RL Photoshop Tutorial
sooo - i'm giving a photoshop tutorial to a group of students in two weeks (twice actually, 30 per session) and I have to keep them entertained for about 7 hours (including breaks, so real time shedule is at about 5 hours).
while some of them seem to know a little about photoshop (and some of them are pretty hardcore), there's a good bunch of them not knowing anything about it and I'd like to not go in there and teach anything like "this button is the brush and you can paint with it [insert point and click gesture in the presentation]" but show them some more intuitive stuff.
while i see the need to teach at least the very basic UI elements, i'd like to push them to something productive. I thought about working with some kind of SDK and just have them pixelate some kind of texture for a lowpoly model but I don't know if that's appropriate for a real learning purpose.
so my question to you: what would you think is the most important lesson one should learn when starting to use photoshop? and what could be a small project to help them learn it (they have no tablets in this course)?
I tend to think to much into the direction of "this bevel and emboss effect looks shitty and your half-assed full-color-here,-gradients-there-style is awful" but seen from an objective point that's more a problem on the user's side, less on photoshop's behalf.
while some of them seem to know a little about photoshop (and some of them are pretty hardcore), there's a good bunch of them not knowing anything about it and I'd like to not go in there and teach anything like "this button is the brush and you can paint with it [insert point and click gesture in the presentation]" but show them some more intuitive stuff.
while i see the need to teach at least the very basic UI elements, i'd like to push them to something productive. I thought about working with some kind of SDK and just have them pixelate some kind of texture for a lowpoly model but I don't know if that's appropriate for a real learning purpose.
so my question to you: what would you think is the most important lesson one should learn when starting to use photoshop? and what could be a small project to help them learn it (they have no tablets in this course)?
I tend to think to much into the direction of "this bevel and emboss effect looks shitty and your half-assed full-color-here,-gradients-there-style is awful" but seen from an objective point that's more a problem on the user's side, less on photoshop's behalf.
Replies
- teach them the core shortcuts
- show them how to find the right tutorials on the net (whats crap, whats not, what to look out for, how to search specific) so they can dig deep and know how to help them selves.
personally I never read any PS books and more or less learned everything by playing through the whole app and watching a ton of internet tutorials, but I guess most people here on this board learned it that way - and not through books, DVD's or courses.Also, I just taught some lectures on PS -
I went over some very basic things that would be useful:
Shortcuts + hotkeys
How to PROPERLY tile a texture
Make a heightmap from said tiled texture
generate normal map from said heightmap using nVidia Filter and Crazybump
Optimize said normal map for engine
The next lesson I actually painted a texture right in front of them and let them watch -
This was boring for some of them because I guess texturing wasn't what they wanted to do but the kids that did pay attention asked tons of questions and I answered them all giving examples and as thoroughly as possible.
I explained the process for making specular maps for metal, wood, and how important it is that they actually put time and effort into creating them and did NOT just desaturate and play with levels.
It's important that they realize that a good specular / normal map are JUST as, if not more important than the diffuse texture with so many different materials. A good texture will include all 3 of those working hand-in-hand to sexify the textures.
Also show them resources as said before. I made sure to show and emphasize Polycount's forums, environmental modeling wiki, the modeling / texturing tutorials written by Daniel Vijoi (creating an old farm and Creating a Next-Gen Environment). And all of the other free resources at http://amc.ro/ .
Show them your favorite brushes, make them accessible to them (if you don't want to give them all perhaps you should make your own little brush set for them to play with and get used to).
As for nice small little projects I've seen instructors be very successful with texturing a Nuclear Bomb, texturing some sort of missile, and catapults. Just simple objects that you can make, bake some normal maps for and give to them to play with. A lot of the students might not have experience with generating normal maps and baking high to low rez models, so if you include the AO / Cavity / Normal maps for the object it should give them a pretty good start.
Maybe also explain how to setup real-time shaders in whatever 3D program they're going to be using. This would be helpful, or show them Marmoset and work in it.
That's what I've learned from my teaching experience. Hope it helps!
That.
I'd like to see making a character/level design concept art...
Or making/improving textures in PS
You can pretty much use render clouds as the start to almost any texture. Handpainting might be too difficult for them right now without tablets, but you can show them some basic techniques to get toward what they're aiming for.
Are they making their 3d model? Do they have background in that? You can just make and unwrap a crate or something for them, then either have them experiment with texturing or try to match it up as closely to the texture you made in a concept piece. Would be pretty simple.
Teach them the power of using layers to your advantage. Explain why you should save as a .PSD besides just your TGA/DDS/JPG output, etc.
If you wanna throw them a more advance tip then go through Image Interpolation settings, both in Image Size and the global setting for stuff like free transform. Use an example where you have a small 8-bit sprite and enlargen it with different image interpolation settings. Explain why you usually don't want to enlargen anything.
maybe i can set up a little scene within 3ds max and ask each of them to do a specific tile texture or texture a prop for the scene... dunno if that's to enthusiastic though.
Well In that case I don't see why actually texturing something in 3D would be a crucial thing to include. Show them the basics of Photoshop such as tools, history stack, layers, selections, masks, adjustment layers, hotkeys, etc. Then ask yourself "What more useful pointers can I give them that they probably won't figure out for themselves?", show them some of those.