What is the General Skill Level of the Blender Community?

[JosephBburg (NodeSpaghetti)]

Hi, an idea: Use annotations in the video for “fast” sections if you feel like you need to explain them more to beginners. You could even put sections of your video in timelapse and use annotations to link the actual speed videos if people are interested.

I think it’s a good idea to consider doing it while recording, then muting all the audio, editing out all the mistakes you make or the crashes blender will do, and re-recording the voice (especially if you use time-lapse, we don’t really want to hear you talk like a squirrel…). I have no experience making tutorials, so take with a grain of salt.

[AustinC]

@Richard Culver

…
There is no excuse not to have some kind of video editing software these days. Worst case scenario it will set you back only a few bucks.
…
Anyway regarding content. If you are having a project based approach that is fine. Just split the project up into segments. For example. I might already know how to model characters but not how to use the Rigigy set up and maybe 5 out of 10 of the videos I can skip because I just want to get to the things I want to know. If you provide starter content for each lession I can DL that and jump right in.

Another more practical thing especially for new people. The starter content allows them to make sure that they have a working file for further steps. Maybe they can not sort out what they did wrong in an earlier step, (version issues or new bugs perhaps) and they want the content to move to the next lesson. Could be they got the gist of the last lesson, learned what they wanted… but… lol the model they made was crap…lol But want to continue on to rigging. That kind of thing.

For me I don’t always do a tutorial to be an expert at the content that is being used for examples. I look to be an expert in the techniques. And there is a bit of a difference.

A lot of those open source options have horrible reviews. And, I spent dozens of hours trying many of them. If I am not so stubborn about wanting annotations, CyberLink PowerDirector and MAGIX Movie Edit Pro are also $50. But, the annotations are so helpful. I will try to recover my Camtasia Studio 8 from my dead desktop. If I can get that working on my laptop, it will be my best choice. If that doesn’t work, I will see if I can get one of the $50 options. I haven’t really looked at Sony Movie Studio. But, money is very tight. I would literally take it out of my food budget.

The main reason that I mention “full projects” is that I will be extensively using external assets and linking. I don’t want to get into a situation where I am spending hours just preparing the startup files for each tutorial, especially since the tutorials would focus more on the conceptual side anyway. I have never seen a free tutorial that offers downloadable resources beyond the most basic scene and a texture or two. I have considered selling my finished assets to help fund the tutorials and projects. I could even sell the entire project directory like Blender Foundation does.

That is a very good approach. I do the same.

[AustinC]

@zeauro

I would call this kind of thing : basics of scene management. Target of this kind of tutorial can be any user.
It is not because a user have an experience in other software in doing complex scenes and try to reproduce it in blender without taking a look at manual that he should call himself an advanced blender user.

Most of members of community have an heteregeneous knowledge of blender.
A user can master sculpt mode at a high level and totally ignore a lot of basic tools in Mesh Edit or Object mode.
A user can master Mesh Edit mode and ignore how to flip a bone in Armature Edit mode.

I think that because they have great skills in one domain are speedy to qualify themselves as intermediate or advanced users.
For me, an advanced user will understand what you are talking about with no definition needed.
IMO, advanced users don’t really need tutorials to talk about workflows. They are already doing it in feature requests threads.
Or it should concern relatively new features and topics.

So, what is an intermediate user ? Somebody who only need some explanations.
The whole topic is which explanations. This point is subjective.
I would say that depends of subject of tutorial.
IMHO, if you want to do a tutorial for intermediate users about particles; you should not have to explain how to add a particle system, difference between emitter/hair, different physics types … or how to bake a particle system.
These kind of things should be let to tutorials for beginners, unfamiliar with particles.
A tutorial for beginners that omits to detail all physics types of particles is not necessary a bad tutorial about particles.
But a tutorial for any skill level that omits baking of particles is a bad one. A tutorial for intermediate users should at least tell : “now, bake particle system!”

