Reply To: Growing Dissatisfaction with CGCookie

[Markus Berg]

@smurfmier1985 I’m sure you are right that many people would ignore the guidelines… I was just trying to think of something…anything… to bring the quality back into the exercise grading. But to say that there are many people who do not have knowledge to properly grade exercises is a bit exaggerating. Sure, some of the more advanced stuff, especially animation, is a lot harder to grade properly for a beginner. But the beginner exercises are not, and most exercises submitted are the easier kind.

E.g.
1. Use mesh tools learned in this course to modifying the provided primitive objects.
2. Modify only the three provided mesh primitive objects
3. Submit your finished exercise to https://sketchfab.com

Basically you only need to check if there are 3 model present that has been modified from their primitive form. If they did, great, it’s a pass. If not, fail, with a friendly comment letting them know why. And more advanced students could maybe add some pointers how to do it if they mentioned any difficulties in completing the task. Maybe some link etc. I guess my expectations are too high…

I do agree that having fun is super important. I wouldn’t be trying to learn 3d modelling if I didn’t enjoy it. I would love to be able to reach a level where I could make money out of it, but that’s never gonna happen unfortunately. So it’s just something I do for fun, but I’m still taking it seriously, or I would just stay on Youtube, saving my money.

Anyways, I don’t know what the original goal was when CGC first introduced the grading of exercises. Maybe it was just something for fun, nothing to be taken too seriously. Or perhaps it was, but weren’t able to sustain the quality of it. Either way, I do think that many people who are serious about learning, maybe after seeing some CGC ads, they come here only to find it’s “just for fun”, will most likely start looking elsewhere. I do feel CGC needs to be able to cater both the serious student and the doodler/hobbyist, or sooner or later all that’s going to be left is the latter.

Maybe it would be better to just get rid of the whole grading part itself, and just leave the submission and comments. I guess that could free up a lot of time for people to spend more on modeling instead. And students could still get feedback on exercises. But again, I do think that would be a shame… or perhaps grading should be restricted until a certain amount of XP has been gained….or just let you grade exercises you have passed yourself… but is just complicating things…

But from your reply it almost sounds like the CGC community has given up on it. “That there are too many doodlers here and nothing we can do about it, so it’s better to just let it be and let everyone do what they want as long as they are having fun.” Again, a shame if that’s true.

Anyways, whatever the thoughts, opinions, decisions etc of the CGC crew are, I will respect that. And if most people are happy, then that’s all that matters I guess.