Top 10 School Ranking
- vfxcourseratings
- Apr 23, 2022
- 5 min read
CGcircuit CGcircuit probably has the most high-quality tutorials out there. While you will mainly find Houdini tutorials, they do have tutorials on Nuke, After effects, Maya, and Things like realflow. A big thing they also have is Steven Knipping. Without a doubt, I can say he easily is the best teacher out there. Cgcircuit has the most variety and most of their tutorials come at a great price other great teachers I can recommend for this site are Tim van Helsing, Timj, David CGMK, and David Adan.
TheVFXSchool While TheVFXSchool doesn't have as many Courses as CGcircuit their pricing is very good. Most time they even have big discounts which makes the pricing even better. While their teachers aren't as good as Steven Knipping I think they still explain everything in an understandable and easy-to-understand way they start with easy projects and then they get more complicated. I think all of their courses are worth the money. Their best course is the Houdini renascence Programm vol 1 in my opinion you can learn a lot about how Houdini used to be the old and the new workflows. They updated most of the old stuff to work in at least Houdini 17 or higher. And then they added a bunch of new Stuff Using Houdini 18.5. They also have a Discord Server for Students. They have a really good self-made website with a very nice and high quality esthetic the website is fast and easy to navigate
CGForge Tyler Bay Covers many different topics Including the main topics like Destruction FX and Pyro he has a lot on shading, rendering, and Vex as well. His Courses are straightforward forward and he uses references and explains his way of analyzing them. If you're interested in Solaris he has great tutorials about rendering and Shading too.
CGMA CGMAs courses are very expensive but you do get a weekly live QnA with the instructor which can be very handy when you get stuck noticed a mistake in the setup or have any questions in general. While from a pricing standpoint not as good as TheVFXschools Courses they are a lot more advanced and cover more on one specific topic like Destruction, fluid, Procedural Modeling, or Abstract FX, They do have a lot of other Courses for other Programs like Nuke too. But I don't know much about those as I didn't watch any of them. I would recommend every Houdini course on their website except for Intro to Houdini you should do Steven Knipping or TheVFXschool tutorials instead as they provide more knowledge for a lower price.
Entagma The Guys at Entagma do little tutorials around Motion graphics and abstract topics they often go more under the hood and explain how everything works. They use a lot of complicated Vex. Their free youtube tutorials are already great but the stuff on their Patreon is awesome. You get their courses for 25 Euros a month which isn't that expensive considering how many they have. Their tutorials aren't the most beginner-friendly out there but they can really deepen your understanding of Houdini. They started doing Blender stuff too.
The Gnomon Workshop Gnomon is mainly known for its in-person college but they have online courses as well. They have a subscription-based Programm costing you 49$ a month. This is quite a high price but if you can finish at least 2 or more courses a month it's worth it. They have a few really good courses about all kinds of stuff. They also offer an annual rental service for 490$ if you're gonna need it for longer than 9 months I would recommend buying this but otherwise, I don't think it's worth it.
Pixelfront Pixelfront doesn't offer many courses but they show you the entire process they do compositing and simulations. Compared to other Schools their Courses have quite a good price too. I didn't do all of them but they look promising and I liked the atmospherics and The Breach course
Rebelway Rebelway has a lot to offer they have a lot of courses intro courses and Advanced Courses. But just like CGMAs Courses, they come at a high price. Most Rebelways courses are even more expensive than CGMAs and you don't get a weekly live QnA session. Just like TheVFXschool, they do have a Discord Server where you can contact the Instructor and share your assignment to get feedback on it. While their Courses look very good and promising from the outside most times they can be quite disappointing. Often the setups aren't done from scratch and Saber (the founder of Rebelway) just explains the setup and goes over it. That way of teaching is hard to follow and very messy. Often not everything is explained and in my opinion that just isn't ok for courses that range prices up to 850$. I think when you buy a course for that much money you can expect that everything is done from scratch and that no shelf tools are used. Sometimes the Instructor builds the setup and then goes to tweak it off cam. These are things the workshop makes above don't do. Steven Knipping always does his Courses from scratch, and So does TheVFXschool and CGMA. Rebelway is the only online school that does it this way being the most expensive. Still, they have some very good courses. Is the best course on their website by far the instructor (Juir Bryan) explains everything well. I think he is the best teacher at Rebelway. I can't talk about the new Advanced Magical FX course as I haven't taken it up until now. (I will update this). You will learn something from every Rebelway Course but if you care about your money and this is a big investment for you I would recommend staying away and learning from the ones above.
FXphd Fxphd is subscription-based just like Gnomon. Its Premium price is 99$ which I recommend because you can download the courses. They're pricing is quite ok I think you'd be able to do 3+ courses per month. The reason why they are last is that most of their courses are quite outdated and just not that good in my opinion. I would recommend buying it for a month doing the "Impact-based Series" and then canceling the subscription again. They don't have that many courses on Houdini and as I said most of them are outdated and made in the older version. For example, on is still in Houdini 11. The newest version is 19 currently.
LearnSquared They have 2 Courses on Houdini both are in older versions of Houdini. They both are taught by Adam Swaab who is a really good teacher. In terms of pricing are ok. I think they can help but I don't think they are necessary to do. You should probably stick with Applied Houdini.
In Conclusion:
Any of these learning websites are great and you will learn a lot! In this list I just wanted
to share my opinion on which courses have the highest quality and where you get more
out of your money.
For CGcircuit The best courses are Steven knippings!
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