A missive on video tutorials.
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I get what you are saying, I did a video tutorial last week and it was crap, at the time I thought it was going fine until I watched the damned thing with my wife, it was hard to follow, my cursor was all over the place, I "um'd and Ah'd" like a fool not to mention getting three email pop ups and a dog bark.
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I think it was the last six energy drinks he may have had.
EDIT: my silly comment was in response to watching the video. Solo, apparently you posted slightly ahead of me and no offense intended.
As far as Blender goes, look at gryllus.net Neal Hirsig, of Tufts University, USA has a full set of very well done tutorials. -
Andrew's tutorials are aimed at proficient Blender users.
I tend to switch off if the tutorial is too basic. But I do agree that hearing a guy talking nonsense about himself and furiously clicking is a pain.
I narrated my whole alien head modelling as I did it. I never publicly posted them for fear of reprisals.
Also it runs to over 2hrs which you couldn't expect someone to follow along to. But it does show how I model and use a variety of tools to speed things up.
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I don't mind the cursor moving around a bit, but I really dislike the software that adds perfect movement to the cursor. Where it moves at a perfect steady pace, only going to the exact precise location. That too-perfect movement is hypnotizing and I can't stop staring it at and forget what I'm watching.
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What bothers me is when the videos are hosted on YouTube and one needs to go full screen to see what the hell is going on it's all blurry and you cannot see the labels in menus.
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"....getting three email pop ups and a dog bark."
I can raise you there, got a huge screech while coming back from making a cup of tea and sitting down. There had been two cats taking advantage of a warm chair. Could have been really nasty with all those razor blades in one place.
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Hmmm.... perfectionalism is good. But I would be more than happy to see how solo makes his modeling or even nick sonders. Any videos of sketch up work flow videos are better than nothing. Especially when you are native english speaker.
I think trimble would benefit those. i think sketch up evangelism is kind of outdated base camp 2008 vidoes was real blast. And 2012 videos of nick sonders layout workflow is really eyeopening. but what about sketch up it self. I use sketch up for yers now. I can model faster than anyone i know, but still i know I can learn a lot from people like solo or nick.
And is siple equation more happy shinny stuff on sketch up more people will use it. More people will use trimble and that makes trimble happy right ?
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I know what you are talking about. Therefore (and especially after watching myself presenting) I do not even record sound for instance. YT has many cool features like pausing videos and adding subtitles. Also, coming from a non-English speaking environment, I fully understand that many other non-English speakers get along with written English but are stumped with spoken English (especially if it is fast, spoken in a weird accent and - indeed - rambling around every unnecessary points). When you have to write subtitles, you are forced to concentrate on the point.
This is how I made this one - notice that (where I thought needed to read the text) there is a small "clock" counting down the pause of the video (you can always press the play button to go on). Also, I hope my cursor movements are mainly "highlighting" what I am trying to convey etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvI6A7Njw4k
Of course, I am not saying it is perfect but I really tried to keep focussed on usability.
(And Pete: it's HD so hopefully even readable when going full screen) -
I agree that perfection is unrealistic, I am not so why expect it from others? My point is that folk are trying to learn and others are trying to teach. While I was qualified to drive tanks, I was randomly tested to ensure I did not start bad driving habits. cutting corners in a 65 ton vehicle will tend to p155 off other road users and it will NOT polish out.
Video tutorials are something which could be of greater use for learning if they were made a bit better and with reguard to a few simple steps to check them against. The adage of being as fast as the slowest member of the group is not correct here but if more of us could get better results, is that not a worthy goal?
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My problem with a lot of tutorials is that the instructor assumes that the viewer knows the program and doesn't explain the processes, but that is why we look at tutorials to learn what we don;t know, for example the instructor will say lets do this and this and here you are, with no explanation of what he is doing, what the particular process does and why we would do it.
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Yeah, most of us hate listening to our own voice. A lot of the time it doesn't even sound to us that it is actually us, if you know what I mean.
