January Blender BootCamp being held in Florida
The training, provided by LearnITPro, will be an intensive four-day training course specifically designed for individuals who want a compact and informative introduction to 3d Graphics and Animation.
LearnITPro provides training classes by professionals in the field, not just classroom trainers. Our courses are designed for hands on learning and immediate application of your new skills.
This training offers a condensed and information-rich, hands-on introduction into 3d Graphics and Animation. This is the perfect class for beginners interested in getting started with 3d or professionals looking to learn Blender 3d application suite.
When
January 20-24, 2008
Course Outline
Graphics and Blender History
The 3D workflow
Touring the Interface
Description of the project
Basic Mesh Modeling
Advanced Mesh tools
Curve Modeling
Lecture: Textures, Shaders, and Materials
Texturing
UV mapping
Advanced materials
Introduction to optics
Camera Techniques
Animation, basics
Basic Lighting
Basic renderingPrior experience in 3d Graphics is not necessary. Some experience may be helpful but not required.
Wonderful Environment
Our Bootcamp classes are held at the world class Marriott Hutchinson Island Resort, located in the Treasure Coast of Florida. All meals and travel to and from the airport are included in your tuition.
Pricing
We have a tiered pricing model to suit our students needs:
All Inclusive – Includes a beautiful room at the Hutchinson Island Marriott Resort, Meals, Transportation from the airport, Training Materials, and a LearnIT Pro tee-shirt. Students also receive access to watch a recording of their course for their own reference from our streaming server. Cost $3995
Florida Residents (or Free Birds) – For those who live in Florida or want to make their own accommodations they can attend the course and receive the course, Training Materials, and a LearnITPro tee-shirt. Students also receive access to watch a recording of their course for their own reference from our streaming server. Cost $2995
Simulcast (Distance Learning) – For those who can’t physically attend the course can attend via a remove video stream and interactive interface with the rest of the class LIVE, students also receive the Training Materials, and a LearnITPro tee-shirt. Students also receive access to watch a recording of their course for their own reference from our streaming server. Cost $995
Stream Access – For those who can’t physically attend the course in person or via the web, you receive access to watch a recording of the course for their own reference from our streaming server, Course Materials are included as well. Cost $299.00
LearnITPro can assist prospective students with financing options, please contact us if you would like more information about our financing options through our financial lending partner.
way too much.. streaming $900 come on.. and the DVD $300… WOW
i think fair price for the DVD will be Max $99
I thinks less even
around £30-40 would be the highest I would pay for a DVD but £450 does seem waaay to much for a video stream.
To everybody complaining about the price: this kind of training is obviously not aimed for hobbyists, but for corporate/professional participants. In that respect, I’m hoping that MORe of these expensive trainings will surface – this is a clear indication that the industry is starting to regard Blender as a viable 3D solution. So: expensive, more professional 3D trainings == good news for Blender.
I agree with Bart. Remember folks, the price of Blender training is a reflection of the value of *your* skills in the marketplace.
@Tony: ooh, that’s a *sweet* way of putting it! Thanks!
Might be wise to take a look at who is doing the training, to see whether it’s worth the cost. Is the trainer anyone with any credibility in the Blender community? Red Hat High had Jonathan Williamson and Bassam Kurdali, among others, providing training with roughly the same curriculum. That was free.
I agree with what Bart said. Its in the eye of professional use and not just generic. Blender is an awesome program and is getting better.
@willie: remember though that Red Hat High was strictly for a select few Jr. High students. I think it’s great to see training seminars like this popping up! Like Tony said, the fact that people are charging substantial money for Blender training gives off a very professional vibe. Take a look a look at the CGSociety workshops, relatively speaking they’re about the same costs.
@Willie: It’s better to learn from a teacher than a showcase, as it is also not the price one pays to be assured of good teachings.
