I have been looking online for some helpful guidebooks to purchase for reference and to use while I learn the program but so far I have not found any! I am seeing plenty of videos! But I like to have a book handy to look up something or follow along without having to press pause on a video.
Has anyone found such a book that they can recommend?
I’ve never heard of one and doubt there’s one out there.
Perhaps you could find one for a similar program (blender?) and read it. Then try to replicate the processes in Nomad. Not sure if that would be worth a try or not.
Make one… sounds like you’d be the first.
I’m not sure how much more “reference” you can get than the online reference manual created by the Dev. Having pointed this out, it perhaps IS lacking in a screenshot overview that shows how the various tools and pull downs are grouped, but with the actual program sitting aside a computer screen with the online manual it shouldn’t take much gray matter to start grasping why things fall where they are.
Once the buttons, their functions, and their locations become familiar, that would be a good time to seek out the simplest videos. Unfortunately, 9 out of 10 YouTube clips across ALL sculpting programs fly through the screen presuming the viewer has intermediate exposure. If you’re not following along quickly enough, YouTube DOES have a playback speed setting. Watching a tutorial at half-speed ought to provide ample time to cross-reference Nomad’s web manual.
Before Nomad was available, I spent over a year in a similar manner trying to grasp ZBrush. My lightbulb moment finally came when one of the classes from ZBrushWorkshops started breaking down the multi-pronged process. I say it this way because sculpting is not just about which brush-tool you’re selecting. It’s also about actively making topology decisions; when to sculpt more broadly with low polygons; when to remesh or subdivide; and when to lay down fine detail. Another facet is about the muscle-memory to make the sculpting app work WITH you rather than AGAINST you. In ZBrush, I learned that most artists constantly have their free hand hovering over the CTRL/ALT/SHIFT section of their keyboard to supercharge the functions of their brush hand.
Having learned and internalized all this, when Nomad came around, it was astonishing how many ZBrush processes and muscle-memory habits were allowed by the iPad app. I can probably speak for many ZBrush veterans that our first time picking up Nomad, no lengthy orientation was necessary. This attests to the connective tissue between these two programs — such that jumping into one or the other is effortless, no huge need to mentally re-wire. Example, Nomad’s bottom corner Mask button appears to most beginners as a binary TOGGLE button, however ZBrush vets use it more like a MOMENTARY keypress; no different than when they’d normally have their finger dangling over the keyboard CTRL key. In adopting this behavior, Nomad will follow the same ZBrush shortcut of tapping once outside the object to invert a mask, and stroking outside the object to de-select (erase) any mask on the object. I understand that as I’m typing this out, it’s hard for beginners to understand or appreciate how “universal” shortcuts like this can make the sculpting process so much smoother and effortless. This is why a printed workbook won’t help enlighten beginners any better than motion demonstration (video tutorial). It’s a single facet focus.
Thanks CarterTG, this response is exactly why I was posing the question in the first place. Reading your comment I got an idea what to expect from fellow users who have also used other programs.
Look up Billy Hooper on youtube he has a beginners tutorial , it’s brief and to the point.
The manual has had an overhaul, it should cover every button and every menu with plenty of screenshots.
What it doesn’t have is tutorials, but as others have pointed out its often better to use video tutorials for that, watch over the shoulder of someone.
That said, what kind of written tutorials/lessons would people want to be in the manual?