Tutorials??

[FZnoob]

I see lots of examples of  people's, work but not too many actual "tutorials".

 

[Des]

True, but I doubt you need any noob...

[skybound13]

I noticed this also.  It’s great to be able to share works in progress and get comments from others but they’re not tutorials, perhaps a new “Works in Progress” forum category should be created?  Being new to the formZ forum, I don’t know if there are administrators who are responsible for reviewing new posts and moving them to the appropriate category if needed.

[¢hris £und]

FZnoob, skybound13,

These are close to a year old now but may help.   I apologies that my presentation skills suck.

 

The final video above was using the techniques formed from the previous videos to build a coke bottle.

Here is a different method to build the same coke bottle.   While this method is far less fluid than the SDS method above, it is also technically far more exacting.  I think I must have just posted this in the discussion that prompted me to make the tutorials and didn't create a separate tutorial thread for it.

https://youtu.be/b44MU13JsX4

 

I will try to get less sucky at making tutorials... but that is a skill unto its own.

 

¢£

[skybound13]

Chris,

Thanks for the link.  By the way, the video on this page works, but when I tried to go to the earlier videos in the original post YouTube was saying the videos were not available.  But anyway, this Coke bottle model is beyond anything I’ve done, what with the small dimensions and fine detail, you definitely know what you’re doing.  As for your tutorial-teaching skills, this most definitely does not fall into the category of “sucky,” not even close.  I’m referring to quality of the content, I don’t really get too excited by the production “tricks” I see in many videos - animated logos, music, graphics/text on screen, screen-in-screen view of the person’s face as they talk, et cetera.

[¢hris £und]

Thanks! I like modeling.  Started out as a 3D animator on a video toaster, oh so many years ago.  And discovered I much preferred modeling over animating.

Hmmm... they should be available.  I will check on that!

Mostly what I don't like about me presenting is it seems that every 3rd word is "um".

I will check on the other videos now and update you.

¢£

[¢hris £und]

Skybound13,

I went ahead and updated the post to include the correct links.  I think I know what happened.  But, regardless, I also cleaned up the whole thread to condense all of my running posts into a single (the original)  to streamline it.  Looking back, the whole thing was presented as a stream of consciousness and thus confusing.  I was confused by it anyway.

Links now work.

¢£

[skybound13]

Chris,

The links now bring up the videos, thank you.

I didn’t notice the “ums.”  Makes me think of a YouTuber’s comment about wanting to redo an earlier instructional video because he kept saying, “And now I want you to…” before each step.  I had already watched the video two or three times, I never noticed.

If I were to do a video tutorial it would probably have things like “ums” also, I think it would be tough to script something like that.  Some of the best instructional videos I’ve seen have used voice overs while the video shows them doing things, I guess that way they can keep redoing the audio until they get it right.  They never sound like they’re actually reading a script though.

[¢hris £und]

Agreed. Though we used to have a guy, Matt Hollowinski (sp?) who was a member of the ADS team who was excellent at making videos.

One thing I tend to notice as a consumer of content.  If I only have a casual interest in a topic.  Quality of the video/presentation really does count.  On the other hand, if I have a keen interest in the topic and it delivers on content, I do give a much greater degree of latitude regarding quality.

I hope that this means you found the content of great help.

I would be happy to produce more and thus get practice at such skills.  Like these, it would be best triggered by specific questions.   The original thread was an interesting one. Here if you are up for a longer read:  

 

So, to round this off.  If you want more tutorials of questionable polish, post a specific question and I or I bet someone else would be happy to comply.

 

If you have the time, the following is a phenomenal and official resource that even I will reference if I don't quite recall how to do something.

http://www.formz.com/support/tips_list.html 

At the top of the page, you should also check out form•Z LAB too.   not tutorials but added resources.  There is also a page out there that had a bunch of scripts that would work with older versions than 9 (with varying success as they were mostly written for 6.x)  Many of these scripts were very useful and many deserve a resurrection once the python API is complete.

