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cghub down?

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  • necner
  • gUnter
    they are less malevolent smile could do?
  • GreyPhoenix
    RIP CGHUB

    sucks so much to loose the contacts. The only thing one can do is to look back in mails and try to google the artist they have watched/followed.

    I will miss that site
  • wasker
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    wasker polycounter lvl 7
  • gUnter
    Where statements of people involved in modern cghub?
    Sensation as if the page was removed and someone else has created knitted for writing the post.
    Devils!
  • Alphavader
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    Alphavader polycounter lvl 11
    I didnt read everything, but i really dislike
    how they handle the exit. There ways they have could been connected with the community

    1. Write an Note and let people back their stuff up!
    2. What about Gold Members ? They have rights !
    3. Why isnt there an option that other people take the page and
    give cghub a big relaunch ?
    5. Will they keep the domain ?

    I mean - heads up people - there always new solutions, and iam sure some guys will put a page up very soon.

    RIP cghub
  • Eldrich
    That was a sad news. People have been heavily confused for the last few days. While not everything is clear yet and we may not hear the truth ever, the great site is closing down for sure and I can feel the pain of everyone posting their beautiful art there. I was only a lurker, I was looking for inspiration every day and the closure punched me really strong. I hope all the artists stand somehow back on their legs and proceed with what they are good at maybe at some other website.

    For all the people who would want to recover at least part of the data from cghub - you can check daily e-mail notifications for artist nicknames and artwork thumbnails. That may not be much, but at least that's something and that's what I'm going to do.
  • Tadao215
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    Tadao215 polycounter lvl 16
    WHY?! a lot of my bookmarks for inspiring art... gone..
  • gUnter
    it's more like a cheating
    cghub alive
  • Joel Chaim Holtzman
    yes its sad. I had alot of art as well on cghub which i used as inspiration. Bút thank god i got referred to other sites like these to view and post more work. Cheers!
  • Tenchi
    A great resource gone. And such an easy outlet for artists, we would otherwise not have access to, to post their art. Another site will fill the void I'm sure, perhaps DrawCrowd?
  • Lane
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    Lane polycounter lvl 8
    Lane wrote: »

    Just reposting this, might help some find their old images/contacts.
  • rino
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    rino polycounter lvl 12
    Tenchi wrote: »
    A great resource gone. And such an easy outlet for artists, we would otherwise not have access to, to post their art. Another site will fill the void I'm sure, perhaps DrawCrowd?

    only hookers and booze can fill that void at this moment.
  • gustavotorqueto
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    gustavotorqueto polycounter lvl 5
    Shakuro post more answers for the closure:

    https://www.facebook.com/shakurocom/posts/777023612315746:0

    We are getting tons of emails and from the comments to our recent post we think that we need to clarify some things and answer the most common questions.
    1. Team Shakuro was NOT associated with Full Spectrum Digital, LLC - a company that ran CGHUB.com. We were actually only responsible for development and of course were not authorized to make decisions like shutting the project down. That also means that we were not making money from ads, pro accounts and so on.
    However, since the real owners prefer to keep low profiles we are the only ones on the surface (to blame).
    2. We were caught completely unprepared. It was as simple as: “Guys, it’s over”.
    Why the shutdown was like this and without prior notification – we have no answer to this question and that’s also beyond our understanding.
    3. Even though it wasn’t our decision to close the project, it was us who tried to reach the community with at least a bit of explanation of what was going on.
    And we are really sorry to see comments like “I am going to stay away from anything Shakuro will produce in future”, “Unprofessional” and so on … and we hope that they are made out of misunderstanding of the situation.
    4. We tried every single option to keep the community running including buying it out, selling to somebody else, even pausing … it didn’t work.
    5. Again the reason is completely personal. The project had a very bright future, we were beating our traffic records on monthly basis, had a perfect team and tons of ideas and even a couple of satellite projects in mind.
    Situation in Crimea, hackers, SSL bug, aliens have nothing to do with the project closure. The servers and were based in the US and were secure. Management team was in US as well. Absolutely nothing is going on in Crimea that would prevent us from doing our business.
    6. If you were a Pro member and didn’t receive a refund – please send email to cghub@shakuro.com with your account details. It will be forwarded to project owners.
    7. CGHUB (domain name, userbase, codebase) is not for sale. We have no right to sale it and the CGHUB owners do not want to sale it. The only thing we can promise is to forward your sale offers to the owners.
    8. During last several years we rejected ~30 CGHUB-like requests from different people / companies (some of them were very promising) as we wanted to stay focused on our main project. We got some new ones during last couple of days and may start working on new CG /art community soon.
    And the last thing.
    We started working on CGHUB 6 years ago, from the request “Hi, can you make a website that shows images?” and since then it has become our flagship project and there is nobody in this Universe who would love it and miss it more than we do. Some of our developers are still in disbelief of what has happened. We would never do any harm to this project / community. So we really hope for your understanding.
    No more CGHUB. Someone will take the void. Good luck guys.
    Team Shakuro
  • firestarter
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    firestarter polycounter lvl 19
    7. CGHUB (domain name, userbase, codebase) is not for sale. We have no right to sale it and the CGHUB owners do not want to sale it. The only thing we can promise is to forward your sale offers to the owners.