But it is not because you are doing a tutorial with particles in it that it is a tutorial for advanced users. It may be a tutorial for beginnners in particles using.
Of course, you will skip some basics of blender like 3DView navigation, Properties, active object. In this sense, it should be called intermediate user.
But Blender is so big, that is better to restrict skill levels to a smaller domain.
Because saying “I am an intermediate or an advanced Blender user” does not really make sense.

Many long tutorials produced by community are long because they are talking to both level of skills. Beginners and Intermediate user.
You can’t explain how to control particles with textures in a short time if you don’t skip explanations about Blender basics, textures, texture mapping and particles for beginners.

Many tutorials are redundant because they have this idea that they may be an introduction to Blender.
And it is very comprehensive.
You will make more views with a title like “Learn to make a dragon in Blender” than with a title like “learn basics of outliner”.

I’m not proposing to copy features from other programs or anything like that. I just used that example to illustrate a point. V-Ray was praised above Cycles, with its proxy feature being one of the reasons. I couldn’t find anyone in the Blender community who realized that this is trivial to setup in Blender. They are all stuck on swapping resources manually or with a script immediately before rendering. I would categorize this under “Technical Director” skills. And, TD tutorials in blender are almost nonexistent. And, I have not seen evidence that many Blender users have good workflows. The discussions that I have seen were more like people having trouble with their pipelines. If more advanced users have employed robust and scale-able pipelines that extend across an entire animation project, they aren’t making tutorials about them.

Blender users definitely tend to specialize; I have. That is why I think dividing tutorials by topic is so important. And, this is why I really like the idea of having references for beginners at the beginning of videos. It doesn’t take a new Blender user to not know something.

To push my point with your last example, there are tutorials that focus on the Outliner. But, it is very introductory knowledge. Learning the more advanced functionality of the Outliner is difficult. For instance, if you hide the viewport visibility of an object in the Outliner, Blender will still calculate the object’s modifiers. This can slow down viewport playback dramatically. But, I have never seen this mentioned in a tutorial. I have never been able to get an answer to a difficult TD question from the Blender community.

Anyway, on the topic of skill, do you think it would be appropriate for a tutorial to focus on specifics like making particles do what you want? I see a lot of particle tutorials where they show every detail of setting up the particle systems. but, they seem to skip the tweaking process to achieve a specific look. I understand that it can be boring and tedious, but it seems like many users could benefit from guides that show people how to effectively tweak settings rather than randomly changing settings. This is the kind of thing I am thinking of when i talk about it taking too long if I explain the basics.What do you think? Based upon your descriptions, this seems like it would be a good intermediate tutorial.

[saltorio]

@AustinCPrescott"

Those are great tips, and I will definitely try to do all of them, except the 3 minutes will be more like 5-7 given the nature of my tutorials. However, I think that i will make efficient use of timelapse.
I really like your suggestion regarding add-ons. One of my greater weaknesses is that I don’t use add-ons. Staying “vanilla” for tutorials is one of the reasons. With your suggestion, I can reference the add-on at the beginning of my video like any other prerequisite and not feel confusing for using it.

Add-ons are a pretty key part of Blender. I’d say even more so than other applications, since many are included with the software itself. The process of installing and enabling them isn’t difficult, and once you’ve done it once it’s easy to remember… which is why spending the time on every tutorial vid to show how to install the add-on bothers me so much.

[AustinC]

@sliced3d

I believe you have to make the decision between whether you want to create Educational materials or Edutainment materials.

Some people will complain about a tutorial being too long because it actually TEACHES how (and why) to do something, instead of just DEMONSTRATING the process of doing something.

I think if you want to teach, you should teach, and this takes time because you have to explain the reasoning behind the actions taken. Otherwise, there is no depth to the learning, if there’s even any learning at all.

People will have issues with something no matter which approach you choose. So, I believe the decision should be based on what your real purpose is behind creating the materials in the first place.

Good luck with it!

I’m very glad that you mentioned this because you state my purpose very well. TEACHING is definitely my purpose. I posted this thread to see how much demonstration and explaining I needed to build up around that teaching so that people would not get lost. But, that takes a lot of time. I think this thread has helped me come to a fair balance.

