Blender Poll

Hello friends.
I’m working in a educational product covering Hair using Cycles. And I created a poll to have a feedback about the subject, and an overall feeling about educational products for Blender.

The link to poll http://goo.gl/forms/Dp1WgbF1KN

There are only five question, but they are important, I’ll share the results later.
Thanks in advance to anyone that can participate.
:)You can discuss in the comments what you think about the subject as well.

I love Blender.

I was looking for some place to praise this program but idk where it would best go. Come to think of it every forum should have a praise report section where people can say just how life enhancing the product is. I really had my back against the wall before discovering Blender. I was playing with Daz 3d freebies and they didn’t even come close to enough to give me xp with a graphic art program. I ended up frustrated and angry so I uninstalled all their items. I also caught a virus searching desperately for anything free to help me with Daz both tutorial and material wise. Talk about stress and nightmare. I already cannot afford to pay my internet bill it is getting so high and Xifinity is raising the rates every chance they get. Paint.net isn’t enough and mmorpg’s get boring after character creation is over. I needed something cheap and meaty and omg Blender is so awesome. This is like having steak after I’ve been thru a desert subsisting on cactus needles!

My only feeling on education products is I’m not paying one penny. Sorry I just escaped Daz3d’s greedy clutches. If I could make the mmo I’m dreaming of and sell it I would love to donate to Blender but I is a poor man for now.

Hey guys, I just analyzed the answers from the poll. The commented result is in my blog.
I’ll post here the results too.



I can only attache 3 files :/.
Anyways, this should be helpful for those of you who wants to make tutorials and stuff. What you think about the answers?

This is a bizarre poll. Why would someone who doesn’t know ‘much’ about hair answer a poll directly related to hair? That third option should be omitted. The real results should be (assuming I’ve got my mathematics correct):

  • Yes vote: 46%
  • No vote: 54%

There’s slightly more people who think there should be more tutorials for hair in cycles, and I don’t think they’d be wrong. Hairs is a tough thing to cover. However, I’m also curious as to why a high percentage think there’s enough out there for hair tutorials. They must think that for a reason, so it might be worth delving into finding out why given the proportion is huge and not a minority.

I’ve also taken the liberty of looking at your fourth chart:

http://static.wixstatic.com/media/133698_84997399ff9e4f92960ce6d143c4522d.png_srz_p_478_284_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_png_srz
Personally, I prefer books over videos, but this chart makes sense because Blender is a visual tool and videos are very visual. I personally say ‘books,’ but they need to be written properly. They need diagrams, color if possible, and very clear, concise instructions. You can get away with having none of these in a video if the screencast is clear, but it helps if there’s instructions and reasons explained. Videos tend to annoy me and it’s tough finding ones worth watching; half of them don’t get to the point (and talk about irrelevant things) at the start of the video for example, and they tend to be very fragmented. At least with books (in my opinion at least), you have a core topic say ‘texturising’ and then go indepth throughout the book with different parts of texturising. Videos, whilst they can be grouped, are not usually stuck together coherently and are usually better for people wanting a quick solution to a single problem.

As far as the price chart is concerned, you have to be careful when you say that more than half are only willing to pay less than $10 because that isn’t what you asked in the original poll. It’s hard to judge how much people should pay for a product if they can’t see it, and the only way to fairly price it would be if they could see it on the shelf in the shop, as it were. You could say; ‘how much are people willing to buy this ring?’ Without actually seeing it, people will leave responses varying from nill (it’s worth absolutely sod all) to thousands. You haven’t given an option for the end of the spectrum, you’ve given an option of 'less than $10, but you need a more than $40 as well.

Thanks for taking your time to reply Kurtis.
Yeah, I tried to answer two questions with just one. When I formulated it I thought I could sense what people think about both (or more if they sense they know hair). Now I realize it was misleading.

I agree with you about the price too. You can’t truly evaluate something that you don’t see/sense/feel (or exist yet). But I had to start from something. Mainly because I was having a hard time to put a price in the project.
thanks again for the feedback.

With regards to price, it depends on the product itself. People don’t usually make money from videos except in cases where they might be popular enough that people can charge a commission for. Most likely though you’d be making money from advertisements and things like that. With books, you can quite safely charge a hard and set fee, but it really is hit and miss whether it’ll take off or not in terms of sales. They’re usually harder to shift than say story-books naturally, but it’s not impossible.

Good luck with your project though anyway! It would be good to see what you’ve come up with, don’t forget to leave a link or something here…

There are lots of great tuts on hair and they are free.
Its all in the marketing. The best tutorial I have seen in a long time had so few views. Hour long tuts that can be put in a nut shell called I tweaked and tweaked till I got it right are all the rage. I can’t endure 5 minutes. You got get some groupies. Have you got any groupies yet?
Edit
Check the market but the biggest factor is you. Some people need to pay or they do not feel like they are getting the best. Can you sell it?