Gnomon video approach for Lightwave? yes or no

[Julez4001]

With Kurv Studio and Dan Ablan Material, ther eis aexisting market.

Are you purposing turning the quality notch in comparative to Gnomon who whose high profile industry people .................

[Mechis]

I would suggest contacting kurv and seeing if you could work with him. That way you wouldn't have to deal with distribution or payment hassles or anything.

Mechis

[mamurphy]

i think that specialized training can be very valuable and profitable....with the right marketing/advertising scheme.

Also as (i think) Julez was saying, the Gnomon product is appealing because of the big names/studio affiliation that go with the high quality.

More specifically to LW though, I think the Dan Ablan/ Larry Schultz All-in-one approach is good, but potentially lacks the depth of topic by topic releases like Gnomon does.

All-in-one also drives potential buyers away with a steep price tag of hundreds of dollars when an individual topic might only cost $50-$60USD (or less in the case of KURV)

(On a side note...while KURV products are high quality, they seem to be more "point and click" show me what the tool does kind of product. I think improvement could be made in terms of production concept/visualization. Take it to that next level beyond the manual!)

I think if you were to build a library that appealed to both the hobbyist/beginner and professional user you could have a great business.

Gnomon also is taking advantage of Maya being the "hot" app in the industry and is also using their success to introduce other apps and (most importantly IMHO) including the other disciplines of professional CG which looks to help boost their legitimacy.

Like I said earlier, with the right business model you could do this successfully, but I think you might need to overcome the bias inherent in the LW community that our app is less than it could be relative to the "big boys".

[Nemoid]

making dvds for Lw too is a good idea. :)

a thing that comes into my mind is making also something project based, from modelling to texturing and animating of a cool character, maybe realistic. it would be fantastic, because it would show the real Lw power in action.

[PixelInfected]

With Kurv Studio and Dan Ablan Material, ther eis aexisting market.

Are you purposing turning the quality notch in comparative to Gnomon who whose high profile industry people .................

i have high respect of kurv and dan work, i see some of their video, but actually they cover only 1% of arguments that i think, and only the basic approach, i want to talk about more advanced function, that usually no one talk.
how many video exist about cloth animation that not show a simple piece of cloth on a plane?
most of it.
how many video show you how to setup a cloth animation for a character?
i see only something for messiah, a lot for maya, xsi and max, but nothing for lw...
How many video show you how to setup a fast rigid body for lw?
how many video show you how to setup a light rig that use hdri for reflection, a baking of hdri for illumination and setup for single light bounce?
how many video show you how to setup a character to play with muscle deformation?
how many video show you the setup of motion mixer to use warp curve and use it to play a character go and back ?
i think there is space for a lot of video, lw is a large and powerful software.
;-P

[southparx]

i totally agree on this,

even ZBrush have their both - technical heavy videos and the practical ones ( check Zack Petroc's - it's amazing ).

i have to admit when i was learning maya, i learned a lot from Gnomon,
it felt like knowing the software itself and how to go around the software even for beginners,
unlike most lw's video lately are about satisfying old customers.

people who are alien to lightwave will sure appreciate this, as they can later see the simplicity of the workflow.

for we who are used to it already, will sure find it better than the current documented manual -

for the experts - might think of new tricks then share it again to the community.

hehee not to say that i'm any good :D

but brilliant ideas, i for one sure will put them in my collection. Go For It!!

[spellis32]

Yes please - I would love to see really in depth tutorials. I have found other tutorials very useful but don’t always give real insight to the power behind LW.


I have so many great ideas that one day, hopefully, these creations will find rendered. However, being a novice, I lack the knowledge of the software with certain tools!


Great artist have an intimate relationship with their medium. The same is true with 3D, know the software and then play God! Go for it :thumbsup:

[private]

I think the first thing would be to establish some credibility. No one knows you. Post some screen shots and some .avis etc of what you can do. Then, hit three advanced topics or so, and see if people come to buy them. However, wait until Lightwave 9 comes out, otherwise, you're going to be wasting your time. Since the changes are going to be pretty drastic with Lightwave 8.5 to 9.0, especially in Layout. Good luck.

My suggestion would be doing some stuff on cell shading and advanced rigging.

