Attached Link: http://www.downstairstheater.com/episodes/Project1/

The User interface
Placing objects, props, attaching
Posing the figure
Moving the camera, adding lighting
Rendering the scene and saving the file

The site is www.downstairstheater.com the direct link is:

http://www.downstairstheater.com/episodes/Project1/

Feedback is always welcome, you can email me or post here. Suggestions are also welcome, or if you'd like to create a similar tutorial (I can tell from the artwork on this site and renderosity that there are some supremely talented individuals out there!)

Hope you enjoy!

Joe
Joe@downstairstheater.com
www.downstairstheater.com - Humor, tech, and more!

I don't really need any help using studio, but this is very cool and VERY nice of you to take the time out to make that video, should be very helpful to loads of newbies out there. Many thanks

This is my favorite way of learning new software. Maybe DAZ, VTC or Lynda software will publish it if it's good. My problem is I have an old fashion 28K conection and have a hard time downloading video files. How big is the file and what format?

The file is hosted on archive.org in wmv format at 129 megs. I could probably try to make a smaller version, however the visual quality decreases pretty badly. If you'd like a diff format please just request it and I'll reencode in that (if possible, I can do most formats, wmv just streams nicely and is media center friendly).

I appreciate the positive feedback, and will get working on the next few tutorials shortly. I have a thanksgiving vacation in the middle of recording/filming that may delay the releases until early december unfortunately.

Thanks all,
Joe Farro
joe@downstairstheater.com
www.downstairstheater.com

I tried to download the file with the broadband conection at work. I recieved the stream but I saw nothing, just a blank screen . Issues with Mac Windows Media Player I quess. Can you put the tutorial in a non-streaming form that I could download to take home and then try it on my PC? Are you going to put in on CD-Rom?

I just right clicked and flash got link to download the wmv-Im sure there is something similar on a Mac if you are using a download manager.

ah, crud, I apologize about that. I'll try to get either an mpeg2 or a quicktime encode tonight. I dont own quicktime pro, so making quicktime encodes is kinda tricky currently.

I'll do what I can for ya, may take me a day/night or two.

Joe Joe@downstairstheater.com

I was able to download file on the Mac at work and take the file over to my PC laptop using my flash drive. It works great on my PC yet won't play on my Mac. I don't have software upgrade permission at work to get the latest Windows Media Player for the Mac but I don't care now that I have the file on my PC. Thanks for makeing the tutorial.

The video was encoded at 9000 Kbps, when you can get away with 786kbps at the frame size you have. Avoid using the DV codec during editing...save your footage with uncompressed AVI. I'tll be huge, but when you render out the final WMV, it'll look sharp. DV and the other compression codecs soften and munge footage and details.

Oh, and it plays great on my Mac Mini! Lower bitrate will take that 125meg down to around 20...

ah! Ted, thanks so much for that feedback! I'll give that a shot next time, and try to reencode this. We've been doing everything in dv-avi cause the camcorders capture in that. I bet this fixes not only this tutorial but probably our other shows also. I'll pass the info on to Louis, who normally does the encoding for the main show Thanks!