Jentzen,
Sorry guess I should of a called Melissa's write up a meeting synopsis
or recap.
-Kevin
On Nov 12, 2011, at 8:11 AM, Melissa Rice wrote:
The talk was like a demonstration, with Oscar showing us around
Blender while explaining structure and philosophy of character
creation and animation, so there aren't slides or anything. Kevin
was referring to my post to the list, which I will also replicate on
the wiki as meeting notes. But that's all there is. We didn't video
tape it or anything. But there do seem to be a lot of Blender
tutorials on YouTube and Vimeo and other places.
The good news is that SeaBUG (Seattle Blender Users Group) meets on
Saturdays so perhaps you could time your next visit to Seattle to
coincide. Oscar said 3 December is the next SeaBUG meeting. I would
highly recommend it if you are interested in animation or game
creation since Blender seems to be a very capable and well-designed
tool and Oscar is a wizard with Blender.
Best regards,
Melissa
-----
Dr. Melissa Rice, PhD
Full Moon Technical Solutions, LLC
14202 60th Ave, NW
Stanwood, WA 98292-4808
email: mailto:[email protected]
phone: 360-654-0709
cell: 425-923-7713
Friday, November 11, 2011, 4:31:57 PM, jentzen mooney <[email protected]
> wrote:
Sorry if I missed them but were the notes posted to the list or
website?
I only saw them in a reply to this post.
-Jentzen
From: Kevin LaTona <[email protected]>
To: Seattle Python Interest Group <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: [SEAPY] Last nights meeting
Without a doubt some of the most "elegant" follow up meeting notes
I've ever read on a computer meeting.
Thanks Melissa for writing them.
And sorry Oscar that I had to miss your presentation last night as
it sounded great.
-Kevin
Kevin LaTona
STUDIO SOLA
Web | Mobil Development
Seattle WA USA
current work: http://studiosola.com/2/web.html
services: http://studiosola.com/2/services.html
linkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/kevinlatona
On Nov 11, 2011, at 11:16 AM, Melissa Rice wrote:
> Many thanks to Oscar Baechler for a fascinating tour of Blender
last night.
>
> Oscar showed us the basics of getting around in Blender's UI,
including making the model, rigging the model (making a skeleton of
"bones" so that character motions can be described), putting skin
and texture on this (e.g., fur or feathers), animating and
rendering. Blender is written in python and C and has an extensive
API exposed and tightly integrated with the UI so that you can go
back and forth between the UI and hand-editing the code generated in
the UI. Hovering over the UI buttons shows you the API call
associated to that action or property (what a good idea!). You can
access a full history undo/redo history. Blender imports and exports
to an incredibly long list of other tools including animation tools
and game engines You can also make automation tools for Blender such
as Nathan Vegdahl's rigify, which automates rigging (see a tutorial
video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txl1X2WVX_E).
>
> Oscar also showed us some of his art work (see his blog at http://ogbog.blogspot.com/)
, an example blender character rig that he made (http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/scenes/the-cataphract-rig-version-1-2/
) that you can download and play with, a blender file exchange
website (http://www.blendswap.com/), and other useful blender sites
such as http://www.blendernation.com/.
>
> He described the Blender business model which seems very
successful in the sense that the quality and speed of development of
Blender rivals that of commercial software yet Blender is free and
open source. It works like this: open movie projects are proposed
with the direct purpose of adding specific capabilities to Blender.
DVD pre-sales fund developers to make the movie and to build the new
Blender features in the process. Once the movies are made they are
available for free download (of the movie and the blender source
files) as well as for purchase of the DVDs. Check out the movies
here: http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/movies/ and production
information here: http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/blender-open-projects/
.
>
> Oscar runs SeaBUG (Seattle Blender Users Group at http://seabug.eventbrite.com
) where he frequently delivers tutorial talks, as I understand (next
SeaBUG meeting is 3 December). Oscar's friend and colleague, Tony
Mullen, has written many Blender books, which you can find at Amazon
or hopefully wherever you like to buy technical books. Oscar is also
writing a Blender book, so check out the SeaBUG meetings where you
might get to see Oscar demonstrate some cool stuff from his upcoming
book!
>
> Hopefully someone will correct me if I have mis-stated anything or
messed up the terminology at all. I'm not in animation myself, but
Oscar's demonstration was so cool it made me want to get cloned in
order to have time to try out Blender. And if you were at the
meeting last night and you recall something cool or interesting
which I forgot to mention, please post to the list. Thanks!
>
> Best regards,
>
> Melissa
> -----
> Dr. Melissa Rice, PhD
> Full Moon Technical Solutions, LLC
> 14202 60th Ave, NW
> Stanwood, WA 98292-4808
> email: mailto:[email protected]
> phone: 360-654-0709
> cell: 425-923-7713
>
>
> Friday, November 11, 2011, 10:06:25 AM, James Thiele <[email protected]
> wrote:
>
>
> I am really interested in Blender but could not attend last
night's meeting. Are there slides/notes somewhere?
>
> --Some radio waves were modulated in the creation of this email.
