Join us for an engaging dive into the world of 3D modeling and education with Chris Robinson from 3D Palace! In this episode of CGCast, Chris shares the inspiring journey of building a massive online community dedicated to free 3D modeling tutorials,
overcoming initial skepticism and challenges, and his future plans for expanding educational offerings beyond traditional 3D software. Expect insights into managing a thriving forum, the evolution of video tutorial formats, and the unique approach
to fostering a supportive learning environment. Plus, hear candid stories about early struggles, technical hurdles, and the unexpected twists of running a successful online platform. This episode is packed with valuable lessons for both aspiring and
seasoned 3D artists.
This episode is a treasure trove for anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes workings of an influential online educational platform and offers valuable perspectives on building and sustaining a passionate community in the digital age.
Welcome everybody to the 26th episode of CGCast.
Today I shall be interviewing Cris Robinson from the owner
of 3D Palace.
Also tagging along, I have Megann and Simon Ruth.
Uh, Ruth. Okay, I'm horrible.
Um, Cris, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Yeah, sure, a little bit. Um, okay, I'm Cris Robinson.
I'm on the website 3DPalace.com, which is a video training
site.
We've been here for about, what, three and a half years.
And we've got about 55,000 members.
And mainly what we do is we teach people how to be good
enough at 3D
to go and write really irritating posts on other forums and
never come back again.
um but, what inspired you to do that, to teach?
Well, funnily enough, I mean, it really was plagiarism to
the highest degree.
I mean, I've basically been exchanging video tutorials with
friends of mine that are new on IRC.
and I read an article quite a few years ago in 3D World
about 3D Buzz who had this crazy idea of sending people CDs
with the video tutorials on and hosting these enormous
video tutorials.
And I thought, well, if they can do that in the US,
I'd really like to give it a try myself
to try and distribute some of these video tutorials we've
been making.
I mean, at the time, we actually got quite a bit of support
off 3D Buzz
and off Jason kind of verbally and, you know,
giving us support in there you're going to make it kind of
thing and that's kind of how it started
we first got a lot of people thanks to 3d buzz because they
posted about us and said nice things
and then we kind of started walking on our own after that
and kind of grew from there i mean
we started off with about 37 and we hit 1000 and then i
think it was the following december we hit
15 000 and just kept on growing and the whole idea really
was let's try and take all these poor
students who kind of don't want to spend $120 on a two-hour
DVD and give them lots and lots and
lots and lots and lots of stuff free of charge. And it
worked, and it worked to such an extent
that we actually kind of put quite a few of the commercial
video tutorial manufacturers out of
business, which was a terrible and sad thing, and we all
feel horribly guilty for it. But no,
it's been an incredibly popular thing, and once we got the
free video tutorials out,
and I think that was about two years on,
I had a chart making commercial DVDs.
And we approached that in a whole new kind of way
that no one had thought of before,
which was rather than the traditional kind of video
tutorial method commercially,
which was, we're going to show you three hours of time
lapse
whilst I talk over the top using my most monotonous accent,
we thought, well, if it's going to be that boring,
why don't we just show them everything?
I mean, you know, 40-odd hours on two DVDs, data style.
And at first people thought, God, that'll never work.
People will just be bored, rigid.
They'll absolutely hate it.
But no, no, it worked.
And so we kind of carried on the whole idea of ridiculously
long video tutorials.
From that, back to the free section again,
which is why, I mean, we've just released that, what's it?
It's the Badger Dropship, which comes in at something like
11 and a half hours long.
And, I mean, everyone else kind of likes to concentrate on
just one aspect.
But we always thought, well, students, when they first
approach 3D,
what they really want to do they don't want to learn how to
create a ball and apply fresnel to
it and things like this they want to create a big spaceship
and blow it up and then make a big robot
and have it kill a puppy or something you know they really
don't want to uh they really don't
want to learn how to do the dull stuff and they'll just get
bored immediately and so that's kind of
the angle we went for and it's been horrendously successful
but um now i mean we have the fun task
of keeping it going as it were it's where the challenge
lies at the minute it means that i'm
sitting kind of every night planning out new methods of
building things that are going to
give add affected artists something fun to do kind of for
the next few months oh that's cool
it's amazing how the community supported you at the
beginning with jason what he did was really
nice and then the members just kept growing on i myself
have used your tutorials i've used up your
bandwidth and yeah fortunately now we've got a lot more
bandwidth than we ever used to have me
when we first started um i started on a shared account
which cost me the princely sum of like
40 a month i think it was and for that we got 10 whole
gigabytes of bandwidth and now i mean
looking back on that 10 gigs is what we get through in the
average kind of hour i think
we've got a 12 terabyte bandwidth at the moment that we
kind of chug our way through
for us
I mean
do I
saw
a phenomenal
amount
we've got
four servers
with our
host over
in Texas
we've got
the old 3D
Palace one
it's actually
quite clever
really because
3D Palace
has run
over several
servers
the 3D
Palace itself
in the forums
kind of runs
on one
almost vintage
service
just a
Celeron
and then all
the download
systems and
the database
and everything
else runs
on dedicated
dual
dual Xeon
systems
with two
gigs of memory and in most of the system that the tutorials
served from is actually better than the
computer I do 3d on which is scary well but they're good
systems and of course it gives us a lot of
stability compared to what we started with so we've heard
the good parts uh can you tell us
about the bad things that might have happened on your
startup yeah sure I mean there were quite a
lot of websites like I say that um I mean there was some
there's always been a lot of elitism
with video tutorials and and with written tutorials and a
lot of the people who are kind
of very much into written tutorials and the sites that
supported them and things like that were very
much kind of oh no this will never catch on no no no no no
and um i mean obviously as as i've said
before if you're going to give students things and you give
them it free then you're going to get a
lot of initial support and that's something that a lot of
these guys didn't realize you really have
to support your student base and that's one of the reasons
that we took off and these sites that
said oh no it'll never work it'll never work and our dead
sites they don't exist anymore you know
I mean, there's a lot less video tutorial and written
tutorial sites than there used to be, because I think they
forgot the important part, which is you've got to support
the students.
