Talk:Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Archive 4

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proposal for better PDF/PS versions

A suggestion: include the graphics, and run the wiki pages through a filter and then through LaTeX to produce a usable output with a senseful contents/chapter section. If one prints the current PDFs, they look crude and awful, especially on a 1000dpi laser printer.

Sounds like a nice idea, however, I think it would be better to wait until at least a whole section is at least at "developed text" stage in all of its sections (if not 100% complete) to convert to LaTeX and then to PDF. As long as there's sparse text or sections under construction, I don't think it's worth it to print the book, in my humble opinion.

Link to this book!

Hey just a quick suggestion!! I know a lot of you out there who read and write this book also have websites that utilize your art. If you do, then you know there are probably a lot of people out there who admire your work and want to know how to make cool 3D stuff too. In that case, make sure at the end of your webpages to put a link back to Blender 3D: Noob to Pro, and we will have more students then ever learning off this book! -Thanks for the time!

Overhaul Proposal

The Noob to Pro tutorials right now are effective, but they could be more so. Some changes that could be made are: - Make each small tutorial relate to the others, culminating in a completed scene. For example, the tutorial "How to model a goblet" could be followed by "how to model a Plate" both tutorials effectively cover different topics, and at the end of the modeling tutorials, the reader can be taught to light and animate the scene. Having a completed scene that the reader can show off has the potential of being much more rewarding and encouraging than having, say, a skyscraper, a goblet, and a simple person that all look unfinished and wildly out of place on Blender's default blue background. Just a thought, I would be interested to hear other people's thoughts on this idea.

wrong link

I think this link is wrong -> Game Editing: Rendering an AO for Terrain

Can someone fix it please? Thanks!

how to rotate the model from x-y to x-z

In the manul Noob to Rro, I want to add a hat to the people as the book wrote. To do that, it needs to rotate the hat or people, e.g, from the x-y to x-z.

Updating PDF

Hi, Can someone update the PDF file, or at least explain how to do so?--OsamaK (talk) 14:50, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Book title name change proposal.

Hello all, I am proposing that the title of this book be modified to read with a more professional sounding, more classy sounding title. my proposal would mean that the name would be "Blender 3D: From beginner to professional" Please state whether you agree or disagree below, and your reasons for doing so, below. Depending on response, I will leave it or re-title the book within a month. i.e. after the 20th January 2009. Cheers.--Read-write-services (talk) 01:08, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed this as I was typing up my response below. There was no notice, {{moveto|Blender 3D - From beginner to professional}}, placed on the front / welcome page of the book to get the attention of other editors. If your fully for a rename, I'd do that and set another 30 day or so cut-off before deciding on renaming the book. --Null Point (talk) 05:25, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Pro Novice to Professional

Can you drop the colon ? To "Blender 3D - From beginner to professional"', take a look also in Wikibooks:Naming policy and it's talk page and in the proposal Wikibooks:Manual of Style and the active discussion on its talk page Wikibooks talk:Manual of Style. --Panic (talk) 01:26, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Yea dropping the colon would be fine, I am way more concerned about the calling of people "Noobs" an American slang term that is in fact used in a derogative fashion around the Wiki to describe people who have "no real clue" how to do something (Newbie). I think that Blender is bordering on the point of professional quality software that to associate the term Noob/Newbie to its tutorial booklet, makes it sound incredibly cheap and nasty.--Read-write-services (talk) 03:07, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Pro The Blender 3D Cookbook

After further investigation, I do not find my original suggestion "Learning Blender 3D" or the current name "Blender 3D: Noob to Pro" to really match the contents of this book. It seems that although this may have started out as roughly a single tutorial on learning Blender, that original work was never completed (nor will it likely be without a significant rewrite of the contents). Instead, this book became a collection of mostly unrelated, self contained tutorials on using Blender 3D that do not build upon each other. This makes it fairly difficult to impossible to go from having no knowledge of the program to being an expert using only the resources here (from start to finish) as the name implies. --Null Point (talk) 15:59, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Pro Noob-To-Pro

