Cube Tutorial in Audio Visual (AVI format)

[Lin Evans]

I'm up early this morning for a job, so thought I would post link if anyone is interested. After a couple email requests for more information on the cube construction in Photoshop, I thought I would make an AV tutorial and post it. Rather than compress it in Flash and not knowing how many have which Flash iteration, I left it in AVI format. The download is about 65 megabytes and contains two AVI files - one an introduction and the other the actual Photoshop tutorial. If you find the codec incompatible, let me know and I'll use a different one or convert it to Flash 8.

Here's the link:

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/cubetutorial.zip

It's a first attempt, so not as polished as I would like, but I think it may be helpful for those not real familiar with Photoshop's more esoteric functions. Let me know if you find it helpful and I may make others for supplemental purposes to the PDF tutorial Jeff and I have planned for the Version 5 release. Any suggestions for changes or improvement would be welcome.

Best regards,

Lin

[Ken Cox]

Lin

the only player that works for me is

VLC

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

but them wmp has developed an aversion to some avi's and am not about to try fixin -- it still plays p2e's tmp avi so do not want to mess with codecs

ken

[Hawk]

Lin

Very well done tutorial – appreciated very much, as I have never done a cube before.

I opened it in Nero Showtime were I was able to use the control consol to pause at any time and minimize.

Then using Adobe Elements 3 as my editor I was able to work along with your presentation step by step.

For any members that do not have Adobe Photoshop, and may have Adobe Elements the instructions and tools Lin used are exactly the same except for one movement.

Lin mentions at one point to choose – “ Edit – Free Transform “.

In Elements the same is achieved by choosing “ Image – Transform – Free Transform.

Many thanks to you and all the other members for these great tutorials.

[Ronniebootwest]

It's a fgirst attempt, so not as polished as I would like

Well Lin, if this is your first attempt then I congratulate you. I have been making audio visual tutorials for some time now and I know what goes into them.

This movie of yours has been extremely well done and is something to be proud of. It is very informative and easy to follow. Thankyou for sharing it with us.

Ron West

[alrobin]

Lin,

Congratulations on the cube tutorial! Very well done, especially for a first attempt. No problem viewing it with WMP.

It is professional, easy to follow, and thorough, and your speaking voice is smooth and pleasant to listen to - all important elements in a "live" tutorial. I'm surprised at how much winzip compressed the .avi files. Which capture software did you use for the AVI?

Am looking forward to the rest of the tutorials you and Jeff have planned for PTE v.5.

[Lin Evans]

Lin

the only player that works for me is

VLC

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

but them wmp has developed an aversion to some avi's and am not about to try fixin -- it still plays p2e's tmp avi so do not want to mess with codecs

ken

Hi Ken,

It's always a guess about which codec to use so I may try to use Microsoft MPEG 1 if I can get my little capture program to read my codecs correctly.

Best regards,

Lin

Lin

Very well done tutorial – appreciated very much, as I have never done a cube before.

I opened it in Nero Showtime were I was able to use the control consol to pause at any time and minimize.

Then using Adobe Elements 3 as my editor I was able to work along with your presentation step by step.

For any members that do not have Adobe Photoshop, and may have Adobe Elements the instructions and tools Lin used are exactly the same except for one movement.

Lin mentions at one point to choose – “ Edit – Free Transform “.

In Elements the same is achieved by choosing “ Image – Transform – Free Transform.

Many thanks to you and all the other members for these great tutorials.

Hi Ralph,

Thanks for the tip on Elements - I decided to use AVI rather than compress it with Flash and use a bit less compression in the actual AVI for smoother action. Zip does a pretty good job of compressing it further so the download isn't too bad for broadband users. It's great that you could actually work along with the demo as that makes much sense when it's possible to do.

Best regards,

Lin

Well Lin, if this is your first attempt then I congratulate you. I have been making audio visual tutorials for some time now and I know what goes into them.

This movie of yours has been extremely well done and is something to be proud of. It is very informative and easy to follow. Thankyou for sharing it with us.

Ron West

Hi Ron,

Thanks for having a look. As I said in my post, it's not as smooth as I would like, but it's a first attempt and I'm glad it was easy to follow and may prove useful.

