Many commercial packages in the industry are using autodesk products for their 3d engine. This makes them expensive. Now we do not have programming skills in house but we can hire well skilled programmers locally, but at a price. Also we would need to link the designs generated into a CAM program which is propriety. Therefore, two problems. Firstly I cannot tie a GPL product into a propriety product since the latter would not even make their code available let alone consider GPLing it. Secondly, I will have to invest a large sum of money on programming skills to realise my ideas, but making that code available by GPL would give me no commercial advantage if my competitors can just come and use it for their machines.

My product is very niche and I doubt will attract large sales volumes, but it would improve my chances of selling my machines which is my primary objective. Therefore using an Autodesk engine is prohibitive.

For the reasons above I think the GPL requirement denies your product the opportunity to be used in third party development that is aimed at creating new commercial uses for the product, and therefore a valuable source of income. Let me say that I think the LGPL licence is also maybe not good since it does not gaurantee income if used commercially. I think something in between is required.

I am not an expert on licences but I try to be honest about using them (Including M$). I am a big supporter of open source and I know that the concept is still maturing. I would however like to see more opportunities created whereby open source products could be assured of an income other than by the begging bowl method of "please donate" which will be ignore by the majority.

The only problem is that there
are a lot of tutorials available on the net, but they are scattered.
The new features are good but tutorials are not available.
There should be someone to answer on the forum, mainly for those
queries which are not answered.

2 Years back I downloaded Maya5 PLE,
and you get Tons of tutorials on each small problems.

There should be a Question and answer Bank in Blender according to the subject.
The Groups should be organized some thing like this.

Path Animation ( Main Group)
and the sub groups like

a. Path Speed Control
b. Path Animation with NLA
c. Path Animation with walk.o.matic
d. Path Animation with Proxy
e. Path Animation using Python
… and so on

I am ready to pay for a detailed video tutorial if you can arrange.
I have already purchased Organge DVD.

My Suggestion is that the Blender Organisation should give one
DVD in the same mannor as they did for Orange. You may ask for advance
as you took in the case of Orange. Keep the same price, No Problem.
Blender is NOT less then any commercial 3D Package. Your DVD
should contain :-

1. Latest Blender
2. Vedio Tutorial of all features in detailed.
3. Sample Blend Files with all the tutorials
4. A lot of Royaltee Free Models
5. Texure Bank
6. One Big PDF Manual with latest feautes.
7. All the Forum like http://www.elysiun.com/forum should
contribute their matarials to fill the DVD.

I am also in the early stages of creating course content in the form of interactive on-line tutorials authored in Flash. I am still in negotiations with a potential funding source to develop these further, so can't share anything yet. However depending on how things go, I would like to be able to share this (or at least some of it) with the Blender community also.

Anyway, back on topic, I suppose you could say that both my college & myself benefit financially from Blender.

Also interested in hearing from any of you other guys who are developing Blender training resources, as I suspect there are a number of efforts like mine fragmented around the globe.

Bye, and since this is my first ever post to Blendernation - Hi to all.

Here is one example:
Our client has to produce about 80 or more tv commercials for a magazine each year.
That is 1 to 2 spots per week.
The budget per spot is very tight, so they had one person make one spot in a half day using After FX.
They tried to fake a 3D Look but in fact it looked very 2D.
About one year ago the client of our client demanded a real 3D looking magazine tv spot but for the same amount of money in the same time.
If that would not be possible, our client would loose his client.
But they had no money to buy a commercial 3D package and pay a 3D operator and also outsourcing would not be an option.
So we produced a prototype spot for them using Blender and also set up Blender in their office.
Now they only need to change the images in the texture directoy, push the Render! button and in the next morning the perfectly 3D looking magazine Spot is finished (almost…).
And they dont need to charge more money !

Sorry for my bad english !

~Toni

What I think it's not ok is the idea of turning Blender into a commercial app (it wasn't one of this article's topics, but somebody said it would be ok) and I don't think Blender Foundation should sponsor the kind of activities this this article is proposing.

Blender Foundation is -as it name states- a foundation. It's not a corporation.
If somebody want to create a corporation for making money off Blender, nobody can say they cant't. But that somebody shouldn't be the Blender Foundation, IMO.

We at Manos Digitales Animation Studio have been working commercially for the last 3 years now, making VFX for television shows and TV advertising. Now we are working on "Plumiferos" which is a commercial film project too.
(BTW, check the production diary: http://www.plumiferos.com now in english too )

True is that we don't "sell" Blender "products" like the ones you've mentioned, no DVDs, books nor T-Shirts. Not for now at least. However, even with that lack of "products" offer in the web, there are much more "commercial" activity around Blender than what you have enumerated in your first post.

Best regards and congrats on this site !

malefico.

Cheers,

Bart

I think this topic is like cursing in a church! (Dutch expression)