Now I disagree with this name change. I believe it is okay for this book to be titled "Noob to Pro". I actually prefer the name over "Novice To Professional". This book isn't made by suits and programmers, it is made by the average aspiring student. "Noob to Pro" is more casual, more friendly, more inviting, and it also gives the book personality and uniqueness. The name sticks in the minds of those who wish to visit again. Just because it is an American derogatory slang term does not mean we should change it. There is no reason why us web users have to conform to political corrections, we are unique individuals! Anyways, I greatly prefer the name, and would really be disappointed to see the name of this book changed to something so plain, so generic, so......politically correct. Thank you.--Bullercruz1 (talk) 23:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Pro Noob-To-Pro

I also vote for leaving the name unchanged. Bullercruz1 has made some very good points. --SoylentGreen (talk) 09:54, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I like the Title as is, I vote to keep it unchanged.

Proposal to relocate "Making Landscapes with heightmaps" to the advanced or misc section

I've stated my reasoning in the module's talk page. --Null Point (talk) 07:24, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind, thanks Bullercruz1. --Null Point (talk) 12:17, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Need Some Cleanup

Hello all, I believe the "beginner" tutorials section of this book needs major cleanup--many tutorials I have recently checked out do NOT seem that beginner....and some are not even that clear. Also, authors of pages should really start adding their name at the bottom of the page, so instead of blindly cutting, moving, or editing someones page, we can ask them to or ask permission for such a thing. I think this is important for the book. Thank You!--Bullercruz1 (talk) 21:52, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the need for asking for permission of the authors to make minor changes as everyone who creates or edits a page on wikibooks has (knowingly or not) agreed to this clause "Please note that all contributions to Wikibooks are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation Licence (see Wikibooks:Copyrights for details). If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here." Although, if you are going to make any major changes to a project, it's a good practice to add an entry to the article(s) talk page first for discussion and possibly place a notice on the page itself (at the top) regarding what you plan on changing. If it's something not too big like moving a section, I'd say wait at least 5~7 days after placing the notice to allow other editors time to share their opinions before carrying out the action. For major edits (renaming the book / deleting a module), I'd say wait at least month or more before deciding on the action. I'd also recommend having a look at the wikibook guidelines: Wikibooks:Be bold and Wikibooks:Decision_making.

As for authors leaving their names on the page, this really is not necessary at all since the page history will show all past contributors and what they changed. --Null Point (talk) 05:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

There exist not consistent model to make changes on a work, but if the work is being worked on it is polite to ask before making any "real" change (definition of major is very open), but there is no obligation to do that, in the past there has been several edit conflicts because of this existence of pecking order, personally I've been involved on the two sides of the problem and still say that the best approach is just to use common sense (but even that may fail). The Wikibooks:Be bold does improve on things and validates any future objection to a bold edit, so out of the blue edits that doesn't conform to the structure or "flow" of the book can be easily fixed.

As for the authors pages, I don't agree with you, especially if you are putting any editor in the same bag. More problematic yet is the inconsistency of history logs and how difficult it would be to make it relevant to establish authorship in a datamining of that resource. This is not the same as in Wikipedia were we would be talking about single page articles...

Another problem is that the GFDL requires that for "...in any medium, that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License", this is needed also to give attributions to any other work, like mentioning that content was taken from Wikipedia or any other source (with a compatible license or authorization), this the history log can't substitute. --Panic (talk) 17:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Request book be split apart

Although it appears that this project might have started out as a book itself on learning how to use Blender 3D, it's obvious that at some point it was mistaken for a category on all things Blender 3D. The contents of several other books that were intended to be separate from this project were at some point were added into it. The original book starts out fairly well written and easier to understand, but breaks off completely from the previous subject matter only a few chapters in. Most of the modules from the "Creating Models With Photo Assistance" area forward have no relation at all to one another besides being about using Blender in one fashion or another. --Null Point (talk) 16:20, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Are you talking about 2 (or more) independent books or a better distribution across chapters ?

