But who will he sell his second rate tutorials to then, Other software platforms are flooded with way better teachers and learning sites.
=)
Not necessarily. His tutorials are not second rate when the quality of the result is good imo. But for example, now as a Modo user, the documentation and tutorial landscape is pretty barren, despite the software growing in usage. I would argue that a good capitalist can make good on this demand for a growing market. Regardless though, if people keep saying his “content” is garbage now, why would he stick with a software or community that continues to attack him for not falling in line with their social dictates?
Gotta look at it from the outside looking it. Blender for the most part is doing good in that its tutorial options are fairly over saturated thanks to the youtubes.
Edited.
Misunderstood posters intent.
Oh for Christ’s sake, this is getting bloody ridiculous.
Andrew Price stated the obvious. He did it in a stereotypically Australian fashion, straight forwardly and without bowing & scraping to those guaranteed to be offended regardless of how well he worded it. Clearly an effort that would be wasted given the usual suspects crawled out of the woodwork, not to actually address what he said, but to simply take potshots at the man saying it.
Fact is, The Blender community has some stand out artists. Fact is, they’re fewer on the ground than in other non-Blender-focused communities. Fact is, work that would get harsher (yet still constructive) criticism elsewhere gets more praise here. Hence, comparing oneself & one’s art to people here is gauging yourself / your art against a lower standard than what you’d be doing elsewhere. Fact is, people comparing themselves to lower standards tend not to improve (or feel the need to improve) as much as those comparing themselves to higher standards.
Now, even though Blender is my primary 3D tool these days (and has been for some years) - that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Perhaps because I realise this and spend time over at Polycount, CGTalk, ConceptArt, and other non-Blender-specific concentrations of artistic talent. Perhaps because, like Andrew, I’m Aussie and we don’t take umbrage at every minor comment. Perhaps, and this is probably more likely, it’s because I don’t make my use of Blender a part of my identity any more than my ownership of a Mac laptop, my preference for Android phones, or my use of Scribus software.
Tools are just that, “tools”. When you find yourself getting upset because someone points out a community focused on hammers is going to have a lower standard of expert carpentry than those that focus on all the tools available - perhaps it’s time to take some time away from the computer.
The guru guy is all about: 1. money
2. EGO (bloated)
It wouldn’t bother me if in the persuit of his happiness he wouldn’t bash others and stick his nose in every possible crack that he THINKS he is better at!
What is the problem of writing the title like: Why do i frequently visit this CG site and this CG site. Instead of
Why I don’t frequent Blender art forums.
He could not even mention BA to get the point accross. He is clearly frustrated from his UI proposal rejection…
His post is intended to bash/generate clicks and i bet he did it on purpose.
He is a success story to himself maybe (gotta ask the guy :))
Helping newbies on BA doesn’t generate any money 
If the money wouldn’t be the main thing on his mind he would come here more often and help for free in his spare time. But noooo he is preoccupied with thinking how he could get more money and boost his EGO some more.
And yeah this isn’t typical Ausie response. Its more like Slavic one 
Take care.
I am close to say that there are actually others who did the same or even more for the community than Andrew just not advertising it that much. And they hardly get the same praise.
The UI debate - and I work in UI/UX actually - clearly showed that Andrew does not understand it well. From my point he did a lot of reading, pulled quotes and such, and while I consider that needed design research, where he failed was synthesizing it into an appropriate and doable design proposal. And he simply got burned for it.
Where I agree with Andrew is the inconsistency like lack of space bar menu entries, property menu and property bar with different content, and such, because this requires needlessly more cognitive activity and results into more mouse movement. If the chaos is cleaned up then
Blender would much easier to use - period. I also teach Blender since years and what makes it hard to learn is not the UI but the massive amount of things it can do compared to other CAD apps. If you would teach Maya you would have the same quantity issue when teaching.
But for the rest? I agree with Ton and other designers, simple is not always what is important - logical effective efficient is what counts and simple apps often hardly can do stuff.
However I also agree with you that Ton kinda head a stroke when talking about wireframe not being needed - which is why I said I think Ton is a coder and not an artist or Designer. Maybe at that time it was to make things faster - but fact is that wireframes have many functions. Blows my mind what Ton said in that regards.
A national sport in Slovenia is practising envy. The typical prayer in Slovenian church goes something like this: Dear God, I would be very grateful to you if only something or someone could shoot dead my neighbours cow.
