To make 3D-Sphere and the content more interactive we decided to implement an „preview“ option for all new tutorials which will be published in the nearest future (The tutorials which are already uploaded at 3D-Sphere will be first converted in a new video format and after uploaded together with preview.). The „preview“ will feature a web-based video directly on the tutorial page with 3-5min content from the tutorial. With this option you can decide if the tutorial suits for you and if you will download it.
3D-Sphere News
In few days we will start a new „news“ section called Hardware in which we would like to bring the latest news from the world of Hardware which is essential part of a workflow in any 3D modeling or animation project. The new section would feature news from the major players in this like Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Dell and others which bring the tools needed for smooth running and using any CAD or 3D application.
During the last tutorial we decided to improve the quality of our recordings by encoding the video a different way. So far all tutorial are encoded using Xvid and Lame mp3 for audio keeping the recording resolution. After some tests we decided to resize a bit the video down to 70% and rising the encode quality of Xvid by keeping the bitrate of the video around 550 kbps.
Recently we had few request for a comment system next to all tutorials from some users. So we decided to start a light weight comment system at 3D-Sphere.com to allow all users which want to leave some comment, request, broken link or other short note for us right by downloading the tutorial. The comment system is still under development which means that the layout will change during some time but will not affect the comments. For help to the tutorials, requests or just talk please use the forum.
We are very proudly to announce our first contest with prizes for almost 5000$ for our users with the theme: Grinch – What i want for Christmas. About this we already mentioned something in our last newsletter where we promised something special and now the time came to reveal it. We would like to thanks Luxology, Allegorithmics, Digital-Tutors and Evermotion to be so kind and sponsor this contest. All participants can submit they work according to the rules until 12/12/2011 and after this time our jury will decide who will win. All necessary information about the rules, joining, prizes and other information you can read bellow. We hope you will enjoy the competition and have fun by it. So what you are waiting for? Join and win!
From today we started a fan page created on Facebook for 3D-Sphere.com to share with you all the highlights from 3D-Sphere through this social network. We post only relevant information’s and don’t use it like a „spam“ area for posting everything which we also publish here at 3D-Sphere. If you want to join our page click on the Facebook „icon“ on the frontpage located in the right menu or just search us at Facebook. You can also access the Twitter page and RSS feed through the same menu.