[PixelInfected]

the idea born from needs, for years i attend in depth tutorial about some hidden but powerful function of lw, like expression or cloth animation, but i must learn most of work by try and error, thanks to forum and a lot of people i learned a lot, and i want to share with all these knowledge, i want to avoid the try and error situation to everyone start now or need to understand how work some part of lw software, when i start in far far time with lw 3.5 on amiga, i can find some desktop images video, first articles on lightwavepro (at bloody cost for italian user like me, that cost 3-4 times than USA user) of daniel ablam (our respected god) but no more, internet was a far think, and there was only usenet, but for old 1200 bauds modem too expansive....

i want to help newbie and pros to learn better lw, and i want to aoid that they leave lw to search in other software something is present in lw but not documented or not showed before...

we start to study the table of contents during lw9 public beta, and early we think to publish an idea of our titles production, then we decide from a public vote what are most needings and what titles must exist before other.
stay tuned and if you have arguments that you are interest or you think are obscured, drop me a line (carlo@macchiavello.com)

[PixelInfected]

I think the first thing would be to establish some credibility. No one knows you. Post some screen shots and some .avis etc of what you can do. Then, hit three advanced topics or so, and see if people come to buy them. However, wait until Lightwave 9 comes out, otherwise, you're going to be wasting your time. Since the changes are going to be pretty drastic with Lightwave 8.5 to 9.0, especially in Layout. Good luck.

My suggestion would be doing some stuff on cell shading and advanced rigging.

naturally i attend lw9 exit, we not start before now be cause we attend this maior change on lw.
below some of my stuff

credibility test.jpg was an old test that i did to show to a producer the ability of lw to produce realism in render, he is nterest to do a tv series like max steel, but at end the money never arrived to start.
finale.jpg is a simple mascotte did during a demo in a show.
glassything.jpg is a frame of animation where i'm working, is a animation sinchronized with music, i'm using part of by hand animation and part midi sinchronized animation.

[PixelInfected]

metalbird.jpg is a test of new shader for lightwave3d, developer is my friend
presmagni.jpg is an industrial animation to show the plastic iniection.
zbrush tutorial.jpg is the result of workflow for a tutorial that i send to pixologic for a guide from lw to zbrush and back with full quality respect result and few render time, where i mix displacement for major dectail, bump for fine dectail and now that normal map will be usable from win and mac with lw9 and new nodal system (tb_shader_tree.p).

[PixelInfected]

moschino.jpg is a couple of frame from a 6 minutes animation that i did with a friend in a studio where i worked this year, a very challenge, 6minutes animation in 18 days, with some model just ready from previous test, but animation, lighting, rendering and postpro was did in these 20 hours day working. this animation was a presentation of new fragrance of Moschino maison launched this Saint Valentain day 14 febrary 2005. our studio did design of new olive dres and packaging, and we did also animation for presentation at MonteCarlo, at most world important show in the fine fragrance market.

gubolo.jpg is a character that i did during a teaching char animation to a class of four people.

[HieSpike]

Hi,

I think creating Gnomon workshop DVDs for Lightwave is a GREAT IDEA. Please do it!

I believe it would do two things:

For one, it would help give Lightwave some much needed credit. It needs to be out there for the world to see.

Secondly, I would presonally love to buy some in-depth dvd lessons on the features of lightwave that I don't have time to dredge through myself. Cloth FX, Hard FX, LScripting, just too name a few. How about a DVD for complex character rigging or maybe even a dvd covering plugin/shader writing.

Anyway, I say go for it...now!

peace out.

[pooby]

Hi..

The problem with trying to make a video to show certain High-End features within LW is that, the bottom line is, LW isn't very good at certain tasks such as Rigid body dynamics or cloth or very complex rigging.

It's really NOT the case that someone out there KNOWS how to do change the parameters to get great cloth in LW and we just need their wisdom - LW's cloth engine can't cope with collision effectively, so you cant do clothed characters (unless you count skirts, rubber trousers, or bouncy non-wrinkling shirts) So any tutorial in this area would not achieve high end results.
Again with Hard _FX.. It's not really a very solid engine, and has so many limitations, that it's not worth a professional tutorial. I woulld never use it on commercial work.
The rigging side could do with more in-depth tutorials, but the general problem is in LW that to do certain more advanced setups, (that are straightforward in some other packages) you can have a ridiculous number of work arounds in LW that would put most people off and expose LW as an inefficient tool for this kind of work.

