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Polycount.com "2.0" is almost here, for real this time.

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adam
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adam polycounter lvl 20
Consider this the be-all-end-all tease I ever do for the new website, I promise.

I'm writing this now because we actually have very few bugs left that we can see, which means we're very close to being ready to launch. Today was a huge day for development as we're now scrounging for any remainders bugs. What a great place to be at ;)

On the surface, you shouldn't see much difference to the Forums that you know and love. Some colour & layout changes are the brunt of the changes to the Forums so really, and hopefully, that experience shouldn't much at all. At least not right away.

So why have I been slowly working at way at this for the past 3 years? One word: Framework. We - thats you and I and everyone here - has hundreds of ideas for Polycount that we simply could not do without a proper framework to do them in. vBulletin just simply is not enough. Which brings me to the biggest change coming to Polycount...

...the front page. Polycount, will now be, the absolute best resource for videogame art. We promise. The front page is going to be our News page, and much like other blogs* out there, it will be easy to read and throw down your 2 pennies if you dare. We're working with a blog format so that you have absolute accessibility and so that we can update news from wherever, and whenever we please.

Polycount is going to be reporting news to you that we think 3D videogame artists will appreciate:
  • Exclusive content like Interviews, Article and Tutorials. The first one out of the gate will be with our good friend Ryan Clark, an individual who has injected himself in most of your work flows today with Crazybump.
  • News from other 3D communities. While Polycount may be your home, you can come to us to find out whats happening at other community sites since there's always great stuff happening out there that you may otherwise not know of.
  • General 3D news that we think you guys will enjoy, learn from, or just overall find interesting.
  • Polycount news. Stuff that's happening internally that you may not know about.
Once this is up and running, we can focus on new features to the site (both News and the Forums) that will make the experience as a video game artist & member of Polycount that much better: Thread previews via mouse roll-overs (no thumbnails!), Image Attachments (finally!), 3D online courses for compareably small fee's with some of our industries best artists, are small examples of where we're going.

I simply could not do these things without the proper framework.

So why the hell has this taken me so long?
  • We - and when I say we I mean myself the team thats helped me along the way - have been doing this in our own spare time, on our own dime, and on something as big as this that can always take time.
  • The website has gone through a TON of iterations - which I plan on showing you guys at some point.
  • The website's development has started from scratch about 3 times now. Either the people helping dropped off the face of the planet, ideas fell through, or what have you. That was a HUGE time loss.
  • It was a global effort so time was a huge management sink. North America to Europe to Australia; that' where the Team resides.
  • Funding! We raised enough money through the Polycount Store to pay for services to finally have the website made by the dedicated team over at BWM Media. We cannot thank you guys enough for supporting us with the store - and we plan on offering more goods once the site is up and I can focus on that sort of stuff.
So what can I expect over the next couple of weeks?

We don't have a definitive date or anything, but at some point the website is going to be shut off from the public for hopefully no more than a couple of days (hopefully a few hours but I'm not naive to commit to such a thing ;)). In the mean time, you should set yourself up with Twitter and follow us. If the site goes down, that'll be the only way we can communicate with you guys which is really important to us. So if you see the website go offline for awhile - don't be alarmed. We're still here, we've just killed the lights to change the set so we can continue this crazy show.

Alright, wall of text over.

Without further a due, consider these the final tease:

polycount_sample01.jpg

polycount_sample04.jpg

polycount_sample02.jpg

polycount_sample03.jpg

*Polycount is totally your blog.
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