Reviews of the new dreamlight tutorials?
Ademnus
Posts: 744
Anyone has purchased these, can you please give me a quick review of their quality? I have had a very bad experience with dreamlight tutorials a few years back and want to be sure there are worth the money this time.
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If we're talking about the new Hexagon tutorials, I'd be interested in a review as well. Specifically the house tut or the organic tut.
Thanks!
yes, the hexagon tutorials are my main interest.
To those who may come and review them for us (and I hope you do)
Were they concise and to the point?
Did the tutor have clear goals and achieve them in an easily understandable fashion?
Did it feel well organized and comprehensive?
I think it would be great for DAZ to add a product review feature in general.
The Hexagon tutorials come from the larger Hexagon Revisited tutorial. Some comments here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/23029/ I personally didn't find most of the comments from those who had it particularly helpful. YMMV
If you really want to make some time to learn Hexagon to see if its right for you then head over to Geekatplay.com - http://www.geekatplay.com/hexagon.php - and check out their online Hexagon videos. They have well over 100 Hex vids there broken down into 5 sets and all are free.
I watched the "Discovering Hexagon" series a year ago in august when I tried it and while Hexagon is not really for me as a modeling program, I would still recommend these tutorials. If you discover the Hexagon is not for you then you wasted nothing but time.
Absolutely. I think it will not only inform the buyer but help create better products in the long run.
I did some time ago and found Geekatplay's tutorials to be the best I have ever taken. Still, they don't cover everything I need and I am looking for more.
Hello, I have been taking the Dreamlight Hexagon tutorials.
I find them to be VERY useful, but you have to understand my viewpoint: I am looking for broad sketchings of skills and how to tackle a particular problem, and that's what I'm getting. I've never been one to shirk from paying for education, but these tutorials aren't "magic" or anything. If you can get these skills elsewhere for free, then I say go for it.
Some of these Dreamlight tutorials are presented by a fella from 2Create on behalf of Dreamlight. The house tutorial is actually pretty simple; it shows how you make a "houselike box", put windows and a door in the face of it, and wrap it with a texture. There's a window tutorial and a door tutorial too, and I found them very useful for me because I never had the idea that you could make a 3D representation of a 2D photograph by USING that photograph as a template for your meshmaking activities.
Again, please bear in mind my perspective: I'm new at this and I am still just learning the language. Until these tutorials, I thought a UV map had something to do with UltraViolet light for textures and I had no idea that the "UV" was describing the coordinates "U" and "V" for a 2D representation of your textures.
Along the way, I have been making notes of "how to" this and "how to" that for future reference. In broad strokes, that is. For example, their use of "sweep extrusion" to make the starting forms for the dinosaur legs. Or that if you use too much smoothing in Hexagon, it will flat out crash.
All of this is just a basis for me; a framework for when I get to actually making things in Hexagon.
Another word about the tutorials: They are not polished, they are not slick, they won't compare to a WWDC or CES presentation. You'll see lots of Hexagon crashes in these tutorials, which should tell you that Hexagon needs frequent "Saves". The presenters are knowledgeable about Hexagon and about most of the functions therein, but these tutorials are not meant to be "all-encompassing" or even pretty like a Discovery Channel documentary. If you are looking for a "show", you won't get it in the Dreamlight tutorials.
But if you are looking for very basic concepts and skills, then I think these are good tutorials. I have two college degrees and have sat through a lot of lectures. A lot. I get shivers thinking about the time I spent being talked at by people with no real-world experience, only to find out years later that these people were full of totally wrong-headed hubris. By contrast, the Dreamlight tutorials will impart good entry level skills to the beginner viewer. As for Val's discussions on the making-money part of Hexagon, you can take it or leave it as advice from somebody who's selling some products. Personally, I think it's good and reasonable advice and will serve me well beyond Hexagon.
Because Hexagon is so "last century" (not even 64 bit yet), I don't plan to stay there for long. The aforementioned crashes should be a red flag to everybody about Hexagon and how it is hampered by internal problems and limited addressability of the 32 bit addressing mode. So I'm planning to transfer the skills I'm learning for Hexagon to Blender, Zbrush, or some other application. DAZ needs to get off their butts and bring Hexagon up to date, or they'll be losing people like me who are more than willing to transfer their skills to other software.
So the upshot is this: I like the tutorials for what they provide me. But for you, please remember that anytime you pay money for a tutorial (or even a class or degree track), you takes your chances. In the end, you get to decide what's right for you. Get whatever you can from it, and leave the rest behind, and never EVER apologize or lament the expense of any education.
My advisor/prof for my master's degree once said that every time we complete some new educational endeavor, we change ourselves. We improve ourselves. We go beyond our former limitations. So do that and never look back!
I have bought and partially watched a 2D Postwork Master tutorial http://www.daz3d.com/2d-postwork-master
and I like it very much. For years I have tried to do some postwork and could not find enough, clear information
on how to do it. So when this tutorial was on the 70% off around New Year, I took the chance, bought it and do not regret it.
