Welcome to TVPaint Community forums !

Hi,

Is there a hardcopy of the manual available to purchase? If there isn't, would TVPaint Developpement consider producing a publish on demand copy at Lulu, for example. www.lulu.com do POD instruction manuals which they say can be quickly updated as new versions of a product are released. An A4 or A5 B+W Perfect bound copy of the manual wouldn't cost too much.

Cheers, Mark.

i must admit the lack of a hard copy of the manual has restricted my capability in tv paint..i don't have a printer and reading pdf's are tedious at best.

either a huge amount of video tutorials are needed or some proper help system like that of 3dsmax would be the way to go.

or like you say offer a printed manual at an additional cost

Hi,
If you want a print copy of the manual, please contact us by email at store[at]tvpaint.fr

Regards,
Patrice

Hi Patrice,

Ah ha! Thankyou. Could you tell me how much a copy would cost before I email?

...and Cresshead, I completely agree with you, I really don't like PDF manuals. Hard copy books are, and will always be better. I do have a printer, but over 400 pages would cost a fortune to print out.

If TVPaint could supply, as cheaply as possible, a black and white hard copy for demo users to purchase (a kind of budget version of the manual) as opposed to a glossy copy, that would be great. I'm sure it would encourage more demo trialers to purchase full copies.

Cheers, Mark.

Oh yes; I also have to second Cresshead's comment regarding video tutorials. More of them please. The 2 external tutorials are quite good, but could have been improved with a bit of editing. Short of us all coming to France for a weekend crash course at TVP's office (which, come to think of it, would be rather nice!), video tutorials are a very useful additional learning tool.

sent my email...
really looking forward to having a printed guide finally!

Brace yourself for when TVPaint tell you how much the hardcopy of the manual costs... 60 Euros + shipping!

That's a lot of money for a manual.

Producing a B+W paperback copy on Lulu would probably only cost around £10.

I really like this program, and I want to use it alongside Flipbook and Flash as my main paperless animation tools, but 60 Euros is such a big chunk of money for a manual. My Photoshop manuals came free with the software.

Honestly TVPaint, I really like your program, I would like to use it for my animation work on TV commercials (see my website: www.markmasonanimation.co.uk ) and other projects, but I want to be able to sit down with a hardcopy manual infront of my PC and learn it.

Unless I can really bite the bullet, I'm going to have to just print out the PDF manual. (I never thought that would be the cheaper option!) Then I'll have a mound of loose paper which won't really speed my learning while you have a 60 Euro manual sat on your storeroom shelf gathering dust.

Is there no way of reducing the amount? I'm close to ordering a copy of the software, but want to learn more. I'd even pay the 60 Euros for the manual if you guaranteed me a 40 Euro discount on the cost of the software.

How about it?

Hi Marc,

You are right 60,00 € for a single user-manual is expensive. (We also know that you have to add the custom and local, VAT tax + the shipment)
Nevertheless, I have to specify the following points :
- This is not a simple user-manual like in other companies : we don't provide a simple dictionnary of features but a full training support to learn each part of the software deeply. (there are 412 pages separated in 20 didactic lessons)
- If you take a look at some other companies that provide 2D animation software, they use to sell their training support at an equivalent price. (and sometimes, nothing is printed !)
- We provide a such training support on the website for free downloading in colors and we prefer focus on the software development.
- Please also consider that a few photographies and texts are still under copyright and we have to pay a fee each time we print and sell a manual.

I understand your point of view, and I hope that you will find a cheaper alternative.

well i sent an email but have had no reply as yet...hint hint

if this is a proper bound book with colour etc then 60euros looks okay if a bit steep once you add 19% europen vat and shipping to the uk

if however it's just a b/w laser print then it would be prudent of me to buy a laser printer and a ring binder just for this manual being printed out as alaser printer is around £70.

all depends on the quality/format of the book.

and again i'd really look to future versions of TVpaint having a chm based searchable help system/reference manul like that of 3dsmax...as i have ZERO need of the printed reference manuals when i have such a good electronic way to learn as chm files

making products with good easy to search/learn electronic help/reference/tutorials should be a KEY aspect of an appliction

as another idea automatron and newtek's lightwave ship with web based [html] help system which are much better than the unhelpful pdf approach thgh still not as intuative as .chm

tell you what i'll do you a deal...

you send me the manual for free
and i'll go thru the manual making a youtube video version of the whole manual as i learn it..

like the short video clips i make for zbrush, lightwave and quick first look at tv paint...

could help everyone who's new to tv paint when they try the demo's out they have acces to the training via youtube too.

some of my youtube training clips>>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsODBHfD6hk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TscPIMusBTw

and a VERy early tvpaint when i had the demo version before i bought it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oT1XsVH6UA



deal?

agreed !

cresshead wrote:...
tell you what i'll do you a deal...

you send me the manual for free
and i'll go thru the manual making a youtube video version of the whole manual as i learn it..

like the short video clips i make for zbrush, lightwave and quick first look at tv paint...

could help everyone who's new to tv paint when they try the demo's out they have acces to the training via youtube too.

what a marvellous initiative, cresshead!

excellent news!

Looking forward to the tutorials. Excellent idea!

looking forward to learning TVpaint as i progress thru the manual,

note i have TVpaint animation not the pro version so i may not be able to cover all the pro features...i'll run the 15day demo and see how much i can cover with that when i get to pro only features in the manual.

the manual arrived!

will start vids this weekend!