Hi Mike,
The first 100 tutorial to watch is certainly a good idea. In fact MAXON has thought about something like, content wise, which is the little book they provide, “Quickstart Documentation”.
The “Quickstart Documenation” can be found here: http://www.maxon.net/support/documentation.html
Please note that pretty much any tool or even parameter has that “right mouse click” help support system, if you like to explore C4D directly.
My suggestions would be to go one time along the tutorials that you will find in the “Help Content” of the application itself.
These two (Help Content Tutorials and Quickstart) are my first recommendations to get an overview about the interface and to get an idea about the typical workflow.
To double this content here would take resources away, with no real benefit.
The Cineversity interface has several filter options, you might take a look into this introduction:
http://www.cineversity.com/vidplaytut/getting_started_with_cineversity_part_1
After that my suggestion for your first point, basic modeling, would be:
http://www.cineversity.com/vidplaytut/introduction_to_space
Your second part might be a more difficult one, as every artist or studio has different ideas about that. Considering the tutorials above, each covering C4D, will show you that we stick to the standard interface, as the firm believe is here, that any change to the given standards might confuse more than it helps. The scene itself, and here is the Object manager mostly the, from my point of view, follows some rules. The simple idea is here that things become “processed” in a certain way. Which is nothing that I would suggest to watch on day one, as the application itself is widely forgiving here, but the more complex you set up your scene, e.g. in MoGraph or Character Rigging, the more you might notice it. For now, you need to create a lot before that becomes relevant. If you follow along the tutorials you will see that each instructor has its own little idea about structuring a scene. One central element is of course the “Layer Browser”. It keep things more organized.
If you have done my suggestions, you might share your impression and then we have a look what next.
Tutorials on the web are a mixed bag of qualities. Check out if you get a forum with these, and how much the author cares after the recording. Another indicator is certainly given, if you see a series of tutorials or if one has provided only some “do-this-do-that” clips with no real explanation, to just get something “cool” done. It might contain some shortcomings which might slow you down later on. In a nutshell, be aware of the quality.
Texture and lighting is a large theme, for that as for the modeling, my typical advice is: Observe! Any tool or object in C4D has functions and options. I call this normally the “shopping list” in hands-on-classes. When you do a walk, sit somewhere, you are always surrounded with objects. Everything has a surface and of course is (more or less) illuminated. Your major challenge is to “see”! To connect the real world with the simulation of C4D.
That sounds perhaps a little bit simple, but between “watching” and observing is a big difference. Even successful studios like PIXAR do before each new movie—studies. Which results as well in tons of reference images. This is a work that you can do everywhere and anytime. Take some parameters of the light source, and try to find an equivalent on any given real object, and so on. I’m sometimes surprised how little some light object settings differ from the default settings. Missing that real-to-simulation connection is the main part creating without knowing. I highly suggest you start parallel to your tutorial exploration to “re-explore” reality with C4D in mind. Your results will be much better. ...and shot images, tons of, if possible do exposure bracketing—and always shoot raw, you will not regret it on the long run. If you have a little Gray-card, use it, it makes the reference images much more useable.
I hope you get a lot of nice projects done with your new application. If there is a question, please ask. If you think that a question is too simple, ask anyway. Everything that one misses out in the basics, will stopp one on the log run.
My best wishes
Sassi
