[Bsod-mentors] Proposal

[Frédéric van der Essen]

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| BSoD Proposal : Blender, an Object oriented 3D software |
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1) Synopsis :
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When a beginner makes his first steps within blender, he
often fails to understand blender's object system trying to
understand it based on false assumptions coming from past
experiences. Those false assumptions will lead to a very
painfull workflow, lots of frustrations, and a much steeper
learning curve.

The blender's object system is usually the last thing a user
will learn, because of the lack of documentation, and because
they simply aren't aware that blender provides such a system.

My proposal is thus to make a complete guide of blender's
object oriented system for beginners. It will start from
the very basic (Object/edit mode) trough the essential
(materials) to the complicated (parents, groups, external
ressources)

The goal is that after reading this guide, the user will have
a good understanding of the object system. This guide will
thus be rather theoric, but it will always rely on practical
examples and exercises.

2) Scope and breakdown :
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1)The data and the interface.
- The first important thing that the user must understand
is that the interface isn't the data itself but rather windows
that can show you the data in a certain way.

2)Meshes and objects.
- This chapter will take the mesh - object relation as a first
example of the object oriented system of blender. What is the
difference between object mode and edit mode ? Why is
my object still there after I delete it's contents ? How does
linked duplicate works ? Thas the kind of questions that will
be answered in this chapter.

3) Links and datablocks
- Once the user knows how mesh and objects works, he knows
enough to understand the concept of linked datablocks. This
short theoric introduction will help the user to understand
the next chapters.

4) Materials & textures
- this chapter will explain how materials and textures are
linked to objects and meshes, and how you can efficiently
manipulate them.
4.1) Materials
4.2) Textures

5) Parents and childs
This chapter will explain parent and childs relationship.
The subchapters will explain how these relations are used
in blender.
5.1)Bones
5.2)Dupliverts

6) Groups
7) Appending and library data.
8) Overview
This chapter will provide a cheatsheet of every type of blender
datablock, what kind of links they support, and how they can
be used.

3) Delivrables :
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- It is hard to estimate how long will be this guide, but
I expect it to be around 20 - 30 pages.
- Each chapter will have sample blendfiles an schematics to
illustrate concepts.
- Each chapter will have exercises blendfiles. Those will help
the user to test their understanding.

4) Biography :
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My name is Frédéric Van der Essen. I'm from Belgium and I am in
2nd bachelor of Computer & Mechanical engineering at the UCL.

I have a quite long blender experience as a user. You can find
several of my works in the blender.org gallery
My understanding of blender is quite deep, with some lacks in the
animation system and the game-engine.

I already have contributed to documentation material for blender
(QuickStart Guide, Video Tutorials, BlendFiles tutorials)

I also worked the past three summers teaching sailing to kids from
8 to 18 for the ADEPS/BLOSO, and I teach blender at my university.

My native language is french, and this proposal should give you
an accurate insight of my english level.

So that was it :) thanks for the reading  !

- Fred.
 
5) Links :
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Blender Artworks :
http://www.mentalwarp.com/~fred/divers/abstract-suzanne.jpg
http://www.mentalwarp.com/~fred/divers/finalBookRetouched.jpg
http://www.mentalwarp.com/~fred/divers/kitchen2.png
http://www.mentalwarp.com/~fred/divers/Splash/Final/splash03.png
http://www.mentalwarp.com/~fred/divers/cupsfromhell2-small.png

Blender Docs :
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Reference/Hotkey_Map
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/QuickStart
http://download.blender.org/demo/movies/HairTutorial.avi