Author Topic: Helpdesk guides & Tutorials  (Read 6510 times)

2018-03-23, 11:59:49

Beanzvision

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Hi guys,

As you know there is no official user manual for Corona/C4D and that we have been putting together helpdesk guides for some time now. What we would like to know is what sort of articles mean the most to you? In what area's do you need clarification? When it comes to video tutorials, what would you find beneficial?

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2018-03-23, 13:21:59
Reply #1

Gruender

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I would like to know more about fog and sss/volumetrics/skin.
Secondary is light settings, maybe some special tricks with hdri or dos and don'ts.

Cheers...

2018-03-23, 13:48:35
Reply #2

Eddoron

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I hope you turn that helpdesk stuff into a proper documentation as the other renderers do have.

Example:

Materials>Channels>Displacement: Description+pics and at the bottom problems that could occur: -insert helpdesk info here-

For the video tutorials, I think that pretty much everything is covered.

What could be useful:

-The most common mistakes/threads in the forum that are created all the time with the same problem.
- How t use the search (forum+google)
- Reading is fun!

2018-03-23, 14:21:28
Reply #3

burnin

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If you want an advice, read further, otherwise, disregard.

Wanna be efficient? Show some effort...

Make a study. Find your target groups, make a questionnaire, send to members, possible future clients, transitioning customers, studios, c4d forums, cineversity, cgarchitect, ronen, corona's mailing list, post on official site... gather as much data as possible to produce simple, yet most efficient manual there is (be aware of Corona's philosophy & guidelines).
Then, when you're finally ready to provide on the site, make it so it's also available to be downloaded as an ebook (pub, pdf, djv format). As of lately, it's becoming more and more obvious that people still prefer having something to read in their hands & offline (during commuting, lunch, free time, vacations, weekends...) on a phone, a tablet, printed...   

Asking here you're just providing to small minority. A drop in the sea. The easiest way out. As sending users to copy/paste/translate 3DSmax's manual and YT videos. Of course community needs to be well informed and listened to as they are the heart and the core of modern public communications.

Maybe this writing seem as inappropriate here, but this looks like an attempt, an amateur's try to help without any kind of professional touch, lacking any sense of mastery.
 
Well, my only hope is i gave you something to consider, to think about and work it out.
No hard feelings. You wanna do good, best for the final release, right? :D

With regardS.


PS
To everyone, throw as many ideas, problems, caveats, questions as you have on your mind... through noise the picture clears. 
Even other renderers are lacking in some aspect. Do better.

« Last Edit: 2018-03-23, 14:28:58 by burnin »

2018-03-23, 15:31:12
Reply #4

Beanzvision

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If you want an advice, read further, otherwise, disregard.

Wanna be efficient? Show some effort...

Make a study. Find your target groups, make a questionnaire, send to members, possible future clients, transitioning customers, studios, c4d forums, cineversity, cgarchitect, ronen, corona's mailing list, post on official site... gather as much data as possible to produce simple, yet most efficient manual there is (be aware of Corona's philosophy & guidelines).
Then, when you're finally ready to provide on the site, make it so it's also available to be downloaded as an ebook (pub, pdf, djv format). As of lately, it's becoming more and more obvious that people still prefer having something to read in their hands & offline (during commuting, lunch, free time, vacations, weekends...) on a phone, a tablet, printed...   

Asking here you're just providing to small minority. A drop in the sea. The easiest way out. As sending users to copy/paste/translate 3DSmax's manual and YT videos. Of course community needs to be well informed and listened to as they are the heart and the core of modern public communications.

Maybe this writing seem as inappropriate here, but this looks like an attempt, an amateur's try to help without any kind of professional touch, lacking any sense of mastery.
 
Well, my only hope is i gave you something to consider, to think about and work it out.
No hard feelings. You wanna do good, best for the final release, right? :D

With regardS.


PS
To everyone, throw as many ideas, problems, caveats, questions as you have on your mind... through noise the picture clears. 
Even other renderers are lacking in some aspect. Do better.