Other things, of course, are things like when I first
started out, just around the time that I started using a
content management system to manage the forum, we got in
touch with a company that provides rendering software.
Because I wanted to be able to make the renders look nice
at the end and also wanted to go more in depth into
rendering.
I mean, I'd used Final Render and V-Ray and software like
that.
And at the time, a lot of people were very interested
because this was still a fairly new thing.
So I contacted a rendering company that made rendering
software.
And I said to them, you know,
is there any chance that you could let us have it on a
discount
and that I could use it to make video tutorials?
And they sent me back a response saying no to both.
I wasn't allowed to make video tutorials at all
because they didn't see that 3D Palace was going to go
anywhere.
They thought it was just a dead-end site.
They didn't think it had a community.
and they didn't think we were going anywhere.
And, you know, that kind of thing happened from time to
time,
especially in the first year and a half.
I mean, I still get negative moments now and again
where you get people kind of dumping onto the forum
and saying, your site sucks, everything's terrible,
we hate your video tutorials, we hate the queue.
They really hate the queue, by the way.
We don't like the fact that we've got to pay for your
commercial stuff,
we don't like the fact that we've got to wait in line,
we don't like this and we don't like that.
But fortunately for us, 3D Palace is very draconian.
We don't actually have to kind of toe the line to any
corporate sponsors whatsoever.
So we can be incredibly horrible to these people in a very
public manner.
And we are.
And I think that kind of keeps our own population under
control to a degree.
Not under kind of Big Brother's watch any kind of way.
But in the knowledge that we're not going to put up with
any crap from people who just pop in.
Or from people who are regulars there who think they can
get involved in forum elitism and things like that.
I mean, it's a hard process running a community of this
size,
but I'm fortunate that I've got a lot of good moderators,
and I'm fortunate that basically the play seems to be
pretty well.
But the users seem to run themselves pretty well,
so I very rarely have bad moments.
I mean, the worst we have nowadays is someone posting,
ha ha, I put your stuff up on a PTP network, look at me, I
am clever.
But quite frankly, I remember saying about,
God, I remember how many years ago it was,
you really know that you've made it in making video
tutorials
when you have your own fault on a P2P network.
So, you know, it hits our sales and it hits our sales hard.
But quite frankly, just because someone wants to sit at
home
and pirate our free video tutorials,
I'm going to stop them,
but I'm not going to sit and cry in my sleep about it.
That's fair enough.
About the moderators, is Oli from Germany a moderator?
Ah, Oli. Here's a coming one, Oli.
Oli's what I call a very senior forum member.
It's quite funny, really.
He's kind of a moderator and he's kind of a senior forum
figure.
I think a lot of people kind of respect what he's got to
say
and a lot of people really loved his V-Ray material sets.
I really like Oli.
I mean, we'll be meeting him in Amsterdam.
I'll be meeting him over in Amsterdam next month
when we're running our seminar there.
And that's going to be a lot of fun
and I suspect that we're going to get very, very drunk.
Yeah, he was really cool.
He really helped me out.
He really showed support for CGCast when it started out.
Yeah, he's a top guy.
I mean, I'm really glad that he's a former regular over on
3D Palace as well.
I mean, he's a regular over on quite a few sites,
like Chaos Group for V-Ray and things like that.
So, I mean, I'm really glad that he takes the time to kind
of come on
and help people over on 3D Palace as well.
Yeah, that's a good shout-out to Oli. Thanks, Oli.
Yeah, we like you, Oli.
We don't really like the picture of David Hasseltag in his
underpants, okay?
We'll let you off with that because we know you're a co-b
ett,
but those underpants tell.
So, can you tell us the future plans of 3D Palace?
I can, yeah. I can tell you pretty much what's going on.
We're increasing our seminar rollout, because a lot of
people like that.
Because, I mean, we do these cheap seminars, basically,
where...
Hang on a second. Sorry about that.
We do these cheap seminars where, basically, we go over,
for example,
next month on the 24th and 25th, we're going over to
Amsterdam,
where we're going to be teaching.
We're going to be teaching for two days on making an insect
and then making it into a swarm in particle flow
and then doing some render tricks and doing some procedural
materials.
And that's going to cover two days.
And then, you know, each night during that, there's going
to be a date party
and we're all going to drink until we're horribly sick
and then turn up the next morning with hangovers.
And it's going to be fantastic fun.
We've also got some planned in the UK,
but we haven't kind of cemented dates for those yet.
The problem is that the plan originally was for mobile
seminars,
but it's a very expensive process to set up,
because my whole plan is, well, I'm going to get 10 laptops
together
and have wireless cards in them, put them in two flight
cases,
and then I can go anywhere in Europe and teach web anyone
wants,
and I can have the price so low that it's cheaper than
buying a pair of decent shoes.
The problem with that is, of course, that it's £5,000 to
buy 10 decent quality laptops bulk,
so I'm going to have to wait until 3D Palace has earned a
bit more spare collateral before I can do that.
So in the meantime, a lot of it depends on me actually
getting seminar venues that I can teach in
that have computers that I can use that are actually
capable of running Max.
However, we do it cheaply.
I mean, I've seen places actually in the same city as I'm
running the Amsterdam one
that are charging 1,700 euros for a one-day session on
learning to use the user interface.
And quite frankly, that kind of goes against everything
that I've always thought learning should be about.
We don't want to isolate it from the people who really want
it and really need it.
And prices like that are just jokes, quite frankly.
What's your price on it?
Originally, it was going to be 500 euros, but I discovered
I was able to get the venue cheaper.
So we dropped it down to 350 euros, which means that we are
able to actually cover our costs this time rather than go
massively in debt.
Wow.
