blender tutorials... what comes next ?

Hi

We just have finished our first series of blender tutorials. And we currently see about 70-100 downloads per day at http://blog.machinimatrix.org . So there is much more interest in this sort of infotainment, than we expected in first place.

I personaly want to thank everybody, who has helped me to better understand blender and be able to eventually create the tutorial-scripts. It was mostly fun but sometimes very frustrating though

Very special thanks go of course to Domino Marama, who really is one of the most helpfull persons around for blender questions and probably for more. And also many thanks to Hussayn Salomon, who did almost all the video editing, sound and voice creations.

Well... There are a lot of themes still to be covered and demonstrated in more detail. So the question raises, on what we should focus next. My personal favorites are:

- sculpty jeweleries (tiny sculpts)
- general Tips and tricks around Domino's Import/export scripts

But there is still this huge theme about UV-unwrapping of arbitrary meshes and probably
many other themes ...

So maybe you can help us to find a good theme of common(!) interest for the
next tutorial series ? What is YOUR favorite ? What would YOU want to see as enhancements ?

There is also an idea to produce DVD's containg all our videos in HDI-quality plus add on software plus demo .blend files plus textual documentation ... But we are unsure about that idea, since a DVD production would not be publisheable for free and we guess that the interest for a DVD would be not nearly as big as the currently seen download rates on our blog ...

So any feedback from you would help us to find the next step.
Thank you for your attention

You and your associates are doing a fantastic job and a valuable service to the creativity in everyone.

And Domino has excelled at helping all blender users pop out sculpted items with little knowledge of the program in depth.

Thanks to all of you!

My thoughts:
Maybe not so much focus on particular objects, like jewelry. The person should decide what they want, but a nice hat, as you have done but a bit more complex would suffice as an example object.

What I think would be useful, after the steps on creating the scuplty and UV's is texturing.
Texturing is what makes anything look good in this place. Even a not so well made object can look terrific with a good texture.

Maybe materials and the node editor would be good for a few demos. It's power in making textures with all sorts of layers, right in the program, would help. Certainly I would like to learn more tips in that regard.

Whatever you decide, I'm sure it will be good and well received.
Congrats!

Kornscope, first of all, thank you for your reply!

Yes, i would focus more on the pitfalls of making tiny sculpts and less how to make a nice gemstone... After all, the tutorials should be generic information resources

Oh, yes!!! texturing is indeed a big issue. We have been looking at this last week and i am currently checking also different tools, like Genetica, and use them in combination with blender, but from all i learned up till now, blender should be fine for texture creation. its just a tool with endless possibilities. I don't think, we will reach the end of tutorial material soon... Although i fear, i will reach the end my possibilities at some time

Again thank you for your input!

These videos are really impressive and instructive, even if you don't use Blender.

ETA: I'd love to see how you achieve some of the things in this thread: /8/16/227258/1.html

Thanx for the video, I'm learning a lot of things with your help.
would be possible to get a transcription from the videos? I have some problems with audio and english is not my mother tongue

Great job. Can't wait for the next vidoe tutorial ^^

Each video has a textual version attached right below the video canvas. Sometimes the text version contains some more details, which we did not explain in the video, or which we got to know after the video was published.
Recently we run out of time, so the text versions do currently not contain images. We might change that in the future...

You cant't find the text ?

here are the direct links to the blog posts:

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2008/05/12/blender-sculptie-creation
http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2008/05/12/blender-surface-textures
http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2008/06/04/precision_sculpties_lod
http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2008/06/16/the-arch-example

Have fun