Well, I've missed my goal and I'm not happy about it. Technical difficulties. But, development continues and the dvd's will be completed much sooner than later.
Here's an update on the way the content is structured.
Check out the 2010 Blender Conference via live streaming!
Hopefully, there will be videos made available for the earlier presentations and the presentations given in other rooms.
Here are two of the Sintel DVD Extras recently released by the Blender Foundation.
I would rate these tutorial excerpts as intermediate to advanced. But, there are plenty of useful tips throughout for users at all levels.
Sintel DVD Extras: Tutorial by Colin Levy, about setting up render and compositing for a shot in Blender.
Sintel DVD Extras: 4th tutorial by Angela Guenette, about creating facial poses.
You can get more info about the Sintel Open Movie DVD box at the Blender E-shop...
technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials
First of all, I can't give you any first-hand advice on how to start down the road to being a Blender developer. I think it's more important to get that advice directly from the source.
Campbell Barton (one of the lead Blender developers, aka ideasman42) has provided a really nice overview of how you might approach this goal. Being self-taught, his advice is very practical and efficient.
This is one of the great things about Blender being Open Source Software, you can get involved and make some kind of difference in so many ways.
Check out the forum thread at blenderartists.org.
In Blender 2.5, the default interaction of the 3d Manipulator requires you to drag the controls with the left mouse button. The transformation is confirmed when you release the mouse button.
We can change this by adjusting the keymapping for the 3d Manipulator.
Start by creating a new scene using Ctrl-N, or selecting New in the File menu.
Load the User Preferences dialog by pressing Ctrl-Alt-U, or selecting User Preferences... in the File menu.
Locate the Input tab.
Locate the 3D Manipulator keymap setup within the 3D View section.
Click the Edit button for the 3D View section to enable editing of the keymaps.
Locate the Confirm on Release option and set it to be Unchecked.
Go to the 3d View and test the manipulator's interaction. Now, you can simply left-click the controls to engage them and left-click again to confirm the transformation.
If you like this type of interaction, save the settings as the default. (Remember that you'll be saving the current scene as the new default scene. You can restore the default cube to its original state by undoing everything. Or, you can press Alt-G, Alt-R, and Alt-S to clear the Translate, Rotation, and Scale transformations, respectively.)
That's it!
I expect the DVD (actually it's 2 DVD's) to be completed by the end of the month (October). It's been a long and bumpy road, but I can finally see light at the end of the tunnel.
The interesting thing is that there will be far more tutorials on the DVD's than there are on the blogsite (and that took me four years to accumulate!).
If you're interested in purchasing the DVD's, be sure to take advantage of the pre-order discount.
Thanks for your patience!
Kernon
technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials
