Big changes are afoot in the Blender community and it seems like everyone is preparing for it in his own way. Tutorials publisher CGCookies.com have announced a *very* comprehensive training series for Blender 2.5.
From the announcement:
With the introduction of Blender 2.5, we are very excited to be one of the first to offer a complete, introductory, video training series to the blender community. Not only will this series make the transition from previous versions of blender to blender 2.5 easier, but it also will give the new user the boost they need to get up to speed quickly.
This is an exciting time to be involved with blender, CG Cookie is here to make sure you know how to use it!
Links
- Announcement
- Training series overview (includes 3 sneak peeks)
43 Comments
that is great!!! but... is free?
OMG : I can edit this post o_o !!!!
Hi Eric, this is a commercial training. Check out the 'Training series overview' link for more information (the link was broken, I just updated it).
I should make some tutorials...
Great news. Its good to see the interest in Blender 2.5 roll on into practical areas such as training.
The suspense is killing me though!
Really great... bit expensive for 20usd each though.. for me that is... but coming late october.... will rc1 be released in oct?
-thondal-
Very great but unfortunately I am living In Europe ( netherlands)
@antonvdh: these are online video trainings.
There will be a documentation on Blender2.5 howtos and about the blender 2.5 interface from Blender Foundation right? Becos I cant afford to buy tutorials.
Great news, all tutorials, books and documentation are for the past releases...
i hope a book on blender python scripting, updated on 2.5 release, will be coming soon...
Hi,
It would be nice if Blender Foundation, created a DVD about this, for $30.
That would be nice for supporting Durian!
;)
They are rather expensive indeed, but you can get the whole training for 48 USD...
Kinda pulled me over the line... :P
But indeed, it would be great if this money would also support Blender directly...
Argh... I hate it when the logo is being .. euh... molested.
Well, Blender is great as free software - so I agree that professional training series _should_ cost money.
Part of those funds should go to further Blender development, that way everyone is happy; users for at least two reasons: getting knowledge and getting better software in near future.
This training looks like a good source of information for everyone switching from 2.4x series or even for completely new users.
Despite of what is being said - I can't afford it a the moment :( but I'm working on it! :)
btw, I can't wait for a good book for professional Blender 2.5 users.
@antonvdh: these are online video trainings.
Ok but can I pay in euro's with for example paypal THE CGCOOKIE TRAINING BUNDLE I want to pre order it
Its nice, and I do think I will need it, I have tried to work with 2.5, and the changes are substancial enough that I get lost.
@antonvdh
I think PayPal makes the fx for you.. I never had any problems paying through paypal, all my credit cards are in CHF.
I might be biaised by the fact that I work with Jonathan Williamson (the creator of those tutorials), but personally, I find that 48$ for a WHOLE software training is really really cheap.
The gnomon workshop dvd or linda's dvd are more costy than that and usually focus on some specific stuff, to get the whole picture you'd need a few hundred buck.
But eh, that's my humble opinion ^_^
Jean, but this is a pre order value. Unless its marketing and he's going to stick with this price after 2.5 release. Remember that $48 is a preSale campaign. About your examples, Lynda subscription starts from something like $25 month, with full access to huge library of diferent software, platforms, etc (I supose).
Anyway, very nice that he's taking his time to share some knowledge and trying to make a living for himself ;) Keep it up and Thanks. I hope there's more things like this on 2.5 release ;D
btw, just noting, you can always check his other free to watch tutorial on CgCookie. Jonathan shared alot of his knowledge for free in the past ;)
Jean, I'm probably going stick with his payed ones, whenever I need. I hope he can keep up with the $48 afterwards.
Great! More lessons = more experience.
I agree with Jahmaica, but i´d rather pay for a DVD from Blender Foundation to help Blender development and other projects.
A training DVD for the new 2.5 version made by Blender Foundation would be great!
How about that? I wish to see it on Blender´s e-shop...
Silvio: Truth! That would be mad for helping Durian :) I mean, there's more then 750 copies to sell to achieve the desired 2000 copies. Having this DVD on 2.5 release, not only current Blender heads, but CG community would get it, to sneak to 2.5! If possible delivered instantely trough download (yeah, bandwith not free, but they could get a specific online storage service, similar to rapidshare or something).
