BlenderNation

Advertisement

You're blocking ads, which pay for BlenderNation. Read about other ways to support us.

Download the Blender Manual Wiki in PDF

59
By on Documentation

If you're not always online, it can be kind of awkward having to rely on the Blender Wiki documentation (I guess ;-). Next time you're out hiking, painting the roof or are just without a broadband connection, make sure you have your copy of Marco Ardito's Blender Wiki PDF with you!

Marco writes:

Hi, if anyone interested i did it in pdf format. I plan to update it monthly. jesterking offered to host the (quite large) file here. Up to now, it is a single pdf file, over 1700 pages, about 52 MB.

That's a pretty cool project Macro, I hope you'll keep it up for a long time!

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

59 Comments

  6. Occulus on

    The last time I looked at the Blender Wiki, it was horribly out of date. Really, someone needs to put together a project to update the Wiki to the latest version of Blender. I can't tell all of you how many issues I had learning Blender by trying to rely upon the Wiki. At the least, the Blender Wiki needs a disclaimer stating that "these tutorials are written for Blender X.XX and do not reference interface changes beyond Blender X.XX."

    And, honestly.... the Blender Foundation needs to stop moving things around in the interface if they expect the Wiki to be at all useful. This issue almost drove me away from Blender entirely... until I found the Tufts University tutorials. *Those* are current; the Wiki (the last time I checked) is not.

    Reply
  11. Timmy on

    Why not to ZIP it well! To reduce download size. Think it would be better for all! Does anybody agree with me? Please Do it for all world!

    Reply
  16. Marco on

    Hello everybody! :)
    as i said, i needed that! so i made it :))
    then i thought: maybe someone else needs this too.
    see: http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13461

    btw, i made another try with pytondocs: (see:
    http://www.letworyinteractive.com/b/2008/09/blender-python-api-as-pdf/)

    i found quite easy to use htmldoc (i need just one click to rebuild it directly from the online wiki.. quite easy, uh?) (see http://www.htmldoc.org)

    unfortunately that program is actually not utf-8 compatible and so localized versions (that could be just as easy) render out really awkward pdfs... i'm working on it , tough :) i'm exploring two ways:
    - a transcoding proxy utf-8 -> iso-8859-1 . maybe some privoxy expert around?
    - process pages with php. in this way i could easily strip "unneeded" parts as headers and footers, navigation menus. lets see what happens.

    maybe wiki site mantainers could create a specific layout to help the whole process, who knows? :)
    i think they could do easily this better than me but in the meanwhile i needed that pdf.

    @Timmy: it's big because its BIG! i just tried to 7z/ultra it and its 46 MB instead of 52...
    i could upload separate chapters (see http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13461)
    nut i'm using jesterking's space and publishing efforts so... well once a month 50MB is not too much.
    try to use some downloader to get it in multiple steps.

    if you need other (not localized) sections just ask. I'm working on Scripts dcumentation as single PDF. It should be useful, although often quite old documentation.

    Have fun!

    Marco

    Reply
  18. Marco on

    Urgh! i just noticed that the news title is "Download the Blender Wiki in PDF"

    well that's misleading: the pdf is ONLY about the "Manual" section of the wiki, not ALL of the wiki! :D

    Marco

    Reply
  21. Joeri on

    Cool, now I can put it on my iPod Touch and read it at normal speed...

    Occulus wrote:
    "and do not reference interface changes beyond Blender X.XX."

    You dont know at 2.45 it will not work with 2.46.
    Wiki is just to stupid to help maintain this.

    Occulus wrote:
    "And, honestly…. the Blender Foundation needs to stop moving things around in the interface"

    I total agree. Same goes for book writers. In one year a book can be obsolete.
    There you have a disadvantage of opensource; no marketing director syncing needs of users towards the product.
    But... a good resource is the release log: http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/
    Big read, but brings you up-to-date and experienced users learn something new.

    Reply
  24. tyrant monkey on

    @Occulus

    I don't about the tutorial section but the manual always states on the header for what version the article was written for.

    the manual side of the wiki is pretty useful some of the stuff can be outdated but still revelant and it beats a lot of other wiki's I've visted that are pretty empty.

