Why beginners don't learn the basics first?

[chibiusa Ling]

11 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

The problem is that the answer i typically give is not the answer anyone wants to hear.

• How many polygons? As low as you can get away with.
• How many textures and how big? As low as you can get away with.

For my own work, that means trying to do more with less on every project,

So translate this into something that new users can learn from. I think a youtube series would be one of the best ways you could do this. Take people through making a range of different objects that you think they would ultimately make in Second Life. Furniture, a tree, a plant, a sword etc etc and show them with each tutorial exactly what you are doing and how to reduce the poly count and texture count effectively and demonstrate the result. Show the difference between a badly designed version of your item and a decently designed version of your item. If done well you could easily get a series like that to be considered the "SL industry standard" that the forums, builders brewery and other places send out to new developers to learn from.

 

11 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

But I can't change the mindset that people have creating content, their fear that if they compromise on anything  their customers will go away.

This is why you start by nipping this issue before new creators get to that point. Some old creators will take your advice on board but ultimately its the newer generation of creators that you should focus something like this on. Help by teaching people the best optimisation methods whilst they are still learning and seeking out those tutorials.

 

11 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

It's compensating a perceived lack of quality with the belief that "more greeble" will counter that. It's fostered by environments like SL and the Unity asset store, no one who "matters" is going to tell you that what you've made is not good enough and has to be remade. It's something you learn in a game studio, or even in an informal amateur team, coders will hit you with the book when the framerate drops down.

Again...I feel like I'm flogging the point a little here....catch it before it begins. We are in SL...NOT a game development studio or amateur team. It's ultimately up to us as residents to guide people, help and teach them in the same way they would in a game studio. Linden Lab isn't going to do it, we have to.

 

11 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

It's something difficult to learn when there is no actual target excepted two metrics (complexity and LI) that can both be gamed through practices that both lead to a worse model. Linden Labs intent on fixing this but this is going to take so much time, if it ever happens in the end.

If you look at references from AAA games, sure we don't have 4K textures in SL but despite that our avatars and props are so completely off the mark that having those good practices out there tells nothing to a beginner when a popular mesh avatars rack up 100K to 1M triangles, when the average game character is in the 20-30K triangles range.

See all above points.

Ultimately it's easy to complain on the forum about these things but, honestly, if you are even half as good as you claim to be at mesh then it should be equally as easy for you to start helping to make the changes that you seek. Whether thats a blog detailing good optimisation techniques or a youtube series that focuses specifically on blender development for Second Life. I am not trying to be offensive here btw so please don't take it as that. I genuinely mean it when I say that you seem to have a good understanding of what the issues are surrounding mesh and the best methods to use to work towards reducing those issues. Share your knowledge, do something about it. Contribute towards the development of new designers. Even if its running a class one hour a week at the Builders Brewery its still something that will help shape and mould people into more efficient designers. It's not only the in world content that is created by us residents its also most of the learning material that goes along with it. The wiki, tutorials, youtube videos, avastar's website, blogs detailing tips and tricks. All of those are the result of residents trying to help learners by passing on their knowledge of how to accomplish something in SL.

Edited January 25, 2019 by chibiusa Ling

[ChinRey]

22 hours ago, chibiusa Ling said:

So translate this into something that new users can learn from. I think a youtube series would be one of the best ways you could do this. Take people through making a range of different objects that you think they would ultimately make in Second Life. Furniture, a tree, a plant, a sword etc etc and show them with each tutorial exactly what you are doing and how to reduce the poly count and texture count effectively and demonstrate the result. Show the difference between a badly designed version of your item and a decently designed version of your item. If done well you could easily get a series like that to be considered the "SL industry standard" that the forums, builders brewery and other places send out to new developers to learn from.

Yes, that would work. But you'd still have to plan the series thoroughly to get a good coherent progression and cover all the relevant topics. The masterplan for the series of tutorials is essentially that manual I was talking about.

Everything in such a series teaches will have to be thoroughly documented because it will meet serious resistance. There are lots of myths to debunk and lots of established names that will feel their authority threatened by it.

A few random but good tutorial videos won't do any harm of course but they won't do much good either. They'll be a drop in the ocean of disinformation, myths and misunderstandings we are struggling against.

