Just figured I’d let you know that for the last couple of months, I’ve been working with the folks at cmiVFX on a tutorial DVD for Blender’s fluid simulator. It’s got roughly 3 hours worth of tutorials and I’m pretty happy with the way it all turned out. The plan is that this is the first in a series of training DVD’s for Blender on all sorts of advanced topics.
Anyhow, have a look-see at the product page for the DVD and (maybe, just maybe), purchase a copy of it.
I am happy with the effort!
Why Quicktime 7 (not playable with VLC) and not a QT6 or even DVD Video?
Do you really use QT7’s new features?
$59.95 USD Isn’t that cheap especially considering this product is aimed at the ‘Blender 3D Open Source Community’ and additional costs like transport and taxes not included.
That DVD page is really cool, there are defently a few things I want to know, althought I think the DVD is quite expensive if you aim for people like students or hobbiests. I think the price would be fair for education purpose, maybe people registered on BlenderArtists or the Blender e-shop should get it a little cheaper.
Keep going, I’m curious what kind of DVD’s the future will bring, maybe a modeling and character animation one?
Yup. But it’s pretty “pricey” even for good work. I’d probably buy it if it were $39.95. But It’s a jig too much as is. It looks wonderful though! Would it be possible to see a couple of minutes of samples? Obviously from different parts – nothing real huge.
This DVD is a “PROFESSIONAL SOLUTION”. If you want to step up your game, then you will realise 60 bucks is nothing. What is a 3d hobbiest? Why not do it for a living? take a chance and invest in your future. Dont be afraid to succeed at what you love.
I suppose if this were a Maya DVD then people would be willing to pay $60, but you have to look at the Blender userbase, most are using Blender because they can’t afford to spend money on computer graphics, so I doubt many are going to spend $60 on this, no matter how good it is. Drop the price by 50% and maybe I’d consider it…
I also feel like this goes against the whole philosophy of open-source. I know it’s legal to make money doing this, but it still feels wrong, especially when so many have volunteered to help the Blender community free of charge…
I don’t feel like it’s “wrong”, I’m just comparing its price with the videos I usually buy from http://www.kurvstudios.com/lightwave/ . Some ARE $60 but most are between $30-$40.
I think the price is very fair for the topics there are been talked in the DVD.
And the DVD is aimed for everyone else, not just Blender users (as said on the products page).
Congrats on the material achieved.
I think it would be cool if u had a little sample clip, because some video tutorials are really easy to follow, or really hard to follow. A preview would be nice.
From the product page:
“This DVD was made for every VFX house around the globe”
Clearly, it is not intended for the casual Blender hobbyist. The price does indeed put it out of reach for most of us. Still, I like the idea (maybe they’ll get cheaper in a few months…) and have zero qualms about people making a buck with Blender generated content. These guys put in a lot of work on this, so it’s not just a rip-off.
Still, I would like to see movie samples instead of the stills (to get an idea what you will end up with) and would like to know if it is a video tut DVD only or if there are PDFs, .blends, settings etc included.
I would love to have the DVD as my interests in Blender are concentrated on the physics parts (rigid body, soft body, particles, forces, fluid,…)
I think that this is what any other DVD training software is offered for! Personally if this is to help people get the most out of the fluid simulator, by all means it will be worth every penny.
Guys, please don’t forget, blender maybe free, and that is the decision of the founder Ton, and we reap all the benefits from his and others hard work, but people like Fweeb who are trying to run a business on supplying quality training to those who will benefit from it , those in the business of CG, need to get reimbursed somehow for their hard work. I think this is an excellent price for the amount of training there is provided, my only crit would be as mentioned before, some demo clip on what to expect from the DVD.
But looking at the site and reading what is provided on the DVD makes me think it is well worth the money, especially if it will help one on the road to creating professional grade FX with blender. Fweeb, thanks for your “Shameless plug warning…”
The thing is, he’d probably make more money by lowering the price. At $60 a pop, very few people will have money to burn for the DVD. But a lot more people in the Blender community would buy it if they could afford to, and more sales at a lower price could beat very few sales at a high price… For comparison, MrBomb is planning on selling a 4 hour head modeling DVD for $25, which I would consider fair, and probably will buy it. But if he were to charge $60, forget about it. Not to mention the fact that the Blender foundation won’t be getting anything from the sales of these DVDs…
Ditto UglyMike, that’s my sentiment. No problems, no anger, no frustration. Just commenting on the price. (I still may buy it if I can wrangle the $60 from the budget/wife!)
