[Bf-funboard] Blendfile Tutorials

Ton Roosendaal bf-funboard@blender.org
Thu, 9 Oct 2003 12:35:21 +0200


Hi,

Urm... nice idea, but I'm afraid this will be quite a huge task to make  
this for Blender. We could think of recording all events, and playing  
it back. There's no real guarantee this will work however, with events  
getting lost when - for example - the gfx card or cpu is busy.

An old idea I had would make it easier to capture video sequences with  
Blender, as mpg tutorials, without the need for doing a complete voice  
over.
Let's call it 'tutorial' mode, which will offer:

- two nicely designed (transparent?) overlay boxes
- in box one the the Keyboard event is displayed
- in the other box the Mouse event is displayed.

Maybe even with a small buffer memory, so you can see combined hotkey  
strokes like "SHIFT+S, 4". We can also think of some way to enhance the  
mouse cursor itself, which easily gets lost in video capture. For  
example, when you press a mouse button, a space around the cursor  
subtly highlights. Can all be coded in OpenGL of course.

I can even think of automatic saving screenshots in jpg format while  
doing tutorials... that would slow down Blender quite some, but on a  
fast computer it can remain acceptable.

-Ton-


On Wednesday, Oct 8, 2003, at 23:32 Europe/Amsterdam, Landis Fields  
wrote:

> Haunt_House,
>
> I like it buddy...great job. You know what would be REALLY nice  
> though...is
> if there was an option to create tutorials inside of Blender...no ther
> application does this and I think that this would definatley put  
> Blender up
> above the rest. Everyone knows how indispensible tutorials are...the
> companies can only do so much (create manuals, offer extras such as  
> textures
> for download), but they dont truly know how an application is applied  
> to
> everyday problems by everyday artist unless they hire some...and I am  
> sure
> that they usally do....or contract them out for stuff but anyways....
>
> Heres what I was thinking of....you know how the tool tips come  
> up..well if
> there was some way to input your own tool tips that were to be  
> displayed as
> determined by the author of the tutorial...for example...you would  
> load the
> blend file...the window would come up as intended by the author which  
> Blender
> is already capable of doing...although the user would then see a text  
> box
> appear from a button much like in a comic strip...as though that  
> button is
> talking....edit buttons icon for example "click me"...then once those  
> buttons
> are displayed in the buttons window Blender would know to launch the  
> next
> instruction (the next tool tip)...this could literally walk the user  
> through
> a project step by step. I REALLY liek Haunt's idea, and this would only
> improve upon that. A feature like this would do to Blender what the  
> unreal
> editior did to Epic's unreal game engine! As always though, this is  
> coming
> from an artist whome has no idea how difficult this would be to  
> impliment
> into Blender. Not sure how one would go about creating the  
> tutorial...maybe
> like a record actions option...as you click each button you would be  
> propmted
> to add text to the tool tip otherwise it would default to something  
> universal
> like "click me". By customizing the tool tip, the tutorial author  
> would be
> allowed to give more of an explanation for what is about to happen and
> perhaps recap on what just did happen. Man....the more I type about  
> this the
> more I like it. Anyways, let me know....maybe this has already been  
> done
> before.
>
> Take care,
>
> Cheers,
> Landis
>
>
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------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton@blender.org  
http://www.blender.org