There are a new set of training videos up in the Tutorial section.
Surfaces from Particles streams,
The stingray model,
Sop animation

Hi Peter…

thanks for the tuts…

some suggestions

1 - these files are WAY too big - 1280x1024 is really too much given what is going on in the tutorials…there isn't any need to see the fine details of the interface…200MB for the stingray tutorial? I set the quicktime to 1/2 res and it's just fine. why not the 720x480 that Robert was using?

2 - pacing is generally good, could use a tiny speed up…also the reviews of the previous part isn't needed at all, I think you can/should assume that the viewer has watched parts 1 and 2 before viewing part 3 etc…

3 - torrents…this is very important. given the increase in interest in Houdini and the instant, ravenous downloading of any Houdini related learning material…even if SESI doesn't care about their bandwidth - WE care about being able to download this material in less than the current rate. torrents and smaller files will spread this stuff around in no time.

thanks again!

Thanks Michael, all valuable comments.

Awsome videos!

on the other hand Houdini is extremely difficult to fit into a small area, maybe a better codec? Max is much easier for this and CG academy (max) uses big sizes as well. Currently those are some of the best all-around video training out there IMO.

Where are those “how to do screen demos in Houdini” things. I could use some tips.

Hello Peter,

I watched the stingray tutorials tonight and I did like the size of the videos and your pace of talking. It was easy to follow your mouse on the screen to see what you were clicking/aiming at and what you were typing in the SOPs. Your pace is excellent to keep up with while I followed you in houdini.

What I particularly liked was your comparison between the rigged stingray and the animated with metaball stingray. It is making a bit of sense why one would choose direction a or direction b. Since houdini is an app that let's you do things in a certain number of different ways it's more helpful to know why and when you take a certain approach then how (i.e. the awfull point-and-click-and-look-at-me-I-made-the-Eifel-Tower-tutorial)…if you know what I mean… ?

Pagefan

andrewlowell
Awsome videos!

on the other hand Houdini is extremely difficult to fit into a small area, maybe a better codec? Max is much easier for this and CG academy (max) uses big sizes as well. Currently those are some of the best all-around video training out there IMO.

Where are those “how to do screen demos in Houdini” things. I could use some tips.

Hi Andrew

I'm on Ubuntu 7.04, so I use Recordmydesktop for my recordings. It works in a similar fashion to Camtasia in that it stores the raw data while you are doing your lesson and then encodes as a second step, once you've stopped recording.
It works like a charm.
The limitation is that it only records to .ogm format, which is the open Theora video format.
So once I have the .ogm file I convert it to .avi using the Divx50 codec. That gives me a smaller file that is very clear. I use a utiltiy call Alltoavi to do the conversion. That too works very well.

I don't do any editing, that's why the videos can sound a bit goofy. If I stumbl at a point, get interrupted, or loose my train of thought, I just start over. It's good practice.

Sidefx converts the file to quicktime at their end.

Cool, I might bring them over to vegas on windows to cut the junk out. The other challenge I'm experiencing is juggling Houdini's sound playback while I'm talking, so there's some editing I think.

I wish someone would put up a “effective teaching with video tutorials” it just feels so different than teaching, much harder although it would probably seem to the casual observer that the opposite would be true.

I have admiration for anyone who does them well

If you have Quicktime Pro, I have exported videos using the iPod video codec, and although it doesn't give you any options, it keeps the video resolution the same, while making the file sizes a lot smaller. I've had clips go from 70mb to 5mb, and I couldn't see any artifacts.

Not sure how it will work with these videos, but it's worth a shot. Thanks for these tutorials. I enjoy the large size, even if it takes a while to get.

Hi. Thanks for the tutorials. I do second arctor & the others in their comments. The image is not that clear all the time, the rez could be sized down to 1024/768, and the biggest one - I think some editing would help a lot. just cut out the dead time when nothing's happening, it would be fantastic. Too bad you can't encode and publish camtasia AVIs, that would be superawesome too, if you could (maybe could be done as people suggest… through torrents?) Anyway, the tutorials are very helpful, thanks, and keep them coming!

Just another perspective:

We use Peter's training videos here in a training room context with a bunch of new users, and find both the the pace and the resolution to be beneficial.

Perhaps two versions would please everyone?

Keep em coming Peter.

Cheers

thanks for the nice tuts



.

Thanks for all the positive comments, I sure appreciate them.

An update on the image quality. We made a mistake with the encoding of the latest batch of videos, there was a default setting that we forgot to adjust.
The original .avi's that I submitted where 1024x800, but when we converted them to quicktime they got scaled up to 1280x1024.

We'll be reposting the videos at the original scale, so they will look much better.

Will there be any tutorials about character setup and animation soon? Also, there is a webpage http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=899&Itemid= [sidefx.com]

that describes some videos it supposedly links to, but there is no link. Do these videos exist yet? Thanks

Sorry, that page was just a test. It is unpublished for now.

Damn! I had a pleasure of looking on this very promising site for the last two weeks… I knew this was unofficial and top secret