The Complete Cascade Beginners Guide - Learn VFX in Unreal

Mostly just distracting due to materials not all being present or working right with Cascade in UE4. The lessons are well covered, but this needless to say this has a severe annoyance factor in a majorly visual field.

Good course. The instructor has a clear and concise presentation and gives very good explanations through example. He won't just say "do this/don't do this because (technical explanation of something you don't understand which is why you got the tutorial in the first place)" he'll say, "do this/don't this" and then proceeds to actually do it every time so you see why. 10/10 recommend

This is a great course in Cascade. The fact that it's based on UDK's version of Cascade might scare you off, but it turns out that UE4's version of Cascade and material editor are extremely similar, so most of this is still useful. The instructor is very knowledgeable and explains everything super well. He never really does anything without telling you why he's doing it and what impacts a decision could have on the way something looks/performs. The effects themselves range from pretty basic to fairly complex and interesting. He takes some time to show how to source and create textures for the effects in external programs like After Effects and Photoshop, which gives a really good idea of how you go about creating effects from scratch. I actually took this course to learn how to make these systems in Niagara. The transition there is a little less smooth than the one to Cascade in UE4. You'll have to get a little creative to get some of these things to work in Niagara, but that in itself is a good learning experience. Certain necessary modules (like orbit) are missing entirely, and I will have to get a little more technical experience before I can replicate some exercises in Niagara. If you're looking to take your first step into VFX in Unreal and aren't afraid to do a little bit of legwork to retrofit an old course to new tech, you shouldn't pass up this course.

The content is outdated (covers UDK). Although most ideas apply to UE4 I would love to see updated content (GPU particles, vector fields).

I like the content so far, but alot of it is very outdated. (he makes a joke about xbox 720, so this recording was prior to 2013. Unreal engine has updated and changed drastically since then. The course is giving me a general idea, but i then have to go to google to learn how to ACTUALLY DO what is being said

Sound quality could be better. It seems like parts of the video are missing at the beginning, and sound goes in and out. Overall, this doesn't affect the delivery of material, but it does make the quality of the videos feel like they're bootlegged, or just not quite polished for presentation. That all being said, I feel very satisfied with this course, and feel like the skills I learned are a great foundation for creating FX in UDK. I do love that they chose to leave out a lot of technical talk about traditional FX animation, as far as physics and movement patterns, and just stuck to the technical aspects of how to use the software. Very concise. loved how short the corse was, while still managing to squeeze in a lot of key info. Thanks for putting this together 3Dmotive!

The material is clear and well presented. There course unfortunately seems to have been abandoned, as questions go unanswered in the QA section. Great course, but if you don't have the time to puzzle things out for yourself, this is probably not the best starting point

Is Outdated and inactive Q&A, but still has some useful information for beginners UDK is no longer available to download, and there are some frustrating differences between UDK and UE4 that made these lectures hard to follow without more advanced knowledge than what is offered early in the course. The Q&A section is dead i have posted multiple questions and haven't gotten a response on anything. There is valuable information for beginners and the ins and outs of Cascade are thoroughly explained, but i have spent more time trying to work around the outdated assets provided then i would like.

This course is very outdated. A lot of the processes have changed in Unreal Engine. It recording appears to have been made on a Windows XP system.

The instructor is good and explains everything well. The issue is he is using an old version of Unreal and his packages dont work. I am following the discussions bc I bought the course but cant really follow along bc nothing works. I hope the work flows are enough to get me comfortable with creating and using my own FX.

Very thorough beginner's tour of Cascade. If you're looking to be an effects artist using Cascade, you'll never spend a better $20.

Explains everything from the ground up in an engaging way, it was really fun and i felt like i learned a lot.

Seriously, you won't find a better and more comprehensive beginner tutorial to UDK. These principals still apply to Unreal Engine 4 and I reference these videos ALL the time.