Does anyone have any insight on why they're closing their doors?<p>Edit: I did some searching. Heart breaking stuff. What an incredible way to remember Jason and the Community by, by releasing everything they have to the internet. Wonderful stuff.<p>"Unfortunately, 3D Buzz is closing its doors, not without giving people a final gift (more about that below). You may or may not know that Jason Busby, founder of 3D Buzz and one of the principal partners, dying from cancer back in 2017, and that affected 3D Buzz greatly. Besides founding 3D Buzz, Jason was Director of Animation for The Renaissance Center in Dickson, Tennessee, and was also the author of the books Mastering Unreal Technology Vols I and II."<p><a href="https://magazine.renderosity.com/article/5641/3d-buzz-is-closing-while-giving-us-a-final-gift" rel="nofollow">https://magazine.renderosity.com/article/5641/3d-buzz-is-clo...</a>
> Most files listed below are available on this torrent: 3dbuzz.torrent. Some files are currently missing.<p>Looks like either the torrent itself, or the set of files the torrent was created from is corrupt, or containing different versions of some of the zip files, because the torrent does not completely verify against the zip files that 3dbuzz originally released to the public on their website a week ago.<p>Someone on Reddit made a torrent too, and the first torrent that person made had some issues too but then that person made a new, fixed torrent that verifies correctly against all of the zip files that were originially released to the public by 3dbuzz.<p>Here is a link to the torrent made by the person on Reddit, that verifies correctly for all of the files: <a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1bljXeR1xv9TphXj4zpeypyYDVDtkpk1e" rel="nofollow">https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1bljXeR1xv9Tp...</a>
I was one of the members of 3dbuzz early on. It pretty much shaped my career. I now run my own video tutorial site (codemy.net) because I was inspired by 3DBuzz.<p>I got my first job because of content from 3DBuzz. Later focussed on web development and now I'm here working in a very good job / able to start my own projects. Most of it started at 3DBuzz. So this is a very sad day for me.<p>I remember when Jason passed away that was devastating. I reached out to some members (who are now working at Epic / Microsoft). 3DBuzz set me (and many other people I know) up for life.
For those who don't know, 3DBuzz was a small pioneering company providing training material for 3D content creation suites.<p>At the time, it also was the only place where you could get training material for Unreal Engine (3/UDK). I can only imagine that quite a few people in the industry first got their start on UE through that material.<p>Moreover, it was a community with a forum/IRC and had a podcast running for a while. While I wasn't an active member of the community, in its heyday I used to visit the site daily. It was a great place.<p>As the founder Jason Busby struggled with terminal cancer, the site died down.<p>My gratitude and regards go out to Jason's family and everyone who was involved with the site.
If you don't want to download via torrent, note that many (maybe all?) of the videos are available on their YouTube page: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/3DBuzz/videos" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/user/3DBuzz/videos</a>
I remember taking the Houdini class. I've modeled a desk lamp. It was crappy and I knew it, but the teachers said it was an "amazing design" and encouraged me to learn more about the software. It truly was inspiring and a great community... Thanks for everything.
During my elementary/high school days, I remember their C++ videos for creating a simple, but fun mage fireball game in Windows console. It was a good introduction, for me, to object oriented programming. Really showed me that C++ wasn't hard at all and could be fun. Authentic videos where mistakes were made and showed you the human side of programming.<p>3dBuzz Variables and Data Types - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og_8Bx-l80k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og_8Bx-l80k</a><p>Mage and Fireball - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=923ELha-L4Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=923ELha-L4Q</a>
This is sad but it is SO refreshing to see something on the web that takes us back a decade or two - plain content, links, no banners, tracking or email subscriptions. Just people sharing a bit of their passions online. Farewell
i know it signals the end of something people poured their hearts into...but i do enjoy reading these kinds of announcements. i find it fascinating to see how founders communicate to their communities and now-ex-staff. in a lot of cases, i find it inspiring.
Links to the files (torrent) on reddit:<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/ekhzsd/comment/fddm16u" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/ekhzsd/comment/fdd...</a>
I took the Mastering Maya class as well as several others when they initially came out more than a decade ago.<p>I learned so much, but also got such a sense of community working with the other students.<p>I'll always be grateful for that opportunity.
It was a gold mine back in the day. Through 3D Buzz I ended up taking one of their courses at the The Renaissance Centre in Dickson. I was 17 and it was only the 2nd time I ever travelled out of the UK, and the first I travelled on my own! Had a great time and I went on to do a BA in Computer Animation and Visualisation. I work in mobile development now and owe a lot of my early programming skills to 3D Buzz. Their C++ and MEL scripting videos were highlights for me. Rest in peace Jason.
Man, that's really sad. I followed the progress of Jason's sickness on fb (he was posting about it pretty regularly) and it was really heart breaking to see how fuckin cancer chews you up and spits you out.
I still have two of the Maya courses from 3DBuzz on DVD at home. Just a week ago I was throwing away all of my old CDs/DVDs but decided to keep them for nostalgia reasons. I guess it was a good decision.
I recently learned that Jason died in 2017 and it was incredibly sad, even though I stopped using 3dbuzz a long time ago, it was an incredible tool when I started in the VFX industry, it was affordable incredible good training.
I tried to wget this and got a cert error. I believe this is due to a known bug in wget for Windows but would be curious if people on Linux see the same issue.