All for free? What’s the catch?

You may think all the courses and tutorials on this site are free, so what’s the catch? There has to be one, right?

Well, actually there are two, if you want to call it that. First, in order to view the content of the courses, you have to be logged in as a user, which means you have to register on this site, but that’s really completely free.

Secondly, if you don’t pay for a course, you won’t get any downloads for it. When you buy a course, you get the videos as downloads to watch offline. Some courses have project files included in the downloads, and others have written articles that are also included as PDFs in the downloads.

But you don’t need the downloads to learn and follow along. For example, in the Blender courses I may provide textures I created in Substance, but you can find similar textures for free on platforms like polyhaven.com and other sites. When it comes to blend files, you’ll learn everything you need in the course. If you’re not paying for a course, it’s just more work for you to do some stuff yourself from scratch. As a side note, the videos you can watch online without paying for a course are also ad-free.

Yes, it’s all free … But please support me.

Those of you who are familiar with my YouTube channel may know that I have ongoing, serious health issues. As a result, I often have to turn down client projects with tight deadlines, so I can’t work on as many paid projects as I would need to always make ends meet. There are some good months, but more bad ones. And while I hope that the bills that have piled up will all be paid off in 2-3 years so I don’t have to worry about money anymore, money is tight in the next few years.

So, please consider buying a course, it would really help me out. I sell via Gumroad, and they are all set to “pay what you want” with very low minimums. If you can afford to pay a few dollars, I would really appreciate your support!

Wait a minute …

If I need the money, why don’t I have banner ads on the site, and why don’t I just make all the courses paid, maybe for a low price?

Call me stupid, but I’m trying to keep this learning platform ad-free for as long as possible. I hate it when I go to a site like this and there are ads everywhere interrupting the content. Yeah, yeah, I know … These people want to make money off their content, which is totally legit. I get it.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And if I myself don’t like it, why should I do that to my website visitors? Especially on a learning platform, content should not be interrupted, imho. I may have to include ads in the future, but as long as I can avoid that, I’d rather keep CG Tutorials ad-free.

Why aren’t the courses just set to paid?

I firmly believe that education should be accessible to everyone, not just people who can afford to pay for it. Also, I think everyone should help others as much as possible, and this is my attempt to do that.

Plus, I love teaching and passing on my skills to others. For almost ten years, I’ve been volunteering to teach Blender and Photoshop at a local youth shelter. These kids have often been through more bad things than any child ever should. It is so rewarding to see the kids come alive using Blender and Photoshop, gaining confidence in their abilities and achieving the goals they set for themselves. Bringing something good into their lives has a positive impact on me.

As for my free online courses, I hope they help at least some of you reach your goals. Whether it’s a single project you’re doing just for fun, or if it gets you one step closer to a job in the industry: if so, that’s “mission accomplished” for me.

To those of you who buy a course, no matter how much you pay: thank you very much, I really appreciate your support!

Now please go and check out some courses, and never stop learning.

All the best

Christina