Thank you.

@JosephBburg

Hi, an idea: Use annotations in the video for “fast” sections if you feel like you need to explain them more to beginners. You could even put sections of your video in timelapse and use annotations to link the actual speed videos if people are interested.

I think it’s a good idea to consider doing it while recording, then muting all the audio, editing out all the mistakes you make or the crashes blender will do, and re-recording the voice (especially if you use time-lapse, we don’t really want to hear you talk like a squirrel…). I have no experience making tutorials, so take with a grain of salt.

I have actually considered this. Annotations are the main reason that I want to use Camtasia Studio so badly. It implements annotations very well.
I also want to use timelapse, only slowing down when necessary. I’m still thinking about recording audio in post or not. I work more quickly without talking. And, It would be nice to be able to record the actual Blender work whenever I can without worrying about a mic. I can always say a few things for reference while recording. Camtasia Studio 8 has very convenient features for seamlessly recording audio in post.

[zeauro]

@AustinCPrescott

I’m not proposing to copy features from other programs or anything like that. I just used that example to illustrate a point. V-Ray was praised above Cycles, with its proxy feature being one of the reasons. I couldn’t find anyone in the Blender community who realized that this is trivial to setup in Blender. They are all stuck on swapping resources manually or with a script immediately before rendering. I would categorize this under “Technical Director” skills. And, TD tutorials in blender are almost nonexistent.

I think that a TD ignoring basics of blender. Just need to take a look at manual or beginners tutorials about datablocks system to adapt their TD solutions.
It is a good thing to create guides to help them.
But my point was that there is no reason to headline a video about datablocks basics “for advanced users” because it would unnecessary exclude beginners to watch it.
I think that there is a lack of explanations about datablocks swapping, hierarchy. But IMHO, it is not a TD subject.

@AustinCPrescott

And, I have not seen evidence that many Blender users have good workflows. The discussions that I have seen were more like people having trouble with their pipelines. If more advanced users have employed robust and scale-able pipelines that extend across an entire animation project, they aren’t making tutorials about them.

Video tutorials were rarely made by people with a huge experience, working on big projects.
Most of time, advanced users are working on productions and don’t have time or don’t want to make tutorials.
Often, they are sharing their experience on support forums or in blog articles.
But they don’t make tutorials like Blender Institue does during open movies.

@AustinCPrescott

Blender users definitely tend to specialize; I have. That is why I think dividing tutorials by topic is so important. And, this is why I really like the idea of having references for beginners at the beginning of videos. It doesn’t take a new Blender user to not know something.

To push my point with your last example, there are tutorials that focus on the Outliner. But, it is very introductory knowledge. Learning the more advanced functionality of the Outliner is difficult. For instance, if you hide the viewport visibility of an object in the Outliner, Blender will still calculate the object’s modifiers. This can slow down viewport playback dramatically. But, I have never seen this mentioned in a tutorial. I have never been able to get an answer to a difficult TD question from the Blender community.

This is the kind of tip about bad design that is difficult to share when we heard about viewport improvements or new depsgraph that will speed modifiers use.
We always expect these problems to disappear at next release and are testing things in the meantime.
So, we can fear to confuse people.

@AustinCPrescott

Anyway, on the topic of skill, do you think it would be appropriate for a tutorial to focus on specifics like making particles do what you want? I see a lot of particle tutorials where they show every detail of setting up the particle systems. but, they seem to skip the tweaking process to achieve a specific look.

I will not call this stuff a tutorial but a demo.
I don’t deny that there are a lot of crap. I remembered someone who did a video about yafaray the same way.
He was not able to explain the goal of using a type of lamp instead of another. Obviously, he had just discover how to enable the addon.
But he did a video, put it on youtube and call it “tutorial about basics of yafaray”. It is freedom.
People are free to do these things.

@AustinCPrescott

I understand that it can be boring and tedious, but it seems like many users could benefit from guides that show people how to effectively tweak settings rather than randomly changing settings. This is the kind of thing I am thinking of when i talk about it taking too long if I explain the basics.What do you think? Based upon your descriptions, this seems like it would be a good intermediate tutorial.