Yeah, last year I ended up £1,100 in debt through teaching
because I really priced it at €200.
So this time I can actually cover my debt, which is good.
What about lodging? Is it find your own hotel or what?
Yeah, well, we can't give you a place to sleep, really.
You're welcome to sleep on the floor next to us outside the
station, I suppose.
Sleeping bags?
Yeah, you could just get a sleeping bag and sleep outside
the station on the floor,
or with some of the tramps that play the one-string guitars
.
Accommodation in Amsterdam is cheap.
I mean, you can get it for 15 to 55 euros
if you're really going for a kind of cheap-looking place.
There's a chance it'll be...
Oh, man, that's hard.
No, but honestly, it's a really good thing that you're
doing.
You actually care about the students and...
Well, the thing is, we've all been there.
I mean, it was, what?
I first started getting into 3D myself.
I mean, I'd originally been a kind of...
I'd say programmer, but I was terrible at it.
But I was a programmer and tester.
And around about 1997, 1998, I decided I really wanted to
retrain and do something else because it was just so
horrific working in the programming testing industry.
And when I first started, I mean, the only thing that you
could get to help you was ridiculously expensive manuals.
I mean, manuals nowadays are really reasonably priced.
Look at something like Pete Draper's Deconstructing the Ele
ments.
Fantastic book, very reasonably priced.
But back then, I remember there was one book I bought, and
it was, oh, something like a 3D Studio Max project for a
beginner or something.
And it was £69.
And it had 200 pages, and it showed you how to make an
alien water tower.
And it was, good Christ, I paid £69 for this.
And I kicked up a fuss.
I went back to the bookshop and took it back.
I said, you know, I paid for this.
I really don't want it.
It was an unwanted gift.
And I got the money back and got something else instead.
I mean, the best book I ever had back at that time, and I
've still got it.
Hang on a sec, I think is...
The 3ds Max Bible?
No, no, no, 3ds Max Bible's toilet paper.
No, um, hang on, Media Animation for 3ds Max by, uh, hang
on a sec.
Which is, you know, I forget what it is.
John P. Chismar.
I have no idea what he does now, but, uh, god damn, that
was a good book.
It's funny, because I kind of look back on it, and I still
enjoy reading it,
even though I've done all the projects in it.
But that was kind of one of the places I started.
And then I modelled a tree by using a cylinder and a ball.
And I was really pleased with myself, you know, because,
you know,
when you see some new guy who's just posted some picture,
and I mean, you know, chances are it might look dreadful
to the degree that you wouldn't believe where your eyeballs
actually bleed.
It's that bad.
But, you know, this is a new user, and this is the first
thing they've done.
So no matter how, you know, how you look at this,
no matter how experienced you are,
you've always got to look at a new user's work and think to
yourself,
well, they've really tried hard with this,
and it's not a case of the picture's crap because they're
learning the interface.
They're learning how to use 3D.
And so you must always look objectively at a new user's
work
and think to yourself, you know, well, they've really tried
hard with that.
Maybe they haven't got it exactly right.
Maybe it is just a cylinder with a ball on the top and a
warp deform.
But, you know, it's their first model, and you know they're
going to improve.
And this is how you get people to improve.
You don't have 50 elitist snobs all jumping going,
ho-dee-ho-dee-ho, that's the worst picture I've ever seen.
God, get back to using POSAR.
You have people who are actually going to be there and
encourage them.
And that's the whole thing about a learning community.
You should always have people to encourage people.
no matter how god-awful their work looks at first,
they will get better, and I've seen a lot of examples of
that.
But have you... I remember in one forum there was this guy,
he started off, he was just doing, like, balls and spheres,
spheres and boxes and stuff.
At first we were like, OK, that's nice,
but he kept doing the same thing over and over.
He didn't actually progress, he was still doing spheres and
boxes,
and do you encounter that type of view?
Fortunately not.
I mean, I think one of the good things about having 3D
Palace the way it is
and being set up the way it is,
if someone comes in and says, you know,
I am going to be ball king and I'm going to make nothing
but balls,
there is going to be something there that you can point
them to and say,
you know, well, the ball's nice, but why not try such and
such, you know,
and make it look a bit better?
I mean, and I suppose another good thing about 3D Palace
is we get people who tend to obsess over robots a lot more
than balls.
But, I mean, we do try and direct people as much as
possible
and kind of give them a little bit of a push towards
something
if we can.
Thank you.
Cris, why 3D Max?
Good question, and a complicated
one, to be quite honest. Well, not really
that complicated. When I first
started with 3D,
back in the day,
I wanted to learn Maya, funnily enough,
which just kind of came out because
it looked nice. And I
really couldn't afford
Maya for the life of me. Really couldn't.
But I got a friend who'd got
3D Studio Max, and
basically kind of had a try on that
and didn't understand a bloody thing I was doing
but
I have no idea if it was legal back then or not
quite frankly but I bought a second hand copy
and installed it onto the computer
had one of those
dongle things that you had to plug in the back
it was really horrible
and kind of started from there simply because
there was no other software, I mean I didn't have the
internet
at the time
I didn't
I'd just kind of moved and I didn't know that many
people in the area
and um so really i was kind of on my own i learned from
manuals and things like that as i was saying
because i didn't have anywhere else to fall back on i think
that's why the whole idea of 3d palace
kind of appealed to me was because at the time i'd have
killed to be able to go ah ah this will
show me how to make a big robot or how to make a car or you
know how to make an explosion because
you know if you wanted that it was a case of save save save
save save save next time you go at the
city go to the bookshop look in the bookshop have they got
the book i want no i'll buy that one oh
god it's crap i've just wasted all my money and you know
that's what it was all about it was very
hit miss learning but you had no choice i mean now it's a
case of you know i want to learn 3d
studio max uh i'll get a video tutorial of max mayor
lightweight of all of them and then i think
the problem now has kind of gone in the other direction
people have a bit too much perhaps
and overload themselves and freak themselves out a bit.