Caution, many and maybe most of these are going to be weird on the newer versions, esp v9.   I don't think v9 has any of the legacy scripting capabilities.

http://ftp.formz.com/downloads/extensions/extensions.html

[skybound13]

Chris,

I agree, Matt Holewinski does a great job with his videos, he did the 30-Minute Model tutorial and several others.

You have a point about how an interest in the topic makes the presentation less important.

The greatest help from your videos for someone like me (a far less accomplished modeler) is that they are an introduction to more advanced modeling techniques and more importantly to see the workflow.

Thanks for the offer to help with some tutorials, I would do that only after doing my very best to figure something out on my own - it pays to struggle a bit and try to find the answer myself, I usually learn something I wasn’t expecting to learn as I try to figure out how to do something else.

Thanks for the link to the tips page, they actually invested a bit of time into that, there are a lot of topics.

The people making scripts are like Jedi ninjas, when the application doesn’t do what they want they make it do it anyway!  I guess it’s actually more like making the software do what they want, only more easily.

[¢hris £und]

Skybound13,

I bet if you hang out long enough, you will find out that I am a fan of scripts....::Grins::

 

¢£

[skybound13]

Chris,

Sounds like you have truly taken “work smarter, not harder” to heart!  If you’re looking for practice making tutorial videos maybe you could do something about scripting for more advanced users?  Could even be a video with your top five favorite scripts if you want to keep it light.

[¢hris £und]

Skybound11+2

I like really working hard at something once.  Twice is ok... When it gets repetitive, I get bored and all I can think about is how stupid it is.  From that standpoint, putting the effort into learning how to and working on such scripts to solve another problem is the perfect situation for working hard once.

 

I actually have been making plans on doing so.  I have built much of the rough outlines and structure.  An intro to python with formZ as the viaduct mindset.  My wife and my business(es)  have kept me really busy though.  She just left her job though to help out with them.  So, this may give me some time to do so.

Though, without her income (it was pretty decent,) I may need to find a job.  Good problems to solve really.

 

¢£

[skybound13]

Chris,

With a lot of tasks I like to learn how to do things the hard way before learning how to do it smarter, kind of like how we had to learn to read time on an analog clock before we were allowed to get a digital watch.  That might involve purposefully doing something the hard way for a while even if I know a more efficient method, eventually I guess I feel like I have earned the privilege of moving on to the smart method.  It also helps me learn to work under less-than-ideal conditions so that greater challenges down the line don’t seem quite as bad.

And you’re right, those are good problems to solve, I’d rather complain about having too much to do than not enough to do.

[¢hris £und]

Mr. Trampoline net/13 foot model,

Agreed,   I guess my post was looking at it from a slightly different view. Though, looking at it, I see it wasn't clear. 

In order to program/simplify a task, you definitely need to know the hard way ( I think).   From my perspective, learning to do the program is the working hard once.   The task of solving a task.  I prefer that, over doing the stuff I have already learned and have to do repeatedly.  Every time I write code, it is a challenge.  And, I am reasonably certain my code isn't pretty.  Especially at first.  A real programmer does a topdown approach... I do more of a hack and try recursively, approach.

Like modeling, solving problems, coding has the same appeal.  Though, I strongly gravitated towards the pretty picture end of the spectrum.  I have dabbled in programming since the early 80's

I guess it is time to dust off my notes and get to those tutorials.  It will be a tough slog, however, as the APIs are not complete.  Then again, if we can get more people interested, it would be a reasonable impetus for ADS to do so.  (self serving reasons.)

¢£

[skybound13]

Chris,

I understand now what you mean about putting in the “hard work” once by writing the script, that makes sense.

From time to time I’ve wondered how complicated it must be to program an entire application from scratch, it’s complicated enough to design the interface (conceptually then graphically) but then to write the code to make it look and function right - that’s amazing.

[¢hris £und]

Fifth single by the Band: Pink Floyd released 17 December 1968,

I have to admit, I am comfortable in the fact that I haven't had to write an entire application.  Though, never done all at once, it would still be a daunting experience.

Though I might be forced to for my business.  An app, not an application.  Seems daunting enough.   External pressures and all.

