Watch the ManCandy DVD Streaming or on BitTorrent

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As you may know, Bassam Kurdali’s excellent ManCandy FAQ DVD is published (like everything else the Blender Institute produces) under a Creative Commons license. Among other things, this means you’re free to distribute or download it. Some people did this and the reactions were, well, not good. I talked to Bassam to find out how he felt about us offering download links.

Bassam writes:

Yes, I’m clearly fine with it – I think I may have commented in the blendernation thread. I got private emails from people asking for permission, and said “go ahead”. It’s unfortunate that so many people in blenderartists yelled at one poor kid for putting up a link, to the point that he took it down! I replied both directly and via pm to him saying it was quite ok, but I think the damage had already been done.

So, as even the creator confirms it’s okay to share the content, I looked for downloads and found the following two, I hope you’ll enjoy them!

Of course, if you can afford it and you’d like to support the Blender Institute, we encourage you to purchase the original DVD  from the Blender e-shop! Additional advantages: the official DVD has straight bits instead of wobbly ones and it won’t make your computer eat all the food in the fridge at night.

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    • wayne

      i’m glad it’s been cleared up, once and for all…

    • Felix_Kütt

      what wayne said, though also as Bart said: “Of course, if you can afford it and you’d like to support the Blender Institute, we encourage you to purchase the original DVD from the Blender e-shop!”.

    • http://pierre.equoy.free.fr/ Pierre

      That’s great!

      A friend of mine is learning Blender. I wanted to offer her this DVD, but was not sure if it was suitable for her skills or not. So I think I’m gonna download it via Bittorrent, and check it first, and if it’s good, I’ll buy the DVD through e-shop…

      Long live Creative Commons!

    • Tx_Rx

      That is interesting. I never even considered downloading it, granted I missed the thread/comments about all of this. I’d agree with Pierre. Check it out (streaming or d/l) and buy it even if it’s purely to show appreciation of all his hard work to produce the dvd.

    • Kimme

      I wanted that DVD, but was not sure if it was suitable for my novice skills. another thing is getting the DVD here, transportcost and stuff like that.

      I’m thinking on also downloading the DVD and donate the blender institute, if thats possible.

      Whats that about straight and wobbly bits?

    • http://spotmeon.blogspot.com gauravanim

      Though i must say that Yes it will certainly will decrease the e shopping of DVD

      But this will going to change a lot of parameters in the field

      Commercial softwares tutorial’s torrents have already their presence in torrent arena
      know Blender DVD exists in that space too..and Blender in that arena will also show more guts and grits & give tough time to commercial apps..

      And regarding supporting the Blender foundation i wont mind giving Bucks if i am a Blender animator working in cg industry (that also now taking blender with Open Arms).

      And the generosity that comes with Open Source Apps. will help me to donate nice amount of money too..as i am involved with my Open Source Blender App. too

      Comments…Blender People..??

    • wayne

      well gauravanim, it’s quite different for me

      i ordered the dvd a few weeks ago AFTER finding the torrent

      i live in south africa and it’s actually cheaper for me to buy the dvd than pay for the 6gb of bandwidth… it’s actually half the price! compared to any gnomon stuff it’s actually a dead give away :)

      i’m studying animation and have already benefited greatly from the mancandy rig so there was no question when it came to the dvd,,,

    • mike

      If you want to offer something to Blender then buy it.If you can’t afford it or don’t want to support BF download it.It ‘s up to you…

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      @gauravanim: “it will certainly will decrease the e shopping of DVD”

      Not necessarily.. people can’t afford it would never have bought it anyway, and being able to see the quality of the product might just convince some more people to actually buy the product. So.. who knows? It might even *increase* the sales!

      I think Open Content may still have a few surprises in store for the media that still cling on to traditional businessmodels ;-)

    • wayne

      i think we must also look at the spirit the dvd was produced in

      the aim was to better the skills of the community, not make money

      so yes mike, lets support the BF by making kickass animations
      the blender community has a huge advantage because we have free learning resources
      lets rather make people jealous of blender by giving them free tutorial dvd’s!!!

      (and of course, if you have money, you know where the donate button is)

    • http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com Kernon

      I think it’ perfectly fine to offer the DVD as a download, after all that is part of the licensing. However, the timing is the issue here.

      Go back and review the reasoning behind the way Elephants Dream was released. That was a more sound way to handle the release of CC content that also has a purchase option. The original thinking was that there would be a four to six weeks delay in the availability of the downloadable version of the product. This was done out of respect for those that purchased the product. I think it’s a mistake to change that good reasoning.

      The availability of the dvd contents on BlenderNation is fine because of the timing. It’s been a little while. However, what if BlenderNation had made the contents available at the same time that the original torrent was posted? Would that have been reasonable? If that becomes the new trend, that won’t effect sales, really?