But when I was first starting to learn Macs,
and back then there was bugger all, absolutely nothing.
Except, of course, Gnomon.
How long was Gnomon started then?
I think Gnomon was possibly in its infancy then,
but I mean, I didn't have the internet,
so I couldn't get any of their stuff anyway.
Do you plan on being on the same level as Gnomon?
I don't think that it'd be possible, to be quite honest,
for 3D Palace to ever approach the level of Gnomon.
I mean, Alex Alvarez and Gnomon are literally in the heart
of Los Angeles,
and they are, you know, they're a quality studio.
I've just bought another Gnomon DVD myself.
The character modelling one for Max has just came out,
because it looks really good.
But, I mean, they're fortunate.
They're surrounded by industry professionals.
Alex Alvarez has a lot of contacts.
I mean, we have a lot of contacts,
but, you know, I'm on top of a hill in the middle of County
Durham,
so it's not quite as inviting to invite somebody over
to come and record a tutorial in the upstairs studio
compared to, you know,
do you want to come over to Gnomon Studios in Los Angeles
and it'll be really cool?
Because I imagine their studios are a lot nicer than mine.
Probably.
And probably have a coffee machine.
Simon, you've been very quiet.
Do you have any questions?
Yeah, like when you're recording a tutorial,
how do you, like when you're modeling and stuff,
how do you keep talking and stuff over your work
without starting to do that,
um, this is what I'm doing now.
And the window looks very pretty.
Oh, God, what do I say next?
Yeah, I've had a few people say that to me.
I mean, it's an interesting one.
I've always recorded, well, not always.
When I first started, I recorded the video
and then recorded audio afterwards.
And that's why, if you look at some of my older tutorials,
like the minigun, I tend to get a bit lost
because I forgot what I was doing.
And I'll start talking about all sorts of insane things.
But kind of with, I'll say the newer, the ones that are
newer than three years old,
it was a case of kind of practice at first, just talking
about what I was doing.
I mean, I've always had the ability of kind of to carry a
conversation
and keep it going well past people's tolerance level.
And for the longer ones, though, like the DVDs,
I was actually quite fortunate in a way,
because around about the time that I started making the APU
set,
I'd actually got a baby son who was round about six or
seven months old, maybe eight months.
Or was he nine? Something like that, anyway.
And he was still in a kind of baby tot carrier, one of
those things with handles that you lug them around in.
And what I used to do, because he used to enjoy it, was I'd
put him on the desk next to my monitors.
And when I was recording the video tutorial, I'd kind of
chat at him as if I was explaining to him what I was doing.
You know, I don't know if he's got some sort of latent 3D
ability or not.
He could be quite cool if he has.
But what I'd do is I'd kind of have him beside the monitor
and he'd think I was talking to him and he thought it was
awesome
because he had no idea what I was talking about.
And that's kind of one of the ways I was able to carry the
APU.
I mean, after that, when I got into Ultimax,
which was 80 hours of, oh God, when will it ever end?
I was kind of more used to talking and kind of mental
filler,
being able to think ahead and going,
I'm going to move this one here and we'll just do that now.
But I mean, it was just a case of kind of practice.
and then with the longer ones I was very fortunate
in that I had a very young baby sitting on the desk
grinning, googling and kind of thinking it was awesome
that I was talking to him
and nine hours a day, non-stop.
Because like, they just really enjoy that.
Well, that's cool because maybe your son will be
the next 3D genius.
Either that or maybe he'll be a serial killer
who hates 3D artists.
I'm not sure, but it'll be one of the two.
That's cool.
Fair enough, we'll see.
Megann, do you have any other questions?
No, not that I can think of.
I want to say, how do you support yourself besides the
commercial?
Well, initially with 3D Palace, it was a case of
fortunately before it, from what I did.
And I also got some help off relatives.
I mean, for two years, 3D Palace didn't pay for itself at
all.
I paid for 3D Palace out of my own pocket to quite a large
extent or less.
Because, I mean, the server fees, software costs and all
this kind of thing.
But since the DVDs came out,
whilst it's not a lucrative, let's all say,
on a solid gold boat on a sea of platinum and diamonds,
it's enough to keep 3D Palace going,
and I don't really need to worry about it too much.
And I can pay myself kind of basically just enough
to scrape buy-on from the DVD sales.
I mean, it'd be nice if everyone went out
and bought 3D Palace DVDs en masse,
but it ain't going to pay for me a solid gold boat
and a Harry Jumper jet at the moment.
That's too bad.
Well, you know, it'd be nice to have a Harrier Jump Jet.
I could go down the shops and scare people.
Yeah.
You'd have to wait in line.
Well, yeah, there might be a line of Harrier Jump Jets at
the post office
because this is Great Britain, obviously.
Well, I don't know.
What do you plan for yourself in the future, you know,
beyond 3D Palace?
It's kind of tricky.
I have got 3D Palace expanding in a couple of ways that I
haven't kind of told you about
simply because even though they're ready for release, they
're under the table in a way.
There's a couple of kind of very exciting developments that
we're working on.
We've been testing the code for it and kind of getting it
working.
And I think it'll be quite a big popular thing.
In the same way that 3D Palace has taken quite a few years
to build up to what it's became,
this new site is similar but completely different.
It's kind of hard to explain without giving the entire game
away.
But I think a lot of people are going to like it.
And I think it's going to surprise quite a lot of people.
and I think that is pretty much where I see education going
for the time being.
I've seen a lot of websites doing what we're planning on
doing
and doing it, in my opinion, probably not wrongly,
but not aiming it at the right market.
And we're going to do it my way, the 3D Palace way,
and kind of see what happens.
When do you plan on releasing it?
Probably around about next month on the 15th, if all goes
ahead.