    If taken at Shakuro's word, I'm gonna go ahead and assume the owners planned on this, and have not yet received the offer that they feel it deserves. In which case hopefully no one buys it.
  • Daew
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    Daew polycounter lvl 9
    Just echoing what others have said about direction of polycount

    I enjoy polycount because it has a community where artists actually interact with each other. From my lurker point of view, seeing this interaction is much better than just viewing amazing art on it's own. Amazing art on it's own can be quite isolating, well for me anyway, and i prefer viewing amazing art/wips with comments attached. It's enjoyable to see what the artists was thinking or the progress of the piece with critiques that aren't all "very good". I prefer the polycount format over the cgHub one.

    The only problem atm is how one picks a thread. For me i usually view threads based on the title so I'm pretty sure i missed a few good threads.

    Anyway about the 2d stuff;
    The sketchbook area isn't used much and the rate of work being pumped out in the sketch thread is significantly lower than the 3D. I dont think that's going to change.

    What I would like to see is maybe just a name change to the Polycount Sketch Thread to something like the "Polycount 2D thread." or something more fantastical
    (with permission from those who post a lot more than i do :P)
    I generally feel guilty posting complete 2d work on there and I don't just because of it's name, even though completed work is accepted.

    I'm still quite new to these forums but those are my 2 cents :)
  • TheWinterLord
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    TheWinterLord polycounter lvl 17
    Ah damnit, sad to see CGHUB go. RIP :(
  • Ootrick
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    Ootrick polycounter lvl 6
    I know right? Aside from Reddit, when I want to shut my brain off and be amazed by talent CGHUB was the place to be!

    Where too now?!
  • glottis8
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    glottis8 polycounter lvl 9
    Daew wrote: »
    Just echoing what others have said about direction of polycount

    I enjoy polycount because it has a community where artists actually interact with each other. From my lurker point of view, seeing this interaction is much better than just viewing amazing art on it's own. Amazing art on it's own can be quite isolating, well for me anyway, and i prefer viewing amazing art/wips with comments attached. It's enjoyable to see what the artists was thinking or the progress of the piece with critiques that aren't all "very good". I prefer the polycount format over the cgHub one.

    The only problem atm is how one picks a thread. For me i usually view threads based on the title so I'm pretty sure i missed a few good threads.

    Anyway about the 2d stuff;
    The sketchbook area isn't used much and the rate of work being pumped out in the sketch thread is significantly lower than the 3D. I dont think that's going to change.

    What I would like to see is maybe just a name change to the Polycount Sketch Thread to something like the "Polycount 2D thread." or something more fantastical
    (with permission from those who post a lot more than i do :P)
    I generally feel guilty posting complete 2d work on there and I don't just because of it's name, even though completed work is accepted.

    I'm still quite new to these forums but those are my 2 cents :)

    So maybe make it more like Zbrush Central and add thumbnails with latest progress to see what the thread really is showcasing? i think that would be awesome. I do skip a lot of threads on its names alone.
  • Di$array
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    Di$array polycounter lvl 5
    Such a sad loss for the community but at least PC is still going strong.
  • StephenVyas
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    StephenVyas polycounter lvl 18
    glottis8 wrote: »
    So maybe make it more like Zbrush Central and add thumbnails with latest progress to see what the thread really is showcasing? i think that would be awesome. I do skip a lot of threads on its names alone.

    Likewise. Looking at a sub with 100s of titles of "sketchbook [name]" requires active exploring throughout the sub. Whereas the Pimping section, actually has titles that grab your attention. Or at the very least, they give a hint to the content inside.