 

22 hours ago, chibiusa Ling said:

Ultimately it's easy to complain on the forum about these things but, honestly, if you are even half as good as you claim to be at mesh then it should be equally as easy for you to start helping to make the changes that you seek. Whether thats a blog detailing good optimisation techniques or a youtube series that focuses specifically on blender development for Second Life. I am not trying to be offensive here btw so please don't take it as that.

I can only speak for myself but I am not offended at all, I understand and respect what you say.

But I've already spent so much time on the forums and inworld trying to help other builders. And all I got in return was public insults from that arrogant bastard Patch.

There is a limit to how long you can keep hitting the wall before you give up and either leave or start lashing out in frustration. I'm certainly not the only one to feel that way. I have talked to others who have spent a lot of time and effort on this and most of them have said similar things.

Oh btw, yes I know this post violates the forum rules. Please feel free to report it if you like, I don't mind. In fact it'd be really interesting to see how the moderators would react.

Edited January 26, 2019 by ChinRey
Typos

[Anna Nova]

Sorry, bit late to this discussion.

One of the problems I have is that everyone assumes the Video (YouTube) is the best way to communicate 'howto'.  And it isn't.  The best way of all is to have a written and illustrated step by step documented guide.  Video is full of the personality of the presenter (yes Andrew I mean you cobber!) and takes so bloody long to get anywhere, and then goes far too fast through the bit you don't get.  Yes, you can rewind and replay, but it is just so terribly slow compared with re-reading the paragraph.

If you want to see what I mean, search here for Aquila Kytori.  Instant understanding.

Is there even one good book on using blender to create game assets?  Just one?  Even a bad one then?  I ain't found it yet.

Ditch Youtube, write books.

Edited January 26, 2019 by anna2358
decided to save time and give you a link....

[Kyrah Abattoir]

3 hours ago, anna2358 said:

Sorry, bit late to this discussion.

One of the problems I have is that everyone assumes the Video (YouTube) is the best way to communicate 'howto'.  And it isn't.  The best way of all is to have a written and illustrated step by step documented guide.  Video is full of the personality of the presenter (yes Andrew I mean you cobber!) and takes so bloody long to get anywhere, and then goes far too fast through the bit you don't get.  Yes, you can rewind and replay, but it is just so terribly slow compared with re-reading the paragraph.

If you want to see what I mean, search here for Aquila Kytori.  Instant understanding.

Is there even one good book on using blender to create game assets?  Just one?  Even a bad one then?  I ain't found it yet.

Ditch Youtube, write books.

There is a pretty vocal group that insists that they absolutely need to be "shown" how to do things.

[Anna Nova]

19 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

There is a pretty vocal group that insists that they absolutely need to be "shown" how to do things.

It's the modern way, I know.  But it doesn't lead to good learning, just copying others.  But I won't change Earth today, I know.

[Luna Bliss]

On ‎1‎/‎27‎/‎2019 at 1:07 AM, anna2358 said:

On ‎1‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 6:01 AM, Kyrah Abattoir said:

There is a pretty vocal group that insists that they absolutely need to be "shown" how to do things.

It's the modern way, I know.  But it doesn't lead to good learning, just copying others.  But I won't change Earth today, I know.

Some people need visual clues to learn, while others prefer text. Myself, I use both but tend toward the visual modes of learning.

When I can view how, for example, a loop selection is made I learn it faster than reading the steps. And though I might have learned that loop selection while watching a pillow being created I can transfer that knowledge to the creation of anything I want.

[OptimoMaximo]

On 1/25/2019 at 10:25 PM, ChinRey said:

Everything in such a series teaches will have to be thoroughly documented because it will meet serious resistance.

 

On 1/25/2019 at 10:25 PM, ChinRey said:

There is a limit to how long you can keep hitting the wall before you give up and either leave or start lashing out in frustration. I'm certainly not the only one to feel that way. I have talked to others who have spent a lot of time and effort on this and most of them have said similar things.

