Dreamlight's Canal and Medieval Village Tutorial Review

Rockitscience

If you’re like me your often looking for that edge when it comes to modelling or texturing. So watching something done start to finish is an attractive proposition. So when Dreamlight released The “Real Making of Canal” and “Real Making of The Village” Tutorials I was interested to say the least And so I bought them..

The other thing if your like me you want it informative and you want it, in a reasonable time frame.

So What a disappointment the modelling for both modules is simplistic, and the release schedule has been erratic. It’s been over a month since the last release of anything regarding the village. And what he did as far as the texturing on the archway of the village would require the purchase of Z-Brush. Which is a pretty huge investment.

The level of modelling is definitely not what you see in other dreamlight products.

This isn't the first time I have seen this I don't know if Val gets to many Irons in the fire or what but he had a really good tutorial going with a shuttle and one one of the urban future models and then just dropped it.

All of these concerns were brought to customer service who cheerfully refused a refund,

So I guess i will be cheerfully passing on anything else they release.

DZ_jared

RockitScience said:

All of these concerns were brought to customer service who cheerfully refused a refund,

So I guess i will be cheerfully passing on anything else they release.

I just checked all of the tickets you have filed with support under this account, and no where is there a record of you asking for a refund. We do stand by our refund policy. If you are unsatisfied with a product you can return that product within 30 days. The only reason customer service would have declined your refund would have been if you were outside of the 30 day return window. If you have a Zendesk Ticket number where you requested a refund let me know what it is and I'll investigate the matter.

If by customer service you are referring to Dreamlight's customer service team then I apologize. They are their own independent company, and while they do broker content on our site they have their own return policy for items purchased through them.

**Edit** It appears the tutorials RockitScience is referring to are not sold on our store. I'm assuming they were purchased through DreamLight's store, which would explain why I couldn't find a support ticket related to the matter.

Rockitscience

Yes that is correct it is through dreamlight,,,, my assumption though is that like his other tutorials - eventually It will be sold through Daz, Should that happen I hope you guys will take the time to critically review it. And any other videos that come from this seller as well.

The point at which I got fed up with it was when one guy spent 30 minutes UV mapping basically a box, And Val spent about the same amount of time with a box that didn't work out, at 450 megs a video that's a lot of disk real estate.

This is supposed to be real as it happens video, so its a given there may be a few mistakes or problems, But If you think about,,, even the local bar band has to rehearse. A little pre-planning would have helped these videos a lot. (you know like a script)

While I'm here, This is something I meant to get into in my other post, But while we are on the subject, Hexagon revisited has similar issues, one of the modules

The one on clothing...

He talks about a morph that smooths the breast area so a dress would fit better in that area, (get away from a certain look) but then doesn't say where to get it, Also nothing on actual acceptable texturing. what looks good how to set that up etc... or how to use it,,,

The one on a car,

where they model 3/4 of the basic body work, and that's it. nothing on the headlights, turn signals other body work, Interior seats etc... There might be a video in there on a tire, can't remember for sure...

On Youtube There's a video on how to make a 57 Thunderbird in blender, that goes far more in depth on this, and is what something you actually pay money for should be.

My point is... The Making of videos and Hexagon Revisited are billed as something to help artists make money at the Daz store, all of it is a long way away from that.

greys

Yes, I've had my own issues with Dreamlight, and have since decided that if I purchase any more of his tutorials I will NOT be doing it without Daz's 30 day guarantee - and the fact that by the time he releases here the entire series is released and thus safe and not likely to be forgotten.

The information in the tutorials I have purchased has been good, and useful. But the release dates were postponed several times without notice, then the downloads didn't work for days and none of this was communicated, the item just... didn't show up.

Additionally, as a younger female, his attitude towards women was frankly skeevy and incredibly objectifying and it made me *extremely* uncomfortable. I'm not even talking about any of his series focused on nudes/pin ups/"making V6 hot" type series that he spams my inbox with ads for; I'd expect it in those and haven't purchased them because they're not where my interest lies in rendering. These were in series focused on other things and I still felt incredibly skeeved.

The customer service on his site is also terrible, and the 'money back guarantee' within x that is advertised on some (IDK if it's all) the pages has been refused to be honoured - I've had it happen once, and I've heard from others that they've had the same experience.

So yeah, no intentions from me of ever purchasing through his store again; I want the security of Daz's customer service behind me if I ever buy his tutorials again. They're far too pot luck, I'd rather pay the extra for the security.