Woudlnt it be nice to have a separated forum board for beginners in zbrush? That they could post in there their progress in learning zbrush and obstacles they could use some help with? And all that without polluting other boards with their (ours) novice works?
It would be nice to proudly present effects of our struggle (however bad they would be, when you learn the program each new thing you achieve feels like win) and then hear some tips from advanced artists whenever they would feel like going into novice board and comment what they see in there.
I know its possible to overcome such obstacles by googling and searching trough youtube enough, but such board would just bound the novice community into the whole ZBrush creative community.
Beginers like me would be ashamed to put their works in other boards due to how awesome the stuff posted there is, but i would love to show my progress in learning to someone advanced and hear some tips for that particular cases. And also sharing what we have learned with other beginers would be great stuff.
Learning by talking about particular cases with other people can boost up the process of understunding stuff in this program without the need of watching countless tutorials waiting for that one moment in them, where author could talk about that particular thing we currently searching for.
So, am i the only one thinking it would be cool to have such board somewhere on this forum?
Meep! I like that idea I work for a 3D printing company but am a total beginner when it comes to designing with Zbrush, would be good to progress with some other newbs
As long as you give the impression that you’ve been diligent in using the existing program documentation and tutorials, and have a specific question about a specific Zbrush feature or are looking for advice on how to achieve a specific result, you can usually find someone to help you out on the Other Questions and Troubleshooting board. If you’re asking a broad question that requires knowledge of multiple areas of the program, you’re unlikely to get much of an answer. So you really have to take responsibility for your own learning, and figure out what you need to know and can’t figure out, versus what you’d like to know in lieu of having to learn it for yourself through study and experimentation.
The Tutorials forum is full of generous people volunteering their acquired knowledge. Definitely check those out.
As for the posting of art, there are users of all levels of ability posting on ZBC, and we were all beginners at some point. Don’t let yourself be intimidated. I find the experienced artists who post here amazingly friendly and free with their knowledge, and responsive to questioning. Sequestering yourself away from them would deprive you of a valuable resource. Again, people respond best to specific questions and not the expectation of a tutorial, even though many of them do create tutorials.
Personally, I’ve always found that I develop faster when I immerse myself in an environment populated by skilled people, rather than taking my cues from other beginners. If you’re trying to learn a language, what is the better way to learn–conversations with fluent speakers or with other beginners? You rarely improve much as an artist by doing things you are completely comfortable doing. Like any form of exercise, you get much more out of challenging yourself.
All that said, you may get more mileage out of a more general forum community like CG Hub or CG Talk. They both have dedicated WIP and “learning” boards with weekly exercises designed to develop skills and solicit feedback. Check them out!
Scott, you cant see all people to be like exactly like you. There are different people and different places they are coming from, as well as different brains in them. Some people like to learn by patiently listen/watch for hours and hours, while others wont learn anything while they get a burning question about some matter that they need straight answer for, to be able to continue learning and understunding what they listen/see. Without that answer they might simply not understund what they are watching/reading and just waste time on it, simply due to one simple thing they got question about and that stands in their way of continue progressing in absorbing knowledge without releasing it trough the opposite ear than they absorbed it
I have understud a lot of stuff by getting simple straight answer from time to time while figuring rest by myself… Hell i have passed with great results the final egzam in my high school without learning or preparing whatsoever for it (and being a huge slacker the whole school time). Its simply becouse brains have different thoughts patterns, and while some prepfer getting the whole thing told to them memorising it, and they are able to understund the whole piece at same time, others prefer to figure it out by themselves at their own pace and own order (own pattern), and just need a hand from time to time to keep going this way. - thats not being lazy, its just how for example my brain works. I just cant absorb to much knowledge at same time and keep it by listening/watching passively, but i love figuring it out by myself - and this way it stays there forever its a matter of synchronisation/desynchronisation with the thought pattern of the student and the teacher/tutor.
And the reason we could use forum board like this is that when a beginners talk with beginners they dont look at each other trying to judge if the other one spent enough time reading docs or watching tutorials to be worthy of giving them answer. Beginner like me will be proud and more than happy to give an answer to other beginner if only i was the one who learned that particular stuff in question earlier - or at least sharing how i would try to do it. Also in discussion within beginners “circles” they can appreciate progress of each other more, talk about it, and such passionate beginners talks are beneficial to all of them (us).
Beginners stories of what they struggled with and how they overcame the obstacle is also valuable info for other beginners cause they might be in very same place at that particular moment of learning ZBrush, while the intermediate and advanced users might have already long forgotten where they have been at beginning, so they will see the question as lazy cause matter in question might seem to them so easy to understund that “first watched tutorial should give the answer” - maybe he/she coudlnt find that tutorial that would give the answer, or the answer was enigmated for him/her and he/she needs just answer in slightly different words.
