I think the forum is getting far too cinema 4d orientated. The original plan was to have a broad special effects tutorial site including tutorials from all the major apps such as 3DS Max, Maya, Lightwave, XSI Houdini etc etc

Since both Cinema 4D and 3DS MAX both have access to thinking particles and pyrocluster I was hoping that the 2 camps could bury their differences and share some knowledge..but ..well maybe pyrocluster and thinking particles are not really that popular in MAX

Well i have decided to start adding some links to offsite tutorials

More and more it seems that tutorials for the major apps can be applied to all the other apps, it may take some reverse enginering and a little trickery but that is half the fun

So I would advise users of any 3D application to broaden their outlook when it comes to tutorials, there is a lot to be gained in conducting cross border raids !!

Now I am probably asking a lot here but do you think it would be possible that a few members could actually bother to give something back to the community ? I mean search out and post links to tutorials ? Or better still write your own ? And try and spread the word to other 3D artists, I am sure that if we exchange techniques we could all learn a lot from each other.

If you do add links to tutorials they will not show up untill i have approved them ( in fact all new post are moderated now), forever fighting spam here

I welcome all tutorial subjects ( I would prefer special effects) and of course try to add them to their relevant app section.

If people are not really going to be bothered to contribute to build the site then I may as well make it a closed site for contributing members only and save on the bandwidth..which is not free !!!

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If You Want to Download Tutorial or Scene Files Please Read This


PLEASE NOTE ALL INITIAL POSTS ARE NOW MODERATED AND WILL NOT SHOW UNTIL APPROVED

Now I hope you all remember the aim of this site

No ? Well this is what it is NOT:

It is not a site for me to show off my feeble skills in any application
It is not a site to boost my already gargantuan ego
It is not a site to generate large amounts of profits

What is IS, or rather should be :

A community site where we all share knowledge and ideas
A place to get and give help
A place to get and PROVIDE tutorials and tutorial resources

I intended this site to be your site, OK it has not cost me a lot of money but it has used up a lot of my time ( which I have been happy to donate). So instead of people simply visiting and downloading tutorials I am asking for just a bit more involvement

I am seriously thinking of restricting access to tutorials to those memebers who actually make the effort to contribute something usefull

Now we can have member submitted, written tutorials as well as vids ( i have increased the upload limit for members vids to 10 MB ( don't forget to zip them and of course they don't have to be vids)

Well by now i can here many of you scoffing and thinking who cares, well at the end of the day i am not that bothered if we only have 5 active participating members. or 50000 members really doesn't matter to me what matters is that those who are here are really getting something out of this.

I just don't have the time or skills to make a lot of tutorials, though I plan to start adding some more soon ( I backed off making tutorials to see If other members would get more involved )



So there you have it, lets see some more activity here and hey you don't have to be a guru to add a tutorial, short tips and tricks are always welcome, you can add up to 10 images per post in the tutorials forum as well as links etc



Oh yes when i rebuilt the forum i lost all the links, I would be grateful if members could help by adding relevant 3d links i will setup the catergories later today

You may have noticed that there seem to be far more free cinema 4d video tutorials than anything else..so if anyone want to make some Max Tutorials or Maya Tutorials or Maybe Lightwave Tutorials, let me know if you want them hosted. You can always post your tutorials to the forums and even upload them into the downloads section

If you have large tutorials then PM me and i will arrange to have them loaded online

All tutorials (video tutorials and written tutorials) are welcome Maya, Cinema 4d, Max, Zbrush, Poser, XSI, Mudbox, Modo, Bryce, Vue Infinite..whatever if it's a Graphics tutorials then I welcome it !!!

I want to get some more extensive vid tutorials made and I think we will need more web space and perhaps a dedicated server, at the moment what we have is acceptable but as d/l's increase I think it would be prudent to investigate and plan for the expansion

As you are all aware the tuts on this site are free, OK they may not be amazing but hey..for free ???

I was thinking of putting up a donations link..maybe paypal ? and may well do that but in the meantime there are a couple of ways you could donate to the site and get something back in return

Quite a while ago i did some work for a company who specialize in the coloring if black and white movies, you may well be aware of their work, a classic they did was to colorize Hitchcocks Psycho.. the result was amazing though there were a lot of screams from the purists who claim these sort of flms should stay as they were..black and white

Well a spin off from their research into the coloring of films was a program called BlackMagic, which basically is designed to color stills ( though you can use it for a variety of tasks such as selective color enhancement)

Instead of waffling on about how BM works it is best simply to point you to my BM site http://www.black-and-white-to-color.com

Download the demo and have a play around, I did the Grace Kelley image after a few hours of learning BM and I was very happy with the result

If you like the prog then a purchse would go into the SFX "kitty" and help to support the site ( BM is just a little earner I have on the side to cover my web costs)

BM comes in 3 flavours and the Home edition is very inexpensive but does lack all the bells and whistles of it's bigger brothers, note the demo is the Pro edition

They also do another handy program called VideoSnaps which basically extracts stills from videos, it is very simple to use but very neat in it's ability to selectively decide on uniqueness of images, give it a spin from the link on the BM site. Very inexpensive and quite handy

I thank you....