Indeed, that's why I am taking a LONG break from teaching 3D modeling (Blender until a few years back, then Maya) at BuildersBrewery (and i think i will probably retire in the end). Most of the people i trained who continued to model, ended up doing the reverse of what i've been teaching to them: highpoly to the limit because "everyone does and if i don't, i won't sell anything because it's lower quality". The frustration this caused me over the years led me to drop completely any "advanced" class, sticking only to the basics. Why should i waste my time teaching how to retopologise an highpoly model, unwrap it and extract normal map, if in the end what i see it AT MOST a retopo'ed model, subdivided to a similar poly rate as the original, just shrinkwrapped onto the original model, so to catch the original detail? Not to mention those coming to class just for advice on how to get their free turbosquid model to upload to SL "i don't care to make models myself, there are so many out there for free LOL". The worst thing in all this is to see that the more unoptimized, polygon bloated, ripped off models available on the marketplace are those which sell the most, while the carefully crafted, real "original", made from scratch from concept to completion are relegated in a "nice, but not high quality" niche.

[Anna Nova]

I don't sell anything.  I don't consider anything that I have made to be worth the hassle of providing customer care.  But my method starts in high-poly, then I make the low-poly derivative and bake the textures from the high-poly onto the low-polys.  I'm always annoyed when I end up over 1Li per link.

But this all takes a long time to learn.  And because there is a lot of complexity in each step, and I do other things too, I need 'Reference Material' to go back to.  That's why I favour written, rather than acted, Tutorials.  It's very hard to find the bit you forgot from a more-character-than-fact video, or worse still 'stop-motion-video-with-no-explanation'.

Who knows, I might set to and start to write some, if the bloody blender interface would stop changing...

[Paul Hexem]

As a scripter that sometimes makes my own mesh when I can't find an appropriate full perm item for sale, I can say these two things:

Blender is a confusing mess with probably the worst UI in the history of software development.

There are no current, up to date tutorials or wiki entries that apply to Second Life. The few that exist reference stuff that's been removed or changed in previous versions of Blender (which makes the already confusing UI even worse).

It's really no wonder why mesh creation in SL is so bad.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

41 minutes ago, Gadget Portal said:

As a scripter that sometimes makes my own mesh when I can't find an appropriate full perm item for sale, I can say these two things:

Blender is a confusing mess with probably the worst UI in the history of software development.

There are no current, up to date tutorials or wiki entries that apply to Second Life. The few that exist reference stuff that's been removed or changed in previous versions of Blender (which makes the already confusing UI even worse).

It's really no wonder why mesh creation in SL is so bad.

You mean, like the boatload of tutorials on the blender.org website?

[Anna Nova]

39 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

You mean, like the boatload of tutorials on the blender.org website?

That don't reference Blender 2.8.   If you are starting out now, why would you bother learning 2.79?

[Kyrah Abattoir]

6 minutes ago, anna2358 said:

That don't reference Blender 2.8.   If you are starting out now, why would you bother learning 2.79?

2.8 Is not ready for production yet, why would you inflict yourself the pain of dealing with all the problems that will be fixed anyway?

If you are learning modeling from the ground up, most of what you will learn can be exported to future versions of blender or other 3D modeling softwares.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Kyrah Abattoir

[Anna Nova]

20 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

2.8 Is not ready for production yet, why would you inflict yourself the pain of dealing with all the problems that will be fixed anyway?

Because the Future is clear?

[Kyrah Abattoir]

47 minutes ago, anna2358 said:

Because the Future is clear?

Yeah but if a UI change is such a terrifying hurdle, maybe 3D modeling is the least of your problems.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

Just now, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Yeah but if a UI change is such a terrifying hurdle, maybe 3D modeling is the least of your problems.

Getting my head around the Blender interface was 99.9999999999999% of my initial difficulties and took about a year to click for me.

Right now, most of my knowledge is in my fingers. If I try to think many tasks through I just confuse myself, but if I just rely on muscle memory it goes much more smoothly. I hope I understand both 3d modeling and the old Blender interface well enough now to make the transition to 2.8, but if it was in my first two years of working with Blender? What a extra load of difficulty that would have been!

Your "least of your problems" line has a nasty, patronising edge to it. Some of us just learn differently and do better with different types of approaches. It doesn't make us less capable or anything else. We're all in different places in our comfort with the software too.

Understanding something of the range of learning styles is a tremendous asset to anyone who wants to teach effectively. While most of us here aren't really in a position to get hands on experience with teaching to different learning styles, you can still read up on it and have a think about how it is that you learn. The more insight you have into this, the more likely you'll be to reach others in ways which work for them as well.