 

¢£

[skybound13]

Chris,

Even writing something as small as an app seems very challenging to me.  Too bad there’s not an app to manage those external pressures, figure that one out and your new job will be counting the money people will pay for that!

[Justin Montoya]

I too would love to see more proper tutorials.  

Maybe we could develop a 'framework' for these tutorials so they can be a bit more consistent?

[skybound13]

When you guys think of “tutorial” are you thinking of a text tutorial with various steps typed out with some screenshots or a video uploaded to the forum?  In my mind some things are so complex a video is probably the way to go, such as chris lund’s Coke bottle tutorials.  Is it even possible to upload a video to the forum or would that be a link to a video somewhere else?

As for a framework, especially if this is a text tutorial, I can imagine an outline something like:

1.  Meaningful Tutorial Name
2.  Description, something like, “In this tutorial you will learn how to create a revolved shape using such-and-such tools.”
3.  List of the tools and features used.  This could be included in the description but the point is to try to put keywords at the beginning so someone scrolling down a list can see it more easily.
4.  Body of tutorial.  Maybe the framework can include suggestions such as to use as least one graphic per step, to use a separate numbered step for each mouse or keyboard gesture, et cetera.

[¢hris £und]

I would like to see what you have in mind!

 

¢£

[skybound13]

Another option would be to have a short video for each step instead of a screen snapshot.

I have watched lots of video tutorials and found many to be very helpful, such as the formZ 30-minute model which I thought was especially good.  But there must still be some interest in printed learning materials (which would include a written tutorial posted to the forum,) case in point is the Affinity workbooks, they have one for each of their three applications, each book being offered for $49.99.  But now that I think about it, just because their books are being “offered” doesn’t mean anyone’s buying them!  :-)

[skybound13]

I’m not sure what Justin Montoya has in mind with the reference to “framework,” I interpreted it to mean “template.”

Another form of tutorial is the “self-guided” tutorials that use a formZ file with scenes set up for each step, there are some of these in the Getting Started window, I thought these were helpful and a unique way to walk someone through learning the software.

[Justin Montoya]

All good ideas  But, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, I think we are missing modern animated documentation showing the basics of formZ tools and workflow.  These should be imbedded in the documentation pages for new users to help quickly get up to speed with formZ. 

So let's say we start with simple animations showing how to use each basic tool, something new users could quickly watch while following along to learn the basics of formZ.  I like animated GIFs for quick tool demos.  Here, I made an example showing how the basic INSERT HOLE tool works.  I feel like this is a good example showing the basic, but very fast and efficient solid modeling power of formZ:

 

I think it would be great if future tutorials could show similar animated GIFs broken down into logical steps.  That way it's' not a long video you need to rewind, instead it is a short looping video showing the current step.

I realize my customized workspace may not be the best basis for these, but I really love having my Tools on the Right which is the logical next step of setting the Tool Options.  

Future animations could even just use a small portion of the screen with the modeling and pop out tool bar that shows how the basic functions work without all the other Interface visible.

BTW, I'm using a nice app called ScreenToGif to quickly record, edit, and export these.  https://www.screentogif.com/

Edited March 30, 2021 by Justin Montoya

[skybound13]

Justin,

Seems like something like this wouldn’t be too difficult to put together, it’s just takes time.  With that in mind one has to ask who puts in that time, ADS or the users?  So back to your comment that you’d like to see more tutorials, were you thinking that is something the developer should do?

The vertical tool bar on the right is interesting.  I remember at my first job everyone set up custom toolbars for AutoCAD, from time to time I had to work on someone else’s computer and it was always frustrating to try to find where they put the tools I needed to use.  I finally worked around that by just learning the key commands.  One day one of the principals commented about how he could always hear me typing away in the other room, I should have told him, “That’s the sound of productivity - I deserve a raise, don’t you think?”

The other principal loved his custom “pick box” - it was huge.  I had been doing something in a file then he asked me to close it so he could open it on his computer.  A few minutes later he called me in and said he couldn’t find what I had been working on (I always did a Zoom Extents before saving a file.)  So I go in to his office and looked at the screen for a few seconds then told him, “Move your pick box…”