Years ago I would probably side with the “crowd” about Andrew or his polemic articles but not any more. He stings the whole Blender community right in its lazy a**. He makes the community think, discuss, plan and do something. We need people with vision, options and suggestions.
Andrew keep walking and keep disrupting!
P.S. No disrespect to anyone, just my cent on the subject.
That’s just a modo problem
Cinema 4d,3ds max,maya,etc don’t really have that problem
and actually, Tyrant,
While pro lighting skies is essentially a supposedly better version of Cinema 4D Sibl plugin,
His stuff is really good
you wont find a 3ds max guru(3d sphere comes close though he hasn’t updated in a while)
or modo guru
and his tutorials are very very useful
10x better…
How about I put it this way
Andrew is number 1 in the blender tutorial market for a good reason
This will all be forgotten in a few week and we’ll be on to the next big thing.
Don’t you just love the diversity and passion of communities, the ebb and flow of conflicting ideas, all this posturing just gets the creative juices flowing, it’s all human life in one big mixing pot.
I kind of think this is lost on Andrew, the article lacks empathy, true vision, is obviously inflammatory, but i’m sure his website traffic boosted ten fold.
Anyway the sun will still rise in the east tomorrow and i look forward to a new day with new challenges and inspirations from this community.
So I take it you didn’t read through the very good thread that popped up regarding pro lighting skies. Long story short if you have a well taken hdri you don’t really need to do much to make it work.
Dude is not a professional cg artist, as he as never worked on a movie, game professionally etc and don’t think he has any formal training in cg whatsoever so sometimes the are dangerous knowledge gaps in what he puts out if you don’t know any better you could end up learning a whole bunch of very wrong techniques.
Personally this is what will be in my stocking this christmas http://www.amazon.com/HDRI-Handbook-2-0-Dynamic-Photographers/dp/1937538168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446481265&sr=8-1&keywords=hdri
@Tyrant
I participated in it
I meant to say all of his stuff except pro lighting skies was good
Based on what? I am close to say that are other sites that offer more in both quantity and depth.
I gained over the years more from those sites than Blender Guru tuts because they were technically specific.
But I think honestly where Andrew excels is with the “www.thearchitectureacademy.com”.
There the work that comes out really speaks also for the focus on details - but to my understanding this is
also more an online class room where others hired by Andrew collaborate with participants and provide feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Who are some of the top dogs for Blender Tutorials? I barely watch any these days, but I could always use some inspiration for improving the quality of my own tutorials.
All the ones I have personally found really solid are from people who are not that prolific in terms of releasing tutorial.
Beorn animation tutorials from the old cgcookie animation toolkit and fundamentals, nathan’s humane rigging, andy’s creature factory 2…I like my hard surface stuff and masterxeon1001 stuff is pretty solid He has pateron and youtube channel…
site wise I don’t think you can go wrong with cgcookie, blender cloud and cgmaster. The cloud is really where I am doing most of my learning these days as I find more of the intermediate to advance type tutorials there.
…
Personally I wouldn’t mind supporting a few tutorial makers if the decided to go the pateron/gumroad route as long as the stuff the put out was worth getting.
I think he understood it well enough, but was unable to execute those ideas into something that wouldnt make everyone cringe on the inside. Of course when I watched his proposals, I was looking at the concept not necessarily the literal depiction. Sadly I think a good chunk of people only look what it looks like rather than process the information as to what its trying to achieve. Over all though I agree with your general assessment of the UI showdown with Andrew.
Regarding the “simple” part of Ton’s speech… i think these word choices serve more as a distraction half the time. He likes to throw around words without really ever saying anything, many of those words and labels are just too subjective.
Of course it is, but its also because Modo is still considered YOUNG as far as 3d applications go. Blender had the same problem for awhile as well…which is exactly how Andrew got started. There was a demand for tutorials and information yet very little to be had. So he went ahead and self published a book + tutorials and people bought it. Now the tutorial sector for Blender is over saturated.
