i made another tutorial
polycounter lvl 12
a texturing tutorial... gee, what a surprise!
if you haven't checked it out already, go see it:
http://www.nextgenhardsurface.com/index.php?pageid=racer445
i'm interested in hearing what you folks think about the split text and video idea. i personally think putting the important "theory" bits in text for future reference will satisfy the types who learn from reading, and the video will help the visual learners like myself. is this something you'd like to see again in the future?
if you haven't checked it out already, go see it:
http://www.nextgenhardsurface.com/index.php?pageid=racer445
i'm interested in hearing what you folks think about the split text and video idea. i personally think putting the important "theory" bits in text for future reference will satisfy the types who learn from reading, and the video will help the visual learners like myself. is this something you'd like to see again in the future?
Replies
I love the idea of 2 part tutorials. It touches on skills that should be utilized every second, and provides a video for those who learn by example, like me.
I have yet to finish your long-ass video, but from what I've seen it's absolutely fantastic.
Like a lot of people I get different kinds of information from the different sources of material. The wall of text and photos to illustrate things works well to emphasize points, and the video opens up the opportunity to pick up workflow ideas as well as audibly reinforcing the tips you go over in static text. As well as to visually show how and why they work.
Entertaining as usual, glad you went over texturing, I think its generally the weak link for a number of people, myself included. So, good job, and thanks man!
That'd be my main concern with the text+video approach. At some point, for someone, the video is going to be decoupled from the page unless you can somehow guarantee it (like by hosting it yourself). I suppose it depends on how important you think the two are together...if you feel like they stand alone, then it's probably ok.
One option might be to take your written info and pictures and build it in at the beginning of the video as a slideshow kind of deal. That way, you still get the effects of text+pictures, but embedded in a single package that will live on in its entirety and won't become lost to antiquity. Being able to pause it makes it just as legible as a webpage.
Another option would be to build what you have as a webpage as an image, then release it and the video together as a zip. I know I personally tend to save zip packages of stuff like this, so the chances of it getting diseminated as a whole package is probably higher.
As for the content, it's awesome as always. Thank you for taking the time to do stuff like this.
i love the theory and the visual. it's good to have the best of both worlds. just having the visual is what most people will go for but never have the foundation or the theory (the reason, meaning) behind stuff like noise in textures as you were talking about in your tutorial.
if anything more theory would be great because it's something that i am guilty of missing out on when i first started texturing and even now i continue to miss important key elements while texturing but thankfully things have come along with better understanding.
thanks again for the tutorials you post up!
One crit: You use Blend If a lot, but I don't think you explained how to do it. It'd be a help for newer users, since it's not really an upfront feature.
This is a little thing, but it'd be nice if you gave the video a more meaningful filename too.
I enjoy the tutorial itself, and I have the feeling I won't be able to live without vtools now.
i originally was going to put the text portion as a slideshow type deal at the start of the video, but i scrapped it because i didn't think people would want to sit through it. i think a short redirect url at the start for the associated learning materials would work.
throttlekitty: yeah it's not something explained or used very often, but it's super super useful. i'll try to include that next time.
I do have a question however. In the theory text you state its best to extrapolate natural noise from materials instead of generating it artificially in photoshop. With that being said how do you approach doing this?
I am new to photoshop and I was thinking something like this, but I am not sure. Filter->Sketch->Bas Relief. Afterwards you could adjust the output with levels or curves. Obviously like you stated in the text you make the noise a bit larger than it is in the reference particularly for hard plastics. I would appreciate any clarification.
Here is an example of racers hard plastic he uses for those that have not yet read the article.
Might I recommend giving Filter > Other > Highpass a try (perhaps with better source images to manipulate).
Thanks for keeping it separate, my connection and bandwidth limits are such that I'm always hesitant to start 300+mb videos.
protip: use lab color and go to the brightness channel, it makes it real real simple to neutralize the brightness of your source for better overlays.
and cs5 works in both 32bit and 64bit.
very useful.
would be nice if there was a 1 key soultion (maybe via action) to add or remove the "~" from the layername prefix.