websites with good training courses (about making video games) ?

[RemiD]

Hello,

Do you know others websites with good training courses (about making video games and the related skills like drawing, modeling, uvmapping, texturing, rigging, skinning, animation, procedural generation, tweaking sounds, etc...)


I have already followed a few courses / tutorials on youtube (!)
a few courses on lynda.com
and now i am currently following a course on udemy.com

The idea is to learn some new concepts / methods each day, and find new ways to achieve some things...

Thanks,

[RemiD]

After having followed a few lessons on lynda.com and on udemy.com and on youtube.com, i post some feedback here, for those who care to do that :
I have learned a few things, and noticed a few imprecisions, but overall it can be useful, however my main critic is that these lessons focus more on using a specific editor / language / engine rather than explaining the concepts / methods / tips with words and illustrations...

For examples the lessons that i followed were done either using Unity editor / language / engine, or Unreal editor / language / engine, and i don't use either of these... (and don't plan to)
So the majority of the lessons were about editing values in the editor, or dragging scripts here and there, or coding using the language / commands specific to this editor / engine. Which is, imo, a waste of time if you want to learn only the concepts / methods / tips about a subject and then implement it as you want with your prefered editor(s) / language / engine.

Imo, there are still plenty of useful lessons to create, considering what i said.

Anyway !

[Yue]

What I think is that these courses are focused on learning to handle tools known from the market, which are specific. In such a case what I feel is that courses as such to make video games regardless of the tool there are very few or none.

[Derron]

Modelling rigging skinning texturing ... all of these things are tool specific.
Each tool has a different "workflow".

Modelling:
While years ago box-modelling was preferred. Since 3-4 years sculpting + retopologyizing became the standard. If you looked 3-4 years ago, these retopo-tutorials were almost zbrush for modelling and retopo in "your favorite tool".

Now many 3D tools offer sculpting tools already - so there are tutorials for "single tools" (eg. Blender - sculpting + retopo).

So if you want to know how muscles in a polygon model flow (edgeloop flow) then you might either look at older tutorials ("how to model a human face") - or watch today's videos on "retopology".


@ Texturing
While years ago you made your textures by hand with searching textures on the net, creating texture maps and then editing them in your paint programme of choice (to add some grunge, creases, ...) todays 3d creators seem to use:
- either Allegorithmics Substance Painter (pretty powerful, kind of "Photoshop" with all these adjustable layers)
- do hand-drawn/painted textures

So for the first - just pay the big price of Substance Painter (maybe you can get a cheaper one - indie licence or so) and have a look on tutorials to see how they dragndrop-together their textures within minutes.
Alternatively you mix together all these textures by hand and then just use the PBR-material-nodes the 3D tools offer. Set your material so it reflects real world material: so dielectric, metallic, ... and it auto-sets everything regarding reflection, roughness, ...

For the second one there are plenty of texture painting tutorials ("handpainting a weapon in XYZ tool"). Have a look at some of them. Principles are always the same: ground color, lighten/darken + decals (with lightenen/darkened areas for emboss effects). For hand painting stuff I would suggest to use a drawing tablet - because pressure sensitivity really helps.


Watching the retopo-stuff helps learning edgeflows (like "circles" around mouth, eye sockets, ...). Watching others painting stuff helps to get the "view" on what to lighten up, darken. It's pretty fast to learn - you just have to get the hang out of how to do things in your 3d tool box of choice.

In my case this is "Blender" - as it is free and pretty much capable/powerful. Quality of tutorials for Blender increased much over the last decade.


Drawing:
There are tools on "hand drawing" - there you see how people draw things in krita, sketchbook - or on classic paper. This might help you to "learn" how professionals do. This only helps if you know the basics. Else you should just check out some basic drawing courses.


In all cases it is neccessary to _practice_. Just watching stuff only helps learning some workflow tricks here and there ("ohh never knew that shortcut").

The more "toolbox agnostic" you want a tutorial to be, the more "analog" it becomes (paper + pen instead of computer) or the more "technical" it becomes (explanation of how Disney animators do the animations). There was a nice pixar/disney tutorial/series on that topic. Some senior developers/animators explained how stuff works (squeeze, squish, scale, ...) to make it look toony and "alive". Cannot come up with the link, but it was rather famous ~2 years ago.


bye
Ron

[RemiD]

If you want to learn how to do something, before using a specific tool / language /engine, you need to understand the concepts, the method, the tips...

Then you can use the tool / language / engine that you prefer which has the necessary functionalities to make your thing...