Jan van den Hemel writes:
Selecting many faces can be tricky. Luckily, there are a couple of keyboard shortcuts that lets us quickly select all the faces connected to just one selected face. This short video explains how.
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About the Author
Jan van den Hemel
Hi, my name is Jan and I help companies by creating short videos for their websites and internal use, mostly as a freelancer for agencies. I post daily one-minute tutorials for Blender users and wrote the popular "Blender Secrets" e-books.
22 Comments
Noooo please, no more less than 1 minute tutorials...
In this video, you missed the opportunity to pack all the face selection knowledge (like ctrl + or - to expand or retract the selection, things like zone selection or even the menus about it.
Either you want to learn or you don't. I don't understand those 1 minute clips tendencies. What can you possibly learn in one minute ? I spend more time to open the notification and check it than the length of those videos.
People these days cannot focus 30 mins straight on a subject.
Meh...
Just to be clear, I am not judging you if its what you want to do. But I felt like I should raise my voice to say what I think about those express "tutorials".
Everybody is different. For me personally, I don't have time to watch an hour of some guy going "hey guys, bla bla bla" until after 40 minutes I finally learn the one thing I need. In fact, I started making these for myself so I could quickly look stuff up after I forgot. I'm a freelancer and I charge per hour so I don't really have time for "real" tutorials anymore. Seems 50.000-ish followers agree with me though :-)
These are not tutorials but tips. They are valuable as more than once it already happened to me that I needed just that one particular information and I've been able to find the answer by googling the tip I was looking for and the daily blender tip showed up.
Keep up the great work, Jan!
Thank you Andrew, I'm glad to hear it's useful for you! That's exactly what they are for.
Hmm, I understand what you mean, but Jan's tutorials are short but clear and to-the-point most of the time.
No, I don't have the time or the inclination to watch a 40 minute video just to learn 3 tips either. People going bla bla bla, 5 minutes before the "tutorial" even starts. There is nothing wrong with the long form, as such, provided they are informative from start to finish. These quick tips are usually very useful. Thanks Jan.
Thanks! Yeah, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with long-form tutorials, don't get me wrong. Some really good examples are Andrew's videos, Gleb's, etc. Those guys are super entertaining as well though, so it's just fun to watch. I watch Andrew's beginner series although I already know all those things, just because it's fun. But when I'm working I need to find answers fast.
Exactly. I wish more people would actually take the time to write tutorials. That would almost guarantee brevity combined with useful information.
The written format seems to be no longer popular since the author gains from youtube tuts a lot more.
I don't know if it's a monetary thing, but it's true that it's a lot of work to write an e-book. And the Youtube algorithm rewards long videos more than short ones. If I turned on google ads on my videos, it wouldn't make me much money (but it would be pretty annoying).
I'm not talking about ebooks... geez what a lot of work. Years ago I used to write online tutorials for other 3D software and they were quite well received. It just seems that by and large, people want to win the youtube popularity contest. Maybe I'll just dump my several thousand words of personal notes regarding Blender on the web somewhere... baha.
Hey, I'd be happy to read it :-)
You would certainly stand out, I do really think there's lots of people who'd like to read that.
What software did you write tutorials for before?
Jan, was quite some time ago, Poser and Daz Studio. I used to model in LightWave and create Poser props and stuff. Yeah, I'm a LightWave refugee. Dunno if my notes would be that interesting? Maybe? Not sure.
Maybe. My first daily tips were also based on notes I'd takes over the year.
OK, maybe we can do a collaborative thing.
Sure! Get it touch on Twitter (@janvandenhemel) it's a bit more convenient ;)
Hmm, I don't do Twitter unfortunately. Is there any other way?
You can e-mail me from http://www.blendersecrets.org
If it weren't for Youtube, I doubt there would be so many options to choose from when it comes to learning stuff. People either make tutorials to directly make profit via AdSense, promoting gadgets/services etc or indirectly by gaining popularity in the community, again, to monetize that in every possible way. Otherwise I don't see why anyone would bother teaching for free given how long it takes to make them (not taking about timelapses). Writing tutorials makes no sense to me unless you already have big traffic on your website.
True. I wouldn't know from experience how much you can earn from YT, but I made ± 10.000 € from e-Book sales last year. So... still something worth in writing tutorials :-) Probably could be a lot more if I dedicated full-time to it (would love to!) but currently I'm still doing client work most of the time, to pay the bills. Hopefully someday I can do teaching full-time. It's way more rewarding.
Well, you wouldn't have made that money if you hadn't included an ad at the end of your youtube tips leading to gumroad. I believe that is how people learned about your ebook in the first place. So Youtube is still number one for promoting a product. If you'd uploaded it to some website, how many would've found it, right? People don't google nowadays, they get right in Youtube. As far as whether vlogging is more rewarding than client work is concerned, it depends. I think there's no true freedom regardless of one's occupation because you still have to cater for your viewers, you kinda depend on their interests which might not be fully aligned with yours. Let's pretend I'm a huge fan of VSE and I'm as advanced in modeling. If I were going to dedicate myself to teaching VSE, I pretty much know it wouldn't get as many subscribers because the topic is a lot less popular. On the other hand, if I started a modeling channel, I'd certainly attract more, but may end up regretting not having followed my true passion. Moral is, one has to always balance between income and passion.
Id post email address here Jan, but not sure it's secure or allowed.