Welcome to
Where to Find Support! So help others to help
you, that is a very critical starting point. We have a very
supportive community, so asking them for help is
great! That's what we're all here to help you out with! Start the conversation.
So if you see someone's asking for help, but you don't quite know
how to help them, just starting that conversation itself
can help answer the question, because they'll start trying things. Perhaps they got a bit
of a mental block, and it just helps them going. As you become more
Experienced yourself, you can help others, too. Now, of course, you're probably
thinking at this point, hang on a minute, Mike, you're the instructor! Can't you just answer
all the questions? Well I would really love to, but I think there are now
something like 22,000 of you students and 1 of me.
So there's only so much I can do in a day, of course, and
you guys can get back to each other really quckly, whereas it's going to take
me a bit longer to do so. So helping each other out is
also a very good way of learning yourself.
Becoming a teacher is often one of the best ways of learning a particular
topic. Of course, I am always around to help, but it may take some
time, in order to get back to any queries that you've got.
Now remember, asking a good question,
you'll get a good answer. So be specific about
your issue. If you go ahead and say, help I can't get it
to work! Well we know from that that you need help
and you can't get something to work, but we don't know what. So it is
very important, that if you're going to ask a question, that you ask a
specific question. Help, I'm having problems with
this particular thing not working, and
tell us what you've tried so far. I know when I've asked for help,
it can feel a bit irritating when someone asks
me, have you tried switching your computer on and off again. Because that does solve
a lot of problems, but of course, if I've already tried that,
I'll say yes yes I've already tried that. But that question would never have been
asked back if I'd said, well I've got this issue with Blender not doing X,
and I've tried restarting the computer and reopening my
Blender file and it's still doing it. Now I'm not going to get asked to switch switch
the computer off and on again. Remember you can
edit your discussions, to your question, to add further things you have
tried, rather than asking more and more questions going on. And
include a picture of the issue. Now, it's very true that
a picture speaks 1,000 words, so if you include a
picture, it can often give us a clue as to what's
going on, even if you think it's to do with X, Y, Z. And remember to include the full
screen with the outliner. It's very tempting to crop a tiny
bit of the screen out, but often it's better if we can see everything that's on
the screen. And remember, you can go to the very top of Blender and make the screenshot
there, which will include everything. Ask questions
in the Q & A. Udemy have changed around their system,
somewhat recently, and it's very useful if we're answering
questions in the Q & A, cause that's how it's all been setup to
work, I suppose. And if you want to share your work,
the best place to do it is to come over to our community, because
it's such a rich experience over there. And you can see the address there.
There's http://community.gamedev.tv!
And we've already got many students coming over there. It's
much much more fluid. You can see pictures, you can see other people's
work. So much easier than it is trolling through the Udemy Q & A's,
which are for questions and answers. So it also feels a bit odd sharing your
work as a question, and it's also very confusing because, sometimes
I look at people's work, and it's lovely to see your work, and I'm
thinking well have they got a question about it? And sometimes if there's no question
or it's a bit ambiguous, you end up starting a dialog and there's nothing actually wrong,
there's no answer required. So have an answer for something?
If you have solved your issue, when you've asked a question, do
let us know, because that's important to know how you solved it
as well. So tell us how you overcame the challenge that
you faced. It's very important, because that's going to help not only going to help us improve the
content, if it's something systemic with the actual lesson itself,
but it's also very useful for other students as well, if they come
across a similar issue. If you have solved
it, it is always useful to use a little [Solved] prefix itself
in the discussion or question title, so that people, if they've
asked that question themselves, can see straight away that there is a proposed solution
to the problem that they're having if they are searching for a similar
problem as to what you had. An example question, just to
get the ball rolling, just so you can think about it. So you might say [Question],
I've got a snapping problem. So
it's very helpful for me if you list a time for
referencing something in the video. So let's say in the snapping video
at 3:32, when you use the Snapping
Tool, I cannot see how... So fill in the rest of that
there. And then, of course, you may want to say I have tried doing X, Y, and Z
but unfortunately to no joy. Here is a
picture of the issue, etc. etc. You get the idea behind this.
This is a very good question, because it's actually going to help me
understand what you're trying to do because you've referenced the time. It's
tells us what you've tried already, so I don't go ahead and give you instructions that you
may have already tried, and a picture, of course, may highlight what the actual problem
is.
So in summary, where to go! Well if you've got
a question that's specific to the lecture that you've been watching,
then please use the Udemy Q & A's, that's what they're now designed for.
They used to be called discussions. You'll hear sharing the discussions a lot,
and if we want you to do that, it would be best not to share in the
Udemy Q & A anymore because it's kind of odd posting
work as a question. And it also helps us manage what
questions we actually need to get to and answer. So if you do want to
share your work, and I'd like to invite you over to our community
at https://community.gamedev.tv/ This is a wonderful place
where you can share your work. It's really easy and accessible to see
all the work as well. It also does what we call Sketch Fab embeds,
which you'll see later on in the course as well. So if you've got a specific
question, ask it in the Udemy Q & A's,
especially if it's against a particular lecture that helps us help you. And it also,
helps us modify the course itself, if we get a series of questions
that are all very similar in nature.
If you want to
share your work then, then come over to https://community.gamedev.tv//
And of course, we've got the Facebook group as well, and you're more than welcome to
come and share your work and then join in the discussions over there. And that's
https://www.facebook.com/groups/blendercourse/
So those are two places you can go to share and contribute your work,
especially if you're doing stuff outside. I love seeing what you guys are coming up with. And
of course, if you've got a lecture specific question, then of course answer it,
ask it or answer it as well [Laughs] in the Udemy Q & A's.
That's it for now and I will see you guys in the next lecture!