@Jonathan, I know that, and I’d like to think that this workshop would be of similar quality. CGSociety workshops are, for the most part, taught by experts in the subject taught, not johnny-come-latelys who pop out of the woodwork. While I agree that expensive trainings give off a professional vibe, they do so because the people attending the training expect to get good value for their money, the companies funding the training expect their people to come back with something substantial under their belt. Now, many of them will take a flyer on something untried, but they won’t do it again if it doesn’t work out.
Take a look at the trainers. Do you recognize any of the names? Are any of them active in the Blender community? On the Blender Foundation Education mailing list? Published in BlenderArts magazine? Do they, in fact, know about Blender and how it works, know the workflow tips and tricks that make expensive expert training worth the price of admission?
I actually agree with Bart: expensive, more professional training is good for Blender. I only question whether this qualifies as to the “more professional” part. It takes more than a fancy Florida hotel and a slick website to make a training more professional. Now, if you could leave a message here saying they’d hired you to do the training, well, that would convince me it would be a worthwhile event!
This posting makes me feel pretty good after the few hits I took in the spring when I offered some Blender training through my school district for $50 per day which also included the coursework and a CD of useful files :-) Some people thought that was too expensive….
@Willie, I think you’re right that an expensive course needs to offer good value for money. Obviously this course will succeed or fail based on whether they can attract and satisfy students. But there are a lot of highly skilled and professional Blender users who may not have high profiles in the Blender community, so I think that you can’t judge entirely based on whether you already know the person. The instructors may have been active in the community 5 years ago and focusing on professional work lately. Not to mention the fact that some of the most helpful and knowledgable people in BlenderArtists are essentially anonymous. Heck, Fligh could be teaching this and who’d know?
One of the reasons that courses like this are expensive is that in many cases, the students themselves aren’t paying. Their employers are paying. Anybody can still learn Blender for free if they’ve got the time and motivation, just like mostly anything else, and they’ll always be able to do so. But if you work at a studio and your boss says “learn Blender” you expect the boss to pick up the tab and make it worth your while. Courses like this I think are mainly targeting that kind of client.
In the end, the market decides what’s a reasonable price for training material and courses. It’s not really a matter of opinion. If people pay, it’s cheap enough.
By the way, if you want to know about the Blender instructor, it’s on the website:
J. Daniel Sawyer
Blender Instructor Dan Sawyer has been using Blender since early 1999 to create visual effects and matte paintings. In the same year he moved from system administration to mutilmedia production, where he has directed, produced, edited, or shot upwards of a dozen short and feature films. Today he runs a small full service media studio that makes heavy use of Blender and other open source programs in its production pipeline. He also writes regularly for LinuxJournal and Linux+ magazines on computer graphics and multimedia production for Linux.
@Tony: In those eight years of heavy use of Blender in his studio’s production pipeline, and regular writing for two Linux based magazines, he has written one Blender specific article I can find, about using Blender’s NLA for compositing. The reason I posted in the first place is, after taking a look at the trainers, I didn’t see a whole lot of Blender specific depth there.
I realize the reason the course is expensive is that the employer is paying. I believe I mentioned earlier, though, that the companies who send their people to expensive trainings expect those people to come back and hit the ground running. If you look at the course outline, it appears they are going to make a model, texture it, uv map parts of it, and do a camera fly-by animation.
This is the curriculum you can find in many community college Intro to CG courses in the US, albeit for 3dsMax or Maya or Lightwave, where students would spend maybe 60 hours of class time and maybe $200 for the fees. This offering proposes to take 40 hours to do something very similar, and raises the fees to $3000.
If Fligh were teaching this and they chose not to publicize that fact, then Fligh would be working for someone who (let’s be polite) was very poor in marketing.
@JimC: I certainly hope your class went well. School Districts can be cheap sometimes and school teachers are notoriously underpaid.
If people pay, it’s cheap enough. If people overpay, Blender gets a black eye. People who pay to send employees to trainings have professional meetings and conventions every year. Word gets around. As Blender moves into the mainstream of commercial CG, people will want to take advantage of this to make some money. Some of those people will be legit, some will not.
