New tutorial - and it's a video, again! Why no pdf?

grinch2901

DoctorJellybean said:

I don't watch tutorial videos, because being hard of hearing it's very difficult to follow the voice. I watch TV\movies with subtitles, which sadly hasn't taken off with tutorial videos. So PDFs are very welcome e.g. Whiskey and Smoke Tutorial. That said, some PDFs require a degree in rocket science to understand it

I can understand that. For me, the ideal is a combination because in PDF's there will invariably be a statement like "use the disambiguation tool to correct the joints" and I'll be like "the what tool? Where is that? how does that work?".  I like seeing a video where they actually go to the menu and open the tool rather than assuming I just know (or maybe they still assume it but since it's a video you see it anyway). 

Ideally you'd get both a video and a complementary PDF but instead of 4x the work it's probably 6x.  So we'll probably all have to just find the ones that work for us and merely gaze longingly at the ones that won't.

Granville

Learners will retain more if they watch the video and the process what is going on by taking notes and screen shots. This take the tutorial and makes it your own.

namffuak

I actually spent some time researching the possibility of feeding the audio from video tutorials into dragon naturally speaking and saving the resulting text. I decided it wasn't worth the cost and effort. I'm currently sitting on 105 GB of video tutorials.

exstarsis

Count me among those who go through written tutorials MUCH better than video. I got over my fear of Photoshop via Sveva's PDF tutorials and I have several video tutorials I still haven't managed to watch more than a few minutes of. I DID manage to watch a bunch of Spriter Pro videos last night but I think that worked only because the longest of them was less than 15 minutes and they were edited to remove every pause (and came with edited close captions).

Anyhow, I've been vaguely looking for productive, directed work for a while so I'll volunteer myself to produce a written form of a video tutorial if anybody wants to put me to work. Gratis, as an experiment. Send me a message.

kyoto kid

DaWaterRat said:

I completely get that Video Tutorials are faster and less work to put together.  And for many people they probably work great.

But I'm not one of them.

I did pick up a video tutorial series that was on mega sale once.  I even transfered them to our media server so I could have the tutorials on the TV while I worked through them on the computer.

Following the Tutorial, I guess I did fine.  I only occasionally had to back up and re-watch.

But I had to take a break from it for a couple of reasons (holiday chaos, our server dying) and if I were to go into Hexagon now, I don't know that I actually learned anything from them.  I don't know that I could use the techniques I replicated while following the video on a completely unrelated project.  I certainly can't recall anything specific that I learned from the tutorial at the moment.  I also don't know if I could jump back in, because I'm not sure where I stopped.  (Again, this would require looking at at least 2-3 of the videos, which at least is better than trying to scan through a 1 hour seminar video for those 5 mintues you need.)

And all this talk of having a PDF reference manual is great - except there isn't one.  Because everyone is doing Video Tutorials, and the DAZ manuals here on the site are generally pretty sparse on the actual how you do something.

I've written a tutorial or two myself.  And yes, they take time, and there are lots of screenshots needed, and all sorts formatting tricks required.  (That I actually find easy, but I've been making my own RPG character sheets for years, so I have practice)  So I completely understand that Video Tutorials are faster and easier.  And I'm not upset with anyone for going the Video route.  They're not useless to me, but they're not as helpful to me as they are to others.

Which is why I only even think about buying Video Tutorials when they're on super sale.  Because while I'm sure they're even worth full price to some, even most, they're not worth that much to me.  (Please do not ignore that last "to me" part when evicerating me for saying that they're not worth the price.)

...this is exactly what I was referring to in my earlier post. You get to see the motions you are to mimic, but little to nothing about the "what", "how" and "why" behind the process or operation.  That is a major part of the learning process which is often omitted or "glossed over" in video format usually for brevity's sake.  Unfortunately those three factors are needed for one understand what he/she is doing in order to move on to bigger more challenging projects. Again, when I first started in this, all tutorials were in PDF format and there was even an actual semblance of a manual available, all which addressed the two W"s and one "H" above. 

I stumbled onto this new thread today in which it appears the author is taking up the challenge to produce a comprehensive set of PDF guides.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/141721/a-comprehensive-guide-to-daz-studio-pdf-maybe-commercial#latest

Novica

kyoto kid said:

I stumbled onto this new thread today in which it appears the author is taking up the challenge to produce a comprehensive set of PDF guides.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/141721/a-comprehensive-guide-to-daz-studio-pdf-maybe-commercial#latest

LOL, I mentioned that in my Art Studio thread early this morning. You can read about it here.  The product is excellent in presentation.  I haven't rigged yet, but with that tutorial, I'll be cruising along I think.

wolf359

Try learning a complex application like adobe after effects with just PDF's I find video tutorials critical to my continuing CG education