Some of you may know me from the forums here (or as a RMP or CP vendor) -- wave!  :biggrin:

Well, now I'm working as the Events Manager at 3D Art Live.

I'm curious to know what types of art webinars you'd like to see. We're the ones who put on Poser LIVE as well as other Poser and Vue webinars. The webinar presenters present in real-time and there's interaction with the audience via a chat box. It's really fun (I was an audience member of Poser LIVE long before I started working there and I enjoyed it). The concept is for them to be step-by-step, tutorial based so that you can actually do what the presenter does when you've finished the webinar.

I'd love to know:

1. Topic areas you'd like to see covered (can be any type of 3D art, not just Poser, and even postwork-related topics)

2. Presenters you'd like to see present

3. What day of the week (and time) you'd like to attend a webinar

4. How long you'd like the webinar to be (like 1 hour long, etc.)

5. If you'd rather sit in a live webinar and participate OR just buy a recording of a webinar afterwards (or both)

Or, if you're feeling extra cheeky, you can fill out my survey by clicking here.

Please keep in mind that these are paid events, so think in terms of things you'd be willing to pay for. :)

If you'd like to be a presenter, seriously I'd love to hear from you. Just PM me and I can fill you in. 

I'd like to see you not using this forum to promote commercial products.

That's fair. I worried that might be the case and I guess I should have just not done it.

I've seen other people post similar "queries" about products or services they might create (sometimes under the guise of "what would you like to see for XYZ figure" or the whole "what do you want to see in my new figure"), so if it's inappropriate, then by all means I hope the mods remove it. 

I also figured that plenty of other people who created tutorials or webinars could equally have access to whatever people posted and everyone could benefit.

I can't delete the post myself or otherwise I would.

Sorry. :(

I don't think this is inappropiate at all and yes, you're allowed to promote commercial products, if you don't over do it. It's actually good to ask these questions before setting up a service like this. You want to know what people are interested in, otherwise no one will benefit of these webinars at all. Personally I'm not interested at all, since I've got tons of teaching materials on my harddisk which I still have to go through, but for 5 I would say both. Whatever time time you broadcast, many will miss out because of the time zones, so being able to watch them whenever you want is great. Also if you do live Q&A question sessions, perhaps it's good to do a follow up session at a later date, asking questions that may arise later on after watching the webinar again. Then you could collect questions through email, facebook and such and answer them when you've got a lot of them. Just my thoughts, maybe they're helpful. Good luck with setting this up and I do hope you get people answering your questions and being interested.

Keep in mind though that we've seen a number of webinars here lately, with some big names involved. I didn't attend them simply due to the times and the prices asked for them. I'm willing to learn, but I don't have an unlimited budget. I haven't seen great excitement about those webinars at all and they seem to have gone as sudden as they arrived. You're wise to start this thread, there may not be much interest for this at all. Aways keep in mind there's youtube, many free help can be found there.

I'm mainly following Vue training these days. I may follow some stuff on youtube, but I've got as lot of purchased training from geekatplay. There are few major players when it comes to selling Vue training. I've chosed geekatplay simply because of the price they do ask and the quality they offer. The other players ask 3 to 10 times as much for the same trainings and often they're not better quality and more important, they do not offer a better insight at all. I've got expensive Vue training and didn't learn a thing at all, but when buying the much cheaper a geekatplay training, I'm learning something new every time. They know what their customers want.

So, you're absolutely right about asking!

I'd like good Poser and Vue artists being interviewed. There are some in the galleries over here (StoneMason, Paul Francis, Tiff666, ...).

Time zones are limitations indeed, but having the recordings available (at a reduced price or so) might be fine.

And no, this is not an inappropriate question, this is listening to your (future) customers.

Thanks for the feedback. That makes me feel better. :)

So do you all prefer:

• tutorial, step-by-step training on a specific topic where you can easily follow along

• demonstrations (which moves a lot faster) where a top artist just shows you quickly how they did something

• a free format Q&A where the audience fires questions at the featured artist

• or a structured interview where a host asks questions of the featured artist (and then there's a smaller Q&A open to everyone at the end)

I love the idea of it and there's never anything wrong with offering training.  It something that is of great benefit to Poser or any software.  Poser is a better experience if folks can be eased into learning like that.

However, I do feel the price point is a bit high compared to the market that it is aimed at.  It's bargain level for folks who have the budget to shell out thousands on high priced software.  If it is geared towards hobbyists that are budgeting content, then it becomes pricey.  Gearing towards advanced users or experts, they don't need it, except to maybe pick up a few tricks and tips.