    For me...The content usually comes first, then I notice the name of the artist and start to follow them. This is why I think I hardly browse the sketchbook thread
  • doc rob
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    doc rob polycounter lvl 19
    Full Spectrum Digital LLC's address is listed here:
    http://www.trademarkia.com/cg-hub-77514335.html

    Anybody in LA want to go knock on their door and ask them what the fuck?
  • Lane
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    Lane polycounter lvl 8
    Where are The Monuments Men?!?!?!
  • Galvanize
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    Galvanize polycounter lvl 7
    We need a new alternative! CGHub was very mportant... for me..
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    The first step of many baby steps: http://www.polycount.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=80

    2D 'Pimping & Previews'
  • LRoy
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    LRoy polycounter lvl 14
    The description of that forum says its 3D.
  • Highelf
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    Highelf polycounter lvl 11
    adam wrote: »
    The first step of many baby steps: http://www.polycount.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=80

    2D 'Pimping & Previews'

    Awesome!


    And hah, they quoted me directly in that last statement, (I will stay as far away from Shakuro from now on) looks like my "tactic" to get them to say something on the matter worked. (I retracted my statements on those posts on FB too)
    At least we know it isn't related to crimea, or that team now. They are basically just saying "not our fault".
    Oh well.
  • Brandon Kern
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    Brandon Kern polycounter lvl 11
    Sweet! Thanks adam, made my day. :)

    I hope to see a huge influx of 2D on this site soon, that'd be awesome.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    LRoy wrote: »
    The description of that forum says its 3D.

    Pfft... no it doesn't...


    /runs to fix
  • whats_true
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    whats_true polycounter lvl 15
    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=777023205649120&set=a.535147629836680.122125.223833394301440&type=1

    Shakuro
    We are getting tons of emails and from the comments to our recent post we think that we need to clarify some things and answer the most common questions.

    1. Team Shakuro was NOT associated with Full Spectrum Digital, LLC - a company that ran CGHUB.com. We were actually only responsible for development and of course were not authorized to make decisions like shutting the project down. That also means that we were not making money from ads, pro accounts and so on.

    However, since the real owners prefer to keep low profiles we are the only ones on the surface (to blame).

    2. We were caught completely unprepared. It was as simple as: “Guys, it’s over”.
    Why the shutdown was like this and without prior notification – we have no answer to this question and that’s also beyond our understanding.

    3. Even though it wasn’t our decision to close the project, it was us who tried to reach the community with at least a bit of explanation of what was going on.

    And we are really sorry to see comments like “I am going to stay away from anything Shakuro will produce in future”, “Unprofessional” and so on … and we hope that they are made out of misunderstanding of the situation.

    4. We tried every single option to keep the community running including buying it out, selling to somebody else, even pausing … it didn’t work.

    5. Again the reason is completely personal. The project had a very bright future, we were beating our traffic records on monthly basis, had a perfect team and tons of ideas and even a couple of satellite projects in mind.

    Situation in Crimea, hackers, SSL bug, aliens have nothing to do with the project closure. The servers and were based in the US and were secure. Management team was in US as well. Absolutely nothing is going on in Crimea that would prevent us from doing our business.

    6. If you were a Pro member and didn’t receive a refund – please send email to cghub@shakuro.com with your account details. It will be forwarded to project owners.

    7. CGHUB (domain name, userbase, codebase) is not for sale. We have no right to sale it and the CGHUB owners do not want to sale it. The only thing we can promise is to forward your sale offers to the owners.

    8. During last several years we rejected ~30 CGHUB-like requests from different people / companies (some of them were very promising) as we wanted to stay focused on our main project. We got some new ones during last couple of days and may start working on new CG /art community soon.

    And the last thing.

    We started working on CGHUB 6 years ago, from the request “Hi, can you make a website that shows images?” and since then it has become our flagship project and there is nobody in this Universe who would love it and miss it more than we do. Some of our developers are still in disbelief of what has happened. We would never do any harm to this project / community. So we really hope for your understanding.

    No more CGHUB. Someone will take the void. Good luck guys.

    Team Shakuro

    PS. CGHUB 2008:
  • JohnnyRaptor
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    JohnnyRaptor polycounter lvl 15
    Damn, sad news indeed.

    Hopefully something will come out of this for the better
  • EarthQuake
    Good move Adam.
    As you may know, the Polycount´s Sketch Thread is being used constantly so I create a note there to remind people to join the conversation or consider about move the stuff to the new Subforum.

    Good call, moved.
  • Brygelsmack
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    Brygelsmack polycounter lvl 13
    adam wrote: »
    The first step of many baby steps: http://www.polycount.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=80

    2D 'Pimping & Previews'

    Is there a thread of the changes being made to Polycount? A sticky or something? Would make it easier to keep track of things.
  • seventri
    Sad day. I really don't understand it. That site has a lot of value. Between the code and scripts built to make it work and the content of everyone that contributed, we're talking a lot of money. Their mobile apps by themselves are worth quite a bit. I'd love to have the source code for them. You'd think they'd sell it to someone else or try to salvage some of it. Maybe they will I guess.