And we're not going to advertise it or do anything exciting
for it or tell anyone what it is it'll just drop into place
as if it's always been there which is
kind of more our way we're not kind of for fresh
advertising we're just trying to make it work
give us a little hint because this episode will come out a
bit late after the recording can give
us a little hint oh a little hint a little hint a little
hint well it's the 3d palace premise
of online learning but i will say taken to the next level
let's just say yeah for people who
are really serious about wanting to learn
not necessarily 3D Studio
Max, but learning, well, let's
say, you know, if you want to learn about anything
from physiology to photography
onwards, we
probably will be able to
help you in one way or another.
That sounds pretty interesting.
Could learn some astrophysics.
We need to
find someone to teach astrophysics before you can
learn it, and somebody won't fall asleep during
it. No, actually, I probably
knows about astrophysics, so maybe
if we get enough interest, who knows?
Yeah, probably. I could teach a cast
a show about making podcasts,
but I really suck at it,
so... I'm sure there's a lot
worse out there. To start,
um, I don't know,
do you guys have any questions?
Well, you know, you haven't
actually told us anything about
Cris, the man behind the
scenes. Tell us a bit
about yourself. Oh, well,
okay, well, I've been
I live up in the wilds of Durham
with a lot of children
I've got five kids and
I've got my partner
Amanda who's currently knitting a scarf
really enjoys knitting scarves
Amanda's an artist as well, she paints
she does a lot of painting and things like that
so I'm quite lucky because
when I'm in a bit of a malaise for modelling
she can kind of give me a psychological
kick up the arse
which is very useful to be quite honest
I mean at the moment I'm kind of
pushing myself really trying to have to force myself to do
any modeling at the moment um
sometimes i go to do patches like this where your
creativity ebbs and kind of grows so it's useful
having someone there and kind of give you a kick as it were
um well let me think what else can i
say i started 3d palace originally on a borrowed computer
that belonged to my mother and uh the
paypal account the 3d palace uses was also owned by my
mother because at the time i managed to
kind of destroying my credit record to such an incredible
degree that i couldn't get a credit or
debit card to validate uh my paypal account so uh that's
why people get confused when they send
money to the paypal account now wondering why it's got to
some old ladies um what else can i say about
myself interest wise my only interests really are kind of 3
d and the kids though i do play rather a
lot of eve online so if anyone wants to come on and uh blow
me up as everyone else seems to do
please feel free.
I heard somewhere, I'm not sure if it's true,
but somebody told me that you were colourblind.
Yeah, I am, actually.
Yeah, quite badly, unfortunately.
I originally wanted to be an architect.
I mean, I trained for years.
Well, I didn't train for years, but, you know,
I kind of guided my schooling back when I was at actual
school
for ages to go towards being an architect
because my grandfather was an architect down in London.
But unfortunately, when I did the colourblindness test,
the careers advisor said, well, you can't be an architect.
You know, they use colored pencils and they use colors to
denote electrical wires and plumbing and stuff.
And you can't be an architect.
They won't let you into university.
So I thought, you know, crap.
What do I do now?
And for a long time, I'd been trained originally.
I tried to become a primary school teacher and then
realized I really hated other people's children so much.
No, really.
Oh, God.
And then I went to university again and did politics and
English.
And I don't know why.
I really don't know why.
But it was about a month into that that I met Amanda,
and then kind of everything changed, and I left university.
How old were you then?
Oh, God.
21?
Yeah, 21.
Oh, there you go.
Oh, God.
34.
Wow.
Yeah.
13 years.
God, yeah.
CG veteran.
Yeah.
I'm not sure.
There's people doing it a lot longer than me.
Pete Draper, awesome, awesome 3D bloke on Big Freck 3D
Palace.
He's been doing that a lot longer than I have.
15 years, right? Or longer than that?
I don't know.
He's got a dark and shady history because he was originally
a ninja.
And then he was a pirate for a while and used to sell the
Atlantic.
And then he became a pirate ninja because he's that awesome
.
So there's a big shout out to Pete Draper.
Yeah, he's pretty cool, actually.
I had an interview with him and we had a good discussion
about layers.
He is the wild man of 3D.
Don't be fooled.
And, you know, he can put me to shame when it comes to part
ying and drinking,
which is a scary thing.
Really? I would never have thought that.
Nah.
Yeah, he is a top bloke. Top bloke.
And his book's definitely worth getting.
Well, if I get... I'm completely broke.
I can't afford anything.
But if eventually things turn out for the best...
If you have two kidneys, then you can always spare one.
That won't... I have a plan of living forever.
or at least to see the year 2100.
That wouldn't help.
That shouldn't be too hard.
Just eat plenty of bran.
No.
I think cocoa.
Possibly the preservatives might keep you going, you never
know.
Yeah, actually, it's true.
We're totally off track now.
What kind of equipment do you record on?
I'm using an NXL condenser microphone
which goes through a preamp.
I think it's...
Oh, God.
And there's the awkward silence.
Oh, it's a Eurorack something.
rather which feeds into a audigy thingamabob which goes
into a my main computer here is um x24800
with a 7900 nvidia graphics card and for some reason it's
got four gig of corsair memory which
windows doesn't use um that's my main machine the old
machine which i love dearly and called betty
was a dual xeon 3.06 ht but unfortunately that died on me
and there were some problems with the
psu which caused various other problems it turned out it
was just clogged with dirt because i never
turned it off so i never cleaned it out um so i cleaned
that out and sold it actually on 3d palace
and that went towards buying this one because the reason
that i probably should get a new machine
eventually and this one's really nice but quite frankly the
dual xeon was better and i really
and I really miss my dual Xehan.
Why?
It was lovely.
It sounded like a hovercraft, because it had nine fans in
it.
I mean, we turned it on, and it goes...
And that's all you could hear.
I mean, the room was absolutely...
You had to turn everything up on full blast to hear
anything.
I know the feeling.
I've had my experience with two dual Xehan's on at the same
time.
It's not nice to hear.