If you go tutorial format, you compete against the market pricing of tutorials, which I'm guessing for well done products that is in the $15 to $40 range, average heading towards $25?

Getting beyond all that, I can see the Q&A being a nice pow-wow session with perhaps some topic suggestions provided so that it could be used to ease folks into a master class or whatnot.  That could be free or low priced and then the largest topic of interest brought into a higher priced class.  I could see that.  I could also see a subscription model for this sort of thing if it was reasonable (and I'm not the biggest subscription fan out there by a long shot).  With a sub, I'd also offer the occasional free class as a sampler.

I don’t care for video training in general, just not my preferred learning mode. I have watched several the geekatplay’s free offerings and they are pretty nice. If I were going to purchase anything, the fact that they have a lot of free content would make me gravitate towards them. Having enough free samples to give people an idea of what to expect would be good. In fact, it might be worth investing in actually producing something at this point to show what you can do and generate interest, even if it’s a 30 minute thing. Vue and Poser seem to be popular, at least here, so a scene combining thise would be good.

Live? LoL, I have a hard enough time going back and forth to catch things on a recording so definitely downloads.. There are plenty of tutorials out there on doing specific things or creating a particular scene in this or that program. I’d be more interested in more general things like creating a specific mood, lighting, etc. character interaction with the setting, camera angles etc. Those can apply across a range of software. Things like Birn’s Digital Lighting and Rendering, which isn’t application specific at all. Maybe giving some specific examples of titles might get a more accurate feedback on people’s interest. – the more detailed and specific the better.

Having downloadable content to go with the training is always nice, something that geekatplay does. That may be easier with Vue and some other programs like Poser where things like figures and clothing can’t for the most part be redistributed.

I would think hosted Q&A where they can select questions and be prepared to answer them in a logical way. Live may be OK for general stuff but I’m not sure about one person asking about this dial setting, another about something else etc. Seems like it might get a bit chaotic.

The price seems high but it may be in line, TBH, I haven’t even looked at what geekatplay charges for their paid tutorials. It may be worth it but for that price you can get one or mayve even two books

At 5$, you would perhaps get lots of customers.

At 119$, I fear you are alone.

Just my 2 cents.

Is it only certain vendors that get to spam the forums to drum up business?

Or maybe they start letting all of them come in with "product surveys" or "requests for feedback".

netherworks, lots of good suggestions there - thanks! I especially like your & lmckenzie's Q&A suggestions. I could see that being extremely educational if it's done right.

lmckenzie, good feedback. We're amigos with geekatplay. That's all I'll say for now. ;)  We actually have already done a few seminars (Poser Live, Xurge3D, reality/LuxRender, etc.) Before most of those seminars, we've done a free intro session (no obligation). I'll have to find out if we can post at least a portion of those online as samples. Yes, Jeremy Birn’s Digital Lighting and Rendering is awesome. I got that one a couple of years ago for Christmas actually. Sat there like a nerd on Christmas morning reading through it - lol. Highly recommend that book to everyone. Very. Good. 

Medzinatar, we already talked about this earlier & throughout this thread. 

Vilters, very good point. I think the more expensive ones will likely be for either longer seminars or high-end apps (or things that someone who's making a living at content creation might care to pay for). BTW, I saw your A2 weightmap earlier today & got distracted and forgot to comment. Nice work. :)

*"Is it only certain vendors that get to spam the forums to drum up business?"*You could report the thread and let the moderators decide rather than freelancing IMO.

*We're amigos with geekatplay. That's all I'll say for now. ;)  *

Ah, so you know the 'Voo" lady - love her voice :-) 

They're a quality bunch over there at GAP.

Quote - At 5$, you would perhaps get lots of customers.

At 119$, I fear you are alone.

Just my 2 cents.

Quote - If you go tutorial format, you compete against the market pricing of tutorials, which I'm guessing for well done products that is in the $15 to $40 range, average heading towards $25?

I think that completely depends on what's being offered. If you ask me to pay $25 for an hour training, no matter how good it is, I'll pass, but if it's at least 2-3 hours, I'll may go for it. Personally I prefer an hour of training, taking me through a project from start to end, showing me what techniques could be used. I've bought at least 10 geekatplay training videos over the last 3 months  and watched a couple of free ones as well and learned something new every time. That's what I like about a training, it helps me to excell in what I do, that worth money.

By the way, I can't reach geekatplay.com am I the only one?

no, I cant reach GAP at the moment either.

for (paid) tuts and things, I'd like experienced artists discussing the issues they had or expected in a project, and telling about why they did the things they did, the way they did it. Just taking me through a project showing off their personal skills does not help me much, I'm afraid.

