Gnomon vs Kurv [Archive]

Buckie

07-05-05, 04:33 AM

Just recently I took delivery of Kurvs new "Get into ZBrush" DVD, so I thought it would be cool to do a little review of it compared to Gnomons "An introduction to ZBrush".

Whatever you decide, I would recommend any new user to Zbrush to get one of these DVD's, I hope you find this useful.

Ok first off Gnomons "An introduction to Zbrush" with Meats Meier. On first load up you'll need to check you have all the bits to view it, which if you haven't, you are prompted with appropriate links. When the DVD kicks in you get a sweet spinny "G" logo & some good sub woofer killing bass which makes you feel you have purchased a top quality DVD, which in effect you have. You are then presented with a list of all the lectures & an introduction to the artist.

On the disc you get around 4.5 hours of lecture, teaching you the basics from, interface navigation through to more advanced stuff like texturing in Projection Master etc. However knowing ZBrush quite well myself, many things that are extremely useful are missing. One which springs to mind is the use of stencils for modelling & texturing. Although the presentation is top notch the content lacks a bit & Meats' teaching style is very random but easy to follow. Also the sound is very erratic, sometimes it's so low that Mr Meier can't be heard at all, only to blast back in a second later destroying your speakers & eardrums. The DVD does help you get started in ZBrush, but you can't help thinking that Gnomon have blatantly omitted some content so that it's essential for a follow up DVD. This is good buisness, but at $69.00 dollars plus postage you can't help thinking you've been knocked just a little.

So now onto Kurvs "Get into ZBrush" with Glen Southern. On first load up (which isn't the quickest) You are faced with a HTML page with a list of links to the various tutorials plus a short profile on Mr Southern. Basically the DVD interface is Kurvs very own website, which isn't the best to navigate & to be honest seems a little cheap. When I clicked on the links to get to the tutorials, Windows gave me a warning about active x & basically refused to play the files, this may be my PC settings, I don't know, but I don't have any special settings that I've used, as far as I'm aware my PC settings are pretty much standard except for Firefox (hmmm). I explored the DVD & found the tutorial files, which I then opened in Quicktime with no problems whatsoever.

Apart from the interface & general bedroom built look & feel, Kurv has given a mind boggling 9 hours of lectures for half the price of the Gnomon DVD. Glens teaching style is much clearer & thought out too, plus you benefit from following one project from begining to end, unlike Gnomons more random bit & bobs. This DVD still has sound issues though, but not as bad as Gnomons. For half the price you get twice as much content, which covers virtually every aspect of ZBrush. With this title you feel you have got your moneys worth. The only thing that could do with some thought is the user interface, it just doesn't say professional when you compare it to the likes of Gnomon.

Pros & Cons

Gnomon Pros: Excellent presentation, good quality tutorials, Meats teaching style is a little random but easy to follow.

Gnomon Cons: Doesn't cover everything, sound is quite poor, price is a little steep.

Kurv Pros: Insane amount of content, Glen is an excellent teacher, the price.

Kurv Cons: The presentation's a little cheap & I had issues using the links.

Conclusion

Both titles are excellent & give you a good jump start into Zbrush, but Kurv give you much more for much less, albiet slightly rough around the edges compared to Gnomons title.

BUX - http://forum.3dworldmag.com/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

Reactor

07-05-05, 04:47 AM

Who cares about rough? It's all about the training! :)

Thanks Buckie... the reviews are much appreciated.

Frenchy Pilou

07-05-05, 05:23 AM

...come sometimes at Zbc :)
Pilou

marcus_civis

07-05-05, 07:16 AM

Thanks Buckie, the time you took to put this review together is much appreciated. :tu:

Buckie

07-05-05, 07:28 AM

Glad to help out guys...:D

spaz8

07-05-05, 08:06 AM

i own the gnomon, zack petroc and Alex Alevarez dvds- both are great.

my kurv "get into zbrush" dvd has been in the mail for a week or two so i hope it shows up soon before im off to vancouver friday. I was expecting it yesterday. I just wanna keep learning more, and get into using zbrush as an illustartion tool, not just for 3d models.No matter how much u think u already know you'll pick up somthing u didn't know u could do in zbrush with any of these dvds. -Ken

Buckie

07-05-05, 10:27 AM

Very true, I've still picked up bits from the Kurv DVD even though I've been using ZB for over 18 months. I also own all the Gnomon ZB titles & must say that Kurvs is definately up there in terms of content...

