A Brief History of 3d-palace [added 1]

[olblue]

Originally Posted by nirsul

Originally Posted by colincsl

http://3d-palace.com/video.php?vid=26

Hah, not all videos were put back up.(#3)

I must agree - none of the ones I made are online - but it's OK as I always felt they were a bit less professional in terms of my well defined israeli accent ( I am able to fake a sort of english accent but I would be lying).

The only video I feel is needed is my review of Texture Maker which is a great piece of software that not many 3D artists are aware of and is my main tool when I need an organic texure.

Nir Sullam

True Nir, the problem was that a lot of tutorials were lost - if you would like to pm me I can arrange a FTP so that you can upload the missing tutorials and review

Incidentally if you wanted to make some tutorials in your native tongue that would be fine

Cris

__________________

[nirsul]

Cris

I believe I lost my videos' local copies a long time ago, too.
Regarding making tuts in hebrew -
I dont think it is needed as most of the guys here who use 3D apps will benefit from the english ones found in 3D-Palace.

Nir
www.nirsullam.com

[olblue]

Ok Nir, I will do a hunt as one of the Admins is bound to have a backup someplace.

[DeadDrunk]

The whole story is bull. Only I know the true story, not this make believe crap Blue tries to feed everyone...

[Psyonix]

Please ignore the drunk one... he has no idea whats going on. Never has really....

[olblue]

Update for 2007

This was about 3 years ago so lets catch up with current events and the whole expansionist programme.

So, 2004 came to a close - around about the beginning of the new year I was asked if I would like to go to Animex by the guys who were running it at the time - I was pretty damn excited and Jon speculated that we could do some cool filming whilst we were there and make a TV Show at last - something we had been speculating about doing for quite a long time.

Animex was a great opportunity to meet new people - we filmed some interviews with Pete Draper, the pixar dudes and so on and made enough for two episodes - they were released in March and May I think it was. Both did stupidly well and are somewhat of a cult classic.

First half of 2005 saw me finish the very first DVD set for 3d-palace. At the time things were in a bit of a crisis - I actually had to borrow the model of the Sentinel as I couldnt afford to buy it myself - 3d-palace was not breaking even hardly - I think average profit at that point was about £50 a month on a good month. The release of the first DVD set changed all that;

Before the APU came out we were in a crisis point for the download bandwidth - 1.2 terra was our limit then although I tended to exaggerate the amount we had spare at the time. The APU's release led to a series of suprising events however - no one had done an end to end DVD set for one. No one had approached even trying the complexity of the piece I was trying out for another. The APU set saved 3d-palace from fading out in the space of two months - thanks to the income from that I was able to buy a new computer system at last to replace what was - to be honest - a very ropey system indeed and I was able to commission Jeremy Love to start working out the concept art for Ultimax.

Ultimax - the legend of polygon... Well thats what it seemed like anyway. It took the remaining half of 2005 and some of 2006 to get Ultimax ready for release - for those wondering why it took so long, you honestly have no idea how hard it is to release a massive tutorial set like that. Whereas with the APU set I was happy to send it off to 3d world and publicise it like mad on the various forums, Ultimax seemed to me to be a bit more suited to a low key release by comparison.

In 2005 I leased a second server for 3d-palace with unlimited bandwidth on a 10Mbit switch - this seemed like a great idea however the problem with that was that our massive amount of downloaders, coupled with this 10Mbit switch, coupled with the fact that the people running the hosting were vermin thievey pikeys meant that everyone - sponsors included - was getting about 4kps download most of the time. Arg.

I cancelled the account and moved the server back to the original host - selecting a 2 gig transfer package for the server bringing our servers up to two at that host. Craig at ghostscripter wrote an anti leech system up that was quite a cunning development - you logged in on palace and then were passed to tutorialsmaster where it called the tutorials securely there whilst accessing the 3d-palace database for auths. It was clever and worked nicely although there was no capping sadly.

2005 was MAXTERDAM!!!! Our first ever live seminar, I chose Amsterdam for it, using a pre-equipped venue in the Netherlands. It was a great success (albeit not financially) however unfortuantely I had the kids with me at the hotel so was unable to join the apre-3d partying. This however was the first time I fell in love with the Netherlands.

2006 and DVD releases were going well - Project Learnstream started build in Jan of 2006 (its in final beta as of this post) by Ocnod - Craig and I managed to find some opensource php which handled limiting file speed - capping was introduced although there was no queue at the time. A few months after that, Ocnod moved over to work on the queue and at last our functioning download queue system went live just before 2006's summer.

Late summer 2006.... arg

Hackers - we were hacked by some South American bullshit political group claiming they were doing it to expose vulnerabilities in phpBB which we had been using for some time. I had the option of cleaning and carrying on or doing something else - I chose the second option.

I turned off 3d-palace pretty much immediately and called for a replacement server to be plugged in - backups from 1 month previously were called up for security - lost us about 1000 members or so however I wanted to be safe. phpBB was in my opinion not an option so I bought a lifetime licence for Vbull - I was planning on using Joomla with it so I also purchased some tools for that CMS as well as a bridge and so on in order to connect the database and the forum. Not wishing to disparage Joomla however its not built for 70000 members - the database cried... literally. It was depressing looking at how badly it was managing (and before any joomla folk call in, we tried just about everything - I had been using Mambo for a year at this point anyway).