And I'd like them discussing the goods and bads of finished pieces, of their own - and of someone else (have two artists mutually commenting, or so). This helps me to find areas of improvement in my own works.

I just went over to "tube you all". LOL

Did a quick search on Hexagon, Blender, Poser & some tricks and tips.
I do not live long enough to look at all existing youtube tutorials. LOL.

Blender alone would cover weeks of spare time.

I'll have to come back in a next life. LOL.

Not for nothing but you guys should check out the pricing at Gnomon,CGSociety, ZBrush Workshops and Concept Design Workshop - the lowest price you'll find on these sites is $49USD.  I get that it's tough for people to pay more (I took a class that was $1000 at ZBrush Workshops)  but $25 is way below the going rate. Just putting that out there.  Most of the youtube videos you'll find on the net wouldn't be worth the space it took to host them, not in terms of quality info from folks in the industry.  You may be able to gleam one or two things from them but you'll probably also learn a lot of bad habits.

I think it's neat that you guys are looking to do training and stuff for Poser and other software. I wish you luck with it. :)

Hmm, vague mentions of a relationship with geekatplay and now geekatplay is unavailable. Please tell us this is just a coincidence. I'd hate to think that geekatplay is going away or its pricing/free tutorials are suddenly going 'uptown.'

Teyon I'm sure has a good point but I question whether CGSociety et al is a pricing model that will work for the Poser community, at least for the hobbyist segment of it. I think you can probably get far more long term benefit from $50-$100 spent on quality training as opposed to the same spent on content, but I'm not sure how many will allocate their funds that way. That's in addition to real budget limitations and the fact that hobbyists can't expect to see a financial return, unlike professionals who, in addition, I assume can take a tax write off of some of the expense.  

Thanks, Teyon & good feedback. :)

lcmkenzie, it's coincidence only. Geekatplay's website was up for me earlier. It must have been a brief hosting outage/fluke for them. Nothing's changing there as far as I know. 

You cannot start comparing the zbrushwold to the poserwold at all. You're looking at a completely different community. Most poser users a training would be geared at have paid $100-$200 for the software they use, while zbrush users are willing to pay almost $800 for their beloved software, huge difference. I'm not even sure if these companies you mention should be taken as the norm at all. If I look at Vue, the users pay $100-$1000+ for their software, yet the majority of training costs $5-$35. It depends on who you take as a norm and what your community looks like.

Sure you can start asking poser uses $50 or more for a training, but you will know in advance that you're not going to get the majority to buy your training materials.

Most poser users are using poser as a hobby, so there is less money to be spent. I'm using Vue for work, so I'm willing to spent some money on training to learn it in a short time span, to get results quickly. Poser is just for fun, I've got all the time in the world to experiment and have fun with it and learn it at my own pace, discover it myself, so I'm less dependant upon others to teach me. If you want me to spent $50 in a training for my hobby I'm not even going to take the time to look at what's being offered. If you ask a lot less let's say $10-15, I will at least start looking at the material.

The only training material I ever got for Poser was on dynamic clothing. The price was $10 or so and that even included some clothing. It was very well done and very helpfull, took about half an hour. Would that have been $50 or even $25, I would not even considered it at all. The rest of poser I figured out myself over the years.

There is quite some training sold here at Rendo and on average it's $10 and that's what I would expect to pay for 30-60 mins of poser training. Of course, you can go way beyond everyone else's prices, but will you sell then?

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I don't care for video tutorials. They almost always contain a lot of material you don't need, but are stuck viewing anyway because of the nature of the medium. Plus unless the narrator is a professional actor, he or she is almost certainly going to ramble annoyingly. Live would be a million times worse.

If it's not keyword searchable, viewable at any time, and thoroughly indexed so that you can click a link to reach each new subject in the video without having to manually fast forward through them, I won't watch, never mind pay, for the video.

Text and images are far superior in every way to video. I might pay for those. But it would need to teach me something I don't already know, and which isn't in the Poser manual.

In particular I would buy recordings of webinars by expert users of Manga Studio.  I'm using it for some texture work in Poser.  Was startled to learn what a powerful tool it is for so little money.  Wish they would rename it though because it's certainly not limited to Manga.  That name makes me cringe from a business stand point because it positions the product in a very small box.  Anyway, glad you started the thread.  I think it's perfectly appropriate.

aeikema, Good points. Keep in mind that the pricing was for being a participant in a live webinar where you can ask questions of the speaker and interact with other participants via a chatbox. Speaking from personal experience (I was a participant long before working for them), I got huge value out of being able to ask some tough questions during the webinars. That made it worth the price for me. I totally understand that not everyone cares about that. 