Hope the mailman gets to you soon, I think my DVD took a week to get to me in the UK...:D

pixelsoul

07-14-05, 08:55 AM

I agree i also bought the starting in zbrush from meats meiers and the dvd from alex alverez.. but i wish i had only the dvd from Kurv Studios i have not watched it entirerly yet but it seems like it's both dvds in one...

Also i think this dvd is allot faster. Only thing that is kinda anoying is that IE keeps blocking local .mov :lol:

Anywho.. :D

If anyone needs a tutorial dvd for zbrush, i would recommend kurvstudios over the gnomon dvds :tu:

tayete

07-15-05, 03:06 AM

I read yesterday (I think at CGtalk.com) that GNOMON is lowering its prices. From 39$ and 59$ you can get now the DVDs (if I remember well...)

Nightwolf10

07-19-05, 07:23 PM

They have just lowered it to $59, with all these other sites starting up with these great DVD training titles, i kinda knew Gnomon has to do something to keep their customers coming.

I always thought that Gnomon was way too expensive but they were the only people who i know that offered such DVDs for training, besides ALIAS who is charging a rediculous amount of money over $100 on some. I never got anything from them. I rented them at my college, and guess what, the first 10 min into the dvd i returned it and rented something else instead.

Kurv is pushing the limit to compete against the big dog's and i think they are succeeding. They are trying to get professional artists for their titles and not just anyone off the street.

Now that Kurv is here, i can't say i will ever go back to Gnomon. The only DVDs i got are the DVDs you mentioned here. Out of all of them i like Zpetroc and Meier.

I also got some 2D Dvds from Ryan Church, and a few Maya, but luckily i was not the 1 buying them. I got them as a gift from my older brothers and sister Last Xmas.

Hopefully they will lower the price even "more" in the future maybe than ill get back...

Right now at Kurv i can get more for less...

acmepixel

07-19-05, 09:04 PM

Buckie's reviews are right on the money. I also have both DVD's and both artist/instructors are very good.

Note to Mac users, the Kurv DVD is easy to play just open the folder and double click the Quicktime files. Although the first set is a bit hard to hear. You will need earphones on a laptop or crank up the volume on a desktop with speakers.

Great news about the lower Gnomon prices. I'll have to email a buddy about this. He's been jonesing for the Alvarez DVD. :tu:

pixelsoul

07-20-05, 02:38 AM

Yes i agree the sound is pretty bad that is really a shame, something i notice on many other learning video's also (*except gnomon) You would have think they could have buy some proper mic's

Buckie's reviews are right on the money. I also have both DVD's and both artist/instructors are very good.

Note to Mac users, the Kurv DVD is easy to play just open the folder and double click the Quicktime files. Although the first set is a bit hard to hear. You will need earphones on a laptop or crank up the volume on a desktop with speakers.

Great news about the lower Gnomon prices. I'll have to email a buddy about this. He's been jonesing for the Alvarez DVD. :tu:

Nightwolf10

07-20-05, 02:56 AM

I agree about the sound. They are not that great, but i never really listen to the sound on my speakers. I like it on my ear. Gnomon is better with sound, but you also have to concider that its done in a studio with all the equipment available to them. Kurv i belive just has an artist do it in their home with a mic i believe.

They could get a better mic i guess, but as long as i can hear it with the volume cranked up, i don't cry about it. To me what matters most is the content of the DVD and how good it is, and who actually doing it.

Southern, is just an amazing artist. He has images on almost every CG site you can imagine. He's well known around the industry, and he also i beleive beta tested Zbrush.

They are both great DVDs, i always liked Alvarez when he was doing the titles for Maya. I liked him most out of everyone because he never stops talking and telling you everything you need to know. Every button he presses he addresses them why he did it.

Other maya artists they paused a lot and had nothing to say, so u just had to watch and fall a sleep. I never doubted his DVDs, except i always thought it was expensive for my taste.

ALex is great, and i am glad he lowered his prices. I think he did a wonderful move with that. I think Kurv and Gnomon is going to be the only place for professional DVD tutorials on 2D or 3D applications.