Exactly.

[AustinC]

@zeauro

I think that a TD ignoring basics of blender. Just need to take a look at manual or beginners tutorials about datablocks system to adapt their TD solutions.
It is a good thing to create guides to help them.
But my point was that there is no reason to headline a video about datablocks basics “for advanced users” because it would unnecessary exclude beginners to watch it.
I think that there is a lack of explanations about datablocks swapping, hierarchy. But IMHO, it is not a TD subject.

That may very well be the case. I’m thinking of tutorials to help people be a TD for Blender. It is my understanding that the TD makes all the meaningful technical decisions that determine the pipeline and standard methods in a project. I wasn’t even thinking of datablock manipulation; I don’t think that would even work correctly. This proxy effect can be achieved effortlessly using Mask modifiers. It is just a matter of standardizing this technique throughout the asset files in a project.

@zeauro

Video tutorials were rarely made by people with a huge experience, working on big projects.
Most of time, advanced users are working on productions and don’t have time or don’t want to make tutorials.
Often, they are sharing their experience on support forums or in blog articles.
But they don’t make tutorials like Blender Institue does during open movies.

Yeah, that can be a problem. I have followed some tutorials/tips by TDs, but there aren’t many. From what I have seen, their tips focus on fine details and how different design decisions affect quality and usability later down the pipeline.

@zeauro

This is the kind of tip about bad design that is difficult to share when we heard about viewport improvements or new depsgraph that will speed modifiers use.
We always expect these problems to disappear at next release and are testing things in the meantime.
So, we can fear to confuse people.

I can see that. I don’t consider it as much of an issue as it is just something that needs understood. It isn’t about nit-picking the weaknesses as much as it is about figuring out how to achieve a desired effect.

@zeauro

I will not call this stuff a tutorial but a demo.
I don’t deny that there are a lot of crap. I remembered someone who did a video about yafaray the same way.
He was not able to explain the goal of using a type of lamp instead of another. Obviously, he had just discover how to enable the addon.
But he did a video, put it on youtube and call it “tutorial about basics of yafaray”. It is freedom.
People are free to do these things.

Haha, ah yes, those videos.

[Blond]

@xrg

I don’t consider myself a tutorial expert, but based on being yelled at on a prior video I split my last series into multiple videos with logical cuts; eg modeling, uv unwrapping, etc, and included timestamps in the description. I tried to make it as convenient as possible for someone to skip to the next part if they already know something.

As far as technical detail, Run a screencast key monitor to avoid needing to explain every button press. Otherwise, I try to explain everything in a way that I would have understood when I was about 15 years old. I try to focus more on explaining why I’m doing something rather than how. UV unwrapping, for example, isn’t very difficult to do. Understanding why to unwrap a certain thing one way or another is more difficult. So I try as best I can to focus on and explain the latter.

Most importantly, listen to feedback in the comments. It’ll be clear if you screwed up somewhere, and you can make adjustments down the line.

Hey XRG, I’ll never forget your super helpful tutorial on UV unwrapping! Amazing job on this one! Always a pleasure to see you on Polycount too!

[_Ben1 (__Ben__)]

just my 2 cents after skimming through the thread. Feel free to fast forward through parts of the process. for example of you are modelling a rough base for character you can just explain your methods at the start and then just speed up the video until you have done all of that and are ready to move on to the next part. this way you can both give a good level of detail about what you are doing. And you can speed up the play time of the video. (im sorry if someone already mentioned this and i didn’t see it)

As for how advanced the general community is in blender it is really hard to say and it would be incredibly difficult to figure out from the forums as a large portion of the blender community dosent post on or even look at the forums. Another thing is that lots of the more advanced to intermediate community dosent have all of what would be considered the basics down. Just because they tend to specialize after a certian point and loose some of the basics in areas of the software they dont often use.
Anyway hope im not being a pain in posting this (blatant smiley face spam)

[Richard_Culver]

@AustinCPrescott

A lot of those open source options have horrible reviews. And, I spent dozens of hours trying many of them. If I am not so stubborn about wanting annotations, CyberLink PowerDirector and MAGIX Movie Edit Pro are also $50. But, the annotations are so helpful. I will try to recover my Camtasia Studio 8 from my dead desktop. If I can get that working on my laptop, it will be my best choice. If that doesn’t work, I will see if I can get one of the $50 options. I haven’t really looked at Sony Movie Studio. But, money is very tight. I would literally take it out of my food budget.