Will modeling with new tools like BMesh be covered?
hehe. "22 mg of Funk, 4000 mg of Awesome."
Thanks everyone for the your comments!
After reading through all of the comments a lot of you have called for more support towards the Blender Foundation... we've answered your call!
With each and every order we will donate $5 USD to the Blender Foundation. Thus far we have raised over $120 USD!
Jonathan: That's really nice!! Because I was already preparing my UZI :D
@Marcus,
Assuming they make it into the final release by October/November then they'll be covered.
Wow! Nice Jonathan!
From his website:
"There is not a lot I can say on this just yet, but I have just signed a contract with a publisher to write a book on Blender 2.5. The tentative topic revolves around character development and workflow. The aim is to publish 2nd quarter of 2010, right around the time of Durian’s completion and the full, production ready version of Blender 2.5"
@jahmaica (and anyone else)
production version of blender 2.5 wont' be ready until next summer? what's all this end-of-october talk then? will the production version be like, "2.5a" o something?
Dave: You got things wrong from my post, I found that Jonathan signed a contract with a book publisher, and he's going to write a book on Blender 2.5; It's expected that, Durian helps develope Blender, same way Big Buck Bunny helped developing previous versions to 2.49 point :)
ah ok. heh, looks like the tutorial series i made is about to become mostly obsolete :P
Ignore this. I'll keep my views to myself :P
@Anon,
I think you misunderstand what we're actually going to be producing (the *sneak peeks* may be causing confusion...). The goal of this series is to not only introduce the hotkeys, menus, etc, but to cover the ENTRIE workflow of developing a character and scene in Blender 2.5. This includes the modeling, texturing, animating, lighting, rendering, and post processing. We will of course introduce all the hotkeys and such, but that is not the focus of this :)
I don't mean to disagree, but documentation and training are two completely different things.
@Dave Ward, I don't know about that, your stuff is damn good! I just saw it the other day, keep it up!
@Anon, no worries sir, always glad to hear peoples opinions and concerns :)
All I can add to this is that practically all of my best Blender knowledge I owe to Jonathan, Kernon and CGcookie, so aside from supporting Blender Foundation through their e-shop I find sites like CGcookie extremely helpful and worthy of financial support. These guys are everything else but greedy, very forthcoming and helpful, besides NICE, so I think there's absolutely no need for "bashing" here. Documentation and books are great and important, but to me good video and live online training is INVALUABLE, so I'd say every cent towards these guys is well spent and also helps you and Blender look more professional. Just my bit here... If the state (Blender community) neglects school, students' chances start to diminish! Think about it. This is quality work and cannot be compared to huge companies who practically already own this sector, but not for Blender.
Oh, good. I was afraid the jump to 2.5x would be made with release notes, partial wiki updates and a few scattered tutorials. A full video training series will definitely ease the transition.
Not to overload the comments, but I'd like to send out another thank you to everyone that has preordered to so far! Not only are you supporting us but you're supporting the Blender Foundation. Because of your support we have so far donated $200 USD!
A more enticing incentive would be if you donated a page of docs to the wiki for every purchase.
Just put in a preorder myself. Can't wait for 2.5 to come out!
@Jonathan Williamson
Absolutely great that you're supporting the Blender Foundation directly now! Can't wait for your training!
I hope one of the developers will read this:
I just watch the CG-Tuts+ video on Basic Decaling in Blender and two things struck me:
- why isn't there a seperate Rendering window type instead of having to modify the UV-Window as a render window? Seems illogical to do it this way.
- Why does one have to remember names of the objects one created. Why doesn't Blender display a list of possible objects in a listbox? Maybe filtering the list depending on the context. It feels silly to having to remember the names of items typed in.
@ Olaf,
In case I've got your questions right, I guess you are a new Blender user.
- In fact you can customize your interface and even save multiple workspaces in Blender. With this in mind, you can define your own render windows in any place, or simply use the current modeling window as a render window.
You can even use a real-time overlay-render preview inside of your modeling workspace (Hotkey: SHIFT+P).
- You also don't have to remember the object-names, there is a object-navigator in Blender which lets you filter/lock/hide any object. Having object-names is still a benefit when you work on big projects with thousands of objects inside of your object-navigator. The object-navigator is called outliner in Blender v2.49, just create a new window-frame and change the "window type" to "outliner" to use it.