WillBellJr

07-26-05, 09:56 AM

My problems with the Kurv discs is they never play well in my laptop. At work, the discs refuse to play at all.

Kurv is sending me a replacement disc for the ZBrush - the sound was way too low as mentioned - I had to turn up all of my volume sliders and yes, my brains got blown out when a system beep occured as well.

I had suggested to them a quick compressor pass with their audio using SoundForge or similar - that would resolve all of the audio level problems.

I just got their Silo DVD and unfortunately, while the sound is a bit better, it seems to play even worse than the ZBrush one - I couldn't even get the links to work on the menu page - I had to go into the disc and play the files individually.

I'm not sure what they're using to author these discs but they're certainly not liked by my HP laptop or DELL workstation at work.

DVDs that I author play fine in everything (though I will say as a video editor, I've paid good money for my encoders and authoring wares...)

I was watching one video and Quicktime just crashed in the middle - I sorta wish they'd use flash like Avid does with their XSI training discs.

Techno probs aside, the training content is great however.

-Will

pixelsoul

07-26-05, 02:20 PM

This could be some sort of codec problem though I had the exact same thing with Gnomon dvd's with the beta of QuickTime 7 all my problems where resolved.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/preview/

I am also wondering about http://www.digitaltutors.com
if the quality of their video's are as good as gnomon and kurv :)

My problems with the Kurv discs is they never play well in my laptop. At work, the discs refuse to play at all.

Kurv is sending me a replacement disc for the ZBrush - the sound was way too low as mentioned - I had to turn up all of my volume sliders and yes, my brains got blown out when a system beep occured as well.

I had suggested to them a quick compressor pass with their audio using SoundForge or similar - that would resolve all of the audio level problems.

I just got their Silo DVD and unfortunately, while the sound is a bit better, it seems to play even worse than the ZBrush one - I couldn't even get the links to work on the menu page - I had to go into the disc and play the files individually.

I'm not sure what they're using to author these discs but they're certainly not liked by my HP laptop or DELL workstation at work.

DVDs that I author play fine in everything (though I will say as a video editor, I've paid good money for my encoders and authoring wares...)

I was watching one video and Quicktime just crashed in the middle - I sorta wish they'd use flash like Avid does with their XSI training discs.

Techno probs aside, the training content is great however.

-Will

WillBellJr

07-26-05, 02:48 PM

I believe it's a codec issue as well (or either the app they use to layout and burn the DVDs)...

I'll try the codec and see - I'm sorta leery of Quicktime anyway - I was a QT pro user up to v5 and I stopped...

I prefer flash based tuts anyway since they're playable across a wide variety of platforms (anything with a flash plugin) plus they're easily resizable (when designed to be so.)

If not flash, then the TechSmith codec from Camtasia. Most companies serious about computer based tuts are using Camtasia anyway.

Macromedia has an interesting program for creating tutorials but since Adobe bought them out, can't say much about the future of their great software (I'm truly saddened by that takeover... :( )

Thanks for the Quicktime upgrade suggestion - I had already reinstalled it to make sure I had the latest, I guess the beta can't be any worse.

-Will

Nightwolf10

07-26-05, 03:16 PM

SLI_Fallen

07-30-05, 06:49 AM

Dont forget "Digital-Tutors Zbrush Basics"

As for me, I *NEVER* can have enough tutorials, especially video tuts. Always seems each one, even when explaining the same things, touches on different aspects of use, different ways of explaining things, and various ways of doing the same things. To me, this gives a more rounded (and reinforcing) understanding of the material. Sure it's a bit more expensive this way, but I look at it like i've made a significant investment in the software in the first place, why not spend a bit more to fully realize and unlock it's ,and your, potential...

Just ordered Kurv's and note they have a 20% discount across the board right now in honor of siggraph...

m0bus

08-09-05, 05:28 PM

I'd like to make a really quick little statement here in regards to the 'customer service' of KURV Studios.

Having ordered this DVD myself, I was originally pleased with the promptness of everything. I placed the order, got an email the next day saying that my DVD had shipped and thought cool, should be here soon. I learned from my last experience of using the USPS shipping method to use Priority mail as it generally arrived at my desk within 5 business days no problem.