But the processing power is unbelievable.
Four buckets rendering in Metal Ray at the same time.
when you first do it for yourself, it's just fantastic.
Yeah, it's true.
It is. It's absolutely incredible.
But, I mean, this is a serviceable machine.
If it gives me too much grief, I'll, you know,
just go down and sell it to somebody else and get a dual X
eon again.
But it seems to be working OK.
It's got one of those god-awful modded cases
with a blue glowing thing in the middle.
I've never understood the need for it,
but it came free with a motherboard,
so it sits blue and glowing on my desk
like some sort of weird flying saucer.
And just a word out to people who like modding their
computer cases,
It's a computer case.
I don't want to kind of, you know, upset anybody there,
but it's a computer case.
Spend money on the insidey bits, not the glowy case.
It's not important.
I have a neon on my computer.
Oh, God, why?
I have a neon.
Do you not have a light in your room?
You could flick the switch on and off to get it on.
I have a problem with eye bulbs.
They seem to blow out really quickly near me.
I don't know why.
It could be my light source.
I might get attacked with bugs.
I actually haven't seen a moth flying into the blue light
on the side of my computer case yet,
but I'm waiting.
Because there's a fan in front, so it'll get really messy.
Do we have stuff to fly?
But the reason for the modded cases is for kids that like
to go to LAN parties.
Oh, of course.
That's something I forget about, you see.
I mean, when I talk to people and say, what kind of
computer do you have?
They'll go, oh, I've got a, what do you call it, a 4800X64.
You have four gigs of memory and a 7900AGP.
and they go oh god what's such and such a game like on it
and i'll go what and they go you know
this game what's it like on it never heard of it i mean the
last thing i played was the demo of prey
which i was told about and uh you know that's pretty new
but the demo version of prey and it
was awesome and you know i was playing it was fantastic and
someone said to me you know oh have
you managed to play it on full like detail and i looked and
it was on full detail i was like yeah
it's great oh man that's awful i can only get it on like
medium settings but you know i mean most
of the time the only game i really play is eve online which
was made in about 1622 um you know
it's kind of low res spaceship fighting another spaceship
and that's about it and occasionally
i'll play an emulated game of um elite first encounters
because you know it's fantastic
and that was made in 1995 i think so i mean if it wasn't
doing 3d this machine would be wasted on me
absolutely wasted.
I noticed that getting into 3D
kind of kills the passion to play games.
I think it does to a degree.
I mean, if there's still something good out there,
then you still do.
I mean, Prey's fantastic.
I recommend anyone to go and try Prey.
I mean, I really enjoyed it.
But I just don't see the point, really.
There's been nothing that's really sparked
my imagination or interest.
Are you still playing Guitar Hero?
Oh, God, yeah, Guitar Hero.
I'm not sure you can call it a game, but...
Well, no, it's like Dance Revolution with a plastic toy
guitar.
But that's an example of playability over quality, over
quality of graphics.
That's something that a lot of people seem to be missing
out on.
And I know everyone's said this a billion, billion times,
but you've got to look at playability over graphics.
I mean, I love 3D graphics.
I can talk about it until my legs go blue.
But they're not important in the long run as gameplay.
And I think a lot of people kind of forget that.
In the same way with movies, you know.
I mean, at the minute, I was talking to someone about this
the other day.
You've got a swathe, an absolute load of CG movies coming
out.
And out of those, I mean, you've got the big studios like
Pixar, DreamWorks, Blue Sky.
And then you've got all these kind of smaller groups that
are just ferrying out CG like it's some sort of factory
process.
And we're going to see some absolutely god-awful CG movies.
I mean, we've seen some awful ones in the past like Ants.
But we're going to see some even worse ones.
Ants was nice.
But, you know, a lot of people are kind of on the border
with it.
I quite liked that. I quite liked the evil crickets.
But we're going to see some awful, really good ones,
which is exactly like it was with traditional 2D,
where we had the really good cartoons,
and then we had a lot of fast, put-out, really junk ones
just to try and get as much money as possible and as much
merchandising as possible.
So, like I say to people, 3D isn't the be-all and end-all.
It's just a tool. What really matters is a script.
What really matters is gameplay.
and the 3D is just there really to visualize
what the person who's designed it was thinking about.
Yeah, you never know.
I don't really agree with you there, Cris.
Because what I think is it doesn't matter
how much detail you get on the screen,
but it does matter stuff like composition
and what color you use and how you design your characters,
what they look like.
I think it does have an impact on how people...
I don't know.
It's a story and stuff.
I don't know.
If you think about that, I mean, look at some of the
character designs for something like
The Incredibles.
I mean, if you look at the characters for The Incredibles
and compare them to the complexity
of characters, for example, in Final Fantasy The Spirits
Within, and that kind of defeats
the argument immediately.
Because Final Fantasy The Spirits Within was basically a
tech demo.
Everything looked fantastic.
You had hair simulation.
The skin was absolutely perfect.
And you had these characters that were supposed to look
kind of, you know, absolutely real.
And it was going to be brilliant in the next stage of
cinema.
And then you get The Incredibles with these heavily cartoon
ized caricature people, which were a lot more simple.
And it all comes down to it was the animation.
It was the storyline.
And it was the way it was put together compared to, I mean,
you know, these photorealistic kind of human creatures from
Final Fantasy The Spirits Within.
It's always going to come down to the way 3D is used.
You can't use 3D as a platform on its own.
Oh, that's true.
But that's basically what you just said,
that's basically what I mean.
Like, the way the characters are put together,
because the design, the visualization of it is part of it.
You know, I have something to say.
I like Final Fantasy The Spirits Within.
Yeah, I liked it.
I think the reason that people didn't like it,
the people who wanted to see were Final Fantasy fans.
You know, they're expecting Cloud and Sephiroth and
something like that, Vivi.
But what they got was something completely different.
It was a deep, well, I don't know how deep it was.
