Struggled through a tutorial

[Seagull]

Total congratulations, actually to both of you. Frances and you are amazing me with your progress. I first downloaded blender about 8 or 10 years ago but never got the hang of it. This time I am trying and I found that the best site to learn from is the one your on. After getting lost on all the other tutorials on different sites, I finally decided to go with this one, and I decided to start with the first tutorial and I am glad that I made this decision. I am doing the yellow sub.....ugly, isn't it........but I believe it is the first so that is where I will start. Over a couple of days I got as far as the propeller but something went wrong with the program, the property menu was only half there and I could not drag to create another window. This was over several days and several reboots, and opening a new blender file was okay, so I gather I must have done something wrong somewhere during the tutorial, probably before the first save, and last night deleted all the work I have done to date. The discouraging news was that it took me a couple of days to get there, a bit here, a bit there.....I bore quickly, don't you know........but the good news is I can get to about the same stage in probably half an hour instead of days. At this stage of the game I probably know about .0005 % of the program but I am learning to crawl, hopefully some day I will be able to walk but we all must forget about me learning to run, that will never happen. Anyway, probably tonight I will start doing the tutorial again while keeping an eye on the property menu so that it doesn't happen again.

I used to open Xara all the time and just used to doddle in it, drawing balloons, etc., just no brainer things to relax and amuse myself, but now xara is on a back burner while I play with blender, probably just the challance of learning something new. At this point it amuses me but I don't know how long that will last, extreamly short attention span.

Anyway, I am happy to see how you and Frances have progressed in such a short period of time. Actually Frances is really amazing, at this stage of the game I have actually no idea how she was able to create her bowl of fruit but hopefully that will change soon once I understand a bit more of the program

[guyke]

Just a remark on the tutorials, Frank.

They are made for a previous version of Blender, so once in a while the shortcuts have changed in Blender 2.5
What I struggle most with is the fact that the cursor has to be inside the 3D-view window when you execute a command. So every now and then, Blender doesn't seem to respond, but that's just because you're cursor is outside that window...
Anyway, I wish you luck with your effort - welcome to the club of Blender students !

[Seagull]

"What I struggle most with is the fact that the cursor has to be inside the 3D-view window when you execute a command. So every now and then, Blender doesn't seem to respond, but that's just because you're cursor is outside that window...

Yes, annoying, isn't it. Here is another one that annoys me. I am reading the tutorial and then click on the pdf file to accomplish my next step in blender. With his screen shots I keep forgetting which program is open. The good news is that step by step, I am getting more familiar with the program, and the yellow sub tutorial, while ugly, seems to be a good starting point. and it does seem to follow the program pretty well. My problem was a bug or a misstep on my part, who knows.

I wanted to print out the pdf file but it's 140 pages, he seems to use only a quarter or half a page, one step per page. I tried to print 4 pages per sheet but it seemed that it was not printing in any order. Must try again but not now, other things to do

[guyke]

I'm lucky to have 2 monitors, so I open the pdf twice on monitor 2, whilst having Blender on monitor 1... btw the train pdf is 300+ pages...

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Hello Guy,

@James re: Animation. I've rendered the animation into an avi-format. The tutorial suggested quick-time, but apparently that's no longer an option. How do you go about converting the avi-format in e.g. an animated gif which can be posted in the forum ?

I'm not sure of which tool to use for going from avi to a forum-able gif.

Blender will render individual frames to disk, if you'll just pick the image type. Then, in the box above, you can write the file name (and change disk location) in the form of "Anim###.png" It replaces the #'s with frame numbers. The advantage to this method is twofold....being able to sequence or resequence the animation...and also you have all the frames of your animation immediately available as a still. I use Animation Shop, which came with PaintShopPro to sequence the animations and make the gif. If you don't have it, I'm sure there are plenty of other utilities to do that, it's such a basic function...

As far as making the forum like it... The forum software thinks it's an image and converts it to jpg. If you'll reference the gif through the Add Image button on the text editor, (after giving it a full url...ie uploading it somewhere), then the software just tells the browser to display whatever it is directly. That's how I got it to work, perhaps there's an easier way.

Again, really nice job in the modeling. It requires craftsmanship and patience to get it that right.

James

[angelize]

For Frank: I took different learning route (I guess what works best for each of us) I started watching video tutorials at Blender Cookie They have a whole section of short easy tutorials geared towards beginners. They have a getting started series that takes you through everything from the the first download through the 2.5 interface to modeling, lighting, materials, etc. That's where I started. And I have also been here a lot picking James' brain. The fruit basket was done using an alpha transparency to "cut holes" in the mesh that James explained here and the apples I learned to model them from a video on Blender Cookie I have started small doing simple objects and learning how to render them as different materials.

One thing too don't leave Xara on the back burner! Xara can make your work flow much easier, for instance you can create any kind of image in Xara and map it to your blender objects very easily! and dont forget that transparency trick! My basket uses a repeating tile with transparency that I created in Xara. And your Blender creations can be rendered with alpha transparency and brought into a Xara drawing! See here Another thing that you can do is create objects in Xara and export them as SVG graphics and import them into to blender where you can extrude them and bring them into true 3D space!

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Frank,

Re: Having to be in the window to execute key commands.

It has to be that way, because when you are over the other windows, they TOO tend to have key commands. Move your mouse over the left tool window and press "a". Pressing "a" over the 3D window goes through the selection states with objects or elements of objects (vertices, edges, faces).

I recommend only playing in Blender while it is still fun. A small project that comes out successfully will make you infinitely more happy than a larger work that you would never finish. In the beginning I didn't follow tutorials AS MUCH as I went to the manual wiki and learned function by function and forced myself to do something with it.

Most things in Blender will take some patience, but then again, almost anything that you can conceptualize and take the time to create, you can render from any angle with any lighting or animate... It's a powerful tool at helping you realize in image what you imagine or decide to craft in the modeler...

Blender actually adds to my time with Xara. I need my normal usages of it, but now also for creating assets for Blender projects.

James

[angelize]

I'm actually working on a tutorial for using Xara and Blender together that I hope will be helpful to those who like me are completely new to the 3D world but would like to explore how use Xara and blender together. No promises as to when I'll have it ready, I have about 4 different projects on the go right now 2 of which are paying jobs that have to take precedence. This will be as much a learning experience for me as an opportunity to share what I learned so far

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Very cool, Frances

I look forward to it.

There should be some kind of reference (here) about integrating the two, Xara and Blender. One can go back and forth between the two. It's not a seamless transition, but it's not really that difficult either... it's really only a matter of knowing the steps.

I'm sure any tutorial along these lines will be helpful and it might get more people to at least give it a go.

It's not for everyone, but if one doesn't try it, they'll never know...

Peace

James

[guyke]

Here's anoither go at the animation - an swf file :

rocket0001-0288.swf