So here's the thing... the dvd shipped on the 26th...the equivalent of 2 weeks ago, USPS Priority... yet, there has since been no DVD. Now typically I wouldn't make a public post like this and would more prefer to take such things up with the company themselves but it seems that nobody wants to respond to emails either :)

As to not seem like the 'black sheep' here, a fellow workmate of mine ordered his Zbrush DVD back on June 21st and has STILL yet to receive it and is going through the same week long email tag I have been (email on a Monday, get a response on a Friday). This is unacceptable business and horrible customer service in my eyes. We have paid for a product and made sure that we followed up on our end, why can't KURV do the same?

I'd like to think that this DVD would be a good addition to the library, but my advice to those looking at this is simply to turn the other way and order the Gnomon DVD's. I have NEVER had a problem dealing with Gnomon, infact I generally get my DVD in about 3 days tops and if there are any problems I typically receive an email within less than an hour offering assistance.

That's just my $0.02 on all this.

-s

kurv

08-10-05, 06:29 PM

spaz8

08-10-05, 06:37 PM

I'm afraid I'm having a horrible time with KURV myself. I ordered the glen southern DVD back in June, was charged on my visa, and have yet to recieve the dvd. Ive emailed kurv continulaly and gotten either no response or its taken a week or so for them to email me back and say were looking into it. I've emiled Wes 3 times from 2 different emails over the last 24 hrs.. no reply. In fact I did get a reply due to shawns post above, but wes seemed to not even know who I was, awesome my orders been lost after all this communication, i guess theres too many guys with 2 month old orders to keep track of. SO i send him my order #, address, etc. .. and as par for the course.. silence. - Ken

sad thing is ive ordered from kurv before with no problems, till this. Gnomon has screwed up 1 order of mine before, BUT, i had the corrected order in my hand like 18 hrs after i emailed them saying they sent me the wrong disc. I was more impressed with that than if my order had gone of with out a hitch.

m0bus

08-10-05, 06:37 PM

Wes,

I would like to bring to your attention that this is in no way a 'smear campaign against KURV'. The public should be aware of any flaws within a system, as a company it is your duty to meet the agreements of a sale. If there is a problem within that agreement then it should be resolved and dealt with in a timely and orderly fashion.

Correct, you did email me back to which your email stated "please verify your shipping address" when I had quoted my order email exactly as it was sent to me (shipping address, billing address, order # and the exact cost of everything).

I believe that it is very professional of me to bring this up as I don't want to see others get stuck in the same position.

While I won't post up the details in regards to Ken (I will let him do that himself and follow after me here) I will simply say this Wes: There is no smear campaign, there is no vendetta, there is quite simply an opinion of a professional who feels that the service of KURV could learn a few things from that of Gnomon.

I would have expected a more professional response coming from the company owner himself (who knows, possibly a better explanation?) but I guess I expected too much right?

Thanks for your time Wes, I see no need for this bantering to continue as I have made my points.

-s

kurv

08-10-05, 07:07 PM

I'm afraid I'm having a horrible time with KURV myslef. I ordered the glen southern DVD back in June, was charged on my visa, and have yet to recieve the dvd. Ive emailed kurv continulaly and gotten either no response or its taken a week or so for them to email me back and say were looking into it. I've emiled Wes 3 times from 2 different email in over the last 24 hrs.. no reply. I fact I did get a reply due to shawns post above, but wes seemed to not even know who I was, awesome my orders been lots. SO i send him my order #, address, etc. .. and as par for the course.. silence. - Ken
Ken, I apologize for not remembering who you were we get a ton of orders.

Shipping issues happen, it is a fact of business. As far as emails go... yeah sometime it takes 24 hours to get back to people.

We have shipped hundreds of these DVD's in a very short amount of time, you always have a few shipments get lost.

We do our best take care of issues in a timely manner. In your case, UPS has made an error in the shipment, and lost the billing detail. They have the package in Canada we are trying to get them to just bring it to you as opposed to taking the time in shipping a new package. That got away from us in time trying to work with them. Did we anticipate that going into it, no... just worked out that way.

As far as Shawn goes, we only heard from him yesterday... and he is not really giving us a fair amount of time to respond to him.

But seeing as you both work together at the same company, are friends and both had the misfortune of packages being lost in shipment... (man you two should get together in Vegas with those odds). Tell you what we can do... instead of shipping more videos to you, why dont we just credit back your credit cards and let the Canadian postal service enjoy the videos... sounds like someone stole them trying to put them in your mail box.