I saw it a while, but it was like a mature story.
There was a secondary reason for that.
I'm sorry to interrupt you all over there,
but there's a secondary reason why Final Fantasy The Spir
its Within put a lot of people off.
And it was partly to do with the quality.
Now, what you look at, if you're not into 3D for a start,
and it's a psychological thing,
We've got these caricatures in, again, going back to The
Incredibles,
and we can see they don't look particularly human, they're
caricatures,
and we can kind of empathise with them,
and we can get on with their zany antics and so on.
But the more realistic something becomes, and the more
nearly human it becomes,
the more not human we can see it is.
It's something trying to be human.
The uncanny valley.
Exactly.
And then you've got the whole human reaction to something
which is abnormal,
and we tend to shy away from it.
And that's one of the reasons that The Spirits Within kind
of didn't appeal to a lot of people,
Because when they saw it, they saw these things that were
nearly human.
And they don't find it disturbing as such,
but it doesn't hit the right notes in the same way
as seeing a more characterised character would.
Which is why I think a lot of people have kind of avoided
it.
Yeah, but I...
Well, it also seems... Yeah?
I got sad when the girl...
When the girl died at the end.
I don't want to...
I haven't seen the film.
You just ruined it for me.
You don't know which girl...
You wouldn't put a spoiler around that bit.
The two girls in the movie.
The two girls in the movie.
One of them dies, but I felt sad.
I liked the old fella in that film.
I think he was voiced by Donald Sutherland.
I can't remember.
But I quite like the old fella in that simply because...
Because he has a personality.
No, no, no.
I just like the graphics.
Just be honest.
I find the movie...
I think the movie was good.
I enjoyed it.
I felt sad when the character died.
When all hell breaks loose.
I don't see why people bash it so much.
It wasn't like Final Fantasy.
The new one, Advent Children,
That was like the complete opposite of Spirits Within.
Yeah, it was.
I think the thing is, though, you've got to remember,
we're not looking at it from a layman's point of view.
We're looking at it from a point of view of someone who's
interested in 3D,
which means we're always going to see something slightly
differently.
So we're going to appreciate it by looking at the typical
competencies involved.
Whereas we're not looking at it...
I mean, you know, I don't know about you,
but going to the cinema for me tends to be a bit of a kind
of,
oh, I know how they did that kind of experience,
which tends to ruin the movie.
Yes.
And I think that's something we've always got to be aware
of,
is that we don't look at it from a layman's point of view.
We're looking at it from someone who goes,
ooh, that defamation looks a bit off.
I just still like The Incredibles better.
Yeah, it is a fantastic film. I love that front.
Yeah.
I think my vote is for Monsters Incorporated.
That was good, but I definitely preferred The Incredibles
for some reason.
And I liked Finding Nemo a lot as well because of the
facial...
They did a lot with the faces of Max.
They didn't have much choice and there was a lot of
characterization in it.
No.
No, I didn't really like that one.
The Incredibles was great.
What's your vote, Simon?
I don't know.
I'm still waiting to see Cars.
I think Cars might top it.
I think Cars will probably be kind of the summer winner.
Does anybody know what Disney's next movies are?
Because the old contract is over, so...
Finding Michael Eisner?
What?
I'm just being cynical, though.
I'll work for the lawsuit.
Have you ever gotten into any legal trouble over what you
've been doing?
Fortunately, no.
There hasn't been any legal problems for...
Did you get a cease and desist letter somewhere?
No, never had one.
Oh.
I was fairly lucky.
I mean, I'm not going to name names,
but I was lucky enough to go to a meeting with an executive
from Paramount
through a local company.
And I was chatting to him afterwards.
And he's a nice bloke, but he looks like Satan.
He really did.
I mean, when I talked to him, you know,
you could imagine the dark clouds surfacing over his head.
He even had a pointed goatee beard.
And he was a really nice bloke.
And I was telling him that I was doing the APU project at
the time,
and I wasn't exactly sure what to do legally.
And he said, well, you're using it to teach people,
and you're using it as a reference.
Your best bet is to look up fair use on it.
And basically, if you cite fair use, and you look it up
properly,
and make sure that you're not spying any reference images,
you should be okay.
And, you know, touch of wood,
I haven't had a single complaint since from doing it that
way.
That's cool. I guess not everyone...
I mean, well, exactly.
As long as you don't include reference images,
and I'm not putting across the video tutorial as, you know,
we are going to learn how to rip off the Matrix.
No, we're using this as, you know, a reference.
Then I've been fairly lucky so far.
And what about the free tutorials?
There's never been any issue with the free tutorials yet
that I've seen.
I thought there was complaining about the Dreadnought.
No, that was a different thing.
Games Workshop.
Fine, fine, a bunch of people, blah, blah, blah.
Games Workshop, I approached them originally and said to
them when they were bringing out Dawn of War,
would you like it if we brought out a load of video
tutorials for Dawn of War
to show people how to mod the game and we could show them
how to put Titan in.
And, you know, it'd be lots of fun and make your game
really cool because people would be able to mod it.
And they said, yeah, that'd be awesome. That's great. Come
down and meet us.
I said, yeah, we'll come down and meet you. That'd be
fantastic.
So we went down and they said, yeah, we're really into that
idea.
And then a week later they said, no, we're not anymore.
And that was that.
Wow.
