• Robin Garrod

  9 months ago

  After going through a number of YouTube blender tutorials I tried this as my first paid for series.
  For the money this is good value, covering a wide variety of tools and techniques to build a final animated scene. Each part of the tutorial is broken down into small steps with 55 individual videos around 10-22 minutes long.
  The level of detail applied to the scene is impressive and the techniques can certainly be applied to other projects, although for this particular project the detail is wasted as most of it is lost given the size of the final image.
  The package also comes with all the assets used in the scene available on google drive which saves time having to pull them off various resource sites. I will assume that the creator has addressed any potential copyright issues providing these as part of a commercial package.

  In terms of improvements there could be more detailed explanation of why a particular technique is applied; for example I have no idea why the first model of the train was only used as a template with the actual model being shrinkwrapped to it, especially given this approach seemed to create a number of problems later on with the mesh. I also had a nagging suspicion that the creator didn't entirely understand what he was doing in every situation, especially seeing him trying various settings in a node group to see what the effect would be.

  Where this tutorial is useful is seeing the creator finding and having to fix a number of issues throughout the tutorial. No professional polish here, if something goes wrong or he just forgets a key step the video is not reshot and you get to see plenty of inflight problem fixing. In its way this is one of the most useful features of the tutorial, you won't feel so bad about your own mistakes and you can see how to solve problems.

  One particular annoyance for me personally was around the vocabulary - the creator was lacking some very basic words to describe particular objects, for example fence posts went through various iterations from 'sticks' to 'these guys' before finally settling on vertical planks. Window frames were rails (slightly confusing when dealing with a train) and the platform was either a rock or a road. As a suggestion for the creator if you don't know the word for something just look it up before making the video.

  In summary I am glad I have followed this tutorial through, even though by the end I was skipping applying the same technique multiple times to add layers of detail that were clearly not going to be visible in the final render. It does cover a lot of useful techniques, even if the detail on why was sometimes missing, and the final result definitely looks great. Perhaps I will take some time reshooting the scene so I can get a close up of the scratched paintwork and smeared windows of the train.

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  Daren Perincic

  9 months ago

  Hi! First of all, thank you for such a detailed review. And pretty much I agree 90-95% with what you said. Regarding the details, I wanted to allow users to use the train in other scenes if they wish to do so. Additionally, I wanted to showcase multiple texturing methods so they can use them in future projects.

  Regarding the shrinkwrap, I had a whole section at the early beginning explaining why we were going to use it. I believe it's around the part where we build the front part of the train. The purpose of the shrinkwrap was to use it as a mold to help maintain the shape of the individual parts of the train we were building.

  This was my second attempt at doing that whole scene, and I didn't want to memorize each step but rather showcase the creative process. As someone who is self thought and has watched both paid and YT tutorials, this is something that is missing. And people tend to think you're supposed to know everything / or what you're doing. In many cases it does come down to experimenting and seeing what works best.

  I apologize for the vocabulary, I was a bit nervous since this was my first-ever tutorial. In that, I scrutinized myself when I reviewed the recordings in post. So I will definitely aim to change that.

  Once again, thank you for your feedback!

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