Belseth

08-11-05, 01:38 AM

I got a complete set of the tutorial DVDs from Gnomon today. Drove me nuts at first because they don't mention that they aren't compatible with DVD players, didn't work on my TV DVD player so I tried the one on my notebook and it locked it up so bad I had to pop the battery. I finally got it to play on my notebook but it sized it out too large and the controls were off screen. I tried everything to resize but no luck. I finally tried it on my main system and it played fine. Very annoying because I want to be able to follow the DVDs but it's tying up my main system. I'm having to pause it and switch over to Zbrush to try things on the tutorials. Very annoying. They really blew it on the authoring. The content seems excellent but not being able to play them on either a TV or notebook seems to be a very bad move. Most are going to want to follow what's happening on the tutorial in the software. The problem seems to be they need 1280 res and my notebook maxes at 1024. I originally got it to write and never had problems with the screen resolution before. Seems a dumb move standardizing to 1280. Like I say a lot of notebooks have lesser video cards and don't support it. If you can't play it on a TV it'd sure be nice to play it on a notebook. Hope they rethink that on future versions.

chadtheartist

08-11-05, 11:34 AM

I don't know how you ordered Gnomons' discs, but they do have system requirements listed right on their site. Maybe you ordered it from a place that didn't have that information posted?

Anyway, what you need to do to get the videos to play on your laptop is to look for the hidden files, and drag them off the Gnomon disc. Then just transfer them to your laptop and watch them. You can use Quicktime to resize the video to fit, scrub the video, etc... This is what I did and I haven't had an issue at all. And I'm running the vids on an old 1.4 Ghz Celeron laptop with 256 MB's system RAM and 32 MB's of video RAM.

pixelsoul

08-12-05, 08:31 AM

Yeah the interface from gnomon disc really suck.. i also have loads of problems with them when i just open the files in quicktime they play fine..

Btw i have never seen any tut dvds that play on normal dvd players.. as most are encoded with quicktime, divx ,xvid, normal dvd palyers support then .vob / svcd / vcd...

edonkey

08-13-05, 05:18 AM

it seams like Glen Southern has been using zbrush since the day it was born.

i would take Glen video 10 times over any of the others
he knows zbrush better then most.

these other guys, i haven't even herd of till they showed up as beta tester for the company,
they might have a good background of 3d art but when it comes to zbrush ask Glen :tu:

just because you can drive a car fast
doesn't make you a race car driver:rolleyes:

Belseth

08-13-05, 12:26 PM

Thanks for the info. Where's the Glen Southern video availible? I'd be curious to check it out. Other than than some issues with the authoring on the disk the content on the Gnomon disks is excellent. He did have a weird name for one hot key and I don't know what he was talking about in Introduction To ZBrush. Otherwise he gives you a good basic working knowledge. There are things that aren't covered but I still have four more disks to go in the series so I think most of the interface is in their somewhere. I think they should seriously consider doing a disk strickly on preparing and exporting to each of the major packages. I think it'd be a best seller. Cover at least Maya, Lightwave, Max and SoftImage. There's a few other possibles but those are likely to be the most used. Plus some of the others may not support 16 bit TIFFs, even Lightwave needs a plug in. I hope over time all the packagess can get together with Pixologic and workout standardized import/export so the user doesn't even has to tweak. Set up say a "normalize to maya" function in ZBrush. Then on Maya it would have an "import from ZBrush". There's an excellent little tutorial for importing to LIghtwave on the web but it seems pretty fiddly and can be streamlined, I'm trying my first import in an hour, wish me luck. From the looks of some of the tools coming I'd love to be able to setup morph targets in ZBrush for Lightwave. I know there's the morph feature but I'm talking about attaching a series of targets that other packages can read. Even better yet would be being able to either export and access the new functions in other packages or setting up deformation animations that could be exported. I went nuts when I saw the surface modifiers. I'd kill to be able to use them for lip syncing or expressions. You wouldn't be limited to morph targets you could handle expressions and lip syncing on the fly.

SLI_Fallen

08-14-05, 04:44 AM

Glen Southern is the artist on Kurv Studios DVD: "Get into Zbrush".

http://www.kurvstudios.com/

Belseth

08-14-05, 05:20 AM

I might pick it up as well. I always find everyone has their own tricks.