    Reply
  26. NetOperator Wibby on

    Even though the wiki isn't always up to date [as some have already said], I am glad that somewhere made a PDF! And, since it is planned to have the PDF updated monthly, the wiki will be on track with the current version of Blender eventually. Thanks to everyone who made this happen.

    Reply
  31. Marco on

    Hi all!
    just to let you know that (as promised! :)) i have updated (&improved!)
    the Blended PDF Wiki Manual. And Nathan is still hosting it and
    publishing the links at:
    http://www.letworyinteractive.com/b/category/blender/

    Plus, there are more docs available now:
    * Wiki Manual PDF (51MB), updated 2008.10.01
    o This is the PDF version of the Manual from the http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual
    * Script Catalog PDF (6MB), updated 2008.10.02
    o This is the PDF version of the Script Catalog from http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Scripts/Catalog
    * Reference PDF (6MB), updated 2008.10.02
    o This is the PDF version of the Blender Reference from http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Reference
    * Release Logs PDF (4MB), updated 2008.10.02
    o The release logs until 2.47 from http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs

    Ciao!
    Marco

    Reply
  34. cool.aquarian on

    Hi,

    When I am downloading the Manual, it is showing as 24.4 MB only instead of the stated 51MB.
    After completion of download of 24.4 MB, when I try to open the pdf,
    Acrobat Reader gives the error "The file is damaged and could not be repaired"

    Please Help...

    Reply
  35. kilon on

    Aquarian , I had the same problem , download it from a diffirent machine and works now. Yeah the size is 24.4 not 51, no worries there.

    Thanks Marco, I wanted a pdf like crazy as I no longer have internet at home, only at work.

    Reply
  36. dibu on

    Yeah I am having the same problem...Its getting dwnloaded but when I try to open it gives error that the file is damaged

    Reply
  38. Ar_wind on

    Hi there seems to be a problem when i try to download the new manual, it downloads up till around 496 KB and then cuts !! The file gets corrupted !! I tried several times I am using a dial up connection. I was able to download the older manual another time fully but i think it was hosted elsewhere !! Can anyone help !! Is there another server from which i could try to download it ?

    Reply
  39. Gaurenteed download on

    After the 8th or 9th attempt to download this from http://www.letworyinteractive.com I gave up and looked for an alternate source, which Marco has provided.

    So just do a search for... Blender PDF wiki manual unofficial 20090902 or... BlenderPdfWikiManualUnofficial_20100622

    here... http://www.archive.org

    Obviously the 20100622 is the most up to date version.

    After you click on the link you searched for, right click in the left hand panel on the PDF link and save.

    Reply
  42. siege on

    I would really like to download this PDF and start learning Blender but no luck so far. Is it just me or is the PDF entirely un-downloadable? Every time I try it cuts cuts out on me at about 10%. I tried looking around to see if it was maybe hosted elsewhere... NOT. letworryinteractive.com seems to be the only place! This dude hosting your Wiki needs to get his act together, either that or get it hosted somewhere else.

    Reply
  50. grateful on

    Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have the worst connection ever and this is such a wonderful thing that you are doing.

    Reply
  56. m.ardito on

    BlenderAstitva, as you see my last comment above your recent one is quite old: since then I've managed to update the PDF, here https://archive.org/details/BlenderWikiPDFManual, until november 2014 (rougly one month after 2.72 release).

    After, the wiki manual went in readonly mode, because there is a new online manual, no more based on wiki, here https://archive.org/details/BlenderWikiPDFManual.

    It was planned by the manual managers to let it export also to PDF, but that feature it is yet to come, if ever will. As the new manual structure is compeltely different than the wiki, and also the manual has been changed so much, and still missing many parts from the old wiki (including any translation, sadly) I still haven't tried to adapt my script to make my PDF again.

    Another guy is making a pdf from time to time (last id form may 15, 2015), if you need, and he posts updates in this forum: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?301598-Blender-wiki-PDF-manual-2-6x-(a-new-start)&p=2866504&viewfull=1#post2866504

    I hope some day anyone will get official PDF or the new system becomes somwhat stable and easier to convert.

    Marco

    Reply

Leave A Reply

To add a profile picture to your message, register your email address with Gravatar.com. To protect your email address, create an account on BlenderNation and log in when posting a message.

Advertisement

×