Best regards,

Lin

[Lin Evans]

Lin,

Congratulations on the cube tutorial! Very well done, especially for a first attempt. No problem viewing it with WMP.

It is professional, easy to follow, and thorough, and your speaking voice is smooth and pleasant to listen to - all important elements in a "live" tutorial. I'm surprised at how much winzip compressed the .avi files. Which capture software did you use for the AVI?

Am looking forward to the rest of the tutorials you and Jeff have planned for PTE v.5.

Hi Al,

Thanks for the favorable report! Yes, I was somewhat concerned because I used about 60% compression and the AVI, especially for the actual cube portion was sizable indeed but the zip compressed it considerably and made it feasible for those with broadband to download.

I used a little inexpensive program ($29.95 USD) called Screen Recorder Gold:

http://www.capture-screen.com/

I've been searching for a decent screen recorder program and have evaluated several. I would love to have a really classy program such Camtasia Studio which has all the bells and whistles, but the $300 price tag is more than I can presently squeeze out of my budget. Screen Recorder Gold seems to work well, but has issues finding my codecs which other programs easily find, so I may yet have to use something else. I like this one because it has a few features which are rarely found in inexpensive software but I have to work out the codec issues or try another. It only makes AVI files, but I have On2 Technologies Flix Pro so can easily convert to Flash FLV or SWF in any presently available format.

If anyone has any suggestions for alternative video recording software, I would love to try other programs.

Best regards,

Lin

[bharkins]

Nice job Lin. I like this approach to tutorials, and Barry Beckham does a superb job for his numerous tutorials. Have you tried CamStudio (free)? Not as eleborate at Camtasia, but the price is right.

What we need now is a full tutorial, or series, on PTE 5.0 in your technique!

Bill

[Lin Evans]

Nice job Lin. I like this approach to tutorials, and Barry Beckham does a superb job for his numerous tutorials. Have you tried CamStudio (free)? Not as eleborate at Camtasia, but the price is right.

What we need now is a full tutorial, or series, on PTE 5.0 in your technique!

Bill

Hi Bill,

Thanks! I hadn't tried CamStudio, but I've downloaded it and have it up and running. It's a super bargain, that's for sure. I'm still vacillating over codec issues, compression amounts and which works better. I've found one $50 program which has absolutely the best image quality I've seen with a variety of codecs including a DivX one which seems to be fantastic in terms of image quality versus compression. I don't know how they do it, but I'm concerned that using it may create a file not that compatible with that many peoples systems. I think I will do a test and post a brief AVI file on the forum small enough that many can download to test. The program doesn't have fancy cursors (actually just the one on your computer) nor does it have lots of bells and whistles, but it works flawlessly. I'll get back to testing tonight and perhaps tomorrow will have a test made which we can evaluate.

The one thing I've discovered it that the AV tutorials can't really use the preview or such but are pretty much limited to using the blue arrow to run through things manually. Though they will display the pans and zooms with the preview, it's always very jerky because ot the hardware acceleration. Even with 30 frames per second there is no smooth pan or zoom - not even worth trying actually.

That really isn't a big limitation for tutorials since anything we see in preview or play can be simulated manually by dragging the blue arrow on the timeline and that works very smoothly.

best regards,

Lin

[JRR]

Lin:

Thx for the video tutorial, they were great !!

I shouldn't ask, but what the heck....

Can a 6 sided cube be done ??

[Lin Evans]

Lin:

Thx for the video tutorial, they were great !!

I shouldn't ask, but what the heck....

Can a 6 sided cube be done ??

I don't think it's possible without using video or props. The essence is that we have the ability to rotate only on a single plane so we can "simulate" three dimensions, but we really can't turn an object in space without actually rotating it on a turntable and making multiple photographs to be played sequentially such as with 360 VR (Virtual Reality) demos. Doing this, of course in p2e is feasible because we can indeed display video simulation speeds with still images - that's essentially what we do when showing the "lake" or "ripple" effect when the software used to create the 30 or so primary images takes a single image, makes a mirror image beneath adding a lake effect then makes sequential images which we can easily duplicate into the thousands in PicturesToExe with no real memory hit over the first 30 jpgs. I actually created one sequence using over 10,000 images with P2E which can run eleven minutes in P2E flawlessly as a single slide animation.