    Here's to hoping something even better will replace it.
  • moose
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    moose polycount sponsor
    Sucks it closed down :( Had a lot of bookmarks there! Hopefully the people who had work up there decide to make a blog or a site now. What hurts the most is the exposure to the great artists from other countries that I normally would not have been exposed to. I don't go to Chinese, Russian, Taiwanese, etc forums, and never got to see those paintings or models until CGHub was open to the world, and opened me to so many different styles and types of art. It seems a little selfish move on the owner's part to just remove the site completely and not offer to sell it, unless there was some geo-political motives going on? Don't want to speculate, it provided an amazing service for artist exposure by ease of use that the internet art community has never seen or had before. It wasn't just a "place to show images," it had also become a community, a social outlet, a source of inspiration for many industries. A real shame to see it be killed off.

    Kind of off topic in response to the new 2d P&P: CGHub worked because everything was visible from the front, not buried in sub-forums and segregated into separate areas. By segregating our forums further, it lessens the exposure of everyone's art and less people will see things. Maybe people frequent these and I'm just lazy, but I don't agree with splitting the forums up.
  • conte
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    conte polycounter lvl 18
    For anyone who want to get the few contacts, and maybe(maybe) some images, follow this:
    1. Go to http://archive.org/web/
    2. Write your page address in "browse history", for example "guntharf.cghub.com"
    3. Choose available snapshot, the one before the down date or even earlier.
    4. Navigate from this how you would do normally, if page existed.

    Edit: you can only get first contacts in list, which are on the profile page.
    If you go to the "contacts"- it won't work.
    Same with "favourites"(2nd page), "Following" and "Followers"- unavailable. Unfortunally.
  • Joopson
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    Joopson quad damage
    2) Home Page Art Tiles - It made looking at new and trending art a breeze. Pieces with more clicks or likes or whatever got bigger thumbnails on the grid. We're visual people and that was a good visual solution.


    I think a "Recent Images" page would be nice, set up either like tiles, or like this page:
    http://www.conceptroot.com/concept-art-polycount-feed/

    I use that page instead of navigating the forums on my phone. I see a lot of work I'd otherwise miss.
  • Bigjohn
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    Bigjohn polycounter lvl 11
    A 2D forum is an awesome addition to the Polycount community, but I honestly don't think CGHUB's popularity was primarily due to its forums. Two things...

    1) Portfolio Hosting - they offered a free place to host your portfolio. Not only that but the content management system was really nice. Others like CGSociety are super clunky and non-intuitive. And because both the front and back end of their portfolio system was clean and easy to navigate, and linked to the artist's contact information, it became widely accepted as a professional platform to showcase your work for prospective employers.

    2) Home Page Art Tiles - It made looking at new and trending art a breeze. Pieces with more clicks or likes or whatever got bigger thumbnails on the grid. We're visual people and that was a good visual solution.

    Top rows...honestly I could take them or leave them. People usually get stoked when they make it on the top row of a website, but I think it can lead to lazy art browsing. The same artists end up getting all the eyeballs on their work over and over again.

    Totally agreed, and I'd like to add the international aspect too. The site being picture-centric, rather than (english) text-centric, made it so it was just as easy for a Chinese/Korean/Russian/etc speaker to post as it was for a westerner.
  • roosterMAP
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    roosterMAP polycounter lvl 14
    dont forget a favorites section so that users can save sources of inspiration!
  • dirtyhairy
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    dirtyhairy polycounter lvl 12
    We support you guys Shakuro! Cghub was awesome and we look forward to you next endeavors.
    Open up a new site and let us know. I'll be the first to sign up XD
  • D4V1DC
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    D4V1DC polycounter lvl 18
    seventri wrote: »
    That site has a lot of value.

    Not that this is what you meant but.. yea in more ways than 1:
    www.cghub.com
    estimated website price is
    $ 682,954
    Link to this info.

    Not that I don't love the forum feel, but perhaps you can adopt a thread to this cause. Hear me out, that will call for all 2D artists/concept and others to add in there feedback to what type of site setup they would enjoy using. As it was said cghub felt like it had a resume type of feel to it and the portfolio was right there a click away.
    ^I think that is the best course of action to take, we keep polycount the way we want it and the Concept artists get what they want and then some.

    Win, win?
    So basically another site, with the PC label in some way, could also keep the new 2D sub/forums.
  • Pabs
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    Pabs polycounter lvl 12
    Joopson wrote: »
    I think a "Recent Images" page would be nice, set up either like tiles, or like this page:
    http://www.conceptroot.com/concept-art-polycount-feed/

    I use that page instead of navigating the forums on my phone. I see a lot of work I'd otherwise miss.


