Ok, now the November meeting notes are on the wiki (at http://seapig.org/November2011Notes). These include what I already posted to the list, plus some more detailed notes that I took during the talk, plus Lee Fisher's Blender links which he posted to the list yesterday (thanks Lee!) and the link Oscar posted to Tony Mullen's workshop (thanks Oscar!).
Now, bear in mind that I am not familiar with 3D animation so if anyone finds something incorrect, misleading, or unclear in the meeting notes, or if anyone has a useful Blender link to add or remembers something cool from the talk that I didn't mention, then please do edit the wiki to improve the meeting notes. If you have technical difficulties editing the wiki, please post to the list and someone will be able to help you sort it out. 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.
