Getting Started in Blender IRC

Published by David Millet on October 25th, 2006 in Toolbox

IRC Getting help with Blender is often arduous task. Between books you can't afford, forum posts that go ignored, and online tutorials that were written on autopilot, where's a beginner to go for quick answers? This may not be news to many, but there is a collection of public Blender chatroooms where Blender users can get help and friends can meet. Before I continue, props go out to Florian Mayer (who went by “name” in chat) for giving me the idea behind this article.

Install

The first step to getting involved in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is finding the right program for you. To keep it simple, for today, the right program for you is X-Chat. If you're using Windows, go here and download the latest installer:

http://www.silverex.org/download/

If you're on Linux, you probably have X-Chat already on your system, or available in your package repositories. If not, try to find an installer on this page:

http://xchat.org/download/

That page also lists OSX installers that I have not tested, but likely work.

Download and install the appropriate version of X-Chat for your computer.

Configure

Armed with your X-Chat installation, you're probably eager to get connected, right? First, you need to choose your online identity (or nickname) and select which server you want to connect to.

1) Open X-Chat, if you haven't already.
2) Under “Nick name,” enter the name that you would like everyone to see. Pick something quickly for now, you can easily change it later. Put something under “Second choice” and “Third choice” as well.
3) Under “Networks”, scroll down and choose “FreeNode.”
4) Press the “Connect” button.

Connected

You should now be connected to the FreeNode servers; however, you are not yet actually in any chatrooms. You need to join a chatroom, called a “channel.” In the area towards the bottom of X-Chat where you can type, enter the following:

/join #blender

You should now be smack-dab in the middle of wonderful Blender chat heaven. However, being in #blender isn't enough. Many chatters are sitting in six to seven Blender-related channels at any given time. Join a couple more channels to see what I'm talking about:

/join #blenderchat
/join #blenderwiki
/join #blenderqa

There are many other Blender-related channels. Here's a list of some of the ones I know about:

#blender – Blender-related chat in English
#blenderchat – also Blender-related chat in English
#blenderwiki – wiki support and discussion
#blenderqa - Blender question and answer chatroom
#blenderadictos3d – Blender chat in Spanish
#blender-fr – Blender chat in French
#blender.de – Blender chat in German
#blenderpraat - Blender chat in Dutch
#sweblend - Blender chat in Swedish
#blenderchar – Blender character animation discussion
#gameblender – Blender game engine discussion
#blendercoders – place to go if you want to help develop Blender
#blendercompilers – for the brave souls that need help compiling Blender
#blenderpython - Python specific Blender chat
#smc - Blender speed modeling challenge

Conclusion

There are many hints and tips I would like to share about using IRC, but I need to be brief. I am copying these directions to the wiki, where I hope they will be improved upon and expanded over time:

http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Tutorials/IRC:_Getting_Connected

On a related note, I'd like to throw my vote in for a new window type in Blender: the IRC window! Imagine having a simple chat client embedded right into Blender that easily connects a user to the most popular Blender chatrooms. With Verse and distributed rendering tools that are coming out, Blender is becoming a better tool for collaborative projects. Having a chat client embedded right into Blender is another step in the right direction, and could be used in conjunction with Verse services in interesting ways. It may not even be that much work: there's already several simple open source terminal IRC clients that could be hooked right into a Blender window. If anyone is interested in hearing more about my vision on this, just look for me (spiderworm) in IRC.

Thanks for reading! I hope to see you in IRC soon!

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25 Responses to “Getting Started in Blender IRC”

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1 Jogai Oct 25th, 2006 at 10:11 pm

And for the dutch users there is #blenderpraat

I use Gaim to log in on IRC. Gaim manages my other (6) im accounts too.
2 Laughing Cheese Oct 25th, 2006 at 10:52 pm

Don't forget Icechat!

http://www.icechat.net/site/
3 MOXAB Oct 25th, 2006 at 11:53 pm

Wow, this is great! I used to be able to have IRC, but a little while ago, I've been trying to get on through XIRCON, but It didn't work for me.