What is the benefit of multiple books if only to cover the same subject matter and have dependencies on each other, if possible the content should be kept together unless you can propose a self contained and specific scope. You can also go beyond chapters and use volumes to keep it on the same namespace and closely connected (as in referencing content on other sections)... --Panic (talk) 17:03, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

This might well be just due to the fact that the original authors ran out of steam and later editors added their patchwork of content later on. I'm not clear what you want to split up. --Swift (talk) 17:17, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

My reason for splitting this project is that it isn't a book to begin with. Only the first few chapters belong to the same book, after that it's a collection of separate books jammed together with little or no correlation at all. The problem I have with this is that the modules are linked together (next chapter / previous chapter) as if they were part of one book, even though they're not. I noticed this myself when I was going through to try and cleanup up some broken links between the early chapters only to discover that I couldn't as there was no order to them. With most of the modules not building on each other at all, leaving them linked together as though they do will likely frustrate new users trying to learn the program. There was an obvious confusion between the earlier editors as to whether this project was going to be a category, a book, or a list of tutorials; several of the "modules" are not even under the same namespace.

My proposal would be to either:

• break up the contents into a collection of separate minibooks and list them all under the existing Category:Blender 3D in appropriate subcategories
• rename the book to something like "Blender 3D Tutorials" and have the modules link back to tutorial indexes sorted by difficulty (ie:"back to beginner tutorials list" instead of "next chapter") --Null Point (talk) 18:53, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I have only done sporadic edits to the book. On the other hand you have consistently been working on it for some time, and you seem to be requiring a structural reshaping to enable you to continue contributing to the work. I would dislike to see adopted a solution that would move content out of the namespace and as I stated some time ago agree that the book needs a rename.

I still have some difficulty to understand why you call it minibooks or talk of splitting the content across several books as it is the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro book is mostly a collection of guides or tutorials except for the first "pages" on the toc that explain the basic on how to use the software, some of the tutorials are indeed specific on the nature of the examples they use to explain concepts of 3D editing and on using the software but they clearly wouldn't alone be a sufficient subject matter for an independent book.

I've had similar structural problems in merging books before (or reshaping them), there is a need of a flow and to create specific purposes, so to give a focus to the readers and enable them to fallow the text, and I agree that this seems to be lost in how the book has been evolving from very self contained tutorials (but that enables also easy consultation), maintaining a balance of the two would be difficult since the software is complex and 3D editing needs some extensive background information.

If you really want to drop the concept of tutorials to adopt a more technical approach the best option is to start from the beginning and reshape the TOC slowly, you have to consider that past contributors seemed to prefer the very specific and self contained approach (IIRC I think some of the tutorials were moved/adopted from personal pages), if you can't live with the tutorial structure you probably should start a new book with more distinct and systematic approach to the subject. Try to state not what is wrong with the actual book, but what you would like to reshape it into, and see if someone opposes that (7 days for each step is considered enough if stated on your proposals) take a step at a time, the easier and obvious first step would be a rename. The renaming has already been talked about and I don't recall any objection to it, this would also require a renaming of all pages so I think you should start there. Propose you new name (or see the options already talked about and give a time to select one of them) and decide what to do from there... --Panic (talk) 20:49, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I can see your concerns, so for now I'd like to at least make it obvious as to what this book is, not an all-in-one-how-to, but a collection of different tutorials and manuals. My proposals:

• Add a notice to the main page stating the above, allowing new readers to better understand the what they're getting into
• Remove most of the chapter style links connecting unrelated tutorials and instead list the tutorials by subject matter (similar to this)

I can wait a week or so to see if anyone has any counter proposals before proceeding, but should there be a notice placed on the main page? --Null Point (talk) 14:27, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Yup I'm all for removing all navigational aids, the "/" convention made most of that obsolete and unnecessary. But for clarity the notice that you propose to add should state that you will be heading the job of reformatting the book and directing people to the talk page. You can put it up now since it is only a tag any substantiated objection will be easy to address without any damage... --Panic (talk) 19:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

You might want to place a notice on the main page to alert readers that there might be some change happening soon. You should also consider using it to recruit some help. --Swift (talk) 02:39, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Done, although I couldn't find a specific template relating to the message I was trying to convey, so I mangled one together from existing templates. --Null Point (talk) 13:36, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

"if you can't live with the tutorial structure you probably should start a new book with more distinct and systematic approach to the subject"

Hmmm.... --Brandished (talk) 08:21, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

The current wording on the main page seems to indicate that these were intended to take a specific linear approach to introducing concepts one-by-one, with each tutorial using only concepts used in the previous ones. If that is no longer the case, you'll have to decide whether to push it back to that mold, or change the approach into more of a cook- or a handbook.