The main reason that I mention “full projects” is that I will be extensively using external assets and linking. I don’t want to get into a situation where I am spending hours just preparing the startup files for each tutorial, especially since the tutorials would focus more on the conceptual side anyway. I have never seen a free tutorial that offers downloadable resources beyond the most basic scene and a texture or two. I have considered selling my finished assets to help fund the tutorials and projects. I could even sell the entire project directory like Blender Foundation does.

That is a very good approach. I do the same.

Not catching what the issue is here. All you need is a basic video editor. Can these open source editors be so bad that you can not stitch together your clips and overlay an annotation? Truely they can not be that bad. With the additional advantage of being able to manipulate the audio.

And LightWorks is a pro editor, and it is free.

Lightworks - Easy to Use Pro Video Editing Software

Certainly would be overkill for what you need. Obviously if you can get Camtasia working to give you auto annotations great. But you really are selling yourself short and also wasting your efforts not going the extra step to insure you have a professional presentation. That requires video editing. And one of the things that sets pro tutorials apart from some guy in mom’s basement recording it with a 10 dollar mic and sound you can barely even hear because he does not even know the first thing about audio.

Regarding he content, I think I may have not been clear. If you are not creating content in the video itself, there is no reason to go out of your way to make something. Links are fine. But if for example you are teaching about modeling and rigging. And one video is the modeling and the next one is the rigging. Toss the guy a bone and include the model you made in the modeling video as a starter scene for the rigging video to insure he can be completely on the same page.

That is all I was saying there. And the same would go for Lighting and animation.

Sorry to be such a hard ass. Really I am a good guy… honest… lol

Just trying to help.

Here is my reasoning. Everything you do should be as professional as possible. Look to the future. And look toward where this can lead you. What will you have to show potential employers? What about the good will on the community you are serving? What possible work may come from that, connections etc. It all matters. Everything you do matters now. So don’t loose your lunch money, but definately put in the extra effort.

And it is clear you are serious about this or you would bot be asking questions. And that is good. Real good.

Trust me on this one.

It will pay off.

[BluePrintRandom]

you can annotate in youtube even…

[AustinC]

@Richard Culver

Not catching what the issue is here. All you need is a basic video editor. Can these open source editors be so bad that you can not stitch together your clips and overlay an annotation? Truely they can not be that bad. With the additional advantage of being able to manipulate the audio.

And LightWorks is a pro editor, and it is free.

https://www.lwks.com/

Certainly would be overkill for what you need. Obviously if you can get Camtasia working to give you auto annotations great. But you really are selling yourself short and also wasting your efforts not going the extra step to insure you have a professional presentation. That requires video editing. And one of the things that sets pro tutorials apart from some guy in mom’s basement recording it with a 10 dollar mic and sound you can barely even hear because he does not even know the first thing about audio.

Regarding he content, I think I may have not been clear. If you are not creating content in the video itself, there is no reason to go out of your way to make something. Links are fine. But if for example you are teaching about modeling and rigging. And one video is the modeling and the next one is the rigging. Toss the guy a bone and include the model you made in the modeling video as a starter scene for the rigging video to insure he can be completely on the same page.

That is all I was saying there. And the same would go for Lighting and animation.

Sorry to be such a hard ass. Really I am a good guy… honest… lol

Just trying to help.

Here is my reasoning. Everything you do should be as professional as possible. Look to the future. And look toward where this can lead you. What will you have to show potential employers? What about the good will on the community you are serving? What possible work may come from that, connections etc. It all matters. Everything you do matters now. So don’t loose your lunch money, but definately put in the extra effort.