I'll definetly be able to chat with everyone again with X-Chat.

Thank you!
4 Jakub Steiner Oct 26th, 2006 at 12:19 am

mac users will likely love colloquy at http://colloquy.info/
5 JD-Multi Oct 26th, 2006 at 12:30 am

Nice little tutorial for beginner to get into Irc chat.
There's also a Dutch blender channel on irc called #blenderpraat, maybe someone can add that to the list. ;)
6 Chit Oct 26th, 2006 at 2:01 am

That sure would come in handy if I ever need it!!!
7 MagicMyshu Oct 26th, 2006 at 2:49 am

You really said it my man. I see I'm not the only one who gets a little frustrated by blender's "support organization". But at the same time, to be honest, its a hell of a lot better than many commercial products and services support can be.
8 wim Oct 26th, 2006 at 9:01 am

Why not add an applet with a chatwindow on the blender site which is able to work with the IRC rooms?
This way anybody anywhere can chat without configuring tihngs at all.
9 kodram Oct 26th, 2006 at 9:25 am

and the swedish chat #sweblend
10 mfoxdogg Oct 26th, 2006 at 11:32 am

you missed one cool blender related room and that is #smc (speed modeling challenge), look at the BA speed modeling threads to see the results, so join up and have some fun while improving your modeling skills
11 jaycun Oct 26th, 2006 at 4:12 pm

or you can head over to blenderartists.org and click on the "Community" link for a browser based java irc client.

link:
[url]http://blenderartists.org/cms/index.php?id=3[/url]
12 pat Oct 26th, 2006 at 5:41 pm

#blend.polis
probably the better german channel :)
13 harkyman Oct 26th, 2006 at 8:14 pm

Image all the security vulnerabilities of having an embedded irc client!
14 Martinv Oct 26th, 2006 at 11:21 pm

If you use Opera for internet, remember that it's now got IRC chat-feature! It's great to have one tab for irc, other tabs for browsing and so on.
I only knew 2 of the mentioned channels, thanks for the list! :D
15 Isaiah Oct 28th, 2006 at 5:19 am

Okey I'm having a problem. It goes just fine until I type /join #blender and I get an error message and it closes. I'm using winxp right now.

Any help?
16 Isaiah Oct 28th, 2006 at 5:28 am

Wait nevermind I just did it again and all I had to do was wait and a join channel box thing came up.
17 Steve Oct 30th, 2006 at 10:07 am

X chat-2 with windows XP crashes when posting a chat message, anyone else withthis problem?
18 qedqubit Feb 22nd, 2007 at 12:32 am

tnx 4 the explanation/how2 !
i'm allergic to msn ,I think i like this better.
19 qedqubit Feb 22nd, 2007 at 1:22 am

in just 226 lines of code, google said

http://coffeecorner.org/Python-IRC.py

yeah, i'd like #blenderchat IN blender, i got dual monitor, which really comes in handy with blender, if i dont use 2xfullscreen, i have blender nation on my other screen or blenderwiki

i bow (in advance)to the wizzard who integrates this !
20 pat Jul 22nd, 2007 at 11:09 am

@qedqubit
work is in progress. simple chatting ist already working
21 Quentin Dec 23rd, 2007 at 9:45 pm

I tried the #blender irc channel. It told me
"You need to be identified to join that channel."
It won't let me in.
22 FinSt3v3 Mar 27th, 2008 at 9:56 pm

Quentin, I'm getting the same issue to
23 mike (mpan3) Apr 22nd, 2008 at 12:09 am

/msg NickServ REGISTER
then everytime you log in:
/ID

this prevents others from using your nickname.
24 mike (mpan3) Apr 22nd, 2008 at 12:11 am

hmm, it looks like tags are stripped:

/msg NickServ REGISTER your_password
then everytime you log in:
/ID your_password
25 alfan Aug 7th, 2008 at 1:42 am

blendster.net has just launch