Hi burnin,

No offense taken at all, We already have a good idea of what we want to add (and not just taken from max) which is why the entire helpdesk is being rewritten. It's in need of updating so that's what we're doing. This isn't the only place we plan to target for feedback and being the official forum, you gotta start somewhere.
The popularity of Cor/c4d is growing every day and we're hoping to make it a smooth ride for newcomers with the least amount of hiccups along the way.
I also agree about having something to download/read "during commuting, lunch, free time, vacations, weekends..." as you put it. This has already been thought of.

One step at a time
Bengamin Jerrems l
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2018-03-23, 15:53:23
Reply #5

maru

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(just a small clarification)
Ben (beanzvision) is now officially a member of Render Legion. He is currently mostly responsible for C4D-related customer support, and preparing C4D helpdesk content.
Our C4D helpdesk in its current form can be already accessed at https://help.c4d.corona-renderer.com/
We are still improving it, but I think it does its job quite well already!

This thread here is a friendly question to our community. What would you like to see? What guides? Tutorials? Maybe we overlooked something important? Maybe we can fix something functionality-wise?

I hope you turn that helpdesk stuff into a proper documentation as the other renderers do have.
We are planning to make it at least as good as our 3ds Max helpdesk - http://corona-renderer.com/help
As to "technical documentation" we have our interactive doc here - http://corona-renderer.com/doc
I guess it is possible to create something similar for C4D, and of course there will be also proper tooltips and help links inside C4D.

Quote
Materials>Channels>Displacement: Description+pics and at the bottom problems that could occur: -insert helpdesk info here-
Most common problems related to displacement are with RAM usage. You can find a "universal" guide on this which will work for any host app at https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000023310

Quote
For the video tutorials, I think that pretty much everything is covered.
Really? We don't have that much C4D tutorials yet! :D

Quote
What could be useful:
-The most common mistakes/threads in the forum that are created all the time with the same problem.
- How t use the search (forum+google)
- Reading is fun!
That makes sense, but probably after the final version is released. I am sure some questions are going to pop up again and again until some common bugs are fixed and features added by our dev team.


I would like to know more about fog and sss/volumetrics/skin.
Here, we've just launched this page: https://help.c4d.corona-renderer.com/support/solutions/articles/12000042333

Quote
Secondary is light settings, maybe some special tricks with hdri or dos and don'ts.
Interesting ideas. We will note this down.

@Burnin:
Thanks for your brainstorm. ;)

We are of course browsing the forum, Facebook groups, etc, to make sure we cover all the topics people find interesting/undocumented/hard to understand. The point of this thread is just to see what our forum users have to say, and to make sure we don't overlook something important. I don't see anything wrong about it.

Currently we prefer to create guides and video tutorials as straightforward "how to do X" manuals. It proved to be a good solution over the few years and we are planning to keep it like this. One of the most common uses for the helpdesk articles is sending them to the users when they contact us through our support channels.

PDF guides have already been requested. It's an interesting idea, however it would definitely require a lot of extra work, which I am not sure we can afford right now. Then it would need to be regularly updated and checked for errors, just like the online guides. One idea is for the user to simply save the freshdesk page he finds interesting as pdf, and then even print it if he wishes to. We also try to make the helpdesk guides as copy+paste friendly as possible, so they can be moved to notepad if needed.
« Last Edit: 2018-03-23, 16:14:41 by maru »
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2018-03-23, 16:10:26
Reply #6

houska

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[...] and of course there will be also proper tooltips and help links inside C4D. [...]

Unfortunately, tooltips are not supported by C4D GUI :-(

2018-03-23, 16:14:23
Reply #7

maru

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[...] and of course there will be also proper tooltips and help links inside C4D. [...]

