Dear all,

I'm contemplating a really serious project on creating a collection of tutorials on Poser and related stuff, and I'd like to hear your opinions on things.

My current ideas:

• Tutorials are bundled in series, each consisting of sections of chapters, each containing videos with PDF support (and eventual additional files). Videos are considered relevant as a lot of people are not getting that much information from reading alone. Seeing and hearing are of utmost importance. Further support is delivered from my Missing Manuals website.

• At the moment I think of two series, both from some 'realism' point of view- Composition, Camera handling, Light, Rendering and Materials.

• Animation, Dynamics (Hair, Cloth, Physics), and Clothes Fitting.
  Including Rendering, Materials, etc relevant to this field of interest.

• Since Modeling, ZBRushing, Blendering, Rigging and UVMapping are not my personal areas of interest, I'll leave all that alone. As a photographer whos "working with models" does not include surgery to get the required poses or expressions done, I tend to use objects and morphs as they are made available.

• The target audience is painting artists and photographers (the "low-math's") who have some working Poser experience, and want to improve their skills and understanding from an artists perspective.

• So tutorials will be at about the intermediate level, no basic user interfacing for mere beginners. And they will be understanding-oriented, no standard recepies or 'monkey tricks' as the real works are always scene and artists style specific, and tricks tend to get obsolete or couter-productive with new Poser versions.

• As a consequence, all details in technical directions and in the (photo) realism areas will be dealt with without turning the presentations into some kind of Math or Physics class or requiring some engineering degree otherwise.

• As another consequence, topics will organized in a results / workflow oriented way instead of following the purly descriptive structure of the software and manuals. The "how" has priority above the "what".

• I've no idea yet whether or not to make it free or payed. Up till now my written stuff was always free, but videos are a lot of work. Similar tutorial series offered by Rendo or SM (each say 600MB in size) go for USD 100, with 40 or 50 pct rebate every now and then.

My questions:

• What is your opinion about the concept?

• Which (additional) topics should be covered to make it attractive for you?

• What is your opinion on free vs sale and at what price is it still attractive for you?

• Would you have extra requirements on aftersales support (solving issues, coaching, …)?

Thanks ahead for your feedback.

videos are the least effective method of teaching if you are hoping for the students to retain knowledge.

I would be very interested in this series.

I like the idea of having both a PDF and the videos as I am one of the people who does not always pick stuff up by reading.  Having Poser open on one window or monitor and the video in another allows a like to like comparisson.  I learnt a great deal using this method the Digital Tailor series of tutorials.

I have no issues with paying, I have even looked at some of the tutorials mentioned but they always seem to start from the beginner upwards.  While I am not an expert having played with Poser for over ten years I can find my way around.  I tend not to buy such tutorials if I think a am going to skip the first half a dozen or more chapters as they cover the basics.  Therefore I like the idea of having something that starts at the intermediate level. 

I would be interested as well. However, I disagree slightly with ssgbryan.  I develop curricula for higher education and over the decades I have found, or as we say online, IMHO, the combination of written and video lessons work best. 

Case in point:  I have difficulty retaining anything read from the computer screen.  I am also a physical learner.  If I have the printed document beside me and the video available in another window, I can read the directions and instructions while the video is a hands-on tutorial which should supplement the written by showing, step by step, following the written, exactly how something is done, leaving out no steps.

One of the things we had discovered in higher education is that there is a profound truth to the old saying "never let the engineers write the users guide."  The engineers already know what is to happen and will automatically take short cuts, leaving the learner behind.

While I am a Composition and Literature professor, the processes are the same.  I refer to the process as "destructive testing."  You need to be able to teach someone with preconceived ideas of a process the correct way, without too much thrash and burn time, for the training to be effective.  Let a group of end users with minimal knowledge but an interest in the process have the material at several developmental stages...and see what blows up.

Primary, secondary, and tertiary testing.  Around here they call it Beta Testing.  Microsoft calls it "let the buyer figure it out and we'll use their own work-arounds to fix it next release."

I wish you great success in your project and would be willing to take a look at the development steps if you decide to go to beta testing and beyond.

Cedarwolf

I have to agree wholeheartedly with cedarwolf - a combo pdf  and video tutorials is the best way for me to learn. I have not had good experiences with video training, as the trainer always seems to assume you know how to do this or that, etc. It is not always the case for me. I have subscribed to video tutorials such as the ones offered on CGCookie.com. I am subscribed in their blender program and I must say their training leaves a great deal to be desired. The trainers talk to fast, or have an accent that is hard to understand. i have found they make mistakes and are sometimes corrected, sometimes not. If the training is provided also in pdf format, I can usually work out what is going on. With just the videos, however, I find them very lacking in learning and understanding. It usually boils down to how good the presenter is at presenting.