It is maybe a basic for someone who already know how to proceed with such an editing, but for me it is invaluable.
Dreamlight's short and concise information was easy to understand and it was applicable both to photo and 3D renders.
I was subscribed for years to Dreamlight club and have not gathered so much information like from this tutorial.
I wish there will be equally good tutorials about advanced usage of Ron's brushes, but so far I have not found them yet.
As a matter of Hexagon tutorials, I am also interested in them, but due to frequent crashes of the program on my computer,
I will not invest in the payed tutors for it, so I mostly stick to the free ones.
See though, no, what that tells me is the person making the tutorial needed to hit STOP on their recorder and start over.
I'm sorry, I'm not paying for tutorials made like that.
If you havent tried them, check out the tutorials at geekatplay.com
smooth, well thought out, organized, to the point.
You might try VTC.com for a month for $30 month by month no contract. They have a good course on Hexagon 2 (course was released in 2006) but still covers the basics haven't changed much for that program. The guy talked kinda folksy which I liked...might put some to sleep. If you are quick you can study some of their other courses in your month... they have Carrara, Bryce, Poser, Zbrush courses.... again most are dated older versions of the programs but still valuable ... for me anyway.
Fugazi1968's Genesis Starter Kit is a set of video tutorials about making clothes for Genesis in Hexagon and is well worth looking at to get a feel for what you can do in Hexagon. If you like his style you should also check out Classic Bikini. Another set of video tutorials I found fascinating is Modeling the Human Head, again done in Hexagon.
All of these sets are currently on sale.
I did try one dreamlight tutorial. It was the space battle one. I did learn some effective motion blur techniques, he lost me with his sky /star field in a round sphere. My stars just looked all stretchy.
I felt about half was filler. Stuff I already knew, like how to set up daz studio windows, and info on what makes a nice looking scene in space. Nice to have, but would rather have more training.
geeks at play Hexagon tutorials worked for me
Now if DzFire did a Hexagon tutorial series, or more specifically a rigged vehicle tutorial, I'd be tempted to buy that.
Actually, I own that one and it's absolutely excellent
And I still get a chuckle when he stumbles over his words when he zooms in on the crotch lol
Although not one of the "Dreamlight" tutorials, I did purchase and watch Age of Armour's Subsurface Shader Basics tutorial. I found it highly informative on getting started with the settings in that shader. Best of all, he does one of my favorite things in a tutorial. He doesn't just tell you what to do, but also why to do it and what effect it will have.
I agree. The AOA SSS tutorial was extremely well made and informative. It is worth every penny to someone interested in using and fine tuning SSS.
I am glad to hear that. I bought the tutorial and haven't had a chance to look at it yet. I like knowing why or why not you should do something instead of just being a simon says "learner"
See though, no, what that tells me is the person making the tutorial needed to hit STOP on their recorder and start over.
I'm sorry, I'm not paying for tutorials made like that...
Well, he did hit STOP. He just lets the crash dialog show first. I think it demonstrates the point very well. Save your cr@p once in awhile and back it all up!
Not paying for tutorials "like that" is certainly your prerogative, but I wrote about this up front and I explained my point of view. The Dreamlight tutorials are not polished, not slick, not "a show". I really did not know about other options when I bought these, and I wanted something a little bit less casual than the 60-minute meanderings that are out on YouTube.
I don't care about pretty wrappings right now, I just want to learn the basics, even if the ride is a little bit bumpy at times. After that, I'll have to stub my toes on the toolbars, trip over the meshes, bump my head on the cameras, and burn my fingers on the hot lights anyway! And at some point, like after a viewing or two and some practice, I won't need the tutorials. They're not going to become family heirlooms! ;-)
By the way, I will check out Geekatplay for sure, so thank you for that suggestion.
I too got the 2D Postwork Master tutorial and just the parts on Gaussian Blur were worth the whole price, whatever I paid for it.
Reason: When I look at many DAZ and Poser renders, it's the EYES and HANDS that scream out to me for visual attention, as well as where the feet contact the ground plane or prop. Too much attention. Personal observation only, of course. But now that I know about GB, and even though I don't use Adobe (I'm actually anti-Adobe), at least I can use my chosen postwork software to take some corrective action to reduce the overly sharp eyes, hands, and feet.
I use the Gimp and it works very well for the parts of the 2D Postwork Master tutorial, I have already watched.
Even differential clouds for making the fog exists in the Gimp. This tutorial has opened up my mind to do things in postwork
I have not had the idea before on how to proceed.
Best Hexagon tutorials I have ever seen are EZhexagon's ones on youtube. Here: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheEZhexagon/videos. By occasion I got several free Dreamlight tutorials and after that I never came back to the idea of any Dreamlight's tutorial purchase. Worse than that free tutorials was only Octane tutorials from KShane.com I purchased last year. (He seems to render great images but his tutorials itself are horrible by my opinion.)