I forgot to add a few things, regarding the english speaking Shade community...
First, i forgot to mention my good old (online) friend (beside Larry and Juan Manuel)
Jean-Paul, from France. He was also a very active member at Shaders Cafe.
One thing i like also to mention is, when Mirye, the English Distributer (starting from
Shade 9 till shade3d.co.jp took over) was in business with Shade, we had also every
couple of weeks free online video/chat meetings with staff from Mirye and the japanese
Dev. team. The presenter at that time was (the now famous book author) Taiyo-san
who did live tutorials and Q/A with Sunny and others. Those meetings where also
announced, so that everybody could attend, plus they where (or are still?) available
at youtube.com.
Now, do you think that many Shade users attended those...? Of course, not!
Another example. When the fantastic Shade City was created (by Shade Master
Ikeda-san) for the free Blue Mars Online platform, it was also announced (by me,
for example), do you think that english speaking users visited it...? I have never
seen one non-japanese user there, expect after another announcement and then it was
only one person, the Chief of Mirye Software... Blue Mars is afaik still online and very
well worth a visit, if you can use the Windows client software.
So, you see people who bought a license of Shade are not much interested, if at
all, in community things.
That's also one reason for me to no longer spend time with the Shade community.
To bad Adam that you entered the community a bit late (which of course is not your
fault) because you do very good stuff with Shade and are a helpful person, with also
providing tutorials.
I hope also that shade3d.co.jp will find soon people who do the english support on this
site, to give Shade 3D another chance, outside of Japan.
Best regards
Stefan