Royal Skies LLC
I've seen a lot of 'Speed" tutorials on YouTube that seem to me to be fast simply to be fast, but they often turn out to be too rushed and, because of that - incomplete.
Royal Skies LLC advertises "Speed" on many of his tutorials - and for good reason. These are Fast tutorials, but done in a very efficient manner. The speed comes from a well laid out path with no overemphasizing. If we need to focus harder on something we'll have to pause, back up and watch some particular part a few more times.
This has an excellent affect for someone like me - totally new to Blender and just exploring work flows and possibilities.
Because they're short videos, I can watch quite a few of them in one sitting as I await a render or simulation to complete, and understand more about what applies to what I'm working on - or intend to work on. He also has them nicely organized into playlists - all working toward an end goal.
First things first - this fellow certainly knows the skills that he's teaching. His wonderful 'instructor personality' can come off a bit comedic, which is refreshing and fun. But underneath it all is a wealth of professional skills that are rapidly being given away before our eyes - this is Cool!
Looking at his large playlist collection from the bottom and working upward toward what's being made today, we begin with a game that he's created and is available on Steam - Vanguard Knights.
One playlist for the soundtrack and another of a full playthrough in one of the game's modes. The game looks like a lot of fun, the playthrough was exciting and it just shows that Royal Skies LLC has the skills needed to take us from concept to final product.
Just to help illustrate the gist of things here, the playlists include instructional collections for many of the necessary topics to take us all the way from deciding what type of art we want to make and of what style to Blender tips and tricks and then on to modeling, texturing, shaders, rigging, tweaking and animating before getting to what he's creating now - coding the game in Unity.
Following through the process can possibly cover topics that might not fit your design - but it's amazing how many of these skills cross over into helpful hints at solving issues for using Blender as a CG tool in film making.
By the time he's done teaching us how to properly rig and weight paint our character, he gives us his male and female Blender people freely and completely without restriction - though he would appreciate (and totally deserves) his name in the credits.
Blenda (female) and Blendo (male) are fully rigged, weight painted Blender people with IK/FK rigs that he's tweaked and optimized throughout the course before making them available to us. Very Cool!
They're low-rez figures for game use, which is the perfect sort of model to learn from because they're light in weight (resource-wise) and show the importance of topology design vs weight painting/rigging.
The rigging course also includes very detailed instructions for creating Drivers in Blender - using additional rigging bones that are controlled entirely through drivers that watch for certain conditions - joint rotations and positions - and fire when told to, to correct the shape of the mesh when needed. Very much like the way Daz 3D's JCM (joint controlled morphs) work, but without the overhead of additional OBJ (mesh) data.
Blenda and Blendo come completely rigged and with drivers, but definitely catch those videos to learn how to create and set up these drivers and shape-correcting bones!
The animation section is certainly geared for game motions, which is really cool. Even if we're in this for film instead of games, this is great stuff to learn. Fasten your seatbelt!
Just watch these short examples I'm previewing here and decide for yourself. Then subscribe, join and become a Patreon Member and be part of the direction his case studies take us! :)
He even has a playlist on making texture maps using the amazing, free Materialize software (I Love this Tool!!!)
Seriously, in following these video courses it becomes openly apparent that his supporters are considered family to him, and he confides in them regarding direction and topics to teach and explore.
I'm glad that he has a cool support (Patreon & YouTube Members) team because I love the direction he's been going and appears to be continuing in.
If you like his show, please consider also supporting the cause via either his Patreon or YouTube Membership, or at the very least, subscribe, like and ring that bell! :)
Royal Skies LLC, you certainly have a fan here!
The Royal Skies LLC website is a wealth of information and study guide to help us all learn the process he uses to create games. This is a powerful resource!
About Royal Skies - A great little rundown on why he does what he does for us, and the cool list of all of his incredible supporters!
Developer's Toolkit - Royal Skies introduces us to the (free!) tools that we'll need to embark on our quest!
The Royal Resources - Royal Skies gives us things that he's made within his tutorials!
The World's Clearest Tutorials - Let's Do This!