    ^this would be real helpful
  • dempolys
    Shakuro :
    We started working on CGHUB 6 years ago, from the request “Hi, can you make a website that shows images?”

    This is why CGhub was so incredible. It was a gridded wall of images. No messing about, no hidden pages etc.

    Finding all the cool art on most art sites is a maze, especially Polycount. I hope we can get a wall of thumbnailed art going like CGHhub.
  • RyanB
    Highelf wrote: »
    At least we know it isn't related to crimea, or that team now. They are basically just saying "not our fault".

    Full Spectrum's registration is easy to find. Not much point in blaming without more info.
  • MrHobo
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    MrHobo polycounter lvl 13
    The cghub tumblr is still up
    http://cg-hub.tumblr.com/

    It has full names as well as images of artist work.

    Maybe it can help some of you trying to remember names, Get it while you can.
  • slosh
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    slosh hero character
    I would recommend drawcrowd.com for now. It's not as clean as cghub but still has a wall of images on the mainpage and you can set up your own profile page with your own banner and images to mimic a portfolio look. There are things missing like WIP images and filtering by category on the main page but it has a lot of potential. Right now, it is largely 2D because of Feng's influence I'm assuming but I have seen some 3D guys migrate over since the fall of cghub. I actually enjoy scrolling down and seeing who's joined in cuz their stuff pops up on the main page. There is still a function to follow users and like their images...all very easy to use. Hopefully, they continue to improve and the community grows to cghub size.
    Galvanize wrote: »
    We need a new alternative! CGHub was very mportant... for me..
  • moose
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    moose polycount sponsor
    A 2D forum is an awesome addition to the Polycount community, but I honestly don't think CGHUB's popularity was primarily due to its forums. Two things...

    1) Portfolio Hosting - they offered a free place to host your portfolio. Not only that but the content management system was really nice. Others like CGSociety are super clunky and non-intuitive. And because both the front and back end of their portfolio system was clean and easy to navigate, and linked to the artist's contact information, it became widely accepted as a professional platform to showcase your work for prospective employers.

    2) Home Page Art Tiles - It made looking at new and trending art a breeze. Pieces with more clicks or likes or whatever got bigger thumbnails on the grid. We're visual people and that was a good visual solution.

    Top rows...honestly I could take them or leave them. People usually get stoked when they make it on the top row of a website, but I think it can lead to lazy art browsing. The same artists end up getting all the eyeballs on their work over and over again.

    Yeah, I agree. To be clear, I didn't know they had forums, when I mentioned their forward-facing art was their draw, I meant the front page had images, no click-through to find stuff, art was displayed openly. From there you could rabbit hole into that person's art, their likes/favorites/contact info, etc. The presentation, usability, and design was what made it slick.

    I agree a 2d presence at polycount is a great thing. I disagree with our presentation. However, it'll keep the admins busy making friday updates with 2 forums, and that will be the route to its success, with community involvement very close 2nd. Dislike top-rows or love top-rows, its a motivator for people to continually post art to work toward that goal & award in this day & age of fast moving art-communities. Polycount's recap is a much more graceful, personal, and rewarding system, and know it can be great with 2d stuff too!
  • Stinger88
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    Stinger88 polycounter
    About Polycount displaying a top row style thing.

    There was a thread a while ago were we bounced around ideas and a few of us put together some layout mock ups of how PC would look with CGHub and ZBcentral style images. There were some pretty cool ideas. I cant find the thread now, so if anyone can remember or find the thread that'd be awesome. Would be fun to see them again.

    However... Since that time I think i've had a change of heart. Only reason is that any forums i've used that have top rows or images on front page I have found that it seems a lot harder to get your work seen and also I miss a lot of other people work. It's great for the "pro's" as their images get tons of exposure (and rightly so) but for the little guy its kinda frustrating. I also find that I don't use those kind of forums as much either, cghub was great to quickly visit and see some images but I never used their forums.

    The recap is awesome for finding things I have missed. It might be cool if we could get more recap's, maybe twice a week?...
  • Wendy de Boer
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    Wendy de Boer interpolator
    adam wrote: »
    The first step of many baby steps: http://www.polycount.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=80

    2D 'Pimping & Previews'

    Great initiative! :poly142:

    On a side note, I think you should move the "Pixel Art" sticky thread to the 2D section now. :)
  • PogoP
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    PogoP polycounter lvl 10
    I think splitting the 2d/3d is kinda naff to be honest. Especially for the What Are You Working On thread. I used to love checking out the 2D stuff when it cropped up randomly. I probably won't end up going to the 2D one as much :(
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