Training dvd's

[re:FORM]

I was planning to buy some training DVD's before the end of the tax year. Does anyone have any comments on the following selection, or recommendations for anything better?

• Global Illumination: Interiors
  Global Illumination: Exteriors, V-Ray Lighting Techniques with Christopher Nichols
  Adobe Photoshop for Digital Production, Essential Techniques for Film, Broadcast and Games
  Digital Sets 1: Design, Modeling and Camera
  Digital Sets 2: Lighting and Texturing
  Digital Sets 3: Rendering and Compositing
  Digital Sets 4: 3D Image-Based Terrain, Combining Spherical Imagery and DEMs with Eric Hanson

I assume the Maya Digital Sets series can be easily applied to max and vray.

[Neilg]

You wont need all of those, I'd be tempted to skimp on the maya ones. You find them incredibly boring and they wont teach you as much as you hope. Chris nichols will give you the light/rendering and i'd reccomend the exterior modeling gnomon dvd which will cover texturing and large scale modeling too.

The CG academy advanced modeling one is very good. Well reccomended if youre planning to clean up your modeling, he goes over an old model of a train and isolates each section, explains how he did each bit and why. That should cover your detail work and general approach to models.

[re:FORM]

Thanks for the info... could save me a bob or two.

Just to give you a better idea of my skills, check out this gallery page for some of my work. Mostly standard externals and product shots.

http://picasaweb.google.com/reformstudios/Demo_2006

I am keen to develop my lighting, material and modelling skills, and thought I'd pick up some new tricks from each of those dvd's.... although I can see I'll be going over alot of ground I'm already familiar with.

(edit) Argh, I just saw those pictures(link above) on a machine in an internet cafe and they all look too dark! Either Picasa has guffed the Gamma on those images, or this machine I'm using has a bad screen. Do they look far too dark to you?