And that happens a lot.
yeah games workshop was strange like that my brother used
to actually run a site um it was
i don't know what it was about but it was basically games
workshop and their games and stuff
and then one day he just got a cease and desist lawyer they
're doing their lawyers and they just
it's it's a good company that's the they're good like it
was their hobby but then they obviously
got management and lawyers and stuff and it all went down
the drain i think yeah that's the problem
you see the people um i mean no disrespect to games
workshop you got the people at the top who
of the people you were talking about and you've got the
people who will work at the bottom but
in the middle of that you've got a whole legal kind of maze
to get in touch with the people at
the top and a lot of the time you know you'll get stopped
before you even try because it's the same
as any corporate culture really it gets stopped in
administration it's just one of those things
though that will never happen to you fellas i think well
there's a big difference i mean we
a lot of the things that are non-commercial a lot of the
things that are free for example i don't
really have to worry about because they're free i'm not
trying to rip any companies off
and the ones that are commercial it's uh i've got a lot of
stories i can tell you but i can't tell
you obviously over the air um but i don't think we've got
any problems you can save the stories
for a special episode of cg cast yeah special episodes the
3d palace stories the 3d palace
gets suddenly sued and vanishes episode that'd be
interesting oh yeah 3d palace 2.0
3dpalace2.com
That's the good thing about the internet though
It's very portable so I mean if anything did happen
You can just close down, restart
And off you go again
And that's one of the things I really like about the
internet
Have you ever been attacked?
Because I remember the story where
About four times
The Chinese took us down
Well not the Chinese
We weren't attacked by China
But some Chinese hackers took us down about two and a half
years ago
That was when we were stupid enough
to run an IRC network through
3D Palace's server. And that's just
you may as well put up an invitation called
come in here and have free things.
After that, we lost a lot of data
but I restarted and used backups.
There was an
event, ooh, good'un,
which took Palace down again. We ended
up with a load of, we were rooted,
I can't remember what the hell happened there.
And then there were a
minor event about a year ago
where I had to do a full backup. And then
we weren't hacked i just cocked up and lost all the data
about three months ago yeah and i was i
was doing something with the newsletter manager and uh lost
all 55 000 accounts and i was just
sitting there going where's everybody gone and then it kind
of dawned on me i was like oh Christ
no yeah i have that i've been in those situations they suck
but you there's nothing like the extent
of like 3d total where somebody actually went into their
office and super glued their backup cds
No, I mean, mainly because the 3D Palace office only
contains me.
So if someone came in, I'd wonder who the hell they were
for a start.
Because no one ever visits us.
You know, we're the bastard child of 3D, to be quite honest
, you know.
We don't get many visitors.
I noticed on your site you have a Pog system.
What is all about Pogs?
Yeah, Pogs were a brilliant idea at the time.
The thing about Pogs was to encourage people to post.
So whenever they posted on 3D Palace, their comment would
win a POG.
And we based our kind of currency system on those small
cardboard things.
You know, those small cardboard toys, because they were so
useless.
And we thought, you know, our currency system can be just
as useless.
And what we allowed people to do was use it to buy video
tutorials with
on the sponsor-membered ones, so they didn't have to
upgrade.
And it was great for a time.
But then we upgraded the site, and the code stopped working
.
And then the coder who built it vanished somewhere.
and then the new coder looked at the code for the pog
system
and kind of cried and ran away.
And that's kind of been it, really.
I managed to get the pog system working again
so people can accumulate pogs,
but they can't spend them on anything yet.
Soon they'll be able to.
It kind of ruins the whole competition.
They'll be able to get them working again in August.
It's just we've got so much coding going on at the moment,
to be honest, that I can't kind of spare anyone to go and
work on it.
But, like, I think I have, like, 100 pogs.
How much do you need to actually get something?
Well, at the time, I mean, the free video tutorials were
always free.
But I think it was 250 or 400 pogs to download, part of a
sponsor member set.
The idea was that we weren't giving it to people, kind of,
you posted 10 times,
here, have everything, we love you, mwah.
It was a case of, you know, if you really wanted it that
badly,
and you didn't have any money, then you could actually earn
it a different way.
And it worked well, and we will be doing it again.
It might even be working by the time people listen to this.
Probably won't, though.
But there's just something we're going to have to work on,
unfortunately.
At the minute when I click on the modify cache level for
this user,
I get 404.
So it's still not working.
So it will work eventually, though,
and then Igor will stop being so upset because he runs all
our competitions.
18 keys.
We're at 51 minutes.
Do you have any final comments?
Yeah, I'm going to give a deadpan shout-out
to all my 3D Palace homies on IRC.
and a big hello to everyone
on 3D Palace
CG Talk, 3D World
3D Total, Simply Minus, Simply Max
3dsmax.nl
I mean I've
drawn my index, oh god
Pete Draper, the big man of 3Ds
You're a good Jason Busby
Big salutes to him as well, of course
and, oh god
what else
Alex Alvarez
Alex Alvarez, if you're listening
you don't have a beard
I was thinking
it was somebody else
okay
sorry Alex
I thought you had a beard
I don't think you have
you might have a moustache
I'm not sure
I really need to look
at a picture
top bloke though
I've talked to him before
oh cool
maybe I can have him
on the show sometime
um
I've seen him on
CG Talks
IRC Network
but it was quite a while ago
but you should get in touch
with him
he's a nice bloke
Michael
okay I'll send him
an email
hmm
well I think
this is a nice long episode
it's a big contrast
to the last episode,
which was very calm and chill.
Man, that's going to talk a lot.
Yeah, it's good.
It's a very good make my j ob easier.
All right, so say goodbye, everybody.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Oh, and Cris, you're welcome.
Cris, you're welcome to come back on the show
anytime you want.
No, thanks.
You'll probably regret that
because I get bored on Sunday evenings
and, you know,
we'll end up with a nine-hour podcast
of me just
hyping things.
We can have a drunken episode.
Simon, I, and you
can get drunk.
You know what, Oliver?
You know what, Oliver?
In that case,
if you're going for
a drinking episode,
you probably want to
interview Pedro del Toro.
Pedro del Toro.
Oh, lovely.
And then you can
explain all about
the application
you don't like.
Oh, yeah.
You can join
an interview with
Pedro del Toro.
Okay, I'll send him
an email.
That's a good idea.
Right.
I think he's still
imprison and borrow
gravia but they do
forward his emails
alright goodnight
everybody
goodnight
goodnight
