ICE: For Dummies...

[NeilV]

Any chance XSI will release some training videos explaining every mainly used feature of Ice in basic, easy to understand terms? I just looked at some of the videos, but they go by way too quickly. True, they are just demonstration videos, but they are done by the dudes who obviously programmed the stuff and are already experts at it.

Also, if you can create fire with ice, can you create other enviroments just as easilly? Ice, Water, Lava, etc?

I see you can already create things like a Ghostbuster Proton beam effect :).

[PetrZ]

Digital Tutors preparing new tutorials for xsi 7 so if you have a plenty of time and you think you consider yourself as newbie, I think it will suit's for you.

IMHO: But I don't have so I prefere advnaced level of education, where everythink important is said and shown once and clearly and I don't have to spend 4 hours to watch something what is descirbed in manual on 5 lines. ;)

[tomkirbygreen]

I'd imagine that official training partners like Digital Tutors would step in to provide this stuff, I'm not sure if Soft' is really in the business of producing free detailed training videos any more. That said I'd love to see some well choosen short 'how-to' videos for effects that where previously a pain in the bum to set up with 6.x

[thiago]

Yes, Softimage will have education partners releasing ICE training. XSI 7 will come with a Digital Tutors DVD that will include ICE.
ICE isn't hard to learn when you get your hands on it. If you go for the artist approach you can just play with high-level compounds, still building your own effects of combining effects.
Open compounds and understanding what is inside is the key to understand how to make your own from scratch.

Advanced things like your own collision models, will need to go down to Math. And of course need a more advanced understanding of ICE, programming, physic and god knows what you wanna do on ICE.
Hopefully some of this type of training will be available too. But don't hold yourself... if your thing is numbers, start to read about it.

Tutorials are also starting to pop, like the one from Brad did on how to build a particle force in ICE.
http://www.vimeo.com/1313863

XSI will ship with lots of examples, and many compounds will be available on v7 that is literally just "play-and-play".

If you gonna be at Siggraph, don't miss the user event and Production Challenge on August 10th.
more info http://www.softimage.com/events/sig08/default.aspx