Modeling an Ancient Jerusalem House in Blender

Course Syllabus/ Description
Like my two other Blender courses, this course too will keep to the most basic modeling tools so as not to overwhelm the students but to become confident in a very short time. And yet we will learn to model a great variety of items with those basic tools.
We will build an ancient Jerusalem house as it would have looked like in the first century.
Please note that the focus of this course is not on deeply researched accuracy of the things modeled but on the workflow and techniques to build just about anything that would be found in an ancient household and beyond.
This way even absolute beginners will be able to build impressive 3D models and gain enough confidence to build projects on their own after they completed this course.
My students usually don’t work along during the session but watch what I am demonstrating and can ask questions.
I am recording every lesson on zoom and send off a link to the full-length video after every class to every student and the students are then working on the lesson on their own as homework.
This way, even if you can’t make it to some classes, you still get the video, so you won’t miss anything.
As a matter of fact – a large percentage of my students take the entire course just by watching the videos on their own time without ever attending.
This may be an option for you if the time slot for the course is inconvenient for you.
Of course I will still be there for one-on-one help if needed.
Syllabus (Subject to change) :
Lesson 01: Introductory lesson – building a toy house
Lesson 02: Hand mill and mat
Lesson 03: Pottery
Lesson 04: Oil lamp
Lesson 05: Bed
Lesson 06: Weaving loom
Lesson 07: Work bench and accessories
Lesson 08: Table and Chair
Lesson 09: Scroll (rolled up)
Lesson 10: Scroll (open)
Lesson 11: Basket for the scrolls
Lesson 12: Building the house
Lesson 13: Furnishing the house with the items we built
Lesson 14: Lighting and rendering
Lesson 15: Camera walk-through animation
Lesson 16: Rendering the animation.
Some lessons can span several one-hour sessions.
Please be aware that it would help if you had a good gaming laptop or a computer with a dedicated graphics card (Blender does seem to prefer Nvidia cards).
A mouse with a scroll wheel is a must, but tablets or a stylus of any kind are neither useful nor needed for this course.
The cost is $35.00 U.S. per full hour once a week.
Duration of the course is six months.
Payment is done through PayPal, at the beginning of the month for the full month. (Please remember that some months have five lesson days, depending on what day the course is.)
Our Instructors

Instructor
Norman Gorn
Instructor Bio
I started to play with 3d programs in the mid-nineties, my first 3d project was an small airplane for the Microsoft flight Simulator 98. This model turned out so well that a company that sold flightsim addon planes, called “The VIP Group” took it into their roster and sold it for me.
The owner of the company also took a great interest in me and taught me many things pertaining to software issues that are crucial for this kind of work.
Through connections from the VIP Group I then got to work by modelling Ultralights for a “Lad’n Dad” outfit called “FlightSim Models”, who also taught me a couple of tips and tricks in 3d modelling and especially parts animation.
The “big gig” came when I got the attention of a company called “AlphaSim” and I ended up modelling countless models for them over many years.
At AlphaSim they were willing to train me in gmax and 3d Studio Max and that’s where I really got most of my experience in 3d modelling.
As the successive flight simulators got more and more complex, I got assigned the honourable task of modelling and texturing the cockpits and mechanical parts of airplanes, since I seemed to had a flair for making textures that made models look worn and well-used.
When the company changed their name to “Virtavia” and changed their image to a more high-end kind of add-on supplier, I had already worked on the cockpits of a good number of plane models that got international acclaim, glaring reviews and won top awards in the flightsim world.
However, long before I ever got into 3d modeling I received training from a company that produced architectural renderings by hand for clients around the world and we helped many of our our clients to win important contracts.
As I gained experience with my flight simulator modelling on the side, I also started to teach myself how to use 3d software for architectural rendering and found that field of modelling to be so much simpler than flightsim modelling.
That then took off as I started to volunteer for a charitable organization and helped them to get a good number of city permits and helped them with design decisions by making visualizations of their projects.
And then I ran into Ed…lol
Contact Info
normgorn@rogers.com
Payment Methods
Payment is done through PayPal.