Having said this, I'm not ruling out the possibility of actually simulating a six sided cube but I see no way at present to achieve this without actually doing the photography, but I've not given up thinking about it - LOL..

Best regards,

Lin

[Tomuk]

Hi! Lin,

First may I congratulate you on an excellent video tutorial, I found it very easy to follow and have now produced my very first 3D cube.

After download, the file opened with no problems into WMP (windows media player) and ran very smoothly.

Just one question if I may.

When saving as a PNG file, you always seem to save as none interlaced, would you breifly explain the difference between interlaced and none interlased an the benifits of each?.

Tom.

[thedom]

I shouldn't ask, but what the heck....

Can a 6 sided cube be done ??

hehehe, actually, I'm working on it...

But first I want to finish the v2 of my photocube photoshop action (see here) to make this effect possible for everybody. I just need time to finish it

(will be avalaible probably before the end of the week).

This photoshop action is only a version v0.1.

I plan to make several improvements and to make a template to make extended photocube effect.

I don't tell you no more to keep the surprise.

[alrobin]

Thanks! I hadn't tried CamStudio, but I've downloaded it and have it up and running. It's a super bargain, that's for sure. I'm still vacillating over codec issues, compression amounts and which works better. I've found one $50 program which has absolutely the best image quality I've seen with a variety of codecs including a DivX one which seems to be fantastic in terms of image quality versus compression.

Lin,

I just noticed than my "SnagIt" program (also one of TechSmith's products) will also screen-capture in video format, using DivX. The default codec is MS video 1, which seems to work OK on my system.

When you get around to testing codecs, I would be interested in running some comparisons with SnagIt.

[JohnFeg]

I'm up early this morning for a job, so thought I would post link if anyone is interested. After a couple email requests for more information on the cube construction in Photoshop, Lin

Lin,

your excellent, lucid tutorial was very much enjoyed.

Thank you for that and all the other hard work you contribute to this forum.

John

[Lin Evans]

Hi! Lin,

First may I congratulate you on an excellent video tutorial, I found it very easy to follow and have now produced my very first 3D cube.

After download, the file opened with no problems into WMP (windows media player) and ran very smoothly.

Just one question if I may.

When saving as a PNG file, you always seem to save as none interlaced, would you breifly explain the difference between interlaced and none interlased an the benifits of each?.

Tom.

Hi Tom,

Yes, interlaced mode is designed for television such as the U.S. 525 line NTSC standard where the images are built by beginning at the top of the TV screen and tracing the first line of image followed by lines 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, etc., until all odd lines have been traced then quickly returning from the bottom of the screen back to the top to trace lines 2. 4. 6, 8, 10, 12, etc. The term "interlace" refers to the fact that this all happens very quickly (30 odd and 30 even lines per second) and the odd and even lines "interlace" so the image is built of intersecting or interlaced lines. The phosphor persistence (the amount of time each triad of red/blue/green continues to shine after being excited by the electron stream) allows minimal flicker, but an interlaced image is less sharp and clean than a "progressive" image where line one is followed by line 2 by line 3, 4, 5, etc., in a "progressive" fashion.

So if you are building an image to be displayed on television, especially CRT television, you generally can save time and effort for the processor when the file is created as an interlaced video. You will sometimes note that effects such as the "Page Turn" in P2E when played on a DVD made for interlaced monitors shows the ragged "edge" from the interlace.

In short, save your P2E PNG transparencies as "non interlaced" for best image quality.

Best regards,

Lin

[bmccammon]

It appears that the "filter/render/3d transform" routine has been removed from PhotoShop CS2. It's probably right in front of me but I've looked in all the filters and the CS2 help section... nothing. Does anyone know if the 3d routine is in CS2? Thanks.

[Lin Evans]

It appears that the "filter/render/3d transform" routine has been removed from PhotoShop CS2. It's probably right in front of me but I've looked in all the filters and the CS2 help section... nothing. Does anyone know if the 3d routine is in CS2? Thanks.

No, you are correct in observing that it indeed has been removed from CS2 - why, only Adobe knows because it works very well with any Photoshop version.

You can download if from my site here:

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/3DTransform.zip

Just unzip and put the file in with your other plug-in's in Photoshop

Lin

[bmccammon]

Thanks very much, Lin. Much appreciated.