[Bf-committers] blendercasts reloaded...

Gaia gaia.clary at machinimatrix.org
Fri Nov 22 16:53:53 CET 2013


Hi;

Here is the idea and i know "it can not be made" and
"blender is not made with that in mind" and all other
common reasons why we should keep hands away from
creating stuff like this. I recall wetalked about
it sometime ago in irc and maybe its already implemented
and nobody told me, who knows :)

However if it doesn't exist: i believe this tool would
really make it easy totell the world about blender's
features fast, reproducible,AND with user interaction...

Even if not the entire functionality can be provided,
"something like that" would be enough already:

curious ? Read on :) ...

preleminary assumptions (mostly doable, or easy to implement)

- I can create a "page" of a defined width/height
- I can add my personal tutorial layout (if i want)
- I can add some user preferences if i want.
- I can specify: "Only for Blender 2.68" (for example)

Up till here: a user who opens this blend file shall get
the same width/height and the same layout settings and
the same user preferences that i had defined.Blender detects
if any of the settings could not be done ("userscreen too small"
for example) then blender says: no! and rejects the file.

By niw user's blender screen looks exactly like my screen.
Now to the fun part:

blendercasting:

- Similar as with screencast i start a session recorder
- Mouse movements are tracked and recorded.
- The recorder tracks what functions i have clicked at what time
   and where on the screen.
- optionally it also records audio in parallel.
- maybe i can add the audio later when i playback the cast..

All is actually pretty similar to a screencast, except that blender
records what goes on instead of creating 25 screenshots per second.

Now what can a user do with that after the cast is loaded:

- pause the cast at any time
- scrub along the cast timeline forward backward
- make inspections right in blender, make changes, ...
- save the current blendercast status as regular blendfile
   for later reuse.
- However, when user scrubs the blendercast timeline
   or resumes the session,then all user changes get reverted
   and the blender cast continues exactly at the current location
   in the timeline.

Actually the user can make snapshots of a tutorial at any time
by:

- pausing the tutorial
- save as .blend
- resume the tutorial

The blendercaster (tutorial maker) can do a bit more:

- scrub to any point in the timeline and "delete the future"
   this is for redoing something that went wrong the first time.
- similar: store the session as a blendercast. either
   the entire cast, or optionally "from start up to now"
- load an existing blendercastand
   add more to the end of the cast (continue a cast)

"blendercast" would be a nice present for Christmas 2014 :)

cheers,
Gaia


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