Class on Demand: LightWave 3D v11 Courseware Online Streaming Educational Tutorial by Dan Ablan

This was one of the best sets of LightWave training I have ever experienced. Dan Ablan has incredible product knowledge and a wonderful presentation style. It feels warm and informal, as though he were a friend sitting beside you to help out. The only disappointment is that it is streaming media and Class On Demand required frequent logins to validate my credentials. I would have much preferred getting a DVD of the sessions instead. You cannot go wrong with the topics covered or with how Ablan covers them though. I highly recommend it for those reasons. I definitely plan on buying Ablan's "up to speed" material for LightWave 11.5.

As a new comer to LightWave, and 3D in general, I needed all the help I could get. Of all the things I tried, this course was by far the most useful to me. The course is broken up into bite sized chapters running in length from about 4 minutes or so to as much as 25 minutes. The total course time is just over 10 hours. The instructor or narrator is Dan Ablan, who heads AGA Digital Studios. He uses a very pleasant and conversational tone and offers good explanations for why the program works the way it does. Using files that come with the lightWave program, Dan walks you through the process of building a simple model and demonstrating the many ways that model can be modified, surfaced, animated etc. At this moment, I'm only half way through the course, but I've found his teaching style to be very effective. What could use improvement is the site that delivers the courseware. When viewing and learning various chapters, I'll often pause the video and go to lightwave to try out the technique being discussed. When done there, I'll go back to video and continue the course. Problems often arise when attempting to replay a section that was just heard (to better understand, or because I became distracted). If this is done more that a couple of times during the video, the chapter would crash and you'd have to start the video over. After restarting it, you could move forward to the approximate location where the crash occurred and continue from there. Not a deal break, but certainly irritating. Signing in to the course requires a username and password, which the site refuses to remember, even though it gives you the option to remember. Help/support is provided via email, but my only email to the support desk went unanswered. However, even with these quibbles, I'm still finding the course very helpful.

This is not a DVD, rather it provides a link to a Website where the instruction is stored. I used it somewhat when I first received it, then had to stop for various reasons. I went back to the site recently and could not access the instruction. I do not recommend this product.