And it is clear you are serious about this or you would bot be asking questions. And that is good. Real good.

Trust me on this one.

It will pay off.

No issues. I understand the need for quality, and I appreciate your comments and advice. The main “issue” is that my standard for quality is very high. I need something that allows me to achieve that quality quickly. Otherwise i won’t have the time to make the tutorials at all. I determined that video editing was a must because I had far too many takes when I tried to make a tutorial perfectly in a single recording.

Unfortunately, they are that bad. Most of them don’t work at all. I spent many hours trying many of them before buying Camtasia Studio 7. CS7 was so unstable and glitchy that is was unusable. After two months and over 100hr of troubleshooting with Camtasia’s customer service, they upgraded me to CS8 for free! CS8 is a dream to work with. It is ideal for software tutorials and worth the $300… if you can afford it. It has many features that save significant amounts of time, which means more time to make tutorials. For tutorials, I think it is superior to everything, even professional video editing software.

Last night I tried Blender’s VSE for video editing again. Ffmpeg must have fixed the quality issues with video imports, because I didn’t see any quality issues after importing several mp4’s! That is awesome! So, Blender is a good option now.

Overall, I think the video editing issue is solved. I have plenty of options to work with, and I WILL make one of them work.

I understand what you mean with the starting files; I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m thinking about something else. Maybe you have some good suggestions that will help me. For something like rigging, a starting file is easy. For a lighting tutorial it isn’t so easy. I need a full scene. It can be blocked out, but everything still needs to be textured and positioned. All of my assets will be linked into the scene. I will have a linked set/landscape with +100MB bump maps. I will have linked characters and props with proxy rigs. I will have a camera with blocked out positions. I may even have an HDR for the environment (another large file). And, all the blend files and textures would be in an organized folder structure. I would need to zip everything. This would be a massive zip file, too large for me to upload practically. I would need to simplify this scene greatly for a starting blend file. I plan to use a proxy system that automatically uses high-poly models for rendering, so I am wondering if I could use just the proxies for the starting file. I would need to pack all the assets and, then, delete each high-poly model. I would also need to ensure that all orphaned high-res textures are deleted before zipping the blend file (the proxies will use lower-res textures). the Orphaned Data mode in the Outliner makes this easy, but it is still tedious. That is the kind of case that i am thinking of.

Yes, I am very serious. I have put a ridiculous amount of time into trying to do this well. And, my PC dying after it was finally setup was discouraging. The patience is difficult sometimes. I feel like just recording on my laptop with its built-in mic and no video editing. LOL, But that would be AWFUL! However, patience has worked out well. I have had more time to think about how to structure my tutorials and what my focus will be. And, this thread has really helped me with that. I have also been working hard at polishing my Blender skills and presentation. This week I will start re-outlining my tutorials.

Some other notes: I have tried 1080p recording, and I don’t think it helps much with Blender. I plan to use 720p and increase Blender’s DPI to a good size. My screen is larger than 720p, though. So, I need to figure out how to adjust Blender’s size. In the past I used a shortcut that opened Blender with dimension parameters. After that, I used Camtasia to resize Blender’s window to specified dimensions. I don’t know if the new OBS can resize windows. I will need to play with it.

[AustinC]

@BluePrintRandom

you can annotate in youtube even…

That’s true. I can do that if i must, but I really want everything to be self-contained. I don’t want to rely on external sources like YouTube annotations and descriptions. I want to have something that I could pack onto a DVD or something (EDIT: like other video hosting sites, cloud storage, etc). Accompanying PDFs make more sense in this respect. The more I think about it, the most I appreciate the suggestion of using PDFs.