Pricing to buy a video of a webinar after it's over will likely be different as we go forward.

moriador, yep, live webinars are not for everyone. But, you have some really good suggestions about the videos being searchable, etc. Written tuts with pics are also a great idea. I think everyone has different learning styles so, what doesn't work for one person, might work great for another.

Tunesy, yep, Manga Studio is an area largely untapped. Teyon & others have put together some nice Manga Studio webinars for Smith Micro (available on their site; free), but more should be done. Agreed on the name, too. I guess the name "Illustrator" was already taken - lol. I would also like to see a different name for their product "Motion Artist" because that doesn't well describe everything that product can do. 

My 2 cents and personal experience from doing Poser webinars (mine are actually online workshops)

1st.  I don't like webinars or seminars.   I'm old fashion and prefer any type of education in an workshop format.  So my approach is to make sure any online education that I do is in a workshop format.  Here's why.  Webinars and Seminars are static learning environments.  It's a speak first ask questions later learning experience.  Workshops are dynamic and demand particpation from the class.  Interaction with students creates a better learning experience by allowing the instructor to meet the needs of the class instead of just going over something that the class may already know.  In cases like this the instructor can raise the subject matter from, say beginner to intermediate introduction skill level.  Interaction also builds a relationship with your students and personalizes the learning allowing the instructor to fit more into a mentoring role.  Than just some guy or lady on video without any attachments.

2nd.  Price range is dependent on 2 things (if there is a demand).  Quality and Return on Investment and Target Market.  The education experience must be of Quality and the Return on Investment must be high.   When a person pays for a class they don't want to be just hit with a bunch of lessons that they could have easily read in a manual.  They want the class to provide real application of how to use Poser to create the art that they want to create.  They want functional application.  What's good is it to know how to pose a figure in Poser if you can't pose a figure in a way that gives emotion or sense of energy.  If they want to just know how to pose a figure then they can just read the manual. When any of us takes any class we want to leave that class with some level of comfort that we know what we are doing, know how to apply the stuff that we learned, and we want it without the stress. The higher the return is for the student the more willing they will be to pay for the lesson.

Target Market:  This is all about knowing who your target market is.  Everyone has a specific goal when they use software.  Don't expect a beginner user to pay as much as someone who is more experiences and relies on the software for work purposes.  I have no trouble with people paying $60 for my workshops because I make sure that my quality is higher than my competitors.  Because I do workshops and not webinars.  Students will get 1 or 2 weeks (5 or 10 days) of learning and hands on training.  But this works because I'm only focusing on a certain group of Poser users who have a similar goal.

Hi Fighting Wolf, thanks for all the good feedback. I think we might be crossing paths here just on semantics. I think we agree philosophically.

Our "webinars" are live and are just like what you're describing as "workshops." Attendees have plenty of opportunity to ask questions and to follow along with what the presenter is teaching. It isn't a lecture.

I agree. Art lectures are boring in most cases. But then again, it's all about a particular person's learning style. Some people love lectures; some don't.

If someone is a serious expert on a concept like lighting and rendering, as Birn is, I could see enjoying sitting back and just hearing him talk. Or, if someone were deconstructing their artwork and telling me how they did it and the challenges they ran into, like ARtBee suggests, I could see that being interesting enough to just listen. I guess it just depends on what it is.

I understand people 'not liking' webinars or seminars, but I love them for the 3d hobby because it's just that:  a hobby.  I like the loosey goosey nature of them.  I still love a good manual, but enjoy the vids too.  I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive.

Quote - I guess it just depends on what it is.

Yes you'll always have to shape it to fit the need of the participants.  Even when you have some really good artists to interview, they will still need to speak on a level of the user. 

When I do my online workshops I actually give the participants a chance to try certain techniques that I use with the morph tool.  This gives me a chance to walk through the process and it allows me to identify areas where they may be confused or simply selecting the wrong option or typing in the wrong setting.

This also gives participants to share their knowledge as well.  Sometimes the participants have other ways to accomplish the same goal and it gives everyone an option to choose which way works best for each user.

Quote - I understand people 'not liking' webinars or seminars, but I love them for the 3d hobby because it's just that:  a hobby.  I like the loosey goosey nature of them.  I still love a good manual, but enjoy the vids too.  I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive.

