. Thanks for this really nice work. Even if I haven't finished the entire video yet I can tell It worth the money. For all of you novice modelers out there, struggling with edge flow and loops this is pure gold. I begun to understand the importance of edge flow with your fly modeling tutorial, so I didn't doubt for a second when I saw this one.

Something I really missed on this compared to the fly tutorial, are the visual aids (For example: the arrows and color used to show the correct edge's orientation) Because sometimes its really hard to anticipate the right direction of the flow in complex models like this. btw no need to excuse about your accent (English isn't my mother tongue obviously, and I'm following along without any problem.