I’ve decided to make the initiative to make a free (no charge) creative commons CC BY-SA 4.0 international licensed ebook for anyone to use or contribute to. I’m making this thread here to gather some feedback how I can improve it.
I’m using LaTeX to create the book. It’s aimed to be similar to one of those ‘for dummies’ books where someone who has never touched compositing or maybe are very much used to after effects could pick it up and get the hang of things.
This book is meant to be beyond the scope of the docs, getting into fundamentals of compositing and examples that might be not covered by existing videos (or the user doesn’t have time for an hour long video).
I wanted this to exist for myself also, I was a bit frustrated with information available, so I decided to provide verbose information I could refer back to.
I got a bit of a change of plans. I thought long and hard how I should do this, and I’m going to try with a static HTML web page. Far less dependency hell than LaTeX (Through TeXLive).
Oh, I know that you can make a PDF document out of HTML. WeasyPrint and the ability for chromium or firefox to save directly as PDF. Downside, is that you can’t have gifs included (You can, but it’s reduced to a static non moving image) and that might be an inconvenience compared to a HTML web page with gifs included.
Primary benefit of HTML over LaTeX is incredibly low barrier to contribute. Not only do you need to know LaTeX (let alone understand and read it) but you also need to install TeXLive or MikTex. With HTML, you just need a text editor (Which any OS comes with) as well as a browser (Which anyone is bound to have).
But a PDF document might have its benefits, I’ll consider adding instructions if I get around to that.
If you need something with a lower barrier (and a new rabbit hole to dig into) I would recommend typst app | github. It’s like LaTeX with a simpler syntax (similar to markdown) and has a more powerful internal programming language, the compiler is F/L/OSS (Apache license IIRC) and they are working on HTML output (it’s already in, but fresh) besides the already existing PDF output. There is no need to use the online app, you can use it entirely offline.
Drawback is that it is relatively new (API changes likely), but there is a german company behind which funds development and gets itself funding and research grants.
Typst is cool and all, but I really should be focusing on getting it done and maybe include other formats if someone wants to submit it. What ideas or what would you want to see included that isn’t already in the docs or if it’s in the docs, more verbose information to be outlined.
It seems you got it right, focusing on the content is most important.
Regarding your question: It’s been a while that I used natron and things may have changed since, but I think the overall workflow should be covered: Which file formats and camera settings are best as Input, and what formats are most useful as output for different purposes.
Text handling for titles would be another interesting aspect. Maybe in combination with tracking.
Ok look I really appreciate, and am really happy to see that someone is taking initiative. But before you start this project, Im going to ask you to consider whom this book is for. Is this book for people who are currently in their late 20s and older or is this for younger people? Because younger people just don’t want to read anything. I run the Natron Discord server and am basically one of the 5 active people there who answer questions and provide help. Sometimes, and more recently, the help required by most people is weird. They’re doing things that are way above their level of understanding and whenever they get stuck, they want someone to give them a solution instead of trying to figure out by themselves. When told that compositing is as much science as it is art and that they need to study theory, this is how the conversation goes:
So if this book is targeting young people in hopes that they will find out about Natron that way, I sh*t you not, kids haven’t even hears of the 2 bibles (VES Handbook and ASC Manual), books that they should read before starting their journey into VFX. A lot of them don’t even have enough or even any experience at all in photography/cinematography, which in my opinion at least is absolutely required for compositing.
Did my generation or the one before us not have this problem? I don’t know; I’m autistic. Here’s what I do know from my experience of training older studio staff, and recently trying to train younger people in VFX. The young generation wants every piece of information spoon fed to them by video they are visibly put off when you mention books or show them a fat one that will teach them more about a topic than I can in a 1 hour lecture. Every piece of knowledge broken down so it’s easy to absorb without requiring the brain to do any thinking. There is a book by Tom Nichols called The Death of Expertise that details how we got to this point and there are multiple factors to blame. This, along with my own declining mental health post Covid, is one of the few reasons I dropped my plan to make content. If I did it the right way, the vast majority of the target audience would simply not watch/read, and I’m not going to artificially dumb the content down for these people, as I would then be part of the problem.
Rant over, you’re free to go back to your normal lives.
In all seriousness though, before you put in a ton of effort and a ton of time (which you will need; it took me months to put together a 101 course for my training program and that was barely 25 hours of material), consider whether all this is worth it, not only to you but also in the grand scheme of things. If you know for sure that your target audience (and the Natron project) will realistically benefit from this, go full steam. I for one have given up on that front, but I will be ecstatic to be proven wrong.
Honestly, I think it was an extremely impulsive move myself to make this thread and project. It was fun while it lasted, but realizing how much I have to number crunch to write it, yeah… I rather have a moderator that’s logged in right now just lock the thread.
