So I went to CGCookie to watch a few free tutorials, and it seems like most of those are gone. There are still good amount of free training material, but a lot of free videos are gone (unless I got lost in navigating the updated site).
The Shop at CGCookies also had a bunch of good training videos. They no longer there
Is it temporary due to upgrade of the site or permanent thing?
I got the impression that they were going to move some of the older stuff to the new site, but only so those with citizenship could download it. I could be wrong though, so donât quote me on that.
So far Iâm not a big fan of the new site, but weâll see how it goes.
I find the new CGCookie quite confusing to use. It seems like some sort of mess.
Also most of the tuts now seems to be for newbs. I was purchasing from time to time citizen membership when some awesome advanced tutorials came in. But now no reason to do that anymore.
And JW(and his team?) got this weird idea that people are not interested in advanced courses because they donât know how to do the stuff in them. WellâŠthatâs why we watch them in the first placeâŠso we can learn and practice to achieve the same levelâŠugh :spin:
Where is the logic? O_O
Are they going to monthly spam the website with 10 tuts/series on how to use the loop cut tool and how to bake normal maps.?
I do like they they removed some old blender 2.4 tuts and 2.5 as well.
@00Ghz:
One of the things being the administrator of a website allows is traffic analysis. If JW is intending to take CGCookie in a different direction, Iâd be willing to be you a hot dinner heâs doing is based on the number of people (& subscribers) he finds accessing the content.
Canât say Iâm fond of the new design myself, but it does appear inspired (at least partially) by the whole âresponsive layoutâ thing new websites are fond of. Generally, I think itâs a waste of time for 3D/2D graphics video / tutorial sites to do that because if youâre running Maya, 3DS Max, Photoshop, etc on a 1024x768 screen - youâre already doing it wrong. However, Blender is something a lot of old computers can still handle and a lot of âless fundedâ people are using. Perhaps that demographic needs this (and, again, logs of who visits and their browsers capabilities help JW know better than us in this regard).
I get what youâre saying regarding the website traffic analysis. Still there is so much that you can talk about basic stuff. They had enough newbs content on the old site as well. No need for even more.
As for the responsive website itâs needed because of Google. They downgrade your search rank listings if your website ainât mobile optimized.
It seems that you have to be a citizen now to be able to download old content that used to be free. Is this temporary or from now on everything that is considered old material will only be downloadable if you are a paying customer?
Not all the free stuff is in Youtube. Iâve even noticed they changed some free stuff to non-free, such as the short laser turret tutorial by Dan Brown. If memory serves me right, feature overview videos for previous Blender versions used to be free too, but they are not available on Youtube. Not a big deal, actually, but I found it kind of odd to switch free stuff to non-free.
I have a massive Evernote document with tips and tutorials Iâve been accumulating. For videos, I just included a link until I get a chance to watch and digest it.
After having all of the CG Cookie links from their site die, I went through to try to relink them to the new archive. But yeah, unless Iâm missing something they donât even appear to be viewable to non-citizens. There is stuff available on their YouTube and Vimeo channels, but itâs not complete in regards to what they used to offer for free.
Ah, I didnât even realize that. I confess that I havenât really watched anything on CGCookie in quite awhile so Iâm not sure what all is and isnât available. Frankly, I wish they hadnât archived the old stuff either, since they were always really convenient to link to when answering peopleâs questions. There are like a zillion really good YouTube channels out there these days too though, so itâs not the end of the world I suppose.
Definitely not the end of the world, for sure. Just made me glad I have this habit of downloading to my hard drive every Blender video I find useful or interesting. One tends to forget that internet is not a static place and even worthy stuff can vanish without a trace from time to time.
I really really donât like the new CG cookie interface, I loved it when it was divided into different websites, like 3ds max cookie, Blender cookie,etc
but eh, Iâm probably the only one with this opinion
Does this mean itâs not possible to independently purchase a particular tutorial of interest without having to be a citizen anymore ? Thatâs a pity. But I guess they must have had a reason.
Nope, I feel the same way. The new site is really not intuitive, barely useful in its current state. It was such an invaluable tool but sadly it is now cryptic and uninteresting, of course, just my take on things.
I have to say, I completely disagree. When Iâm at my computer, I prefer to spend my time doing work rather than looking at tutorials and reading manuals. Idle time while commuting, waiting for whatever or just sitting in the loo is best spent reading manuals and looking at tutorials and I very, very much prefer those to be mobile friendly. So your whole point of âyouâre doing it wrongâ is just kinda weird.
(in a somewhat off-topic note, I do think responsive design gets a lot of bad rep because so many sites look exactly the same. Same flat look elsewhere. I think thatâs got more to do with todayâs minimalistic UI trend than responsive desing in and of itself. Just look at the âweb 2.0â era pages⊠they all had a very similar look as well.)