If you have to make a video with sound and the dog barks! Just act as you normally would, saying, 'Shut to ??????? up Fido' or *'Now, now Fido, be a good boy!'*or words to that effect. What's the worst that a viewer will think? Most I feel would get a giggle out of it and endear you to some degree provided Fido was not acting up throughout the video.
If something happens in the 2 hour video, roll with it and comment! If a door bell rings or a phone rings, just say, 'Opps, must get that', break and come back saying, 'Back on the job', maybe with a notice on screen showing, '.....After 2 minutes'!
Most viewers like to see that even the teacher is human and also on a learning curve. Sometimes watching 'perfection' (no such thing BTW) can IMO be a little 'sickening' to say the least. Also folks learn quicker when they are also being entertained! Think about the teachers you had when you were young. Which were the best for you? I'd bet it was the ones that brought a smile to your face while they were teaching you.
Nick Sonder's videos and so appealing because he is natural in them. I notice that even the 'slip ups' Nick made were not edited out! This made it all the more interesting to watch. BTW, Nick is a really natural guy, meet him in Boulder last October.
Csaba's above video is also a great way of getting the job done but it really only works for short videos I think. If a video goes on for a reasonable period of time it can get hypnotic as suggested above. Csaba is a very entertaining guy! Maybe he could have introduced some of his personality in the text overs, just a thought!
I think a good way to do these things might be to use what I like to call theVuReDo (View, Read, Do) method. Its something I have been thinking about for a while. The process is,
Make the video with no voice or notation. It might be broken into Parts so a little planning might be good.
Then make screen shots of the important processes in the video and produce 'Step by Steps', Clarify http://www.clarify-it.com/ is a good app for this.
The idea is that the learner prints the Step by Steps and has them by his / her side, watches the video in parts if a long process and at the same time starts doing the process on his / her computer.
At any time the learner can run the video or part of same to refresh in his / her mind what its all about. Even though the learner may not initially grasp how stuff is being done in the video, I think it goes into the subconscious and the Step by Steps bring it to the fore as they are doing it for the eureka moment ...... 'Bingo! So that's how it did it!' Once the process gets into the learners head this way, it tends to stick there.
With this process the learner is using their Eyes, Ears And Hands to learn, in the case of learning how to dance feet replace the hands! Watching just a video they are using just their eyes! As regards using their ears! I personally somethings read 'instructions' out aloud! I think many of us do!
I'm interested in hearing your thoughts!
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The reason I posted this missive is to start a 'conversation' and get folk to put their thoughts on the page. I know nothing is 'perfect' BUT, I have paid for numerous tutorials only to wonder what on earth I paid for, part of the problem is I find the points mentioned above distracting, and it is hard enough to learn something new without that as well. Putting the shoe on the other foot, if someone wants to help another learn something they got through sweat and frustration, surely the goal is for that person to have an easier path to learning.
If enough folk put on the page what they find irritating, difficult or even what they find helps learn better, tutorials will improve generally and we may even be able to set up a voluntary set of standards. I would like to see ALL tutorials on sketchucation scrutinised and assessed, allowing those that do not meet a standard, be improved with advice.
Not an avenging angel, more a 'confised of lichfield' apporach. I am not perfect but I hope those that have contact with me can feel comfortable enough to tell me where I go wrong so I can improve.
I really think we are ONLY strong or efficent if we are ALL on the same page and can help each other. The same goes for learning sketchup and being decent citizens.
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Sometimes humor trumps perfection.
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An enormous put-off, as far as I'm concerned: bad English. I simply cannot understand why any company would dare to ask money for tutorials narrated by people who mangle the English language to the extent of being incomprehensible.
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Thanks for the compliments. I like to talk about SU and LO, so that helped, along with Tyson Kartchner's video skills. I think perfection would make the videos too dry. We are all human as Mike mentioned. Seeing simple errors or hearing the dog bark, phone ring, make me feel as though the end result is achievable by mere mortals. Also depending on what level of SU user is the target audience, you do have to make some assumptions on skill level. Otherwise the videos would be hours long......first grab the line tool, start line and move along axis..........you get what I mean. Those skills should be assumably learned by the viewer based upon the level of the tutorial.
In the next one, I'll make sure the beer is in view!
