Online Training Outlet Roundup

There are always free tutorials to fall back on, but for some applications such as Houdini, RealFlow, XSI or Massive, there just isn’t enough free material on the internet to get a thorough understanding of the application you want, or quite possibly need to learn.  When all else fails you are going to probably have to pay for some training DVDs to get the education you need.  While it is kind of a pain to pay, you always have to remember, it’s a lot better than a few years of college.

FXphd is the educational extension of FXguide, the ever popular VFX and production website, and they have classes on almost every platform available.  The professors are some of the top in the industry, ranging from veteran Flame artists to skilled and trained After Effects motion graphics artists.  Offering a wide array of classes on applications you can’t find anywhere else, such as Flint, Inferno, and Massive, among others, this makes FXphd a premiere destination to go when you need to get your education done.  They work in terms, and you can take up to 6 courses a term, and anything that you create, you can use on your reel.  They also offer a ton of VPN software for you to learn on, and classes often run for around 10 weeks.

Gnomon is a huge site, community and a marketplace.  They actually have 3 sites under the Gnomon name:  TheGnomonWorkshop.com, Gnomonolgy.com, and GnomonSchool.com.  The Gnomon Workshop is a marketplace where you can search through hundreds of training DVDs on visual effects, compositing, 3d, and other highly intensive training categories.  Gnomonology is similar in the aspect of buying training, but the tutorials found on this site are individual lessons for individual tasks, and also much cheaper than the full DVDs.  Gnomon School however is different in that they offer classes for a a few weeks at a time similar to the way that FXphd operates.  All three of these sites operate together fantastically, and you can learn a hell of a lot if you are willing to shell out the money.

Lynda.com has been around for a long time, and isn’t just based in graphics, 3d and video.  They have training videos available for almost any subject imaginable.  From Adobe AIR to ZBrush, there is probably at least one title available for you on the program that you need to learn.  Subscriptions are very reasonable as well, at $25 a month it gives you access to thousands of hours worth of material, that you will not be able to get through all of it in a month even if you tried.  They also have individual DVDs as well as books available for purchase too, if you are more into having the hard copy around for future reference.

Chris Maynard is the creator of cmiVFX as well as the sub site, FXMogul.  cmiVFX is an amazing resource of hundreds of tutorials for sale to enhance you learning arsenal.  Their unique player keeps track of the titles that you have bought, links them with your user name, and lets you stream them on the website so you don’t have to bother with downloading gigabytes among gigabytes.  They are also one of the few outlets online that offer classes in Flame as well as the normal popular applications.

There are many more outlets out there, and I would be here fore hours listing all of them, but these are the big hitters, as I like to call them.  Whatever you need you are sure to find with these websites and their dedicated teams of trainers.  If you know of other sites that I have left out, please share them with us in the comments!