Sci Fi Animator has published over 200 videotutorials on YouTube, all nicely categorised by topic.
Sci Fi Animator writes:
I'm a 3d technical artist with a great interest in natural disasters, 3d animation, geometric illustrations, computer programming, foreign languages, science and fiction. As such, you can find all kinds of related tutorials, stories and animations on this channel.
Hat tip to Carl Endres!
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13 Comments
Great - this will be very useful. Good sound quality, reasonably clear presentation, and no silly background music.
Background music is fine if it's panned to one side so it can be faded out. :)
I have to disagree. If you go into a classroom or lecture theatre, does the teacher put on some background music (of his own preference) to distract you from the technical subject he's explaining? People who use background music in tutorial videos should really ask themselves why they are doing it. What does it add? It's very likely your viewer will not like *your* choice of music, so you are simply annoying a proportion of viewers. Blender Cookie sets a good example - quick presentation style, clear sound, minimum of rambling, few mistakes (like they actually planned what they wanted to show!) and no music.
The in-joke was that panning it to one speaker would allow the music could be muted without losing the voiceover. If the voice is on the left speaker and the music is on the right, I can use my balance slider to mute the right speaker and only hear the audio from the left speaker. In other words, music that can be disabled is fine.
One thing that's clear is that the old saw about music being "the universal language" doesn't work so well in practice.
It depends on the tutorial, it depends on the music. Sometimes music is there to help you stay awake. Sometimes music can be distracting. But it isn't all the same in every case.
For me, personally, I can deal with of both in videos. What keeps my attention usually is my intention in gathering new information. I prefer videos that tend to use music for time-lapsed portions and no music when the person's speaking.
You cannot compare the actual presence of a teacher with the static nature of a recorded speaker on a video. It's an entirely different experience when you're listening to someone who can equally pay as much attention to you.
The audience of a teacher is much more focused than that of a video's much wider general audience. Students are there listening to a teacher mostly because they don't have a choice in the matter--they need to listen to pass for a grade. People visiting a YouTube video, on the other hand, are there completely by their own choice alone, and dealing with their attention span comes quite differently for a recorded video as opposed to an actual teacher.
You don't want music with a real speaker simply because you can't pause and rewind them while they speak. Plus, the music would make them hard to hear. Videos enjoy the luxury of such on-demand interactivity and controlling the volume in editing.
With videos, it's a virtual medium that intends to represent a speaker. It's far more passive than an actual living presence and the brain knows it. It can be a challenge sometimes to make the brain pay attention to something it knows that isn't live. It's difficult to keep people's attention when they're glaring at a screen for a long time, esp. when the tutorials extend beyond shorter time lengths.
Sometimes music (appropriately-set music, I must add) helps the viewer stay tuned better. Music can be as much of a tool to help you focus as much as it can be a distraction to hinder you. A safe bet would be to use no music at all, but that's not to say that subtle music in the background is always a bad idea.
But again, this all depends on the viewer and it depends on the video. You shouldn't speak so absolutely about something so relative.
Nice. I may check him out.
MOAR GAEM ENGINE TUTORIALS FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And here I am, feeling all proud about finishing up my single tutorial. :P
It's still worthy of taking pride in though! It's one more than most of us have done, and you will get to 200 completed before you know it.
Thanks. ;)
Thanks a lot!! Very useful!
Cool stuff
Thank you for sharing! We live in a remote northern Canadian community. Attending a post secondary school for 3D graphics training is not possible due to distance and the fact we hold down full time jobs.