BlenderNewbies - a resource for learning Blender 3D
Get Firefox
Best viewed with the free Firefox browser. Minimum Screen Resolution: 1024 x 768

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Video: Super Time-Saving Tips (Part 1)

Here are some great time-saving tips to help increase your productivity in Blender.


Watch the video tutorial...



technorati tags: , , ,

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi!

I'm having problems expanding this one. I've been using Stuffit Expander (mac) on all other video files and it has worked without problems. While I'm trying to expand the large file I get an error message saying that the file is corrupt.

I've looked for a Mac version of 7-Zip but haven't found any.

BTW thank you for your great tut's so far!

Regards
Christian

Kernon Dillon said...

I just did a test download with no problems and was also able to extract and view the video.

Try this link for a possible Mac version of 7zip however, I have no idea if that will work or not. It looks promising, though.

http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/

Kernon Dillon said...

Also check this page (at the bottom):

http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

Anonymous said...

Thanks Kernon,

I didn't get krmathis' 7-zip version to work, but I was able to extract the large file via Unarchiver.

Thanks again for your great tutorials!

/Christian

Anonymous said...

Hey I think that its great that you are doing these video tutorials. Learned alot! Good job!

Anonymous said...

This was one of the best video tutorials i have ever downloaded. Simply Awesome.please keep up the good work.
regards
-pranay

Unknown said...

I just can not thank you for the great work you have put in to give use such profesiol videos! Not scence Greybeard have I gleened so much! There was a trick you you did near the end of you video "Pivot Power" that just blew me away where you added faces to the first tower. Will there be a tutorial about that!? (hint, hint...)

Thanks again for great work,

Eric

Kernon Dillon said...

Thanks everyone for the kind words!

Anonymous said...

Hi,
I downloaded and unpacked the large video-file, but I'm not able to run the video. IrfanView misses vids:XVID (I don't know, what that is) and the Windows MediaPlayer just freezes.

I really would like to learn some first blender-steps.

Regards, Hago

Kernon Dillon said...

I've never used IrfanView to watch videos so, I don't know if it's simply an issue of downloading the xVid codec. You can try that first, if you still want to use IrfanView.

I use the VLC and MPlayer media players to test all the videos I make so, I know they work. VLC seems to offers the smoothest playback of most videos and, I don't recall ever experiencing a codec issue with VLC. MPlayer is my second choice. They're both free and don't include any spyware or adware junk. Google the names and you'll find them.

Thanks

Anonymous said...

thanks.
Subtitles will be good.

Kernon Dillon said...

If you're having problems downloading, I need more info. I don't think it's my hosting service because I use one of the best services available and I'm no where near my monthly bandwidth (1000GB). Also, the video has been downloaded many, many times (over 2,000) with only two or three people mentioning a problem. So, it's quite possible that there may be some issue on your end.

-What OS are your using?
-Dialup or Broadband?
-Are there any limitations imposed by your service provider?
-Is there a timeout issue with your system or ISP?
-How are you downloading (browser, download managing software?, etc.)
-Is there an issue with your firewall, antivirus, etc.?
-What other applications are runing that may be effecting the download?
-Is there an issue with HD space?

John E. said...

Hi Kernon, just coming from Blendernation. I haven't downloaded the videotutorial even, but I was wondering you could produce smaller files, with no penalty on quality. I made some tests yesterday, producing videotutorials. The results: 1.3MiB per minute, at 800x600,with audio. The quality is very good. If you are interested in how to achieve such compression, email-me ([My-nick]@gmail.com).

By the way: thanks a lot for your videotutorials!!! they are great!

jedihe

Anonymous said...

i tried with firefox 2.0 and opera9 and it didn't work... i guess there's too much people downloading the video at the moment. i will try later tonight...

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your effort. A really well done video tutorial. Found some stuff which was new to me :-)

Andreas

Anonymous said...

I had problems downloading. Finally, I tryed option 4 (mirror) and it worked properly.
Thanks for this usefull tutorial.

Anonymous said...

Ctrl-L does almost the same as simple L-Key but with selecting everything connected with the selected vertice. Simple L selects just every vertices which are connected to the mouse closest vertice.. Just try it out.

Anonymous said...

Hey, Just a quick point... I've downloaded a few of your videos and they are quite nice... but I noticed that your audio is a raw pcm stream. This means that (for example) the Blender Screens video is about 12mb of video and 114mb of audio. I reencoded the file (simply copying the video stream and reencoding the audio stream as a 64kbit cbr mp3)... and the resulting file was 17mb (rather than 126mb). The resulting file had more than adequete audio... and the video was simply a stream copy (and so lost no quality). I don't know what platform you are on, but if you are on linux and have mplayer/mencoder... I just went:
mencoder old_file.avi -ovc copy -oac mp3lame cbr:br=64 -o new_file.avi
anyway, keep up the good work and I hope this helps

Anonymous said...

oh, by the way, further to my above comment... the reason zipping your file seems helpful is because it contains an uncompressed audio stream. Zipping the version with the mp3 audio will be virtually useless, so you could just let people download the video file itself... this would obviously also avoid all the zip compatibility issues people seem to be having.

Kernon Dillon said...

You're right about the audio. In the past, I simply didn't know any better. But, I've recently begun using and mp3 format for the audio. However, I just checked my last video and the audio shows PCM when I checked the file details (in Windows) !!! I know that I explicitly set it to mp3...hmmm. I'll have to run some tests to see why it ends up as PCM. ...I know I set it to mp3...

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

The copy/paste feature blew my mind. I had no idea that was possible. Thanks for your helpful tips.

Iván Egües said...

Thank you for your tutorials... they are great!!!

Have you consider doing some tutorial more advance?... for example in this one the part you use Discombobulator blow my mind... even you didn't explained i could get it.

Or if I can make a request: nodes!

Keep the good work, and thanks again!.

Kernon Dillon said...

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad the tutorial helped. I have plans for a Super Time-Saving Tips II, as well.

Yes, I will definitely be covering much more advanced topics in the future (character modeling, texturing, animation, fluids, etc.).

Stay tuned...

Anonymous said...

Wow! I'm blown away by the quality of your tutorials. This site is a treasure trove of information! Thanks Kernon! You made my experience learning Blender even faster and easier! I'm a user of other popular commercial packages like Maya and Max, but Blender has shown that it is robust enough to compete. Have you thought about compiling your videos into a ultimate Blender Training series and sell it to fund more training videos? I'll be the first to buy it from you!

Warmest Regards!
Weelian, Singapore

Kernon Dillon said...

Thanks!

BTW, I'm about 80% done with a tutorial compilation DVD-ROM. It will contain most of the tutorials currently on the site. And, the image quality will be better because I don't have to use so much compression (or any). The lo-res videos will also be reproduced at their original higher resolutions.

The cost will be very affordable, less than the cost of one average tutorial video. I view the DVD as more of a delivery service since the videos are freely available for download. It should help those on slower connections and it's much better than loading up your hard drive or burning your own discs.

Post a Comment

Comments are always appreciated, thanks!