Maxwell Render

I would like to provide a 3 day (18 hours) Maxwell course for beginners/intermediate level users and generally people who would like to learn Maxwell and use the demo version. A detailed course plan is available here:

LINK

The fee will be 400€/person for the full course. I would like first of all to get an idea where the first course should be held so if you are interested, please reply here and specify which city you prefer. I can travel to most European cities and language wise I can do the course in english, french or swedish. Also please tell me if you would prefer the course is scheduled during the week or during the week-end, starting friday.

I am limiting the classes to 10 people, no more, no less After I get an idea where the first course should be held I'll announce a definite date and location in another thread and let you know the details on how to sign up etc. More courses will be offered on a regular basis so please reply if you would be interested in attending a future course so I can plan other locations. Please don't forget to also specify the city you prefer.

You will have to bring a laptop with you. Temporary licenses for Maxwell Render will be given for the duration of the course.

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Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness

Good initiative!

Swedish? cool. Are you from Sweden?

What kind of temporary licenses is that, demo-liceneses or something special?

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industrial design and visualization (http://www.syse.se)

Hi,

I lived in Sweden a few years so I speak swedish fluently

The licenses are full licenses, just that they only last for the duration of the course.

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Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness

I see!

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industrial design and visualization (http://www.syse.se)

a 3 day training sounds good . so please come to vienna

cheers . oliver

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Skyline of Las Vegas

This sounds perfect but.....

Cost is too cheap not that I would complain. The big issue for all training done in the classroom is time away. I could not justify taking 3 days out to learn maxwell unless it was on non consecutive days and relatively local. Have you considered web conferencing based training? That would really interest me.

How about this for a solution:

Follow your programme over maybe 12 web sessions (12x2hr sessions - more than 2hrs is a waste of time as you phase out after that). Charge 600 Euros (to cover using a professional level web conferencing tool like WebEx with sound). Record the sessions and let the users have access to the recordings or send them a DVD.

Alternatively get in touch with some leading VARs for the likes of Solidworks, FormZ, Rhino, SketchUp and see if they can host a training course for you.

Finally consider producing a printed book! The market needs one!!

Web conferencing sound very viable. I live in America, with very little chance to travel overseas even for Maxwell training.

Maybe we could get some ideas from http://www.animationmentor.com: Online training.

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http://www.ftella.com

...don't take the price as an idea please

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Q6600 - 8Gb RAM - Nvidia GTX 470 | Maya 2011 | Rhino 4.0 || A keyboard, a mouse and an old Wacom Graphire

It could be a viable solution for hands-on training, the only thing I'm wondering about is if transfer speeds of a viewport for example will be enough for people to see what I'm doing. But perhaps even if it's not 30fps transfer, with voice the participants can still get the idea.

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Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness

The most important thing is the upload speed from your end. A lot of standard broadband connections actually have fairly low upload speeds - maybe 256k to 500k. For effective web conferencing you really need to be using a reliable uplink line of maybe 800k plus. A lot of the big software companies run web casts on leased line connections so they have the speed. Always use a wired connection as well - wireless is too flaky for web conferencing delivery.

I don't think it is a problem though as companies like SolidWorks and Bunkspeed deliver web conference training sessions using Go To Meeting regularly. You can also record the sessions anyway and save for later viewing.

Best thing to do is try it and see what works and what doesn't. Sound can be delivered by tele-conference via the land lines (I'm not a huge fan of integrated web conferencing with VOIP sound as this hogs the bandwidth).

You won;t get 30fps but then you don;t need to! You need to slow down the delivery for web casts - besides us newbies need to take it slow! The problem with a lot of the existing Maxwell training videos (both with and without sound) is that the playpack is on hyperspeed. Even those done in realtime are done by expert users who assume we all think as fast as they do. It really is a case of less is more. slower delivery = greater learning.

Finally - the biggest web cast killer is trying to share your 30" apple Cinema display at full screen size! The actual webcast display should be as small as possible. I usually resize my monitor to 1024x768 for web conferences, or I resize the application window to roughly this size and share just that active window.

I've done a test with gotomeeting and it's actually very good Even with VoIP everybody was getting around 3-5fps in the OGL viewport and the rest of the UI/mouse pointer speed was very good. I could easily see what others where doing on their computer as well. It's great to just share one application window instead of the whole desktop.

I'll keep you posted, I think this would be a good enough way to proceed. Would 4 hours/day with a pause after 2 hours be ok? Time goes fast, I think just 2 hours/day is not enough. So 4hours for 5 days. Perhaps many would prefer if 2 of these days would fall on a weekend?

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Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness

do you have to be a 'certified user' to provide a Maxwell course?

(a little off topic, sorry)

The main requirement is to KNOW maxwell. All other technicisms go behing.

Kurt, you don't have to be a certified user, we are trying to find experienced Maxwell users from all over the world who would be willing to provide training to others. If you like, contact Nicole at nicole@nextlimit.com and she'll send you more info.

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Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness