Recently I've been trying to improve our documentation for artists setting up models and actors with physics on them. My process for this has mostly been to learn how to go through that entire procedure myself - what better way to identify all the pain points in a setup process than to live through them?
Part of the documentation that's come out of this is an instructional video that takes newcomers (both to Maya and to our own tools) step-by-step from "here is how you build and rig a basic object in Maya" all the way through to having a working, collidable object in game.
Ordinarily I dislike tutorial videos myself - it's usually much quicker to just read through a document, compared to waiting for a person to very slowly and ponderously talk their way through whatever they are explaining.
But in this case, I found that the text documents we had weren't enough for to really understand which buttons to push and how things ought to look in the editor. So here's one case where a picture really is worth a thousand words (and I guess a video is worth 29,970 words per second). Also, making this sort of video is fun.
Here's a brief excerpt from that video where I rig my beautiful programmer-art centrifuge with static collision:
Having gone through this, I'd like to share some tips on making this sort of tutorial video (and common pitfalls to avoid).
I use Open Broadcaster Software to capture video. Typically I just set it recording and leave it running while I work through whatever it is I want to depict, since I can edit out any false starts, misclicks, or pauses afterwards when I put the video together.
One common mistake is to try to record these things like a stage play, getting it all right in one take. There's no need for that, and it almost always produces a suboptimal result. Use video editing software and assemble your video from takes, one shot at a time, like the pros do. I use Adobe Premiere, but Windows Movie Maker or Blender will do.
I capture video with my headset microphone turned on, recording me thinking aloud while working through the task. Even though I won't use this audio (see below), it's helpful reference to have in the video file so I can remember what I was doing when I edit the clips together.
Stream-of-consciousness recording results in a lot of pauses, "um"s, and wasted words. Stitch your video together and then record the voice over - ideally on a good microphone, but a headset mic will do if you run it through Audacity's noise reduction filter. You'll have a much better sense of what you need to say, and also more leeway to push phrases around for precise timing.
You know those annoying YouTube videos that spend the first minute saying "um hiii guys, this is The Video Instructor coming to you again with another awesome video about blah blah blah..."? That's annoying. Don't do that. There's no reason for it.
If it's an internal training video, everyone already knows who you are and what the video is about. If your video is going on YouTube, the people who chose to search for it still know what it's about. A five-second introduction at most, please.
Don't be afraid to cut and splice. Remove every "um", hesitation, and redundancy. Get rid of all the boring stuff and all you'll have left is the interesting stuff.
If your editing package supports it, zoom in on dialog boxes and other things you type text into. Even if you're recording at full-screen resolution, your audience may not be watching fullscreen. Magnifying the text will both draw attention to where you want it, and make it easier to read.
It's really tempting to use that awesome track you've had stuck in your head all day as background music, but the problem with awesome music is that people want to listen to it. It will also make the voice over harder to understand (ever tried to talk to someone at a rock concert?).
You probably don't need background music at all, but if you do, pick something undistracting and make it quiet enough that it's only audible when no one is speaking. You're probably using your music as a "bed" - just something to fill quiet spaces in between sentences, and create a sense of continuity. So you want something that your voice can easily be heard over.
... enough said.
-- Elan Ruskin (Senior Engine Programmer)