The same will happen with Modo over time. This is the best time to jump on Modo tutorials though if profit is part of the equation. Supply and demand! Low supply, big demand. In fact Tor Frick just published a set of tutorials on Steam for Modo Indie. So some are starting to get it.
well there’s XRG13 who is just the best hand paint guy in free youtube tutorial market but he rarely posts stuff,sadly
his “introduction to hand painting in blender”(the one where you paint a purple pillar) video was the final thing that convinced me to switch to blender 
There’s 3D bandit who is just the best procedural guy
There’s Andrew price who is pretty professional when he doesn’t derail into talking about japanese shirts(shame because I liked him better when he derails into the most random stuff)
There’s BlenderHD aka Jonathan Lampel, tests out everything new and makes a good tutorial about it
Cynicatpro, who is technical but we don’t get a lot of techy people here so yeah
CG geek whose tuts are 2 hours long but, he’ll get you to the final result, no bs.
Gleb alexandrov, we all know him, come on
and of course who could forget
CG cookie… before they changed UI
Tutorials are still cool but eh…yeah
There are probably more people but yeah
lots and lots of people
If you look into product modeling and rendering you can also check out my playlists in youtube - but they are very specific to using Blender as a product design tool not about character modeling or animation.
And for architecture rendering and such there is so much one could learn from VRay tutorials and apply that to Blender. When I was younger working with Maya and Lightwave I also often frequently looked at: http://www.evermotion.org/ They have a pretty diverse set of interesting reads.
Odd - I would have assumed that Modo by now would be very populated with tutorials as well specifically because it is not so new. But I found also the more an app is attracting professionals the less you might get free tutorials. Alias is highly specialized for car / trans design and you hardly find anything useful. Well nobody wants to share their skill there. Makes sense it is a highly competitive market.
Maybe what I read from Ton’s point was this: I disagree with making Blender easier because 3D itself is not easy. Making a good and efficient UI is really tough. I am since the beginning with Fusion 360 and they try to make a UI that is cognitive easy yet collects all the powerful tools. Essentially their loft is also a bridge and a blend command all in one. That in Alias would be three tools. But they struggle with the fact that the more functions they add the UI will be more dense meaning more buttons to press and such.
It is great to introduce Blender at schools but the app is today so powerful I am not sure if a simplified = dumbed down UI to make learning 3D faster easier is the best for the future of Blender. If via Python just a new UI could be scripted that hides most of the tasks a kid would struggle with and limit it to basic 3D data generation and manipulation then this might be not a bad idea.
Some month ago I needed to to something in Modo and it took me some time to figure out where is what. So even such a simple UI like Modo is just not something to learn in an afternoon - meaning coming back to Ton 3D is just a complex topic.
The wireframe stuff scares me a little because I slightly sense a serious disconnect with reality here tho.
I recently talked to somebody who teaches Rhino and SketchUp and they use SKP because they can so quickly make some ideas in 3D and the learning curve is fast. But the stuff done in SKP is garbage and the app itself is limited. My students suffer a little under the fact that we only have 2 courses for digital design and I cover Alias Fusion 360 and Blender witch Alias and Blender being the two hardest apps to learn because there is so much you can do in them unlike Fusion which is great at solid tools but generative design it is pretty weak where Blender with the modifiers just kills both.
That’s kinda where I am from. So I hope I understood him right to make the UI more consistent - for me this would be already a great help.
@cekunen
don’t think you can learn Blender in one short course!
may be the basics but not the advance stuffs
learning curve is really stiff now - much more then in old 2.49!
you and I have been at it for years now
and I’m still learning tricks with the new tools !
so bl is still evolving and getting better in general
PC are getting more powerful so you can do more things faster!
and one good thing most of it is still free !LOL
happy bl
I don’t have a problem with Andrew, but I found his article very misguided for how to improve at art. Since he isn’t an advanced artist himself yet, he has a few misconceptions on how to get there. I think his tutorials are pretty good though.
That were about the same thoughts I had. I think he has reached a good level and knows how to use blender and blenders tools. Thus his results are good. There is no arguing. But still he has his own path to go… And sometimes he tries to talk about stuff where his understanding is still not there. And I think many people reached a good level, but they get dictated by the programs/tools they use. Cycles for example gives a user great photorealistic possbilites and you see the renderings increased alot lately. But sorry photorealism is not all you can achieve with it. Why not use the tool as You want it and create/develope something unique with the toolset you have.
Imho his article lacks a lot of differentiation. It is just not as easy or as black and white as he often tries to make it. Of course you should be open to other art/artists/masters or whatever. But this is not all. The main part about getting better is how to motivate yourself to take the next steps that are important.