The learning curve has been nasty because the software is pretty twitchy. After working all evening on a model it developed a corruption. Very depressing. Not sure if it's fixable. definately not within ZBrush. The crashes and bugs, not to mention a non standard interface, has made it more difficult to get comfortable with than it should be. I was being paranoid about saving which for once nailed me because I was overwriting the same file for six hours. I found the corruption immediately after I saved it. I might have been able to save it through a script but the software crashed before I could do anything. Very frustriating.

pixelsoul

08-14-05, 06:49 AM

Normally you would just save different versions of your tool so i you mess it up, you can always go back to a previous version..

Once you get used to the interface and the fact that you can't pickup objects again after you drawed a new one, you will probably like it better then traditional software i know i do :)

I might pick it up as well. I always find everyone has their own tricks.

The learning curve has been nasty because the software is pretty twitchy. After working all evening on a model it developed a corruption. Very depressing. Not sure if it's fixable. definately not within ZBrush. The crashes and bugs, not to mention a non standard interface, has made it more difficult to get comfortable with than it should be. I was being paranoid about saving which for once nailed me because I was overwriting the same file for six hours. I found the corruption immediately after I saved it. I might have been able to save it through a script but the software crashed before I could do anything. Very frustriating.

Malloc

08-15-05, 01:31 PM

One thing I didn't really care for was that most of the Digital DVDs from Gnomon are DVD-Rom, and not DVD like their Analog videos. Least all the ones I have (At 10 so far, and have my eyes set on the latest from Aaron Sims). If they include actual scene files and such, that's fine but I'd rather have the versatility to watch them on a large screen, or in a regular dvd player vs having to watch it on a computer. Other than that, I think their stuff is pretty top notch. Depending on the instructor they sometimes skip over thinks like hot keys, or time saving things they take for granted, but I'm thrilled over all with the products. I've been looking Digital Tutors and Kurv as alternates, but so far I haven't seen specific ones I'm interested in.

Belseth

08-15-05, 01:44 PM

I agree on all levels. Not sure why they went the ROM route? There is no extra content, scene files and such, so it seems pointless and annoying. Also the authoring seems to be different on each. On one I can't minimize and on another I can. I did run onto one mentioned hotkey that the name threw me, it was the TILDE key. I don't recall hearing the name before and it's rarely used, it's the ~ key in the upper left. It's used for panning tiled maps.

If you're talking about the Aaron Sims on Creature Design, I got it. I was a bit disappointed because I thought it was a ZBrush tutorial. Turns out it's Photoshop and Softimage. Pretty stunning to see what he can do with Photoshop though. Makes me want to give painting another shot with it. I mostly do what he was doing with a brush tool with a cloning tool. I paint all day long in Photoshop but I haven't done the kind of things he's doing. It's rather long and slow but well worth the watch.

Malloc

08-15-05, 02:50 PM

I was talking about the "new" one Aaron put out, completely on ZB, and comes with the 150 alphas, etc. I have Zack Petroc's vid on Human Anatomy, Mr. Alvarez's on Head sculputing and Texturing, and Meats Intro to ZB along with a ton of the analog ones. I don't work in the industry, so it's usually my tax returns that go towards the Vids and software. I can think of a few worse ways to spend money. If XSI turns out to be the way I want to go for rendering, I'll likely get Aarons other two vids as well. I think one has some detailing, but mostly modeling in XSI, and the second vid doesn't have any (or was it the other way around). Either way, I find them all great for entertainment as well as educational.

Belseth

08-15-05, 03:22 PM

I ordered what I thought was a full set. I'd be curious to check it out. They didn't list it with the other ZBrush tutorials. I'll check and see if I can find it.