      (BTW, this is not to be interpreted as yelling or anger.) :)

    • Aleksander

      Hm, I bought this DVD.
      BTW does anyone have a link to Blender Advanced Fluids torrent???
      I’l be soooooooooooo happy!!!!!

    • http://e2-productions.com Dion Moult

      We should have more like this. For people in countries like mine the exchange rates are horrible and it is quite difficult to afford purchasing items from the Blender e-shop.

    • http://www.freezingmoon.org Dread Knight

      This is God sent!

    • Henk

      Well, after viewing some of the chapters on Blip.tv I immediately went to the blender shop… Now I could effectively view anything and decide if it’s worthwile of having a nicely packaged DVD. I guess that’s what it does as well.

    • Anthoni_C

      Well I would buy it instead of downloading it anyways for two reasons mainly; First, is to support the Blender Institute of course; Second, to have it ready on a professionally made DVD instead of some shotty burned DVD that runs like crap, that I poorly burned. ;P

    • http://etmed3d.ovh.org etmed3d

      THANKS!!!!

      It’s greait Video!!!!

    • http://www.drewvogel.com Drew Vogel

      Are there any mirrors for the full DVD torrents? My torrent download is going to take DAYS!

    • Tx_Rx

      Would a couple of sample chapters on a site the likes of the blip.tv on it’s launch maybe promote the sales?

      Granted that’s neither here nor there now, but after seeing how many people hit the shop after seeing that in support of the hard work it’s maybe something that DVD creators could do to promote a product. (YouTube is pretty limited for viewing such tutorials.)

    • http://www.watchmike.ca Mike

      I bought the DVD because I want to support this, and Tx_Rx points out something interesting.
      The Mancandy FAQ on blip could bring in more traffic and ad
      revenue, so more profit.
      With the FAQ benefitting blip.tv, perhaps blip could sponsor a similar CC production in the future.

    • http://blendergroupie.blip.tv Ryan Malm

      I’m responsible for putting the vids up on blip, while I’d love for the vids to stream with no ads at all, thats simply not possible given the nature of the site.. they are providing the bandwidth for basically nothing, after all. If I ever see any proceeds from the ads that appear alongside the videos I uploaded, I will gladly donate them to the Blender Foundation. I was also very careful to give credit and include a link to the blender store for every video, if anything this should help sales, not hinder them, because you’re only getting the videos here. The DVD comes with all the .blend files used to create the video, and are packed full of valuable insight you won’t get just watching these streams.

      Those of you you have a copy of the DVD might have noticed that not all the videos are up yet. I plan to upload the remaining videos over the next couple nights, and blendergroupie will be a source for other blender-related videos in the future, so keep checking every once in a while.

      Thanks for noticing, and thanks for the blendernation post!

    • http://rexprime.com rexprime

      this is good news, i actually bought and paid for the dvd, the first one never arrived, and the new one isn’t here yet (hopefully it will be), in the mean time i can watch the tutorials.

    • tom

      Hi all, please Digg it

      http://digg.com/comics_animation/Blender_offers_free_animation_training_DVD

      Bart or others please add the digg link to the article :)

      LetterRip

    • roofoo

      @Aleksander:
      Hmm, I don’t think that Fluids DVD was under a Creative Commons license, it was a commercial DVD, meaning that it’s not legal to redistribute it online… (Somebody correct me if I’m wrong here.)

    • Haas

      Could some one upload it to newsgroups and post a nzb here? btw some extra information about the video would be helpfull.

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      @Haas: see the related posts under the article for more info.

    • Tx_Rx

      Newsgroups would be good, 200 day retention and not dependant on seeders, granted, just one person should upload it I’d say. NZB please! @roofoo: I believe that was indeed a commercial training DVD.

    • qwerty

      Bassam for President :-D

      I’ll buy the DVD for sure, because of your good choice to really open and share your work and your knowledge.

      Congratulation!

    • http://www.blender3d.at carlinhos

      I bought the DVD and find it an amazing work. Even if it is to download for free now, I think I would buy it again, because I find it very important to support the production of quality tutorials like this.

    • dronix

      great DVD, thx for the upload.

    • Xand

      does anyone know if some subtitles are on the dvd or available on line. some translations could open the DVD to non english listening people. a lot of users could read english enough for written tut or subtitles but unterstanding spoken english is a no way.

    • TBOL3

      Hello, I would also like to tell all of you that I’m uploading the dvd to archive.org. I’m starting with the video files.

      http://www.archive.org/details/TheMancandyFaq

      I’d upload the whole thing as an ISO, but I couldn’t take the day or so to upload it at archive.org’s rates.

