Modding groups dedicated to training/educating newbies?

[Gmr Leon]

I'm a bit curious, as diving in and out of different online communities, I ran into a very unique scenario with EVE University in EVE Online, and was wondering if something similar may exist in the Source modding community. That means nothing without explaining what the hell EVE University is though, so to explain, it's a corporation in EVE Online dedicated to helping out new players and teaching them some of the tricks of the trade of the game.

Thus, what I'm wondering, is if there may be some Steam group of modders, or a random modding group out there that's main goal is to help those interested in modding to learn how to go about it, how to do it in general, what to try learning, and so forth. I know a large amount of modding is learning by trial and error, and reading a ton of tutorials, but I didn't know if maybe a group had developed to make that process a bit smoother, to help guide those interested to the tutorials they found useful and explain things if questions cropped up.

TL;DR: Do any of you know of any educational/mentoring modding groups?

 

[Ennui]

Not exactly, but my advice in this situation is to head to Interlopers.net. It's the most active and largest of the Source modding communities (there are older ones like Snark Pit and TWHL but they have been pretty quiet in recent years and much of their stuff is more suited to HL1 modding than HL2).

Lopers are very helpful and friendly as a community and people there will help you learn what you want to learn as long as you show initiative and are willing to do the bulk of the work yourself. Lots of lopers have gone on to get jobs in the gaming industry and still stick around to share their experience and advice. It's mainly centered around level design but you will find plenty of people there who are strong in modeling, texturing and even coding.

 

[Gmr Leon]

Thanks for the info Ennui! I'll have to take a look over there sometime. =D