They aren't mutually exclusive but if you are teaching something online with the purpose of earning money then you'll need to be able to recognize which customers are most likely to pay for your videos.  People who enjoy reading manuals or watch tutorials on youtube are not likely to pay for a live online webinar or seminar. People like that have a gift for being able to basically teach themselves if given the resources.

If you are going to offer a live webinar for money then you'll have to make sure that you are marketing to the right customer.  For example, If I want your business, then I would advertise my written material and my recorded videos to you. Because you "still love a good manual."   People who watch training videos aren't necessary the same people who would pay for or attend a live webinar that is held at a certain time and date.  But someone that needs that personal interaction will do what they can not only to pay for a live workshop but they will also shift their schedule so that they can attend on that date and time.

Quote -   - tutorial, step-by-step training on a specific topic where you can easily follow along*- demonstrations (which moves a lot faster) where a top artist just shows you quickly how they did something *

Both, as in show the steps diligently, then demonstrate actual workflow.

Price:  depends on whether the tut teaches me how to do something.  I would not balk at the prices I saw on the 3D Art site if the tuts are effective.

Live vs recorded:  I suppose both would be nice, but I would place a premium on a recording/PDF, because that way I could go back over the material at my own speed at the time of my choosing.

Suggested topics:  I'd like to learn how to use Python for Poser, starting from zero.  What factors are accessible? How do you access them?

Oh, and rigging and morphs would be areas I would like to improve in.

I’m not sure how viable it would be, but it would be interesting to see a couple of people’s take on the same thing. You don’t have to duplicate the whole topic but maybe just a brief ‘here’s another way to do that,’ on a tricky or hard to understand area from another viewpoint. I’m thinking of all the programming or 3D examples I can follow up to a certain point and then get a bit lost. Later on, I’ll see the same topic covered by someone else and get the ‘aha, so that’s how it’s done/what it means’ moment.

Along the same multi-presenter lines, I think it would be cool to see a series with multiple people doing a single project from concept through modeling etc. to postwork. It wouldn’t have to be elaborate, in fact, simpler would probably be better. People could dip in where they wanted. If you’re only interested in lighting and postwork, skip the modeling etc. parts. Throughout the presentation, perhaps the various artists could comment on how their work all fit together and how they collaborated. A wrap up roundtable would be nice. Of course this is the way things get done on professional productions and, the typical hobbyist either does them all themselves or more likely purchases the components. Still, I think they might find it interesting and the individual elements would work as standalone training.

Birn used to have a site (3D Render Challenge?), which may still be up though I think someone else took up running it. That had a variety of great modeled scenes for people to try their hand at texturing, lighting, and rendering in their 3D application of choice. Something similar would be interesting with the same scene done by various artists. Bonus points if the content is available for the students to play along.

Moriador brings up a good point r.e. rambling. Probably the main nit pick I have with the geekatplay videos is the 'hit the wrong button', or the 'no, I think I’ll use this other texture moments – just generalizing here. Those are inevitable, even with an expert, but that’s where I would think that editing would come in and perhaps a pre-recording run through. Now maybe that’s the nature of more affordable training and maybe the type of product Teyon mentions is all hit the mark perfect in that regard I don’t know. I’d still put up with the minor annoyance for the price differential, but there should be a happy median. Subject matter expertise doesn’t make a great presenter, probably a fairly rare combination. That’s where a good editor, producer/director is probably invaluable. I can see how it can get expensive to produce.

If some of us are right and the Poser market won’t bear the price, what do you do? You don’t want to lower your quality for them. If you do Poser at reduced prices and rely on volume, I can almost guarantee that even those customers who look down on Poser as a toy will want some of those ‘toy’ prices themselves. It might almost be better to do Poser, DAZ Studio, entry level Vue, PaintShop Pro etc. as a separate division for consumer programs. Of course, this may be undesirable for any number of reasons, and for that matter, any pricing skepticism may be unwarranted. 

Good point also r.e. search capability. They have some pretty neat technology IIRC based on voice recognition for video indexing albeit possibly price prohibitive. I can remember eagerly searching for ‘cigar’ back during the Lewinsky flap ÷) Maybe a .pdf transcript with links to points in the video would be nice. I’m sure there’s all sorts of tech out there I don’t even know about. Beyond having Sally say she’s having trouble with X, if she can show her screen and what she’s doing, it would be a tremendous help for everyone. I don’t have the bandwidth to even think about that kind of interaction but I can see how if you can pull it off there’s a world of possibilities. If you can bundle things up in a DVD, there are still a few people who may find it inconvenient to download multi-gigabyte presentations – sacred devotional material aside.