Joomla went - VBadvanced came in - I chose a nice red and white theme I liked the look of and customised it a little. People said "Hey it looks like 3dbuzz" - I disagreed. There were harsh words - its not like 3dbuzz(although I do like Jasons choice of colour scheme) I just like red. Capiche?

Took a week to get palace up on its feet - that was a long ass week too. I was working flat out about 20 hours a day for the first 4 days - we all know how much time installing just a new OS and drivers to a computer takes - setting up a webserver for 70000 people is way way way way way harder. Thankfully I had CLAMMERS and Agrutez pitching for the 3d-palace team (whilst I ran about looking confused quite a lot).

MAXTERDAM II! I loved running the first one so much I did it again - Maxterdam 2 was fantastic fun, again using some pre-installed venue I headed over and taught modelling, rigging, animation and particles. No kids this time so PAR TEH. First full day there before teaching though I had the wrong shoes - feet turned into a giant pain ball. I spent the first day limping about then slipped in the shower and bruised my right hand really badly - turned up on day one looking like I had been to the warzone. That night we partied hearty - alarm woke me at 7am... OH GOD NO.... arg. Trust me, I will not be drinking mid lecture days again. My love for Amsterdam was rekindled however.

Also mid 2006 DISASTER II! The 3d-palace workstation dies suddenly and tragically - taking 30 hours of non backed up learning material for the nw EGM with it. I never really discussed what was on the set that was lost however fyi the stuff lost included about 10 hours of talking in depth about the interface and how to break into using max if you were new including all the basics needed, followed by about 15 hours modelling a high detail AT-ST and then some work starting the Pariah. All gone and Im not doing em again - sorry. I know I should have backed up.

The Pariah was developed by a canadian concepts artist called Mike Phillips and is a really amazing and detailed character. I will start it this year once the penitent engine is done however there will be NO EGM (essential guide to max) I decided now.

Last quarter of 2006 then - I order 200 wrong size DVD cases and get irritated on the forum - someone then suggests I made a limited edition of 200 dvds on some subject or other to raise money for palace.

A month later I get a bad batch of DVDs and have to send out A SHED LOAD of replacements. Spend 5 days duplicating and labelling and generally wanting to stab owls with spoons - someone on the forum says "Hey why not make a tutorials set to raise money for an automated duplicator?"

I mix the previous two ideas and start on a Penitent Engine in November (arg - 4 months and its not done yet). As I progress things get a bit bigger than expected and the set veers towards the huge with the design covering cloth, fur, character modelling, character animation, mechanical modelling and animation, uvw unwrapping, texturing, lighting and rendering... my brain implodes for a while.

Elbaz releases the first Maya dvd set we ever had - much excitement and cheerleaders come out for smoochies in February - this covers my irritation that Animex let us down and that we didnt get to film there or attend this year. I will be looking for a new 3d festival for 3d-palace to support this year. Whilst waiting for Elbaz to finish his DVD I start a campaign for donations and cheap purchasing of the ATMT set so as to get money for a duplicator. The great duplicator importathon kicks off at last at the very start of Feb after we are donated enough to buy one from Ebay in the USA.

Amtren.com has our back on this one - having for sale for just under $1000 a DVD duplicator / printer system. Ratmann our resident Cuban gets the money transferred to his account and he makes the purchase - having it shipped to his address.

It takes about a week - from there Ratmann organises UPS to deliver it to the UK within 3 working days (nice) for something like $500 - thinking on it he could probably have flown to the UK and delivered it himself for that however thats not the point - Duplicator was coming! I paid about £40 tax on arrival (dammit - it was a used item!) and saved a LOT - lets work this one out.

I paid $1500 for this duplicator. Nearest price in the UK for the same is about £1900 or about $2800. Do the math(s).

[olblue]

We are at march now - our Mudbox set will release in about a month and we will also have free tutorials to download on the site for mudbox More Maya stuff is coming, Im starting some photoshop stuff for palace this week 0 the Penitent engine is still in development - EGM is cancelled indefinately. Greg is working on a new advanced game development set for game levels and all is good!

Maxterdam III and IV are now in planning - this time however I am going to be offering accomodation, using my own laptops, desks and chairs in a very ambitious plan indeed. I have a set of apartments I will be hiring - one for me to stay at, the other larger one with huge living area for the students who want to stay over and where I will install the computers, projector, desks and so on. I tested one of the desks this morning - just arrived in the post - hot damn they are clever. PAcks to the size of a boot box (showbox you would get boots in) and unpacks to the size of a full two person desk with rigid top and legs.

[Malach]

all i can say is....nice work on the site, dude.....very nice.

I am in awe.

[littledavie]

If I was any lesser man I would cry.....
But seriously...great site, great support and people behind it with a passion to keep it running. I've already learned a lot through this site and will be learning more. A simple book would not have been able to keep me interested
This site does...

well thanks to all of you founders admins etc. I will not start with names as I will certainly forget or not even know the people that made this all possible

be seeing ya

[eagle4]

congrats on an awesome story cris. you forgot to mention i started doing competitions for 3d-palace in december '05. i kinda took over from Megann.

(btw check out the latest comp http://www.3d-palace.com/forum/showt...311#post110311 )



eagle4