[Fweeb (Jason van Gumster)]

@AustinCPrescott

I understand what you mean with the starting files; I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m thinking about something else. Maybe you have some good suggestions that will help me. For something like rigging, a starting file is easy. For a lighting tutorial it isn’t so easy. I need a full scene. It can be blocked out, but everything still needs to be textured and positioned. All of my assets will be linked into the scene. I will have a linked set/landscape with +100MB bump maps. I will have linked characters and props with proxy rigs. I will have a camera with blocked out positions. I may even have an HDR for the environment (another large file). And, all the blend files and textures would be in an organized folder structure. I would need to zip everything. This would be a massive zip file, too large for me to upload practically. I would need to simplify this scene greatly for a starting blend file. I plan to use a proxy system that automatically uses high-poly models for rendering, so I am wondering if I could use just the proxies for the starting file. I would need to pack all the assets and, then, delete each high-poly model. I would also need to ensure that all orphaned high-res textures are deleted before zipping the blend file (the proxies will use lower-res textures). the Orphaned Data mode in the Outliner makes this easy, but it is still tedious. That is the kind of case that i am thinking of.

I think that, though well-intentioned, your premise has a fallacy. To properly teach lighting principle you don’t need high resolution models and heavy texture maps (well, until you start dealing with image-based lighting, but even then it’s just one or two images). To teach good lighting practices don’t need complex objects and textures. In fact, it’s a much better lighting exercise to make a generally boring scene (think a sphere in a closed room) look compelling. If you truly want to focus on the why and the core principles, then the high resolution elements are more of a distraction and hindrance than a help. Of course, high resolution images are sexier to sell, but there are pretty easy ways to handle that.

[AustinC]

@Fweeb

I think that, though well-intentioned, your premise has a fallacy. To properly teach lighting principle you don’t need high resolution models and heavy texture maps (well, until you start dealing with image-based lighting, but even then it’s just one or two images). To teach good lighting practices don’t need complex objects and textures. In fact, it’s a much better lighting exercise to make a generally boring scene (think a sphere in a closed room) look compelling. If you truly want to focus on the why and the core principles, then the high resolution elements are more of a distraction and hindrance than a help. Of course, high resolution images are sexier to sell, but there are pretty easy ways to handle that.

I agree with you. But, these tutorials will be walking through an actual project. They are meant to also demonstrate the pipeline. As such, I would be working on an actual project. I could greatly simplify the scene, and I would need to if I was going to upload a starting file.

So, to follow your suggestion:
I would determine which lighting techniques I would talk about. Then, I would make a very simple scene to upload for people to practice on. Meanwhile, I would apply the techniques to my full sets. That probably would be easier than trying to simplify the full scene. Although it would still take a while.

[shawn.kearney]

@AustinCPrescott"

EDIT: I thank everyone for their feedback and wonderful suggestions. My question has been thoroughly answered.

Hello everyone,

I’d like to regularly make Blender tutorials. But, I’d like to know my general audience. Even in advanced tutorials, many instructors walk through nearly every keystroke. That is awesome for beginners, but it takes a lot of time. For instance,

is nearly 90 minutes long!

This SERIOUSLY irritates me a lot, and concise intermediate and advanced tutorials would be MOST welcome. Honestly, I think that it doesn’t serve the community well either. I think that if we approach every tutorial as if the audience is someone who cannot even place a cube, doing something like the mentioned snow scene tutorial really isn’t going to be that much help, and may encourage people to approach doing work in blender with a “well, I know how to make snow” sort of attitude, instead of seeing the bigger picture - that the skills involved with snow can be applied to a multitude of different subjects.

But as an intermediate user, these tutorials are REALLY annoying - and are not limited to Blender either. I wanted to learn about C4D’s particle ripple shader, and had to search through 20 minutes of making a bathtub and texturing a beachball for five minutes of what the tutorial was supposed to be on!

I am not saying that people should be discouraged from learning, and I totally understand feeling discouraged by less than Blockbuster quality results - but honestly I think that advanced tutorials that cater to everyone will end up frustrating everyone.

I think having an overview of what skills are needed to complete a tutorial is far more valuable than going over every asset.

[Richard_Culver]

Well to answer some of the questions raised it comes down to understanding how to teach and understanding how people learn.

This is what it is all about. And the fact of the matter is people need basic things that are often overlooked

First is a good sound theory as to why something is done. Then a shown example. And finally them actually doing something.

