what makes a good tutorial?

[LucentDreams]

Text and video together will always be better but also much more tedious to make. Being ni the rigging section I assume you mean a rigging tutorial specifically? In that case to date the best series I've seen have been Jason Schleifer's, they come with video, good documented notes (his new one has the best written notes ever) but despite the medium for delivery what makes his tutorials better than most educators, myself included, is his uncanny ability to explain the WHY. Step by step tutorials on their own aren't much good, a user gets a finished result similar to yours but it doesn't really help them understand so they can do one on their own.

Explaining why something is done the way it is is far more important, it teaches them what they should be thinking and looking for and why certain tools are better than others. My favourite answer when talking to people in any field, about why they do something a certain way, is "I don't know, I was taught to do it this way." Would really make you worry if it was a surgeon wouldn't it?

Regardless of medium, the Why is key. If you can do video and Text together you've covered 2 of the three components to learning, Visual and Audible (which includes reading) and even a little tactile as many believe reading to also be a seems to be effective for tactile learners. Tactile learners will also simply have to follow along and do things step by step to help them learn, which is something a tutorial can't force them to do :/ The more senses you can stimulate the better.

[Dark Soldier]

hi

thanks , that was a really good reply to my questions

i'm not covering rigging unfortunately in my tutorials. it just about modelling and texturing for characters for games. i'm going to cover low poly and high poly modelling, normal map creation , how to zbrush with max and how to use zbrush and photoshop to create textures like diffuse, specular....

like you said its not good to do step by step tutorials which is why is why the videos will only cover a particular section of the character e.g the head. that will vary from video to video depended on what i find the most suitable for the particualr technique that i'm demonstrating .

also like you said i wanted to concentrate on the 'why'. but in the image+texdt documents there will be indepth breakdown of my whole character and why i chose to do things certain ways and what alternatives there are to the technique demonstarted, because theres always more than one way to do something.

at the moment i'm in the final stages of preperation for making the modelling section of my tutorials which will be made over the christmas period, i need a few people to test then out and tell me if the content has strong educational value and are easy to follow (any comments would be useful !! )

so if your interested just send me an email after christmas, i'll probably start a thread anyway

thanks again, that was one of the best replies i've gotten on cgtalk ever !!

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