No one method of teaching good technique is going to work for everyone. Perhaps a way forward might be for a group to join together to jointly create a set of "Blender for SL" videos, texts and reference material focused on what's needed to create efficient mesh for SL.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

No don't get me wrong I get it, but I have a hard time imagining that a UI change is such a huge deal. Software changes all the time, and we just adapt in the end, it just takes a bit more time for some and a bit less for some others.

And don't mind me, I always tend to come out snarky. No one listens to me anyway since no matter what i say, I'm too blunt.

As for 2.8 I'll probably migrate to it once it hits stable release, I just spent an entire day troubleshooting what turned out to be strictly an SL problem, I'd rather make sure that the tool i'm using isn't the cause.

Edited January 30, 2019 by Kyrah Abattoir

[Pamela Galli]

I have not read the entire thread. But just wanted to point out that very often, even most of the time, people who come to the mesh forum for help,  want help bringing not just Marvellous Designer but often blatantly ripped mesh from some 3d site into SL.  They don’t seem to realize the ridiculousness of claiming their first effort at modeling is something like the Taj Mahal. My first was a coffee cup!. They don’t really want help modeling but with importing.

They sometimes don’t even bother to conceal it — once someone wanted help importing some elaborate braided hair, which helpers in the forum got busy trying to provide, but the original name of the hair was still on it, which search led to the game site it was ripped from. 

But to this day people bend over backwards trying to teach how to import ripped models. 

Edited January 30, 2019 by Pamela Galli

[Luna Bliss]

7 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

They don’t seem to realize the ridiculousness of claiming their first effort at modeling is something like the Taj Mahal.

lolol

[Anna Nova]

22 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

No don't get me wrong I get it, but I have a hard time imagining that a UI change is such a huge deal. Software changes all the time, and we just adapt in the end, it just takes a bit more time for some and a bit less for some others.

And don't mind me, I always tend to come out snarky. No one listens to me anyway since no matter what i say, I'm too blunt.

As for 2.8 I'll probably migrate to it once it hits stable release, I just spent an entire day troubleshooting what turned out to be strictly an SL problem, I'd rather make sure that the tool i'm using isn't the cause.

We still loves ya.

Disagreeing isn't disliking.  And I'm a ***** too.

Edited January 31, 2019 by anna2358

[Anna Nova]

22 hours ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

...

No one method of teaching good technique is going to work for everyone. Perhaps a way forward might be for a group to join together to jointly create a set of "Blender for SL" videos, texts and reference material focused on what's needed to create efficient mesh for SL.

It would indeed be wonderful if there was a set of such videos WITH accompanying reference texts.  To have something on paper (or on a tablet/2nd monitor or Kindle/Nook) next to you while watching the video would be absolute learning heaven (for me).  If someone starts such a project, I'll help.

[Sasy Scarborough]

2 hours ago, anna2358 said:

It would indeed be wonderful if there was a set of such videos WITH accompanying reference texts.  To have something on paper (or on a tablet/2nd monitor or Kindle/Nook) next to you while watching the video would be absolute learning heaven (for me).  If someone starts such a project, I'll help.

I know it is not the same same, but when I did a lynda course, it included cc text, thing was it was copyable, so I saved it to a doc to reread. I haven't looked into others that way, but a bit of ctrl f when stuck on something would work wonders that way.

[Luna Bliss]

On ‎1‎/‎30‎/‎2019 at 5:02 AM, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

No one method of teaching good technique is going to work for everyone.

So true!  I've seen people give up on mesh when all they needed was a different teacher who communicated in a way they could understand. I learned that early, and stopped thinking the case was always that I 'needed more coffee' -- if I had a difficult time learning a particular subject on a video then I switched to a different video on that subject with a different teacher --  finally I could understand.

[Janet Voxel]

I’ll just leave this here....

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Some of us learned real good. Others, notsomuch.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

On 1/30/2019 at 11:14 AM, Kyrah Abattoir said:

And don't mind me, I always tend to come out snarky. No one listens to me anyway since no matter what i say, I'm too blunt.

This got me thinking about  LOD optimisation/lack of and how it impacts the virtual world as an analogy for communication "optimisation"/lack of and how that impacts our world(s) as well, both real and virtual. Might this be a useful metaphor for the tech-orientated?