I'd recommend keeping this in one book, though the Subject:Blender 3D page could also be used to rank and annotate list of tutuorials.

While the automatically generated links to parent pages are useful, they don't make any extra navigational aids redundant. Specifically, links to related content that helps readers locate tutorials that explain topics which the current one assumes knowledge of (for that purpose I created {{Japanese related}} for the Japanese wikibook). --Swift (talk) 02:39, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem with the book is that although the first editor(s) may have wanted a linear path, it wasn't followed through on. I looked over the book's history and there was no linear path in the way the content was added. Editors would work on one tutorial or section of tutorials and move onto another, but didn't put enough effort into linking the different parts together (or even finishing every section) and the book quickly became a patchwork of random tutorials.

For this reason, I don't think trying to remold this book into an all-in-one is doable anymore, as most of the content would have to be rewritten. Making it a collection instead would be much more doable, I don't have much experience making templates, although navigational aids would definitely be useful. I like your choice of wording as well, "The Blender 3D Cookbook" has a very nice sound to it. --Null Point (talk) 12:37, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you guys reckon the best thing for this book is to make it a collection, illustrating concepts — rather than a linear whole with each tutorial introducing a new tool — then I guess you should remodel the book. It might be worth while digging up the version that got the "featured book" status to see what the state was then.

With deciding where to take this book, a recruiting message like I mentioned could be useful. While it's easier in some ways to work on one's own, company to double-check ones actions and help brainstorm is increadibly useful. The Japanese wikibook only has a couple of contributors, but each of us would have made plenty of mistakes on our own.

Templates are simple beasts. You can have a look at some at Wikibooks:Template messages which User:Darklama and I are rewriting (comments appreciated), ask in the technical assistance reading room or just ask someone you reckon migth be able to help. --Swift (talk) 13:18, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't find when this book became featured, but it was "book of the month" for July 2005 (thanks archive.org). I'll have to complement Spiderworm, ZeroOne, and the other editors who worked on starting this book, it seems that despite a rough start, they were able to meet their goal (at least partially) of making this book an all-in-one howto. The beginner tutorials section in the July 2005 edition was actually fairly easy to follow along with, so it seems the problem with this book was more that contents were added to it without enough moderation towards keeping the intended structure. --Null Point (talk) 13:55, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. Now there are several Blender 3D books, all listed at Subject:Blender 3D. Please use the "move" tab to move pages that don't quite fit one book into a more appropriate book. --DavidCary (talk) 15:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

General thoughts about this book

The task of making this book to something that it claims - be a linear guide of tutorials building upon each other, is nearly undoable.

• It would require that each author would have read all previous tutorials.
• The beginning tutorials should be complete and well written.
• The structure of this book has to be static and would not allow for any changes.
• A version change would require an update of the whole book.
• There would be the need for a general editor who takes care of the above things.

The book is not to bad though at the moment, in my opinion there are a few things that are not so good (but could be handled with some effort):

• The beginning chapters are not complete. Some are very sparse and pretty much unusable in fact.
• The continuous linking between tutorials should only be kept where the tutorials are based on each other.
• There are no statements of the used blender version, this will hit a user hard if shortcuts are changed (not to speak of UV mapping, particles, the animation system, the interface...).

My proposal is:

• Keep the pages in one book.
• Leave the name of the book as it is, because it is a well known brand.
• Create a beginning section with a continuous sequence of tutorials.
• Arrange the other tutorials in appropriate subsections but keep them as independently as possible.
• Add a version note to each tutorial.
• Create a to do list.
• Care about the versioning of the images.

--SoylentGreen (talk) 06:18, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think a name change is that impossible, a redirect page as well as a summary on the new book should take care of those unfamiliar with a different name. The name's not a big issue for me though, I don't agree with keeping the name, but that's just my opinion.

