Firstly, I want to congratulate you on a wonderful program that has given many people including myself, the tools to express creativity like never before. Its been fantastic and every release seems to get better and better - so great job - really.
Now to my little rant (in a nice way of course).
The program isnt the easiest to learn - the UI and definitions are quiet challenging (for me at least - I aint a super intelligent being). But thats ok, everything i believe is just about learn-able. But the problem I have is the LACK of support in terms of OFFICIAL Vray tutorials and walkthroughs. For instance, I have both Railclone and Forest Pack Pro licences and their documentation/tutorials and walkthroughs are industry leading in my opinion. They are perfect and so easy to learn. They cater for all sorts of people and their needs. Some people learn better one particular way (ie - some people learn from manuals alone) while others are more taught via videos and documented walkthrough examples. Some others via diagrames and pictures… whatever, you get the idea. For such a popular program like V-ray, i feel like it lacks A LOT of support for OFFICIAL tutorials. I have signed up to various online courses, one of which being Grant Warwicks Vray course. I feel disappointed that its left to people in the community to come up with tutorials for V-ray. As much as I appreciated them, they are fantastic and I would have done them regardless of official Vray tutorials or not. I just feel like official tutorials take the guess work out of learning some things. For instance, throughout Grants course, I believe he mentioned that ‘I need to clarify with Vlado if thats how its done or why…’ or somehting along those lines… cant remember now it was a while ago…you get the idea. Anyway, Chaosgroup… please please please… especially with the upgrade from v2 to v3 of vray and the changes. Can you please provide some official vray tutorials videos or guides that can give insight on the settings and how to achieve results for different scenarious for particular industries… you can even break them down into how you have the quick settings.. ie a video/guide for studio settings /interior settings/exterior settings…
It would be great if you guys released an official video/guide so we, the community can stop second guessing ourselves and that you cater for the people that have specific ways of learning - as much as i love the program, my life doesnt afford me the time to sit down for weeks to knuckle down and learn the settings and what they do and how to optimise…
besides being helpful to your community, its a great marketing tool that im sure will help the business.
Looking forward to your reply and once again, keep up the great work and cool updates.
You are right of course, we don’t really have much, if anything, in terms of official tutorials and courses. I guess this is one reason why all kinds of weird workflows come up and confuse people. I think we have the resources to improve this, we certainly have the people and the knowledge. Hopefully it’s a matter of setting their priorities right.
Thanks for the reply Vlado. I really look forward more news on this. I’m sure a lot of your followers would appreciate and benefit it all.
Oh and one more thing… the implimentation of the mouse hover info within the settings… is it possible to make it stay on as long as the mouse is static? It disappears pretty quickly and its hard to read so fast.
I completely agree with the OP - official tutorials would be fantastic. I’m pretty sure they would pay for themselves in no time - learning how to correctly use any software can be a major barrier to adoption.
This would be fantastic. And I would request both video and written tutorials. The way that iToosoft do their tutorials for FPP and RC are excellent - they are spoken word video tutorials on vimeo at full HD, very clear, with the text version alongside so you can read later and refer back for details easily.
Hey there everyone! Just wanted to post a reply and introduce myself. My name is Dariush Derakhshani, and I have been consulting with Chaos Group for a while now, and I have officially come on board as the Technical Documentation Director.
I will have more to say in time, and more details to share soon I’m sure, but I wanted to say that we are definitely working toward having many more tutorials and videos to help people learn functions and workflows for V-Ray across many platforms. I totally agree with what you all have been saying here.
A little about me: I am currently a college professor in 3d animation, and have been writing about Autdoesk software for years (Introducing Maya and 3ds Max Essentials are my two main book series). I’ve also been in CG/VFX for over 18 years, with the past 13+ as a CG/VFX supervisor for commercials, tv, and film, with the last many years spent in V-Ray.
short cirkuit, I totally agree that people have different ways of learning, and we are for sure using this understanding in our approach here. I am very eager to hear everyone’s comments and suggestions, so keep them coming!
Pixologic is very good at this. Especially when introducing new features it’s very helpful to have a good tutorial to learn how to take advantage of them quickly without having to resort to trial and error.
Although if you start watching some of the early videos some of the practices are out of date, so you sort of need to watch them all to get the whole picture. In some ways, Grant could go back and add/re-edit the older videos to correct settings etc.
as much as I like Grants videos - i think they are too long for my liking. I have signed up to the more popular courses and I would have to say that Ciros couse is probably my favourite in terms of how basic and to the point it is. You get a LOT out of 10 mins. I feel with Grant there was a lot of trial and error. Ciros course is tructured similiar to Itoo’s where its just to the point. No trial and error. Not dissing Grants vid, just that the short and sharp vids suit me more - everyone is different i guess.
Learning how to do your own trial and error is very important, too many tutorials just tell you how to do something without showing you how to get to that conclusion first.
I somewhat agree, but to reach that point you need some help along the way. For official tutorials, getting new users going should be top priority. Having new/changed feature tutorials is just more about getting things to production quicker.