THINGS WE TRIED / THINGS WE LEARNED
3D Palace was an experiment in teaching ambitious things to people who were willing to try. I was Cris, or Ol_Blue on the old forums. It was generous, occasionally chaotic and, on the good days, a place where somebody's first rough model was the beginning of a career.
I started 3D Palace when a decent manual could cost £60 and putting a video on the internet felt faintly absurd. Hosting was expensive. I spent as much time squeezing tutorials into a downloadable size as recording them. Jason Busby and 3D Buzz were an influence from across the Atlantic. The point was simple: let somebody learn enough to actually make something.
The APU set followed one complicated, Matrix-inspired asset from modelling through rigging and animation without leaning on plugins. The bonus disc wandered into a Sentinel, particles and a pilot. It was the sort of oversized teaching project 3D Palace liked best.
Reeldump let people watch tutorials without signing up. It worked, and running the video service cost far more than I could comfortably sustain. The old pages also had account features for upload and community use; account-free watching was the important part for a learner.
SteelPython was an attempt to deliver personalised tutorial files automatically. After an order, a server encoded a buyer's details as a transparent watermark into each video and prepared the download. Clever, resource-hungry, and difficult to keep going as a small team.
The Outer Islands is where I work today. The historic courses remain free; current teaching and mentoring focus on Unreal Engine 5. There is no need to recreate an old forum or make everybody register before they can learn. Find a useful step, try it, and tell us what you made.
THEN / NOW
The Matrix-inspired APU course started at the asset and kept going through rigging and animation without relying on plugins. The bonus work included a Sentinel, particle systems and a pilot. Today, the useful question is still: can a learner follow a complete project from rough shape to moving result?
Explore the APU set →The Serenity-inspired Stormbringer drew follow-along work from members. Cris recalls people from the film’s effects team contacting him with kind words about the model and tutorial. The surviving set is preserved as an original collection; its age is part of its value as a record of how complex work was taught.
Explore Stormbringer →These accounts come from Cris’s recollections. The archive inventory confirms surviving file sets, but those files are checked before lending.
FROM THE PUBLIC FORUM / REVIEWED
“The old forums were cranky and looked a bit grim, also loaded slowly and were no fun to use really”
“feel free to talk about projects, start projects or just generally mill about”
“I am not a great salesman”
These short excerpts are from visible, public posts by Cris in the preserved forum backup. Spelling is as posted. The full backup is private; no member emails or private messages are published.
The CGCast conversation with Cris Robson ↗ catches the old Palace voice, including the jokes and some wonderfully ambitious plans. Its transcript is automatic, so names and technical terms sometimes need checking against the audio.
This is Cris's recollection, with dates and surviving pages checked where possible. It is a living history; more original material will be added as it is reviewed.
The 2010 forum backup survives. More public posts will be considered slowly, with context and privacy checked first. Old private messages, email addresses and accounts are not part of the public archive.