I agree with all the other points you suggested. With all the changes that have been suggested, a whole "TODO" page for the book might helpful. Use it to keep track of the suggestions that have been brought up as well as what updates have been completed. --Null Point (talk) 12:59, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I would open an discussion over at blenderartists, this will draw much attention and you will get a lot of opinions and maybe help here. --SoylentGreen (talk) 17:03, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, that's more involved then I'd like to get and I don't have an account there either, but if you want to bring up this conversation there, go ahead. I don't really want to rewrite this book, just restructure it somewhat so it's easier for readers to follow. I'd like to wait a few more days to get any other opinions or ideas before getting started, I'll be busy for the next few days anyways. --Null Point (talk) 14:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

My apologies, but I think I'm gonna call it quits with contributing to the restructuring idea. I spent an evening skimming from page to page to make sure all the sections I found were at least linked and listed on one page. That sounds like a simple task, but after several hours of work I didn't even get through half the book, I kept running into very broken or very incomplete pages. If that weren't bad enough, the other problem I found was most of the images in this book would have to be recreated and reuploaded. Many of the originals were deleted for not including licensing info and maybe half or so of the ones remaining are the same and will likely end up being deleted as well. While it's true that there are some great tutorials in the book, they seem to be in the minority, buried inside a WIP with the original authors not likely returning. Too summarize, I believe that in order to make this book really useful on it's own, there would be no recourse short of rewriting most of the sections (many from scratch) or heavily fragmenting the contents to highlight the completed tutorials. I have come to an impasse, fragmenting the book is possible, but seems to universally opposed and rewritting most of the book is beyond my capabilities as I'm learning the program myself. --Null Point (talk) 06:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm working on the German wikibook for three years now, and I know it's not finished, and not perfect. A task like making this book to a good one will take long time, but you can do small steps - one after the other. And even if you just take the book a small step further, maybe others will follow and start where you've finished. So don't despair, there is still hope .... --SoylentGreen (talk) 12:47, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Look the great part about this book is you don't need a degree in Graphic Design to add to it. Of course, because the general population is able to add content to this book, not everyone is going to be completely aware of formatting structure guidelines that should be followed in general and will simply add their content. This should not !NOT! be discouraged in the least, and because a couple authors (not everyone who adds content, only a couple regular editors with issues) have an issue with the formatting enough to revamp the entire book. Now he makes some good points, NullPoint, but it seems to be lost on him and the others who protest that this book is meant to be for regular people!!! We who edit regularly enjoy the formatting, but those who just wish to add their one time know-how about Blender do not pay as much attention to formatting. If we start breaking things up into redirects and seperate books and navigation, it will off-put the general popuation from contributing to this book, leading to a drop in edits, additions, and while us regular editors will still add content when we learn more, we NEED the additions of the general people to keep different perspectives, different ideas, and different minds in this book. What we regular editors can do is simply move things that are out of place into the right section, help keep the grammar and spelling looking nice, add an indent here or there as asthetics would appreciate, and maybe suggest people to add something here or here. But the best thing about this book is that in the first page, you can go anywhere you need to very easily because it is all laid out there in that chapter column. --Bullercruz1 (talk)

Oh, and about the renaming issue.....not to be rude, but people need to get over the fact that it is American Slang, and get over the fact that "not everyone might get the reference of NOOB". Face it--people know this book better because of the name. It's simple and easy to remember, but it stcks in the mind. SO WHAT if it is American slang, it was made by an American!!!!! If it was made by an Aussie or a Frenchman, they can use whatever slang their country adopted, and could tell us Americans to get over because we should! And face it, if you are going to be intelligent enough to figure out a program like Blender, but you can't understand what "Noob" means by the phonetical similarities to Newbie? Maybe Blender might be a little too advanced for you then. Am I the only one who feels this way? Must everything be Generic or can we have SOME originality and personality? I thought the kind of people who used Blender were true Individuals and wanted to created individual projects? Anywyas, that's my opinion, I apologize about the inflammatory end.--Bullercruz1 (talk)

Hey this book is badly structured! It says learn to model but its contents are: "modeling a simple person", "modeling a silver goblet". That is not really teaching how to model. They are too specific to be helpful in general.

