I love what you’re doing, Chip. We can never have enough hard-surface workflows.
Yes, Max has had a modifier stack for time immemorial, and it is a lot more powerful than Blender’s(with about 120 modifiers) It also has an Edit Poly modifier which changes things significantly in relation to Blender’s lack of such an option. More recently Max add the MCG(Max Creation Graph) which is a procedural node system that allows users to create their own modifiers.
Max also has a Chamfer(Bevel) modifier that is far ahead of the other DCCs in features and almost rivals solids filleting.
One area where Blender beats Max hands down is with its Boolean modifier. Max has had great boolean tools for over 10 years now, but not as a modifier.
One major toolset that Blender is sorely missing is any decent 2D tools, such as the extremely powerful and unrivaled Spline tools in Max.
I’m not here to blow Max’s trumpet as I’m loving my Blender experience of the last few months. It’s not going to replace Max for me any time soon, but 2.80mhas a very bright future ahead, and I’m glad I’m on board to share in it.
Also, you’ve mentioned Vitaly many times. Did you know that he spent half his life modeling in Max and all his earlier work that got him noticed was Max booleans?
Really enjoying your videos. Although I have very different methods of hard-surface modeling(working in games) I’m going to follow along in Max for fun. Cheers mate.
No, didn’t know that. I know he did most of the 10 days of mechs in Moi3D and Softimage. I believe he still uses SI to this day. Chatted with him about putting some of his kits in KIT OPS but we never did finalize that-- still would like to do so.
Because of some health issues, I’m breaking out my NITROX3D course into smaller segments, called “TRACKS.” The first: TRACK-1 is free at gumroad. https://gum.co/NITROX3D-TRACK-1
The second: TRACK-2 is $11 and includes all source files plus a free KPACK for connectors. It’s at https://gum.co/NITROX3D-TRACK-2
I just uploaded both of them to Gumroad. See the top of this thread for information. Let me know what you think or if you have any questions or comments.
I’m kind of thinking I don’t particularly like this overtly friendly sales pitch thing you have going on. Not that your add-ons aren’t useful it just seems to be becoming an on going income earner… hey everyone blah blah here is a free video… and here is the paid video… here is the free content and… now here is the paid content. It sort feels like my interest is being farmed. Then you tell other members to get out of your thread…
Personally I don’t like having the forum ‘commercialised’ as it were.
As an old Blenderhead I kind of get what Ton has been saying recently about the emphasis on market exploitation vs community participation.
I am not hostile about your contribution but since you asked…
I think that is the point of paid addons and tutorials. There are over 4000 Blender products for sale in Blender Market alone. Gumroad probably has a similar number.
You should probably take it up with the forum administrators.
Here’s what he said on the Blender blog about making money with Blender:
“Just distinguish yourselves with the proven successful free/open source business model: provide docs, training, content, frequent updates and support. Your customers will love you!”
and in the comments, Ton says, “Please don’t think I’m against people who sell add-ons on the BlenderMarket.”
You should probably take it up with the forum administrators
If I thought that it was a serious problem I would have already done so.
And, I agree seeking their assistance for recourse would probably be the thing to do as expecting you to change your stance voluntarily if requested doesn’t really seem likely to yield results. Just a feeling I have. Thanks for asking for feedback though.
I think your marketing strategy is just fine, @chippwalters. Unfortunately, it seems Ton’s blog post created a little confusion to some. I appreciate the straightforwardness of your posts, and though you didn’t have to share the reason you’re charging (because you deserve monetary support for your time/effort), I appreciate the honesty.
I’ll be picking up the videos on Gumroad when I get through my current tutorials. I’ve been wanting to learn more ND modeling, but I didn’t want to dive too deep into Hard Ops or other addons without learning how blender works on it’s own. Thanks for creating this!
My only issue with this becoming a commercial thread is that I only started following this thread because you said you were going to make a free series of videos. I’m not an industrial designer. I have some ideas for some 3D printed items I might like to make for personal use, but that’s pretty much it for me in terms of geometric shape type stuff. I was only interested in NITROX3D because it seemed like an area to build my general modeling knowledge in, and a way I could make the scenery items I find most boring to make faster.
Which is to say, even though I’m very sure that your work is worth what you’re charging, I have many, many other things to pay for that I absolutely need. So I’m honestly just disappointed that you’ve moved something I found interesting that I thought was going to be free out of my reach by charging for it. I totally understand, and I’m not at all resentful. I wish you the very best with this endeavor. But I’m sad to get locked out of the free course I was sitting in on.
Maybe I’ll get to come back in the future. Thanks for all you’ve done so far!
A fair reason to be frustrated with this forum thread. It does kind of feel like a bait and switch.
When it started, it seemed like it was going to be an open conversation about techniques lead by an expert. Then once the conversation got going and people became interested there suddenly appeared to be a paywall for additional information. Changing the tone from community to commercial.
Now, personally, I can forgive this. Well, I can forgive the desire of an expert to be compensated for sharing their knowledge and time. Though I would hope that any expert intending to ask for compensation for sharing their knowledge and time would consider their approach to doing so in the future.
Best to be upfront with intent from the start. It ruffles fewer feathers.
Did you ever stop to think the decision to charge for this came later when I saw how much of my time was being taken up with creating videos? Not to mention including all the files with materials and meshes.
Or did you happen to see almost half of my products at Gumroad are free? Or that I have over 40 YouTube videos that are free?
Or that I’ve shared tips and techniques here online as well. Or is it just that you feel “entitled” to all of my hard work for free?
If you go back to the very first post, you would see I said:
"I’m currently working on a FREE set of a couple of NITROX3D intro videos " which I have delivered. The first 2 videos were free. It took over 40 hours to create the Track 2 videos. I know you think they should be free, but as you say in your personal profile, “Its (sic) a living.”
People make models, addons and charge for them and why not. Time is money as they say, so i have no problem with being charged a small fee for someones hard work. After all Blender is free itself and i have probably saved myself $500 at least a year in update costs for other software packages.
Thanks John, I appreciate your view on this matter. It is disappointing to work hard on something one believes in only to have naysayers jump all over it-- for whatever reason.
Very sorry this has becme such a toxic community towards content creators. I for one appreciate your hard work and bought Track 2 on Gumroad right away. Keep it up Chipp!
Thanks for your hard work, creating all this free stuff. While i am not a customer of your service/products, it is my observation that you are doing it the right way. I’ve seen nothing but professional behaviour from you.
Constructive criticism is good, but entitlement isn’t proper criticism.