Another thing that is often overlooked is a good clear and concise definition of technical terms. Before you launch into complex theory and example.

And as mentioned. People need to be doing something. I know you would not think this would have to be mentioned. But I would say it surprises me still when I give one of my artists the task of watching a tutorial, and come back and see what they are up to in and hour, and there they are dutifully watching the tutorial. Program is not even open, no content files downloaded or attempt to find something similar to experiment with along the way. It is unfortunately a point of discipline in a way. How would you expect to understand and retain anything if you don’t do it?

You can’t. So don’t study that way.

And I also “enforce” this when I pair up one artist with another to teach something. I sometimes have to walk over, take the keyboard and mouse out of the hands of the “teacher” and switch their chairs around and plant the student in front of the monitor, front and center. And I say to the teacher, you talk, and to the student, you do! Get it? “Yeah yeah yeah… OK…”…lol

Again you would not think this would have to be pointed out. But there it is. You can’t learn effectively be being nothing more than a sponge for a bunch of spoken or written information.

So now, do you provide starter content?

Well that is a simple answer. Why would you be teaching something to someone and expect them to be actually doing it, unless they can easily re-create it or better simply have the same file to work with? You can’t. It is that simple. And your teaching will not be effective.

So if your planning some large grandiose scene to teach with, you better plan on handing that scene over, or don’t waste anyone’s time and don’t promote a bad habit in your student through the fact that they can not possibly follow you.

It is pretty simple. That is what teaching is about. So if you want to get a complex scene together that is fine. Show some real production problems that come up when you get past balls and planes. But don’t get so complex that you can not give that file over to the student. Or even as well make the links available. Blendswap for example has lots of content.

But if you plan to make changes in a scene that is continued in another lesson. I think it is a good practice to provide the starter scene for that next lesson.

When studying tutorials I have found this very useful.

[RealityFox]

Since you already got a lot of feedback I’d like to just make a request:

I would like to see more blender python tutorials. There are some basic ones but it would be nice to see a tutorial on developing a addon.

Anyway, good luck! Looking forward to see what you make.

[AustinC]

Hm… I see what you mean. It will be a lot of work, but it would really help them learn. What do you think would be an appropriate price for all of those startup files?

[AustinC]

@shawn.kearney

This SERIOUSLY irritates me a lot, and concise intermediate and advanced tutorials would be MOST welcome. Honestly, I think that it doesn’t serve the community well either. I think that if we approach every tutorial as if the audience is someone who cannot even place a cube, doing something like the mentioned snow scene tutorial really isn’t going to be that much help, and may encourage people to approach doing work in blender with a “well, I know how to make snow” sort of attitude, instead of seeing the bigger picture - that the skills involved with snow can be applied to a multitude of different subjects.

But as an intermediate user, these tutorials are REALLY annoying - and are not limited to Blender either. I wanted to learn about C4D’s particle ripple shader, and had to search through 20 minutes of making a bathtub and texturing a beachball for five minutes of what the tutorial was supposed to be on!

I am not saying that people should be discouraged from learning, and I totally understand feeling discouraged by less than Blockbuster quality results - but honestly I think that advanced tutorials that cater to everyone will end up frustrating everyone.

I think having an overview of what skills are needed to complete a tutorial is far more valuable than going over every asset.

I was looking for information on using Blender for CAD-like work, such as designing prototype machines and parts. I can across a guide for precision modeling in Blender. I was quite excited, but I laughed when I read this: “Don’t be fooled by the name the guide is useful to anyone wanting a clear introduction to Blenders mesh modelling tools.” I thought to myself, “oh, trust me; that was not one of my concerns.” I will still go through it and continue looking at things on that topic, but that was a perfect example of what you are talking about. It goes through the most basic aspects of Blender. Sure, it needs to cover all of the modeling tools to be thorough since some people may not know about some basic tools. But, it also goes over the fundamental UI. Referencing another guide for those parts would probably be better.

And, yes, I have had this issue in many other areas as well. Programming is a great example. It took a lot of searching to find books that taught enterprise-scale application development.