    • Squiggly_P

      I’ll probably buy it eventually, but just from watching the first few minutes of it… It looks good but MAN… Bassam really pounds the crap out of his keyboard sometimes, lol

    • MaceG

      If you’re running Firefox and using an extension like Unplug (or any of the various YouTube grabbers) you can download the individual parts here: http://blendergroupie.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc

    • CorsairX

      When it comes to free distribution of content, Eric Flint wrote an article that might be of interest: http://www.baen.com/library/

      Baen’s situation isn’t completely analogous to the Blender Foundation, but I he raises some points that I think also apply here.

    • CorsairX

      but he raises* (dangit! No edit!)

    • http://www.rgbk.org bmud

      I’m glad I finaly got to see the cool animation that’s at the end (or the beginning??) because I really wanted to see it. Now, if I have more time for animating, I will invest in the DVD – which is its purpose, you know? I was tempted to buy it for the flashiness of it. Now I feel good that if I bought it, it would be fore its practical purpose.

    • Dale

      I got a microscope camera for Christmas, for my computer. After close inspection, I can confirm that, as Bart says, all the bits on the DVD are indeed straight…not a wobbly bit in sight!

    • maguilla

      One thing that pisses me off is the people that download a torrent and doesn’t seed it.

      This selfish attitude is certainly not welcome at all.

    • colezero

      iam sure iam going to buy it next month, but now iam downloading it to see if its worth 34 €. Its alot of money and i recently bought Introducing Character Animation with Blender, so currently i don’t have the money for this.
      But what i saw so far looks really good, so i definitely going to buy it.

    • Haas

      please some one put it on newsgroups.
      I’m not buying it because I aint that good and as a student 34 euro is a lot of money for a hobby.

    • Trawler

      I bought the DVD and it arrived 3 days ago. It is well worth the price. The DVD is very well done and the content is amazing. I’m happy to contribute to the cause and get some great content in return. I hope there will be more Blender Foundation DVDs coming out after Peach. I’ll gladly buy them!!

    • http://spotmeon.blogspot.com gauravanim

      i got my answers ;)

    • Mikkel

      If you want to give the maximum amount of support to the Blender foundation, it seems to me that the best solution is to download the DVD from the torrent and donate the price of the DVD on paypal:
      http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/donation-payment/

      That way nothing is wasted on shipping, handling, and sales tax (I don’t know how donations are taxed?). That’s assuming that you have a fast internet connection with free bandwidth like I have.

      I am really glad that Bart published Bassam’s opinion here to clear up things. But I must say, that I would have been surprised, if he had replied anything different. After all, why use the Creative Commons license if you are not fine with the material being shared? That is the whole purpose of CC.

      And I don’t really understand why this outrage over free distribution has arisen regarding this DVD especially. Don’t you people download new releases of Blender for free all the time? How is that any different? Lots of hours of work is put into the coding as well.

      Anybody who benefits from any aspect of the work of the Blender foundation should donate in some way. Buy something, donate directly or donate work. If a person downloads this DVD for free it doesn’t mean that that person isn’t giving something back is some other way. Just like downloading the Blender software isn’t a bad thing.

      Best regards,
      Mikkel

    • Joeri

      LOL… I see the concept of sharing knowledge for free is shocking the world.

      How said that is, how far has capitalism sank us into the pit pool of hell where people start to think its normal that we need to pay to stand on each others shoulder and build…

      Soon some law will make it alright to copyright an alphabet letter and 26 people will get very rich.
      And others will hold all colors, like orange (yes project orange got mails from some phone company).
      Anarchists will start developing new letters handing them out for free, building a concept of communication, free of charge. People will stare and be angry as they paid hard cash for the b-to-z (missing a and m, they where just too expensive) seeing the new letters made writing just as easy and more clear as there where no longer any restrictions…. They yelled! And yelled…
      There you go, nice treatment for the 3rd blender institute movie.

    • tim

      quick question,

      i wanted to buy the dvd, but shipping would come to more than the dvd, so im thinking i would download the torrent then support open move or peach. but when i tried the above torrent file, it says that there is a bad file name. something along .html that i cant open in bittorrent any ideas??? i hope you can understand why i want to download it, the shipping is jsut too expensive. also, i would love to get my hands on this dvd but now i cant

    • TBOL3

      You’re downloading it from bittorent? I had the same trouble. Use a different client. For example, if you’re on linux, use kTorrent. I’ve also heard that u (micro) uTorrent is good.

    • http://joostbouwer.nl Joost Bouwer

      Hi there,

      For everyone who likes the high speed of a newsserver… Here’s the nzb

      http://www.newzleech.com/usenet/?p=4306974

      good luck

      Joost

    • Lucas Magno

      Estou muito contente que este material esteja disponível, é um grande passo para turma open, irei baixar sim, não posso perder esta oportunidade, etretanto irei comprar sim, acredito no trabalho open e que podemos sim produzir materias de qualidade, sem custos astronômicos, mas devemos nos unir e adquerir o DVD na E-shop. Isso pode ser um marco e quebrar muros.