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hi guys,
I saw some videos from sketch up basecamp 2012 were was sad that you listen to the community. So here it its a opinion.
I was thinking, about my experience with tutorials and learning SU.
Even I made few graphs about it.There are few problems with learning software and tutorials i want to address.
1 - Learning and learning curve costs us time and time is money. When you look at that this way. Its disturbing for my, that how little attention is payed to tutorials and work flow improvements.
2 - SU is so easy, simple, fun to use, that someone can easily fool himself into believing that sketch up is not powerfull enough and it can not be used for complex tasks. And I think is quite opposite. I know a few people who moved to rhino, cinema or some bim, because of that. And I even saw people open it for the first time and say it looks like microsoft paint i cant do serious architecture in it.
3 - There are lot of tutorials on the basics, but number of tutorials decreses with growing experience.I would like more tutorials from guys like. Nick Sonder, Michael Steigel, Pete Stophel. Videos from base camps are great, but I think they just scratch the surface.
New tutorials with nick and LO are real blast, but i think that models showed are great and I would like to se how they were modeled. I believe I could learn a lot. We all could learn even more in following discussion.So what you say ?
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DOD3R, I'm curious about something related to your post. Tutorial videos take time and, as you say, time is money. Would you be willing to pay for those tutorial videos?
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I've actually been giving a lot of thought to this lately. One major aspect of SU & LO that is so remarkable, is how it is so easy to customize a work flow. I've developed one that works really well for me, but certainly may not for others. In what I've discovered, there are certainly some practices that are more efficient than others, yet I will fall back to a process that is more familiar to my given process. I would love to document this in the Rey near future down to the detail that DOD3R mentions.
I'm getting pretty swamped with work in the new year, and want to schedule some serious time on opening up LO further. All I hear in the back of my head, is Paul Lee, yelling CAD MUST DIE! This will be a big year for SU & LO in my opinion. I'll try my best to help.
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@dave r said:
DOD3R, I'm curious about something related to your post. Tutorial videos take time and, as you say, time is money. Would you be willing to pay for those tutorial videos?
I am very well aware that tutorials = time = money. I am sorry a did'nt write it well previously, but I wanted to say that who would benefit most from these tutorials is trimble and they should produce and may be pay for them.
Why I should not pay for them.
I think there is a really little audience for these videos and even less would pay for them it would be really bad bussines.
Why sould trimble pay for them or at least give bigg support for it? Because there are lot of tutorials how to make circle and puspull it. or lot tutorials for chair or whatever. And that is why lot of people thinks sketch up is NOT real deal. And opposite is true Trimble wants to sketchuppers to make houses to build and want them to by build by trimble products. Another way Trimble can look at it is. This is the cutting edge of sketch up usage for architecture. I think really small precentage of sketch up users can really even understand Nicks tutorials. Trimble as a devoloper of a program needs some people to use it on its limits so the can find them and push them little further.
And even another way to look at it is that I belive we can help each other improve our workflows and I hope that even Nick learn something from us by sharing his workflow.Fun fact. I did'nt learn much new things ( maybe 2)from Nick tutorials I was aware of every feature he uses, but I never put it together this way. We need more tutorials witch explains how to use sketch up, but instead we have a lot of tutorials about how sketch up works.
@unknownuser said:
I've actually been giving a lot of thought to this lately. One major aspect of SU & LO that is so remarkable, is how it is so easy to customize a work flow. I've developed one that works really well for me, but certainly may not for others. In what I've discovered, there are certainly some practices that are more efficient than others, yet I will fall back to a process that is more familiar to my given process. I would love to document this in the Rey near future down to the detail that DOD3R mentions. I'm getting pretty swamped with work in the new year, and want to schedule some serious time on opening up LO further. All I hear in the back of my head, is Paul Lee, yelling CAD MUST DIE! This will be a big year for SU & LO in my opinion. I'll try my best to help.
Yes! great.
PS: Sorry for my english is bad obviously, but I hope it make sense.
I would like to qoute: “Write drunk; edit sober.” ― Ernest Hemingway
I will work on part to nex time
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