Training

[sdessureault]

Hi,

I'm a computer science teacher in a college in Quebec.

One of my courses is about 3D programming with Irrlicht. It's the very first time I give a 3D course. The results are good, for the first time.

Soon, it is likely that I have a small training budget. I wish to improve myself with Irrlicht. So here is my question: Do you know any business that can give a one week training, next summer, on Irrlicht (and maybe Blender)?

Feel free to contact me if you want to know more, or if you have any idea.

Thanks,

Sebastien Dessureault

[rogerborg]

Ah hah, it's you that keeps sending students our way!

I suspect that it's vanishingly unlikely that we'll find any business giving useful Irrilcht training. Emphasis on useful: it's surprising what people become experts in when money is offered.

I'd suggest that you contact Irrlicht's original developer, Nikolaus Gebhardt, via email at office at-symbol ambiera.com

The active Irrlicht devs may also be able to help: they are hybrid, bitplane, and luke.

There are a few Irrlicht users who have the requisite skillet. Vitek springs to mind.

Good luck in your search, and please do let us know if you do find anyone selling Irrlicht training; it would be very interesting to see that happening.

[MasterGod]

One of my courses is about 3D programming with Irrlicht.

Holy mother of god!
W O W..
That's amazing, for Irrlicht

I wish you the best of luck and here are some guys I could recommend (which rogerborg didn't mention)
Edit: Adding the guys he said gives you this list
Irrlicht's original developer, Nikolaus Gebhardt aka niko
hybrid - Official Irrlicht Developer
bitplane - Official Irrlicht Developer
luke - Official Irrlicht Developer
varmint - Official Irrlicht Developer
vitek
BlindSide
CuteAlien
rogerborg

[CuteAlien]

I suppose the best way to improve your knowledge is to try to understand the examples. I'm not sure if there really is a better training. You have to understand the basics for 3D and for C++, those are important. But once you know that, the examples will get you started very fast. For further information you can look up the API documentation. And beside that it's mostly experience, which is hard to teach.

If you have concrete questions this forum and also the IRC chat can often help you out. I would certainly like to hang around a week in Quebec, so if your budget pays for flight (from Europe) and accommodation I might think about it ;-)

[d3jake]

I agree with CuteAlien. I'm a rather large newbie when it comes to Irrlicht, and some parts of C++, but after I looked through the examples, and API documentation, it was pretty easy to understand things. And as Alien said, you can't really teach something like that. I learned just from it being forced due to me not knowing how to do something, so I had to learn how to.

[BlindSide]

Yeah not to insult you if you have found it difficult to learn, but I personally think Irrlicht is very very easy and doesn't really require professional training or too much time to become an expert in (Especially if you are already familiar with C++ and graphics terminology, when I started with Irrlicht I was not, so the learning curve was a bit steeper.)

Like CuteAlien said, the examples and API docs should be your best friend. When I first started writing Irrlicht apps I had the API docs open the whole time and when I thought I needed something I would just search for it. It didn't take long for me to memorize most of the useful functions. (Also functions declarations are nicely commented so if you use Intellisense with MSVC you get a nice description with every method that pops up.)

Cheers

[MasterGod]

As they said, I also started with minimal experience and the tutorials/examples, API and mainly the forums here helped me a lot to learn graphics terminology (which I had no single clue about it), C++, the API itself and much more.
The best thing you got IMHO is the community so the best 'course' I guess is to dive into the source code of Irrlicht and search/ask questions in the forums. And it's also free
Tutorials + API + Forums == The complete guide for the Irrlicht user IMHO.

[d3jake]

(Sorry for two posts so close to each other but...)

Searching the forums is a great way to find solutions to problems that you've had. Odds are that someone else on the forum at one time may have had your problem, and is also where I got my free flight code for use in the game I'm helping with.

[MasterGod]

(Sorry for two posts so close to each other but...)

Wada...
You shouldn't apologize for that , maybe just for bumping and some times there are good reasons for that too..
lol you're a funny guy

[Zeuss]

I actually teach at a 3D Animation and games school (that is all we do) and we are the 2nd institution in the world to be games and 3d animation orientated only. If you want to take a look: http://www.aie.edu.au

We do not have any course resources or provide courses for Irrlicht (our course uses Truevision3D for tutorials but that was from before I started), but it is my personal 3D engine of choice and maybe one day the course will change.

[/endplug]

I have to agree with people here if you are only after 1 weeks training with Irrlicht, read your way through the examples, think of a simple project to make. Something a-kin to Pac-man or breakout nothing too major just to get to grips with the API.

If you don't already (trying not be patronizing as you said this is the first time you give a 3d course) knowing about vectors and matrices is a must!

You need to know about dot products, cross products, normalisation, linear interpolation (lerp) and how a matrix is constructed and what the rows and columns represent as a minimum, but not just knowing about them but how to use them as well.

This knowledge allows you to do very powerful things in a few lines of code that I have seen beginners use trig for. Such as trying to calculate the forwards vector of an object from the rotation (using trig) rather than getting the top row of a matrix. (Oh I should make that a feature request)

Good luck! Hope the course goes well.

[BlindSide]

Such as trying to calculate the forwards vector of an object from the rotation (using trig) rather than getting the top row of a matrix. (Oh I should make that a feature request)

I just use parent-node, getAbsolutePosition and set the rotation of the parent node. It may be less efficient but its much faster to implement and simpler to understand. Also I found that most of the vector3df's built in functions eg. getHorizontalAngle eliminate the need for knowledge of things like cross product, dot product etc.

Offcourse, if you get into shaders then those things become essential.

[Zeuss]

To me its just bad to rely on 3d maths being done for you in an engine as you may move to another engine and its not there. Also employers expect this kind of knowledge of anyone doing 3d programming (for games, visualizations etc).

It's a key skill and should be given in any 3d training.

But of course, using engine API stuff does tend to look neater but everything has a trade off.

[sdessureault]

Thanks for all those replies!

You are right! There are really good tutorials. I already did most of them. In few months with a class of 8 18 year old students, we did a lot of really neat things! We are doing a FPS in our own 3d model of our college (obviously, without de "shooting" aspect! No gun!)

But, as I'm a teacher, I have to give some others courses like Oracle SQL-PL-SQL, Java J2ME, Flash and Action Script, C++, Delphi...

So, I'm a "jack of all trades, but master of none"...

Having a training would allow me to quickly answer my questions, and it would be nice to to make some concrete contacts in 3D business, and maybe have a partnership. Within few months, I could have to find some trainings for some students (they have to go to work 12 weeks in business in order to have their college diploma).

So I also want to make some contacts and partners in 3D business, for my college.

Well, thanks! If there is other good ideas, don't hesitate to write to me!

Sebastien