What really needed is something that is general, a article/tutorial or set of article/tutorial that will enable you to know how to model anything, not specific objects. Say: start with something somewhat generic like modeling a human head, then along down there will be adding more specific modeling of heads like modeling a woman's head or a man's head an elderly head or humanoid (aliens maybe) head. The general head will give the reader the "basic skills" in modeling a head while the more specific ones will give the reader the skills in how to cope with the modeling problems encountered in modeling specific heads.

Noob modelers like me need to see the whole thing first before diving into specific difficulties encountered when modeling specific objects. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 119.95.89.9 (talk • contribs) 19:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, there are many different ways to aquire these skills. This book has so far taken a learn-by-example approach. There is certainly space for another, more general approach on Wikibooks. See Subject:Blender 3D for the available books. --Swift (talk) 11:59, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, the "more general ways" could also be a "learn-by-example" approach, they are not exclusive. What I mean is to write an article that teach you basic skills of modeling (could be by "learn-by-example" approach) and then gradually teach you additional skills that would help you cope with more specific problems of modeling. Its like mathematics at school; you had to learn your numbers first before doing your arithmetics, and learn your arithmetics before doing your algebras, and learn your algebras before doing your calculus. Of course you could skip and still learn but that would be more difficult. I for once did, I studied with my big brothers calculus book when I was a grade six elementary pupil. It was difficult to understand but I was having fun.

By the way I plan to implement this idea of mine myself. What do you think?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rosver (talk • contribs) 11:58, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Here are my own thoughts on the matter:

1. The mission statement needs to be redefined. It's somewhat lacking in direction. I don't know what it should be, but if the name of the book is Blender 3D: Noob to Pro, that's what the book should deliver. A comprehensive tutorial which will take a person who knows nothing about Blender or 3D modeling and animation from total ignorance to a level of skill and comprehension which would be considered professional by peers in his or her field. (Unless by 'pro' we just mean a Blender power-user; but there is absolutely no reason why this book couldn't become a resource for professional digital artists to share their trade secrets if the infrastructure and general quality of the book are already in place.) There is no reason to duplicate the work being done on the official wiki. What we need to know is how to differentiate Noob to Pro from the user's manual.

2. The conflict between having too much and too little theoretical information in the tutorials is a real issue which needs to be addressed. If the aim of the book is to enable someone to work professionally in their field (ie. as more than a mere power-user) then the theory has to be there. I think that each subject should have interlinked theory and practice pages: the practical tutorials could be followed cookbook style by people who are just starting out and need to know how something is done without needing to know all the details but the theory should be there for people who want to understand things at a deeper level. The theory pages could simply link to the practical pages the same way textbooks provide exercises at the end of chapters or sections. People then have a choice about how much or how little they want to read about a subject.

3. The organization of the tutorials has to be re-examined. I favor an approach that starts with a general tutorial to familiarize all users with the Blender interface and underlying concepts, followed by branching skillset development trees based on the user's objectives. Blender is a multi-purpose tool and people use it for a lot of different things and the flow of the tutorials can recognize and support that. The basic tutorial (which would include very basic 3d modeling) could branch out to character modeling, environment modeling, animation, game design, architectural or scientific visualization, etc. No doubt many people would be interested in more than one branch, but organizing them this way allows us to logically order the tutorials according to the domain: character modelers obviously need to know about rigging, skinning, texturing, etc., but don't necessarily need to know about physics, lighting, scripting, etc. This solves the problem of trying to fit in tutorials which don't, in fact, progress logically because they are, in fact, about different subjects. This kind of organization is already there in a nascent state in the table of contents, but it needs to be developed much more robustly.

4. People need to showcase their skills and find sources of inspiration. Of course there are many places already that allow you to show other people what you can do, but if any place needs outstanding work it's a wiki that promises to turn noobs into pros. It might not be a bad idea for some of the major contributors to demonstrate some of their own skill and give noobs something to strive for, and provide a gallery for registered users to show off their projects and get critiques. I don't want to duplicate the work being done by places like polycount and blenderartists but I think it might be good to offer noobs a safe place to get crits without feeling intimidated by the awesome work of some of the real pros.

