Reply To: COLLAB2021 – HQ – Stylized Fantasy Environment

[Kent Trammell]

 it is more bite-size compared to the backhoe project

Very true, intentionally so. You’re the second person to mention the smaller scope so I’ll take a moment to write out my perspective.

7 months is a long time to stay committed to a project, both for contributors and for the instructor (mainly because they can’t record courses in that time). Even though I aspire to do huge, multi-month Collabs in future, I think it’s best to start smaller in scope to refine the system enough so  that it can facilitate larger projects with larger numbers of contributors eventually.

That said, the backhoe also taught me something important about these projects: They are what we make it. When the first volunteers signed up for parts to model on the backhoe I expected a lot less than what they delivered. I just figured they would commit an hour or so here and there since it was all volunteer. But they all took it very seriously. They made it into the impressive model it became. Way beyond my expectations. In fact their commitment and level of detail pushed me to a higher standard. It was so compelling how naturally this happened. Their effort made the backhoe into such an impressive thing I simple needed to animate and render an assembly sequence to do it justice.

What I’m trying to say is that even with a smaller scope environment project, we each will decide how impressive we want the final model to be. That makes me excited to see what it will become!

I don’t mean to ramble. I guess I’m starting to read into a potential consensus that the smaller-scope project might seem underwhelming(?) It’s understandable compared to the behemoth that was the backhoe. But I’ve also dropped my jaw at what a collab team is capable of. I suspect the same will be true in April 🚀

I will work on viewing the rocks, clouds and tank courses prior to April 6th

That’s great! I’m glad you’re going to watch before April. And I’m thrilled to hear you’re looking forward to it. April is gong to be a month to remember ✊