I've worked in the industry for over 25 years but runaway production drove me out, I did traditional visual effects, modelmaking, sculpture, etc. Unfortunately I'm working for a small toy company right now that doesn't pay much. That may change very soon but right now every cent I don't spend on food goes to computer software/hardware. I just blew around $3,000 in the last week. Took me months to get that far ahead and it's all gone now. My favorite saying is once you get into computers you'll never have time or money again. I have my sights on a quad Operton that'll max out at 32 gig of ram. Even building it out myself it'll set me back nearly 10 grand. Guess it's ramen noodles for a few more months.

martinSH

08-16-05, 06:51 AM

As the first guy said! the teaching material is the most importent! as you are buying those DVDs to learn more about somthing! Anyways your review is verry nice and strait forward! it gave me a good idea of wich DVD to bye! so thank you verry mutch!:tu:

Craig_Hardin

08-16-05, 03:40 PM

I have training videos from both gnomon and kurvs and I am happy with both of them. Meats voice is a little mono-tone both other than that I like the gnomon videos just fine. They went to rom because they where able to get a better video compression than the standard mpeg used in dvd players. (ensharpe) Yea it's a pain you can't watch it on your tv but having the video nice and sharpe is worth it. Bottom line is school is expensive, so throwing down a couple of hundred bucks for good quality training from master artists is worth it! I'm still watching the kurvs and getting my zbrush on, but so far Glen is doing a great job. I enjoy watching from different folks as everyone does it a little different.
So go spend some money the training is good with either company.:D

Belseth

08-16-05, 03:53 PM

I just wish I could run them on my notebook. It would be ten times better if I could follow the videos. I'm now having to go back through and watch portions because I remember it's possible to do certain things but I can't remember all the quirky steps to doing it. I'm not sure why they mastered in such a way to exclude 1024 res. Really caused me a lot of headaches. I'll take some video loss just to have the option of following it along. I'm seriously thinking about dragging out my old monitor I keep as a back up and setting it on the desk with one of my tower systems just so I can follow them along. Pretty silly to do it but the ZBrush interface is driving me nuts. You retain far more following along than watching four hours of lecture then trying to remember all the steps.

Craig_Hardin

08-16-05, 03:57 PM

If you copy the videos to your harddrive and open them in quicktime you can scale the window to fit your resolution :D
Also found that elimated the spin down issues with my dvd player on my computer.
HTH's

Belseth

08-16-05, 04:29 PM

Thanks. I'll try that. I assumed that the files were sercured. It'd be a massive help.

pixelsoul

08-17-05, 12:47 PM

I thought this as first also but they are just hidden :p

Thanks. I'll try that. I assumed that the files were sercured. It'd be a massive help.

DanielMD

08-17-05, 07:16 PM

What about digital tutors, is it any good ?

fletchman

09-10-05, 03:47 PM

What about digital tutors, is it any good ?
I have both Kurv's and Digital Tutor's one. Both are good and each complements each other if you are a complete newbie (like me). I like DT's DVD because it is clear, consise and covers all the basics (plus using a refernace pic to model which prompted me to buy it in the first place). Details are covered by Glen Southern in Kurv's DVD. And the amount of time spent in the project is a real eye opener on the power of Zbrush.

joe_seig

09-10-05, 05:52 PM

I downloaded DigitalTut's package awhile back. Very good as an introduction to zbrush, even if the artwork being created is somewhat dodgy at times.
If you haven't already, try googling "zbrush tutorials" to find free ones, also give it a try using google images too.

Clayton

09-13-05, 08:22 AM

I would like to thank everyone for their input as I've been looking for an introduction to ZBrush and decided to go with Kurv's "Get Into ZBrush".

Clayton

namequaltozero

05-06-08, 04:04 AM

In my case I go with digital tutors, kurv s., gnomon in that order.

The gnomon tuts are good but some times the voice of that guy in (zbrush prod. pipleline) are toooooooo boooring, repetitive and sombie-like, It comes to my mind this song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaNuB52_Irc) dont take it personal hehe, also that annoying windows sounds (asterix,critical,exclamation etc.) the voice volume are lower and need to increase the volume, to properly hear something, but that crappy windows sounds play at normal volume and just imagine what happend when one of that windows sounds played and my stereo and pc volume was near in the top.....·"#~@€@·!%%&! at the midnight when everyone sleep .... ( just right now im watching zbrush prod pip., disc2, lesson 3, 2:45 , :evil: !!!!!!!!!!! :td: :td: :td: ) , I plan to start learning maya but only for that detail I dont buy gnomon dvds anymore.

by the way if yur dont have experience wit ZB I recomend the digital tutors one, its more clear, also use newer version of ZB than gnomon.

and for all dt, g, ks, I never use the interfaces, only pass that and start watching the vids directly from the media directory. waste of time and effort to made that crapy user interface.