Can’t help you with the price. But at Digital Tutors subscription is just about double if you go with the option that gives you start files.
I am not fully understanding the work part though. If you are making these files to do the tutorials, why is it more work to give them the file?
Well it is more work to provide them, yes. But the larger part of the work is creating the tutorial.
Usually you want to work backwards. You make a tutorial that is planned well and that ends with you starting with the scene in one state and ending it with the scene in another. You save two versions. The start file and the end file. The end file is the start file for the next lesson. You don’t provide the files til you are done. And make sure you have a sequence that can be followed from lesson to lesson.
But it requires you to simplify your material and subject matter to things that can be easily re-created with simple steps.
Anyways if you plan it right you have material to promote the tutorial and what it will cover and the start and end files of each lesson.
If you are doing that work anyway, then why not hand it over?
I agree! Unfortunately, while I am a programmer, I haven’t gotten deep into Blender scripting yet (just some basic UI scripts and reading a few pages of course code). I keep an eye out for good books, but there still aren’t any for Blender 3D 2.6+ yet. I will probably just need to dive into it HERE, after I get some intermediate project tutorials done.
At first I will focus on what I know. In that respect, much of what I can offer is conceptual, which reminds me. I need a way to visually represent concepts. I want to do something like this:
Unfortunately, balancing what I want to do with what I am able to do is a tedious and frustrating task. Now that I have a very clear idea of what I will do (thank you everyone!), I will carefully plan what I can do. I am leaning towards “warming up” on lessons for a few math courses first (yes, courses, probably 2-3 grades worth). Those are almost completely outlined and planned already, and I have already taught a year or two of math. So, I can focus on the process rather than the content. So, Blender tutorials will definitely be pushed back a while. And, after evaluating the work involved, they will definitely be divided into volumes that won’t be cheap.
Thank you, and hopefully I can begin before too long.
EDIT: I want to clarify that I will do Blender tutorials. I just won’t do large project series for a while. I also won’t try to expand into new areas like Python yet.
I have two answers.
First, projects that are simplified down to “simple steps” are not very visually appealing and lose information that I think is very valuable. Just look at the snow tutorial that I linked to earlier. It is a perfect example of what you are talking about. But, the result looks like garbage compared to the render that the tutorial is promoted with. The promotional render is obviously a very complex scene. Promotional renders are important since they are the resumés that people will judge your skills by to determine if they want to bother with your tutorials. This is especially true if you are selling something. If I don’t take the time to do the entire project twice, once for tutorials and again for a promotional render, then the final result of my tutorials would be the promotional material. Your proposal would result in a poor final result as far as self-promotion goes.
Second, you are only considering a linear workflow. Saving starting files as I model a sculpting base, sculpt, retopologize, texture, and rig is easy. That is exactly what I plan to do as I progress through the project. But, what happens when I want to light a scene that consists of a linked set/environment, several linked assets with proxy rigs and linked materials, a smoke simulation, color management, a blocked animation, and an animated camera rig? What if the the project files total 300MB? Let us say that the simulation cache is 200MB. What about the simulation cache?
Simplifying the scene would be a pain, but, for the sake of creating a starting file, I would take the time to simplify the scene before sharing it. I would remove the smoke. Then, I would make the tutorial with the smoke on a hidden layer while viewers follow along with their starting file. But, I would occasionally check how the light interacts with the smoke. They couldn’t follow this part, but they could hopefully learn from it. Then, when the project is done, I could put the entire project online to download like the Blender Foundation does. I could even charge for this to raise funds, also like the Blender Foundation does.
But, you are saying that I can’t do that. You are giving me three options.
I should exclude the smoke simulation from the entire project. I am already designing my project to be as simple as I can while still covering what I want to cover. Leaving out the smoke entirely would exclude a lot of good tutorials from the series. So, you’d just have me create another dedicated tutorial series later just for the smoke, right?
I must keep the smoke in the download file. How many people do you think would be happy downloading a 200MB smoke cache just to learn about lighting? Even if I did go this route, there are other issues. For instance, I would need to re-upload the massive zip file after every tutorial. I could try splitting it into multiple files where I only need to update a few zip files that don’t contain the large files, but that would be a technical nightmare for downloaders.
I must copy the scene file and simplify the copied scene by removing the smoke. Then, I upload the modified scene and use it for the lighting tutorial so that everyone can follow along. Then, I must apply the changes made in the lighting tutorial to the original file that still has the smoke. Then, I will need to tweak the lighting “off camera” to account for any changes brought about by the smoke.
Do you see what I mean, now? All the “bells and whistles” help promote the tutorials, and they also provide good content for additional tutorials in a single project. It isn’t about making a “grandiose” scene. It is about showing people what goes into a “grandiose” scene. And, it doesn’t take many bells or whistles before the scene will need simplified for sharing. I have already simplified the projects a lot. If I leave out too much, my tutorials don’t even serve their purpose.
Oh, and I will do some tutorials soon, though. I just won’t do a large project walkthrough. I have a proxy tutorial that I want to do soon. I also want to make a tutorial on how to have multiple instances of a linked character that have different animations in the same scene without using a depsgraph hack.
