This is a test video of my settings in Camtasia Studio for recording. I have seen some videos in YouTube that are clear then at some point turn blurry. Let’s see if the settings I used are OK.
What I saw in the video was a blurry image at first and then it became clear, exactly the opposite of what I have seen in others. I’ll do some adjustments and check back later.
Looks like I will need to switch my focus to Camtasia recordings until at least the first week of September. For our SAP/cERP training, the book is alright for reference but the guys I work with really need the visual experience of watching a person going through the motions of what they are trying to accomplish. Since I can access our cERP system from home I will be going through the book, chapter by chapter and creating small videos for the teams reference. I’ll start tomorrow when I get home. To bad I will not be able to publish these outside of work (they will contain trade secrets)
I started watching the Character Modeling Tutorial for CGCookie.com Citizen members this morning and so far have been suitably impressed. If you are a Citizen take the time to watch this video course (to use the new term instituted by CGCookie.com 4.0) by Johnathan Williamson.
Watching this video I was paying particular attention to the work flow and saw that what I have been attempting to do was close to on target although I did forget to work on the sweater, I completely forgot about that detail. The other two were the use of the skin modifier which I have seen in action but have never put to use and as a result was not a tool I thought about and second, sculpting, this is a tool I am very uncomfortable with and that being said, I did not consider this at all. I believe I will incorporate both of these to some extent with the character I am working on. I don’t know how but I shall try.
Another thing have been doing lately is when CGCookie.com presents a new course I will download all the videos, fire up Camtasia Studio 8.0 and add all the videos to a project. I then publish this project including markers for a table of contents and presto I have a directory of files I can easily transfer to my 64gig thumb drive and take with me anywhere. Try it out, it works great.
I created the animation video for the logo last night and was somewhat impressed as to how easy it is to accomplish in Blender. I created 4 different video formats .avi (two different types), H264 and a .dvd or mpeg file. The most jittery was the H264 file and all three of the other formats were very smooth. The .avi raw file was the largest.
After I created the files I loaded Camtasia Studio 8 with my Coffee Mug tutorial and added the logo to the start and end of the clip. The resulting video turned out great other than the fact I really need to create a logo all my own and came up with some ideas for that. Placing the logo animation at the end of the video was a little much and I would prefer just the final still seen below.
During the day I will create a script for a short tutorial on creating a .avi from a frame series generated from blender and complete the video portion tonight. This will be a very short video as the process is quite simple. I will practice my script a few times to get it correct and add it to the video portion in Camtaisa Studio 8 later in the week.
Update:
Looks like I won’t finish the script today at work. I had some problems with creating a quick animation in Blender. It turned out to be the same problem I had during the weekend; when I finished rendering once and tried render again after a few changes it would not work. So, after searching and searching for a solution without any luck I went back into blender and tried to render, would not work (duh). I then went back into the video sequence editor and my images were still there but I had deleted them from the drive! I then selected the sequence of files, deleted them and hit the render button for animate and (bang head on desk) it worked! Day wasted, which meant I wasted HOURS on Sunday trying to figure this out. Now back on track but will be a day late but not a dollar short.
I have completed recording and editing my first tutorial. Below is a render of the finished tutorial and the photo used in the opening shot.
The tutorial is based on one of the Mugs in the Tea set ‘Still Life’ tutorial I started and completed earlier this morning. I thought this would be a good start for the following reasons:
I felt the video turned out great for my first. The total time of the video is just over 12 minutes, a little more than 15 minutes prior to editing. Editing of this video itself took a couple of hours.
P.S. I loved doing this.
P.P.S I am getting used to my recorded voice.
Downloaded the new update of Camtasia Studio (Version 8) and looking forward to experimenting with all the new features starting Friday after work and throughout the weekend.