Hence you get certain people selling their rigging DVD tutorials of very simple setups and arguing that this is all you need. (whereas a more accurate statement would be that this is the level that LW is able to cope with comfortably)

My opinion of LW is that it DOES have a long 'list' of features, but those of us who have been using LW for years have learnt to take many of them with a pinch of salt.

[PixelInfected]

i used a lot dynamic, in lw, maya, and oher software, but with exception of syflex dynamic engine, no one engine is fast and simple to setup, dynamic with lw is possible and professional or do you think that every shot with dynamic rendered is baked from other softwar?
anyway, the idea of courses is to do a parameter based and project based sample, to see every single parameter how to work, and at end of work, a full complete project to have a reference of you can do with this parameters modificication on tradizional working environment.
Before to buy people can see the result of dvd work, and then decide if is interesting for them or not.
i think is best for everyone.
me too in past i not found enought documentation to use in a proficient way the lw dynamic and was forced to translate from japanese the real documentation of fx_motion and fx_break....
there are a lot of studios lw based that produce for hollywoodian production a lot of sfx, and use lw and all its features to do that. my goal is to show all techniques that i had learned in last years and i used, then i hope that i convince about the ability of lw to produce some kind of shot.
i want to show how to work together with zbrush and postproduction, be cause no one did dvd about postproduction techniques with lw and after effects, combustion, digital fusion and more....
i know that actual lightwave have some limitation, i meet it during work, but not only with lw, also with maya, rhino, polytrans, and more. Best thing is to understand how the tool work and use it at better.

thanks for suggest, the idea is to show all full working features, at best of them, for example in the surface and lighting dvds, i will talk about occlusion shader, but i not talk about gmil which is half abandoned plugin, but i talk of free and working plugin like sg_occlusion, for example.

naturally i try to keep the compatibility with win and mac version, i have a lot of friends that are mac user, and i have good collaboration with Apple, and i would like to do a full compatible dvds for win and mac user.

guys it's a time
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

[sinbad]

With all respect, I would say you would have a hard time selling your training material for several reasons. Firstly, I would enquire as to your grasp of English if this to be your main language of communication, teaching isn't just about how well you know software, it is equally based on how well you can communicate, and with how much clarity you can disseminate the detail of your information. I would also agree with Pooby, many af the limitations are with the software itself. Gnomon and other esteemed training facilitators draw upon a wealth of reputable practitioners to demonstrate the workflow of Maya. You may find a niche, and I wish you luck, but you will have your work cut out for you.

[Zarathustra]

1) I have to agree with Pooby's whole post
2) Language may well be a barrier
3) private's comment of "establish some credibility. No one knows you." is legit

[phantomworkshop]

1) I have to agree with Pooby's whole post
2) Language may well be a barrier
3) private's comment of "establish some credibility. No one knows you." is legit

Agreed,

But, I'm also curious to see what you'll do.

Suggestion: Walk through an entire project, start to finish.. concept, modeling, uv, texturing, rigging, animating.. rendering. All of it. :) Or, do a series like that.. follow the same project.

Good luck!

[Digitalink]

Try posting some short video or web tutorials, see how well recieved they are before atempting dvd lenght material

[pooby]

dynamic with lw is possible and professional or do you think that every shot with dynamic rendered is baked from other softwar?




No.. I have seen many dynamic shots rendered in LW, but none that have convinced me that it's a capable impressive engine that is up there with its peers.
Sometimes I see tests that people have done and think.. That's good considering the shortcomings of LW, but wouldn't it be nice to just think 'That's impressive'

[Emilio®]

I think the idea itself is awsome. Now a days LW started to become one of the hotest 3D software, because of it's low price, easy learning and riendly UI, Lightwave will stand on the top of the scene for quite some time. I'd love to see some series of video tutorials, I mean competition always make competitors do better and better. Wether you're gonna work with Larry, Dan, Kurv or someone else, the idea about making such series of tutorials is awsome. I used to be a Maya addict...an Alias junkie..lol, but after I took some courses in one special effects studio, I kinda fell in love with LW. It's an incredible software...even though it's not the best, it provides an incredible ammount of posibilities and I hope that in near time we will have tutorials just like Gnomon make for Maya, ZBrush or other things.
I'll keep my fingers crossed for the project to become realty and if there is any way please keep us posted about how things are going.