Anyways, these are my thoughts, but it's late and I'm no longer thinking as clearly as I should. :| Let me know what you think.Truant (talk) 04:15, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

TODO Page

The overall consensus here seems to be overwhelmingly for cleaning up or restructuring this book to some degree. I've gone ahead and created a TODO page for the book here and started adding some of the suggestions from this page, I've tried to add all the mentioned changes (minus renaming the book as the there wasn't a strong agreement on the topic). If I missed a suggestion, or if you want to add another suggestion to the list there, go ahead and add it. --Null Point (talk) 02:46, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea of clean-up, so I did just that for this book. Any comments? Feedback? Criticism? Comment my talk page or here to let me know your opinions about it, if you have one. I hope I made the book better. Thanks you! --Bullercruz1 (talk) 22:45, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The book has been quite improved in the last days. There is a little problem with some tutorials that are in reality manual pages and would belong in the manual. But we should now start at the beginning and fill the pages with some content. --SoylentGreen (talk) 09:07, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Comment removed in light of recent developmental knowledge.--Bullercruz1 (talk) 16:39, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

improve stages list

I see the "stages" list at Blender 3D: Noob to Pro#Table of Contents is slightly different than the one in the {{stages}} template. What is the extra icon supposed to mean? --DavidCary (talk) 19:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I added the extra Icon to be used on pages that are incomplete. It is different then the sparse text one, in the sense that using Under Construction shows a page is incomplete, while Sparse or Underdeveloped Text refers to a page which is completed but is just not all-inclusive or comprehensive. I feel it was necessary considering the status of many of the pages in this book and the complexity of certain subjects may take a while to develop. --Bullercruz1 (talk) 20:24, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

There is a somewhat similar convention at Wikijunior:Languages: an asterisk next to an article in the TOC means that some of the sections of that article haven't been populated yet. More words are spent there (than are spent here) in explaining what it means; you might want to arrange your key so it explains the icon more clearly. To be honest, I don't think the device over there works all that well, because it's too easy for the markings in the TOC to get out of synch with the actual state of the article. I suppose the special icon here might make it harder to overlook and therefore easier to maintain... Has it been working out well for you? --Pi zero (talk) 13:07, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Well it is a new idea only implemented a couple weeks ago and I have gotten no feedback yet, good or bad. There were two aims with these new icone:

• Differentiate between "Sparse, Undeveloped Text" and "Incomplete Text".
• Draw attention to pages that are incomplete.

There is also a third side-effect I have only recently realized but nonetheless will likely help new users: the icon will make the page be left alone by new users, and therefore new users will not get confused or distracted by incomplete work. Only regular editors would be the ones to visit the page. If anyone would like to give me any personal feedback or opinion on the idea, they are free to I encourage positives or negatives. --Bullercruz1 (talk) 17:36, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Page modelling tips

The page Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/modelling tips has some issues:

• It should be moved to "Modelling tips" if it is kept at all.
• The author claims himself: "this is not really a tutorial, but a list of handy tricks you will probably use alot when modelling" (sic)
• The page doesn't really contain usefull information.

I think the page should be deleted. --SoylentGreen (talk) 09:33, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it should be deleted. It's completely useless. --Electro (talk) 13:28, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Images

The part below images has to be changed immediately. Images have to be uploaded to commons! There is more than one language in this world. I suggest the following text:

Adding Images

In Blender tutorials, images are definitely a must-have. They help clarify your point, institute a standard and reference by which a new designer may judge their work, and in essence improve the teaching process of this book by at least ten-fold; however, there is an especially great problem with incorrect copyright attribution usage in Blender, which is leading to more and more images being removed from the pages and from Wikibooks altogether. These seriously hamper the tutorials, especially if the original author is gone, and can make a once-great tutorial now completely invalid and useless. Even if you believe that you know what copyright to use, please visit this proper Blender images copyright page and see how you should add copyright and where.

This is what you should do:

• Check whether there is an image that you can use already at commons:Category:Blender 3D.
• Upload your images to and only to Wikimedia commons. There is more than one language in this world, and only images from commons can be reused worldwide.