In my personal view of how its the best for ZBrush community, there is no room for treating ZBrush like some arcane secret knowledge people can grant access to only if they prove they spent weeks reading trough shelves of ancient books searching for simple answer, and that answer might still be foreign ancient language.
And at last but not the least the most important argument: Is there some downside of having forum board where beginners might talk with each others freely without being judged by advanced users as lazy when they ask question? Noone is forcing anyone to answer or even read the question if he/she thinks its somehow wrong to give answer in some cases.
Let alone the benefit of google indexing of all beginners talk, which might prove very useful for future searches for particular answers by other people in future.
I don’t view that as the case here. As I said community members are very generous with tutorials and the exchange of knowledge, as long as your expectations are realistic. Do the current responses on this board strike you as representing what you describe?
Ultimately the knowledge is out there for those with the will to find it, and it’s the users responsibility to discover it for themselves. While some people are willing to do it, why should one person who has read the documentation have to answer easily available answers for someone who refuses to ? Like I said, we already do answer specific questions on the Q&T board for new users who are clearly making an effort to use the available resources and aren’t clear on one point or another. Refusing to do so and expecting others to spoonfeed you readily available knowledge is somewhat disrespectful to the people who spent the time to learn it. That knowledge has value, and there are commercial training products and services for those willing to pay for it.
I’m not telling you how to conduct yourself, and I’m not suggesting no one will ever answer your question if you don’t ask a certain way. I’m telling you, based on ten years of experience with Zbrush and on these boards, how to get the best results when asking questions during a Zbrush learning experience.
Other than the fact that already exists here? New users submit work all the time and if theyre lucky, an advanced user might give them some feedback on it. Nobody ever looks down on the work of a new user, and they get encouragement from other users of similar experience levels. We don’t judge people for being lazy when asking a question, but the fact of the matter is some kinds of inquiries receive a better response than others, and that’s not going to change with a different board, since it’s going to be the same people answering those questions–those willing to do so.
Other than the fact that Pixologic is a small company, don’t really have the staff to manage additional boards, and already rely on community members to handle a lot of simple user questions, there is only my personal conviction that splitting users based on skill levels is not beneficial to the community, and works counter to the purpose for which you intend it.
I’m not sure why I received such a defensive response to what I intended to be a helpful reply. I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that I was judging you in any way. It was my intention to advise you how to succeed, and how to best get help for the issues you were curious about.
In any event, I directed you to two other more generalized boards with much larger staffs, and thriving beginner sections that also answer questions and have weekly exercises for building skills. I suggest you seek them out, as well as posting work and talking to users here.
I have been a user for many years but I too was very overwhelmed with all the great artists and the more advanced tutorials or WIPs and had a bit of a hard time thinking I would never get to the point of making an image I was even semi happy with. Sometimes even the green eyed monster hit my upside the head to be honest lol but I also had a passion and a want, to the point of almost need, to learn and make 3d art so that over powered that feeling for sure but sometimes the newer people are shy and also feeling a bit overwhelmed.
Yes you can find many tutorials for beginners written and in video format and you could try to search for them in the tutorials forum but that can sometimes be a needle in a haystack and can be in it’s self most difficult. You could also be like me and make tutorials to help those that are new to find beginner tutorials like putting a link to your tutorials for beginners in your signature and make sure that you give a good explanation on what exactly the tutorials cover so that you are not looking for that one video or written tutorial that you saw months ago and somehow forgot what it said to do for it is not a function you use in ZB a lot and then try finding it again. Even though mine are far from perfect, so far lol, and I should of elaborated a bit more on what they have in them a bit more too. Also I had 20 gigs of tutorials in both formats and good luck trying to find just the right one I was looking for lol and that was even with a basic list of stuff that each had in them that I made.
What I am saying is I totally agree how helpful it would be to have a beginner forum in ZBrush Central not only for the benefit of the beginner but those that want to help the beginner and sometimes miss that beginner’s question and one gets lost and frustrated and doesn’t like ZBrush anymore, I have sadly known this to occur with some people.
I hope maybe they can think about this and have just a special place for the beginners to go and feel a little more at home with ZB and within the community.
I also find the getting started written document and introduction video found the the ZClassroom to be helpful and a great start but sometimes they need more access like closed captions/subtitles so that others with either hearing impairments or people that speak different languages can understand it. Yes there are forums for certain languages but not all so it would be helpful to have closed captions or subtitles included. YouTube now has this feature and you can make your own closed captions with it. They can also be translated to a certain degree. So would like that.
p.s. funny I found this by searching for a glow tutorial lol lol so go figure on the needle in a haystack of infinite size.
p.p.s. might think about categorizing the tutorials a bit too just a thought lol
