Who else is psyched about the upcoming Nature Academy at Blender Guru? Can’t wait! 
I’ve started learning Blender month ago and Andrew’s tutorials are simply the best. Might as well buy his new book.
Huh. Didn’t know he had a book out, unless you mean The Wow Factor. Anymore info on that?
I was psyched out about it until I saw the price point today. The site now looks like some horrible marketing executive got hold of it. Only 6 days to register and buy it? That to me is a very obvious attempt to make people feel rushed into buying something “exclusive”. The quality of his own work needs to speak for itself. But some HUGE, long page devoted to trying to convince me it’s the best thing since sliced bread along with gigantic, flashy “BUY NOW!” buttons really put me off.
I couldn’t wait until the price was revealed. $200 is a bit steep for me. 
But the results look awesome!
I couldn’t wait, either. I expected maybe around $99 or something. Unfortunately I’m a bit poor and I would have to save up for it. But the revelation of only 6 days to reserve a “seat” (along with the price) makes this quite impossible. I love learning new things and being locked out of any hope of being a part of that is extremely disappointing.
I want andrew to succeed financially as his tutorials are awesome, but im not fond at all of this 6 day window. I will happily buy his tutorials once they are available for me to purchase at my leisure, not his. I dont feel i need tech support, and i’d rather not have to pay for it. I just want the videos.
For future reference, i think andrew should tone down his infomercial-style sales pitch. Its really offputting. Im looking for blender training, not a sham-wow.
I think he hired someone in marketing to help him with this and this is “the way marketing is done” now. My husband works in marketing and internet commerce and he told me beforehand the price will be 200$, I was stunned to see he was spot on. So the price must be right for this kind of product. He is trying to make a living from his tutorials and there is nothing bad about that, especially considering he gives out so much for free. Unfortunately the marketing style his marketing advisers put him on to is not well fitted for the Blender tough crowd 
marketing is important you know, even if it sounds “evil” to an artist’s mind… would be a pity to work so much on something and get peanuts for it because people didn’t get to see it well…
The marketing/advertising on the page looks like something I’d find on one of those World of Warcraft scam sites trying to get me to buy their leveling or gold-making guides.
However, I sent an email to Andrew expressing my dissatisfaction with the way things were/are handled. He responded and told me he had intended this not to be for hobbyists or students, but for an “older” demographic who are looking for something more in depth than they are simple tutorials. I let him know that he should have made that clear in the beginning, as the amount of hype he put into it, plus the nature of the contest and the sample mountains how-to before release, made it look as if he was making this for everyone and not just a very specific demographic. Plus I think he fails to realize that a lot of his readers are hobbyists and students. Call me a jerk, but I can’t support a site or its operators who produce super-exclusive content like that and give an unnecessarily limited window in which to sign up to it. While I respect his need to make a living and I appreciate the hard work he puts into what he does, I can’t give him my patronage if he refuses to make things more accessible to everyone.
i hope that for 200 you get something new. he has very interesting tutorials . so i hope he will not show stuff that he already showed in hes free tutorials.
for example the stones. i hope that it will not be like the asteroid tutorial.
the tutorial that i am interested is the tree tutorial. on hes site the tree tutorial was done with 2.49 and an addon that doesnt work in 2.5. so it will be interested to see how he makes trees. the trees need to be made so that you have artistic control how the tree looks and have control to add leafs where you want. and i am interested the plant tutorials.
the mountain and the grass tutorials was already realesed. and i think the ocean can be done with the ocean modifier and normal shaders. so the new will be stones,plants and trees.
The price is steep; consider that for the price of platinum membership you can get Vue 9 Studio which is more than capable :evilgrin: of doing these kind of renders and is completely supported by hundreds of free tutorials at www.geekatplay.com.
In addition, the 6 days time window makes commercial offers by entities like Adobe look “user friendly” :eek:.
P.S.: b.t.w., in Vue, setting up a mixed material rock + snow in the appriopriate locations is not a trick worth an hour long tutorial, it is the first example of what you can do with mixed material distributions, explained in a couple of minutes…
I watched the video infomercial. It´s horrid, I felt like watching a telemarketing channel and the page looks like it hoarding email addys with all this flashy “enter valid email >>HERE!!<<”
Oh, and archviz peeps neglect nature to a degree because they are paid to visualize the reality, not the surrounding. I am sure your client will be more than happy if you tell him you got to charge him double the price because you want to focus more on the surrounding because you think it is important… engineers for construction don´t really care for that, at least in my country.
I felt like watching a telemarketing channel
Yeah it may be a cultural thing but being European it makes it feels cheap and not in price unfortunately. One thing that is missing is an audience that are overacting.
To be honest I really don’t care about sounds, textures, models, clouds timelapses, etc because even if they state I get this for free, I still have the feeling that I am paying for stuff that I don’t want. I may come over as skeptical but I have worked in ecommerce in the past and I know that nothing comes for free.
Also what I am interested in is how long an individual week is because it is value is estimated at 67$ which is a lot more than what I have payed for the complete Blender vehicle (+/- 15 hours) modeling series. And then I also can download it to my computer or tablet for watching on the road.
I don’t want to criticize somebody for making money, especially not if they invested a lot of time, but I really don’t have much positive feelings about this and I will certainly pass.
the tutorial that i am interested is the tree tutorial. on hes site the tree tutorial was done with 2.49 and an addon that doesnt work in 2.5. so it will be interested to see how he makes trees.
In one of the mails or pages I saw something about using Arbaro http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/
he is using Arbaro for making trees?
I don’t get why Andrew goes for this infomercial style marketing approach. A lot of people didn’t like when he was show casing his WOW factor book so why a repeat here.
offtopic
I am an engineer working in on construction projects, we don’t care for anything but 2d cad drawings with measurements on them … archvis and all that jazz is more for investors and developer so that they can market the projects to who ever is paying for it.
he is using Arbaro for making trees?
Yep, pretty sure.
Arboro for trees and also ivy generator. I am 100% sure but I can’t find where I have seen this.
Im very satisfied with Blendercookie.
Its affordable for the normals and pro’s of us.
I’m really undecided about this. I dont make any money from using Blender although my aim is to get good enough to pick up some archiviz work one day. If it helps me make a great image for my portfolio that lands me that first job then it’s paid for itself many times over.
But, i’m really not a fan of the sales pitch and all the free extras that i’d be paying for dont interest me really. I’d never be around for the web chat Q&A and really doubt I would be able to keep up with a project a week either.
If this had been a DVD or downloadable i’d have happily paid $100, maybe more. The only way i could justify paying for this is that i’ve watched all of Andrews free tutorials and learn a lot from them so maybe i owe him.
Also i cant help but think that once his secrets are revealed that they might filter through via forums and other people free tutorials. I wish him every success, he’s obviously put in a hell of a lot of work but i think i’ll wait and see how i feel in 9 weeks time.