Cost for me is not an issue if the price is reasonable and the training worth what it is priced at. I learned a long time ago that to get decent training, you usually have to pay for it. One expects dollar value for their money in any case.

I have read through some of your Missing Manuals on several occasions. I found them helpful and easy to understand. A similar presentation along with a decent video tutorial would be exactly my cup of tea.

C~

I'd say do both

mostly I'm ok with vids (even speed modeling) but when you have missed that specific setting/shortcut whatever a pdf is soooo much quicker

also if the right perrmissions/software you can add notes an things

I hate it when I grabbed a pic of nodes settings (for cycles) and it saves as attachment blahblah its flipping hard to find

I enjoyed Cederwolf's reply.  I have some experience as a technical writer and now prepare the digital assets for a company that makes online technical training packages for aircraft maintenance.  I've been woefully disapointed by the state of tutorials for Poser.  Some of them are downright crap.  A person may be a great modeller but that doesn't qualify them as an instructor.   

If you're going to charge for them, and you should if the material is in demand, please spend a few bucks and have your completed tutorial assessed by a technical writer or training company.   

dear all,

thanks for reading (100x) and commenting (6x) on my initial post.

Rest assured that I am aware of the pro's and con's of the various ways of knowledge transfer mentioned. The best ones are the doing-ones, and the tighter the coach:user relationship and the more interactive the approach, the better. But a video / pdf combi is one of the best things that can be prepared in advance, and delivered 'as a product'.

I also do know my way around in training and in user / tech writing, as it took say 50% of my attention during the last 30 years, for a living. I won't comment on the works I see and hear passing by every now and then (which is a comment by itself). I know what it takes, I can see they meant well and did their best. I'll do my utmost best to outperform on that.

Which by the way does not mean I know it all ! But a first proof of the pudding can be found on my Missing Manuals website (which isn't perfect either, I must make smaller steps every now and then, and I'tend to go too deep too fast). So please, feel free to comment on all that, I'm happy to learn from your experiences.

Perhaps more forum visitors would like to comment on my proposal. Thanks in advance.

I'm merely an amateur, but find that videos of workflow-based lessons are highly effective in showing what may be applicable to a specific artistic concept I'm trying to express via the given toolset.  That is, while a manual can provide details on specific settings, the practical demonstration of how one starts and flows towards desired results can easily be augmented by any creative thinker to their own context, I feel.

The essential needs of lighting, scene composition, materials, rendering, etc. sound great for this effort - although I would love to see more morphing demonstrations, what you are describing sounds highly valuable as a base to start anyone in a solid manner before they progress to the next step of highly customizing their models, props, etc.  So many of us have struggled with the basics of, let's say, lighting options while juggling with more expressive, directly artistic options and concepts, which I think has made the process of learning to use the larger set of tools for enabling more advanced expression far more frustrating than it should likely have been, IMHO.

Even if you don't desire to cover morphing and such in this series, covering how objects can be moved towards desired expressions and made to interact in ways that appear "convincing" (i.e., surfaces appear to actually touch, grasp, envelop and perhaps "give" - maybe through the most basic of morphs) would be very useful to see for artists in the audience.  Perhaps this was at least partially in your mind when offering "physics" as one subtopic.

Depending on the length and depth of the content/examples of workflow demonstrated, I would easily pay a usual rate (as seen on renderosity or similar marketplaces) for this style of tutorial.

yeah I'll do some on morphing, but when it comes to practical high end detailled modelling, making fancy morph targets, ZBrush interfacing, Blendering, CR2 construction and repair, turning humanoids into tri-peds and the like, then "A man's got to know his limitations" (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force).

As long as speed modeling vid's make me drool, I should not make them myself. And when I do, I should pay you for watching them (a lot, I'm afraid), not the other way around.

If you do not offer a pdf along with the video tutorial, consider adding closed captioning. 

thanks for the tip, but I will do pdf+video.

The PDF can contain detailed tables and detailed sections for further reading, while the video can contain animations and brief screengrabs for visual clarification. So they add value to each other, the PDF is not intended to be some kind of offline subtitling.

With respect to the creators of all other stuff, I don't favor those everlasting parts of ongoing screengrab-videos, where there's nothing to see but I've got to listen to someone just talking. That's like turning my TV into a radio.

Well, after all those years, I've got quite a good idea how not to do it. Now I've got to do it different. Pfff.

no more comments?
(before this thread disappears from the monitor and gets lost in history)

Well the only other thing I would say is don't see the lack of further response to this thread as lack of interest.  Most people who have responded to the thread have some background in training and therefore responded to the question.  I imagine many other thought it was a great idea but stayed in lurk mode.

I guess you will have some idea of the possible interest from the number of downloads of your 'missing manuals',  I personally think any training you developed along the lines you have laid out would be very well received.   It has already been said there is a lot of training out there but much of it is hard to follow and hopelessly out dated.