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Let’s talk about the book.
🕑 Added 2019-10-17 18:01:00 +0000 UTCSo, if you guys read the "future plans" post, you will know what I’m talking about. So instead of writing it again, let’s go with the details.
Backstory.
Some time ago, I was reading a book about programming. It was an english translation… or more like, it was on its original language. Something that caught my attention is that it seemed a rather snarky book, because while I don’t think every writer does it, there’s something special about telling the readers to not be a moron and comment your own code. It’s honestly something you shouldn’t say to the people who paid for your book (as far as I know, ‘moron’ is not something you call to any person) but still, it was true, you should always comment your code.
Some time ago, an idea came to my head: if I ever were to go away, the SFM model building scene might become even more slow than it already is.
I want to clarify this before I continue: I’m not giving myself that much value, because I know there are people out there who already build models themselves but they are in need of exposure, and that if someone of the current model builders go away, there’s already enough people to fill the slots we are going to leave behind. That’s how things work. Of course maybe the quality is going to be below expectations, but quite frankly, I don’t think anyone have high expectations on my models, so my slot would be filled by literally anyone.
Some people say keeping knowledge only for you is wasted knowledge. Knowledge is also a pretty pretentious work in my opinion, but that’s the word I guess, so in order to share my current knowledge, I decided it was a good idea to do it in the form of a book. A snarky book.
Conceiving the idea.
The first question you may ask is: Why a book? Why not a tutorial or a video tutorial?
It’s actually pretty simple. There’s already streams of people building models. There’s already tutorials about porting. There’s already tutorials about flexing. And yet, people still says there is no tutorials about [insert what I want]. There’s basically no place to host those things. Streams, tutorials, video tutorials, you name it, all of them get buried by the constant stream of content. There’s so much content you can only find the information using specific wording, which makes it both hard to find, and if it is multi-part, hard to follow along.
By using the format of a book, you can just download the file and have all of the information you need within seconds. Then you can read it literally anywhere: on your PC, on your TV, on your Tablet, on any device while the porn is downloading, on any device while SFM is rendering, on any device while the game does matchmaking things, on your phone while you are taking a shit, in your phone while you wait for bae to arrive for netflix and chill, on your phone while you wait for Uber to arrive, on your pho-you get the point.
I was talking with a patron about it. My original idea was to sell the book in a pay-what-you-want scheme. This way, people would decide to either support the idea or not, and still get something.
Because of this, my idea was to send it someone for proofreading. Here’s the issue though: who the fuck am I going to send this, a book about 3D models for adult-oriented content for proofread?
So I thought about a friend who also happens to be a patron, who also happens to speak english, who also happens to be an aspiring model builder, who also got stuck on the model building process, who also happens to ask me for help.
I told him about it, and told him I would send the works in a chapter basis. The benefits, in my opinion would be to be able to basically have the book earlier than everyone else, and practice it before everyone else. In retrospective, I think what I did was a terrible thing, and that regardless of my so called “benefit”, that job need to be paid no matter what. I’m truly sorry for that. I got a positive response, so with that, the project got a green light.
Rethinking the idea, and the changes I made.
Some time have passed, and I was taking some notes during the building of… Tifa? Jesus Christ I can’t remember…
During the notes, I was thinking about the structure of the book, the tone of the book and the previous knowledge people will need before starting to attempt something.
Then I got this thought on my head: I’m writing a book. I’m not writing a tutorial.
Because I’m not writing a tutorial, I am not going to help people for their very specific problems. I cannot help everyone with their problems because I do not know if they mixed previous knowledge with the one of the book. There’s no possible chance to know that for sure since I cannot just assume they didn’t.
This gives me more freedom to write the book, but also this should make me write a disclaimer about me not giving any support not because I don’t want to, but because I’m unable to do so.
In turn, this spawned some more chapters in the book, but I think that’s for the better, because in the end, is about sharing the knowledge.