Thanx a lot for thinkin' about us Lightwavers :thumbsup:




Emilio

[PixelInfected]

first, Happy new year!

ok, i read all comment and i can reply in short
my main language is italian, and english version will be checked and verified from many english people.

i have a lot of experience on training (6 years since about lw, and more for other arguments) and everyone i met in my classes are happy of my training, my special approach and quality of training. i did training in italian and english.

i have many idea about what i can show and i have some idea to show the quality of video, but actually is too much soon to show that, i attend lw9 beta to verifie and show that.

thanks for all comment, help me to do better.

[Nemoid]

I can add that I know Pixel since many years. he's a good Lwver and 3d artist. He knows Lw very deeply and all hell of workarounds to obtain correct results when the app can't, by compositing , rendering in passes and much more : he also helped Newtek to sell many licences here in Italy, by making people know about the software and understand it better.

Trust me, you'll be happy to see his vids indeed. :)

[Emilio®]

Trust me, you'll be happy to see his vids indeed. :)


I sure will be :thumbsup:

Pixel, you get all my respect for tryin' to show people what a great software LW is. I'm sure you'll teach us a lot of valuable things, so go on with the project man.



Emilio

[pooby]

PixelInfected.. I want to make it clear that I'm not doubting your talents or be-littling the idea of making tutorials in this area.

I just think there is a misconception that LW can do pretty much everything as well as it's competitors in all areas..
This misconception is usually held by relative newcomers who imagine LW to be a bottomless pit of features and capability.

The reason I made my remarks is that you have pretty much chosen to make tutorials on all the areas in which LW is terribly weak, and I can't see a happy ending..

I always like to be proved wrong though

[PixelInfected]

Hi Pooby,
i know you from your post, i understand your point of view, and i like it, i did this post be cause i need honest points of view like yours.

i know the weak points of lw, and i find some workaround to obtain good result with lw.

i want to show that, and help to clear some dark point of lw.
how many pros use expression and scripting ?
for maya, xsi and more there are a lot of documentation, for lw i must translate from japanese, and colect some part of doc spread around in the internet.

the idea is to show and help people to use these features that usually are limited to few people.
thanks

[brunotag]

hi pixel go straight ! the first dvd will be mine ;-)

[danielh68]

Hey Pixel, count me in too! I'm very interested.

[alvin-cgi]

go for it!:thumbsup:

[Nemoid]

PixelInfected.. I want to make it clear that I'm not doubting your talents or be-littling the idea of making tutorials in this area.

I just think there is a misconception that LW can do pretty much everything as well as it's competitors in all areas..
This misconception is usually held by relative newcomers who imagine LW to be a bottomless pit of features and capability.

The reason I made my remarks is that you have pretty much chosen to make tutorials on all the areas in which LW is terribly weak, and I can't see a happy ending..

I always like to be proved wrong though

Hey Pooby: don't worry. We all know Lw problems in certain areas and no one said that Lw is a magic wand.

However, there are methods to streamline things-solve problems knowing how 3D works : methods that are also used in real production environments like compositing, rendering in passes, faking things, setup things in ways that are different from what's commonly suggested and thus working fine....

Sometimes in Lw there's the need for workarounds to make things that in other apps can be a one click solution.That's true. But most of times its the same for other apps too.

And also, since we're using Lw and not Maya or Max, is better to know how to solve probs using Lw or other methods to get what we want.
Results are what's important.

I'd personally like to see Lw highly improve its animation capabilities and other weak areas but its not like that NOW, so its better to focus on what tools are at our disposal and how they work now.

The good thing i can assure to you and all other guys is that Pixel knows how 3D works deeply, and how Lw works even internally. He explained me things about Lw structure making me understand its strong points and its weak points.

Given his knowledge, he knows for example how to get faster rendering times, how to obtain a better surfacing, even using procedurals very well and every sort of smart tricks to get the job done. He touches Lw limits !! :)

Ok Pixel, now go and do it.

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