Use the right categorization. You will find different templates for your upload also at the copyright page.

---

--SoylentGreen (talk) 15:38, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

....I thought images could only be uploaded to commons, then used elsewhere. I've never seen anyone be able to upload an image to Wikibooks itself. The Image Depository is just a way of filing images used in this Wikibook more categorically...but the images original location will be commons no matter what, correct? Am I missing something about images? --Bullercruz1 (talk) 22:40, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I haven't tried it, but if you click on the upload link you will upload your images to en.wikibooks only. The file CoverArt.jpg

for example, can not be used outside en.wikibooks. --SoylentGreen (talk) 07:45, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Please help. I wanted to add a screen shot of a face model in progress but I had to use a set of free reference pictures I found in the internet in the background. I'm all confused in how to properly copyright this. I'm also unable to found an acceptable substitute in the commons. This copyright stuff really goes against the grain in things like this.

Comprehension Check/Reviewing

Hey, look, there's still some tutorials that aren't fully comprehensive. I'm suggesting we should direct our attention to the articles that aren't fully comprehensive. Also, there are some pages that haven't been reviewed. I think somebody should review them. Ok? Thanks.--GeForce3 (talk) 04:29, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

English standardisation

Should the book be written in British or American English? I know it's a trivial matter, but I would like this to be clarified. --Electro (talk) 15:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

IMHO, it doesn't matter. Brits read American just fine. Americans read English fine too.

Every Material Known to Man

Should be on on Resourses... It is alredy listed twice, I copied it to there and someone undid my edit... In resources it would be easier to find, since it is a f*ing page filled with resources for materials... Not downloadable, but are not tutorials on how to make an realistic looking material, is just: "this material is R 0.454 B 0.345 and G 0.457" I think you can't even change the materials, since there's the author's name, if you edit it you should create a copy of that with your changes by your name... So since it's being discussed now, you should decide where it should be, and place it there, instead of placing in two different places that at least one person (me) believes is completely wrong... Or, if it can be in two places to ease finding, why can't it be on a third?

Cons of current places: Glossaries means "an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge" and EMKTM is definately NOT that... The other place I didn't find it now, perhaps someone alredy removed it too, but perhaps I didn't find it, cause I remember it wasn't called "Every Material Known To Man" there. -- The preceding unsigned comment was added by 189.5.142.108 04:06, 19 May 2009

I hope it is not listed twice, because the purpose of the book is This book can be seen as a series of tutorials arranged to help new users achieve expertise in Blender. The tutorials will increase in difficulty but enable intermediate users to quickly advance into whatever tutorial most suits their knowledge and continue along the sequence. We've made concerted efforts to accommodate everyone.

It is questionable whether EMKTM should be in it anyhow, so the idea of moving it to Resources seems reasonable to me. I would support that. But User:Bullercruz1 has made the change at 01:57, 25 March 2009, I think it would be impolite to undo his change without asking him first. --SoylentGreen (talk) 04:48, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed that it is not a tutorial nor anything to help people get expert, just a load of 'copy paste' materials... But they help noobs (like me): e.g. the skins are good to test humanoid meshes easily, and I know nowhere else it would be hosted so easily editable so to accomplish it's goal, so if listed as resource like the blueprints I think it would be more proper... Sorry I'm not too aware of wiki politeliness... 189.123.179.105 (talk) 03:44, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Hey, I'm 189.5.142.108 from before! (Off: Are you THE SoylentGreen from Blender Artists Forum and Blender Open Material Repository? Read a lot of topics there to help me besides this wikibook, and downloaded your Backface Culling material, it's perfect for making outlines for cartoon characters! thx)

You're welcome (and it's the same person with the same nick). Best idea: register yourself here at wikibooks and write Bullercruz on his talk page. Politeness prevents edit wars, and we are all here voluntarily, so I tend to be overcautious at times. --SoylentGreen (talk) 13:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm having some technical problams

I recently installed blender on a new computer, only to find that for some reason I can't circle select. --Manuh22 (talk) 18:37, 13 May 2009 (GMT)