News: Progress Update for the BlenderNewbies 2.5 Training DVD

Just a quick update:

Development of the DVD is moving along at an increasing rate as Blender 2.5 continues to become more stable. Here's an abbreviated version of the mindmap depicting the current state of how the DVD is being organized.

Click to enlarge image.

A special Thank You to all of the pre-orders that are making this project possible!

UPDATE
Question: Can you post a little bit about what kind of videos you are thinking about for the "Technical Reference" section?

The Technical Reference section will contain many very short (less than 2 minutes) videos covering very specific technical subjects such as targeting a camera, snapping, local view, setting up a render layer, etc. Think of it as a video wiki for the DVD's contents.

I believe it will make learning more efficient because you won't have to waste time scrubbing through a video for that one part that shows, for example, setting up a render layer.

I'll create reference videos for things that aren't repeated too often in the project videos. For example, there won't be a reference video for "pressing the E-key to extrude".

Two things will determine how much content is in the Tech Ref section: time and disc space. To deal with the time issue I'll record these videos near the end of development to get a better feel for what may be helpful as a Tech Ref video. To help address the disc space issue, I'll record these videos at a smaller resolution with a lower framerate, and maybe framed to only show what's relevant.

Question: What about the Appendixes?

The Appendixes will contain quick references for things like:

• Using experimental versions of Blender
• Upgrading Blender
• Reporting a Bug
  
• etc.

Question: What will the Index be like?

The Index will be similar to the index of a printed book or the Lables listed on the right side of this site. I'll be "tagging" videos as I create them, and these tags will allow you to click a link on the Index page and get an appropriate listing of videos. Honestly, this is just something that I HOPE to be able to do. Currently, I'm not exactly sure how to set this up for the DVD's html interface, but I will at least have everything tagged so it will just be a matter of researching how to implement something like this. I'm sure it's not an original idea so the question has been asked and answered somewhere online.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials