Anyone own this Gnomon Workshop DVD about Alias Studiotools?

I was just curious to see if anyone owns it and if it helped them learn the basics of Alias Studiotools. I am aware that this dvd is probably a few years old and that there have been various upgrades to the software since then, but does anyone think it would still be worth getting it? I want to self-teach myself Alias. http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/151/Modeling-Essentials-with-Studio-Tools

Thanks

CJ

I have it. Honestly I learned more from the online tutorials available, and there’s a book called Learning Design with Alias Studiotools I have the PDF version. I learned a lot from that. It’s written by a guy who taught it at Art Center.

I uploaded the PDF here: http://droplr.com/1sQfa7

But it might be because I read the book first before I got the DVD so I didn’t really feel like I learned much from the DVD. Plus it’s boring and I fell asleep. The DVD Product Rendering essentials with Alias is pretty good though. That guy who teaches it works at Minimal and is baller.

In my experience, Gnomon is highly over-rated. Their stuff is expensive, and most of the time not all that interesting - but that’s just my opinion.

I learned a lot from the presentations over at Autodesk University, you can go to the site and watch them for I think a 100$ virtual pass. Well worth that I’d say. Plus you can download them so you can watch them more than once, trust me, you’ll want to do that :wink:

Also there’s the free online help: http://www.autodesk.com/techpubs/aliasstudio/2010/
A little bit drab and boring maybe but I loved reading through it, just casually on my iphone on the sofa, mind…

Haven’t seen the DVD, but looking at the resulting project I can’t say that would be a good use of the tool. Highly geometric shapes like they show there are pretty quick to understand, and it’s not Alias’s strong suit.

The included Alias documentation is actually fairly good at covering functionality of the tools. The Alias design site has some good (and bad) tutorials as well.

I bought that DVD a couple years ago and it’s pretty dull. he basically does a lot of revolves. I would not recommend it. There is a nice DVD on product rendering in Alias though. Granted everyone is rendering in Shot and Showcase now but it’s a really solid introduction to principles of rendering, setting up lights, customizing materials, depth of field, etc.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/53/Product-Design-Rendering-Essentials

To all who replied. thank you.

I decided not to get the Gnomon video I was asking about and just stick to that book that Tarngerine mentioned. I bought it a year ago and never looked through it!! (yes, embarrassing…) It’s just that I am more of a “video” person and I get bored with books easily and prefer an “instructor” and following along (as I have done with Scott Robertson’s videos). But Gnomon is so overpriced!! Geez. I will try out the actual PDF learning resources that Alias provides as well, as some of you suggested. It’s free. It might not be a “video” instruction, but it’s cheap. :slight_smile:

thanks again, guys!

FYI Autodesk tutorials have videos (some of them). check out the retractable knife tutorial.

Thanks Tarngerine! I have seen that one. :slight_smile: Wish me luck on my Alias journey!!

If you need any further help feel free to post questions up here or check the Autodesk forums. (Though from what Ive seen they werent heavily used last time I checked)

Thanks Cyberdemon!

No **** !

I informed about that and, turns out you need to pay for them. They are a subscription customers forum :confused:

I think you just need to have a registered Autodesk account but I’m not sure. My account is a subscription account so someone would have to double check.