Just as we are aware there are people selling Blender knock-offs on EBay and we give them no credence or support, we need to be aware that other ways to make money from Blender may not warrent automatic support.
I’m not saying this offering is a con. Don’t get me wrong here. I am saying that writers need to exercise a little bit of jounalistic scepticism, do a bit of research, and do a write up that mentions some of the legitimate efforts, such as Blender Foundation Education. Perhaps this might motivate the legitimate trainers who haven’t yet gotten involved in the Blender community efforts to do so. Dan Sawyer may not yet know about the Blender Foundation’s efforts to certify trainers, but BlenderNation authors certainly do.
@Willie
Oh…okay, so you’re actually talking about me and my “journalistic scepticism”? (btw, correct spelling: skepticism)
First of all, I’m not a journalist (thank God). Secondly, I did do some research. You are just simply of the opinion that this particular course offering is not a “legitimate” effort. What is a “legitimate” effort? Must everything emanate from the Blender Foundation to be considered “legitimate”? They can’t do everything, you know. In fact, it is their expressed desire to see these types of activities.
And, just because someone is making money doesn’t make the effort suspect. Real things cost real money. This course is being offered on a resort island and the students won’t be staying in huts, either. LOL. Did you miss that part? Plus, three meals a day, full accommodations including a ride to and from the airport, supplies, etc.
The Blender Foundation’s efforts to certify trainers has been nothing more than just an idea for more than a year now. It is not something that is actually going on at this point. I’m sure it will eventually happen but, as of this moment, there is no news to tell. You can join the “bf-education” mailing list to stay up-to-date on things like that (hint).
If this course offering turns out to not be worth the money, the only ones that will have the black eye will be those that offered the course. One of the reasons that courses like this are offered is so that future courses will have a existing customer base to market. In other words, students that find value in this course will be much more likely to take another course, as well as recruit others, based on their success with the previous course. It’s called business.
It’s up to the trainers and the students to determine the legitimacy of their offerings based on the effectiveness of their content, presentation, and properly targeted market. Only time will determine their legitimacy, not blind assumptions.
Thanks for the comments Willie
The classes went well. I ran a 3-day class in June and again in August. Classes were mixed Central Dauphin School District employees and a few from other districts and business. June was better attended with 5 outsiders while August only had 2 outsiders. We were supposed to have 3 more from a publishing business, but they backed out at the last minute due to some problem with them missing a business deadline.
I wonder what the bootcamp is using for training materials… they don’t break that down on their website.
@JimC, they are probably using Blender Basics, or, given their expertise in video production, various video tutorials from someplace like Blender Newbies that cover their curriculum. I did a brief (like 2 minute) demonstration of Blender at a math educator conference, and a lot of math teachers expressed an interest in learning the program, so you might want to check out those people as a possible market.
@Kernon, thank you for letting me know that, by the grace of God, you are not a journalist. I’ll know what to expect in the future. Did YOU miss the part about the lux accomodations and bennies costing an extra $1000? What’s your point? Oh, right, schooling me on business, the bf-education mailing list, “only time will tell,” my spelling, and my own opinions! Which, in case you missed it, I specifically said was not the case. Oh well.
I suspect the only blind assumption around here is that if it mentions Blender it’s worth publishing.
The Pricing schedule offers different packages. If a person wants to cover the expenses of their own housing, transportation, and meals, they have that option (Florida Residents – or Free Birds) which costs $1000 less. It’s right there in the post…
And yes, this is BlenderNation and we post articles about Blender-related things that may be of interest to some or all of the Community. That doesn’t mean that you, or anyone in particular, must like or agree with everything that’s posted.
My response to you was based on your attempt to school me on writing a post for BlenderNation. You issued a list of assumptions in several different directions and when the pointer ended up in my face, I decided to simply point out a few things that seemed to be overlooked.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree and leave it at that. Thank You.
Thanks for the relevant and interesting news, Kernon. Keep up the good work.
Hey Willie… If they’re using the Blender Basics book, that explains why the price is so high for the class! (ok… a little self promotion there ;-)