Tutorial costs?
 

Hello,
I was just looking at the Stratocaster tutorials that will so far cost nine points for the modelling section and I wanted to know if it is possible to be told what the planned total "cost" of the tutorial will be (including texturing and lighting etc). I think it would be handy to know what you were getting yourself into in terms of financial commitment if you start one of the VIP tutorials...
Thanks,
tank

Its so hard tank to judge how big or how long a tutorial will take.

But say a car tutorial - if this is done right through then it going to be some parts for sure.

What we have to do is work out the bandwidth costs for that tutorial to give a cost. So If a file is 40mg then 2 points is around right / sometimes 3 with a scene file.

I know now that philip is working on a great little free tutorial ... I will let him tell you about it, but it will be around 2 to 3 parts at 20/30 mg a piece.

We will try to give a parts estimate but this could be very mis-leading

that would be cool thanks.
I would have thought that modelling would take the most amount of time, have you found this to be the case?
I certainly find video tutorials of the modelling process the most beneficial in learning, but have you looked into those viewlet video tutorials that are out there? They seem to offer much smaller file sizes at the expense of lower frame rates but maybe in the texturing and lighting aspects of a tutorial that would still be fine because it's easier to follow what's happening. That would allow less bandwidth and less cost (hopefully! :)).
Anyway just a suggestion :cool:

I would say modelling and texturing is equally time consuming, ofcourse that is very much depending on the type of scene.
Personally I havent had the time or need to check out the tutorials offered here but I dont think I can keep away much longer.. lol, anyway I would rather pay a little higher price and get better quality on the videos.. just my opinion though :)

//Matt

the quality can still be very good...
Check out Magmas panel modelling tutorial over at LWG here:
panel modelling
to see what I mean.

Hi tank ..yes we used viewlets at simplymaya before moving to videos.

We would like to stay with one codec and one format here at simplylightwave so everybody gets good quality video tutorials.

Thanks for your feedback

oh and also the viewlets take a LOT more time to make ... not only do you have to hit a "screen print" key every time you want a shot... then you have to add text to every part thats important.

so a 35 minute movie would take about 10X that to do with a viewlet... there cool for little 2 min examples but nothing else really.

Hi,
I agree with Tank.
At least you should post the estimated cost of tutorials.
You could adopt another strategy. Say, if one buys the tutorial since the first day, at the most, he would pay the estimated price. Even if, in the end, the tut would cost more.

Estimated tutorial cost will never happen sorry guys its just the way it works, its not possible to estimate, if people like a particular set of tutorials we may expand upon it if no one like it IE. it doesn’t get downloaded even though there may have been 3 planed the other two for obvious reasons wont get made.

The interest, download rate and multiple other factors go into deciding how many parts there will be for a tutorial we don’t know how many parts there going to be till we have had chance to get some feed back on it, it’s the only way we can create what the users want rather than create what we want.

eRP I take it if we estimated to high you wouldn’t want to pay the higher cost?

Sorry guys in an ideal world maybe; but its an unwieldy and impractical idea.

Just a quick comment on the McClaren F1 tutorial. I've just bought and done the first part tonight and I'd say it is definitely going to be worth the money if all the video's are as good as this one.

Watching an expert model something as complex as this is priceless I think. You can learn much more by seeing it done on video than you can from a book.

If you have the money I'd pay up , but thats just my 2 cents ...

C u , Scott

Thank you for saying so Skelegon_Key I’m sure Philip will be very gratified to hear that :)

Cheers
David :)

David.
I'm satisfied with your explanation. Now I understand why it's not possible.
I'm going for the McClaren Tut.

Thanks