Unfortunately, tooltips are not supported by C4D GUI :-(
Oops, sorry for false info then. But there are help links under right-click menu, right?
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2018-03-23, 16:19:16
Reply #8

houska

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Oops, sorry for false info then. But there are help links under right-click menu, right?

Yes, we actually discussed this with the guys in a pub yesterday. That's THE way to make documentation in C4D and we plan to do it this way. So you would right-click on a feature and select "Show help" from the context menu and it would show you the corresponding helpdesk/freshdesk article.

2018-03-23, 22:08:39
Reply #9

Eddoron

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I hope you turn that helpdesk stuff into a proper documentation as the other renderers do have.
We are planning to make it at least as good as our 3ds Max helpdesk - http://corona-renderer.com/help
As to "technical documentation" we have our interactive doc here - http://corona-renderer.com/doc
I guess it is possible to create something similar for C4D, and of course there will be also proper tooltips and help links inside C4D.

Quote
Materials>Channels>Displacement: Description+pics and at the bottom problems that could occur: -insert helpdesk info here-
Most common problems related to displacement are with RAM usage. You can find a "universal" guide on this which will work for any host app at https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000023310

Quote
For the video tutorials, I think that pretty much everything is covered.
Really? We don't have that much C4D tutorials yet! :D




-The helpdesk is an FAQ, not a documentation

- That was just an example of how the structure of the documentation should/could look like. Click on Materials, the menu expands, types of materials appear. Click on Skin, Hair etc and read a description of what it should simulate and what the parameters do. Some examples of different settings and maybe at the bottom the most common mistakes/problems with that type of shader(eg. RAM USAGE)
Quote
https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/SPDOC/Interface
https://support.solidangle.com/display/A5AFCUG/Arnold+for+Cinema+4D+User+Guide
https://docs.redshift3d.com/display/RSDOCS/?product=cinema4d
https://docs.otoy.com/Cinema4DH/C4DPluginManual.htm#Cinema4D/DiffuseMaterial.htm
https://renderman.pixar.com/resources/RenderMan_20/PxrMarschnerHair.html
http://support.nextlimit.com/display/maxwell4/Global+Material+Properties
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/shade/build.html
http://vrayforc4d.net/docs/

As you can see from examples A to X. They look a little bit different than the HELP desk and one can easily find what they're looking for. The helpdesk should be its appendix.

- Well, the MAX tutorials aren't that hard to translate into Cinema. If people need the sight of a familiar GUI even though the settings are pretty much the same, fine. Looks like we need the same in green.
For the topics of the videos, make useful examples connected to archviz. That's what most people seem to do. Oh, wait...

2018-03-23, 23:35:34
Reply #10

indexofrefraction

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i second Eddoron.

the help desk is a faq or guide for beginners but if you need to look up something quickly, a real manual is way better. no offense, but i dont understand why corona goes such an odd way for the documentation.

to me it seems also that a real manual is easier to maintain later on
« Last Edit: 2018-03-23, 23:39:36 by indexofrefraction »

2018-03-26, 12:40:16
Reply #11

houska

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[...], but i dont understand why corona goes such an odd way for the documentation.

Legacy and effectivity reasons, really. Right now, the freshdesk is really a bunch of answers and questions, but we intend to make it a fully-fledged documentation with table of contents, links between articles and cooperation with C4D itself. Offline version shouldn't be hard to make from that if it's needed later on.

2018-03-26, 21:38:04
Reply #12

indexofrefraction

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@ houska  +1 :)

2018-03-26, 21:55:30
Reply #13

Benny

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Even though are many good videos, I think some of them could use an update for new users as workflows and best practices often change between versions.

2018-03-28, 11:12:28
Reply #14

maru

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Even though are many good videos, I think some of them could use an update for new users as workflows and best practices often change between versions.
That's also the main reason why we are rarely updating the videos right now. :)
There is so much going on in development from one version to another that we would have to redo many videos each time a new version is released. That's why we believe it is better to wait for the final version (or a semi-final daily build slightly before the release), and then provide up-to-date videos.
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