And then, another thought crossed my mind: This is not a tutorial. You are not going to hold people’s hand to build models. Since you are not writing a tutorial book, are you 100% sure the pricing you are setting is right?
Even though it’s going to be a pay-what-you-want book, it needs a recommended price, which is the price I would personally sell the book.
I thought about all the time it took me to be in the spot where I’m currently sitting and I want to quote just what I think are the most important things I did to achieve what I know right now:
- Learning how to use Blender. (The longest one, because I keep learning things even nowadays.)
- More than 60 model ports. I did them for a lot of characters I didn’t even care about, I just wanted to build a muscle memory for the process. Only a super small fraction of them were ever released (All of them already lost)
- SMD/QC Flex learning
- UV fix and manipulation (fancy way to say "I move shit around until I'm not disgusted with it")
- DMX learning
- Meshmods/Model hack (XNALara/SFM terminology)
- Flex Keep from SMD
- Staying up to 3AM just for experimentation.
- Waking up at 5AM to test ideas that came on my dreams.
- Learning Blender Python (not necessary, but programming in model building can be incredibly helpful)
My learning process by itself, if I’m not exaggerating, adds up for more than 2000 hours of learning. In retrospective, I’m happy I never used the Steam version of Blender, how could I explain those many hours to some friends lol
With that number of hours in mind, and putting into account a lot of factors, methods, ideas, my own settings and refining other techniques by adopting them and change them to fit my needs, I did a lot of calculations and thinking, and I finally came to a conclusion:
I changed the pricing of the book and is not going to be a pay-what-you-want book. It’s going to be a book with a static price.
The final price: $0
The book is going to be 100% free.
The reason is yes, I developed all of that knowledge and adapt it to myself, but I would never be able to do this on my own. I got all of the information and inspiration from free sources. People helped me without asking me money. I got the information from public sites.
Yes, it’s knowledge adapted to me, but if what I’m doing is sharing my information and not hand-hold teaching, then it would be unfair for people to pay for something they don’t even know if they will get any benefit from it.
I thought about putting a price on it only for psychological reasons: if people actually paid money for this, they would feel the actual need of practicing model building because they “already paid for it.”
But honestly, I don’t think that’s necessary, because, (I will add this phrase to the book, snarky of course) people always find excuses to not do things.
I’m going to need to make some compromises though, the main one of them being I’m not going to send it for proofreading. I mean, come on, wouldn’t be hilarious to read snarky shit in broken english? Not really, but hey!
Personal expectations of the book.
So, with all that said, this is what I personally expect of the book:
- To be a mess.
- A funny mess though.
- Not a tutorial, but simple to follow along.
- I expect to see more people interested in model building, and aspiring model builders become actual model builders.
- Not particularly eye-opening, but interesting to read, even if my english is shit.
- An increase… not really noticeable, but just a really really small increase on custom models.
- More Patreon pages dedicated to models.
What should *you* expect from the book.
- To irritate you for the typos.
- To frustrate you for not holding your hand.
- To drop it halfway through.
- To give up.
Be happy because it’s free and you didn’t waste your money! However, if you can get past that, then you should expect this:
- Learning Blender on your own, which in turn, will make you see it as a potential step instead of relying on SFM.
- Self teaching. Learning by yourself and teaching yourself will help you in the long run, since you will understand what you are doing without the need of rely on notes. It’s not bad to have notes, but for the most part, you will need notes to confirm, instead of long reads trying to understand yet again what are you doing.
- Understand the limitations of the programs you use.
- Learn how to develop a plan for your model building needs.
- Understand the risks of the process and how to act when they happen.
- Creating a sense of pride, so instead of settling for what you have learned, you want to learn more.
- And lastly, being able to build a model.
ETA?
It is done when it’s done. I really want to write that book, but I also don’t want to rush it, because I want to make it as good as I’m able to.
So that’s what’s up with the idea. What do you guys think? Most people might not be interested, and a lot would rather just keep spending on commissions instead, but I think this could be a great thing to do.
