Guild of Writers

You know I've mostly been using standard tutorials for creating things in blender. Most of them are fine, but for some reason I've never been able to get them to work the same way the person that created the tutorial did.

I also have noticed that most are for older version of blender. Which at times either have features that have been removed all together or moved somewhere else. Today I tried one for animation and several things it asked for weren't there and/or were called something completely different. of course it didnt work. When I animated it it looked more like abunch of UFO's flying around on the screen and not clouds.

I just wanted to ask anyone doing a tutorial for blender or any 3d program to put the name of the program and the version. So atleast the person using it can research changes to the version they have compared to the version the tutorial is made for.

I don't think I need to tell you how irritating it can be when you follow one of those tutorials from begining to end and word for word and not have it work right.

When and if tutorials are created for age building, please make them for idiots or super newbs which ever you like to use OH also pictures plenty of pictures!!! specially at important parts.

I think you just volunteered for the position of main tutorial beta tester :P

I'll be the second one.

Can somebody write an idiot guide like getting started with a Ahra Pahts shell and start with the obvious stuff like

Where do you put the files you receive for your shell?

do the textures have to be in a particular place or sub directory?

I am not talking about uploading.

There's a bunch of newbies here that have been battering their heads against Blender tutorials becuse they thought the latest Blender version would be the best and it turns out if you have not got the one it says on the book cover then there's stuff missing.

That's without mentioning misprints.

Let's keep it for the version we pull to load Ahra Pahts and as Goofy says loads of pictures.

Is there a simple tutorial for putting a door on your shell and I mean simple and I mean your shell? Not how to do a door in an age.

Before somebody else mentions it when it comes to this stuff I am an idiot so an idiot guide is appropriate.

Well, I maybe can shed some light on why most of the tutorials are really picture-less and sometimes rather vague.

When the devs implement a feature into PyPRP the person who implemented the feature usually writes the tutorial. Now, we're programmers (and age builders) rather than tutorial writers (most of us), and a lot of us would rather be programming or age-building than writing tutorials.

Lots of pictures usually takes lots of time, tutorials that can't rely on previous knowledge of something are REALLY hard--imagine saying something like "Ok, now make a cube" and then thinking: "I'm going to need to explain this in depth" and before you know it you have half of the blender noob-to-pro guide just in your little tutorial.

Now this is not to say that even for people who know all the blender basics the tutorials aren't difficult and a little vague (and sometimes crumby).

I think that most of the tutorials expect you to have quite a bit of blender know-how. Maybe what can be done is have links to the noob-to-pro guide at the top of the tutorials.. something like "needed skills". Because if you don't know how to do something in blender you REALLY won't know how to do something with PyPRP.

Ok, that's my take on the situation.

J'Kla wrote:I'll be the second one.

Can somebody write an idiot guide like getting started with a Ahra Pahts shell and start with the obvious stuff like

Where do you put the files you receive for your shell?

do the textures have to be in a particular place or sub directory?

This is a very good idea, and I've written my method of handling "workspaces" here (http://guildofwriters.com/wiki/Workspace_Setup).

Thanks Paradox that looks the business.

Lontahv:
I have been there caught that bus written the tutorial with the pictures and if you are any good at using the software it's easy (But it wasn't Blender).

There is an old saying that goes "Those that can do, those that can't teach". I have always been of the belief that if those that can and understand those that can't, wrote the tutorials we wouldn't need those that teach.

The alternative is the thing that proves the point, that is that those that can't are trying to teach themselves.

If one you get one really good "How to make a cube tutorial" and you make it easy to find when it comes your turn to take the next step you can say hey if you don't know how to make a cube there's this really good tutorial on cubes over in the tutorials bit of the wiki.

It's like FAQ's never contain the questions you want answered and they never seem to have a little box at the bottom so you can ask your question and get it's frequency increased.

Our one saving grace is we are or should all be working with the same version of Blender.

OK. Duty idiot here asking for his next idiot guide

I have a shell and I have done some modification and I want to see what it looks like in Ahra Pahts.

I have a modified blender file in an export folder and I just want to see what it looks like in place.

I haven't textured it I don't know how to do that yet, there's no sound and I don't even know if I will fall through the floor if I step on it.

I just want to see it visualisation will help me progress to the next stage but I don't want to spend an eternity ( relatively speaking ) working on a texture only to find out it looks rubbish.

All I want to do is follow a simple guide to put it in my local CC Uru.

Anybody out there?

Have you checked the Testing Your Shell wiki page?

No I had not and that looks a good one.

sometimes all you need is an extended finger pointing to the right place.

OK Now for the questions?

Here's the text

Testing Your Shell

Follow the steps below for incorporating your shell into Ahra Pahts.

1. Before starting, make sure you have the latest version of PlasmaShop installed and configured.
2. Install the latest version of Ahra Pahts into Uru
3. Load your shell into Blender.
4. From the File menu, choose Export->PyPrp, then choose "All as full age, per age textures (.age)"
5. Choose a temporary directory other than your Uru's dat folder - it is very important that you do not overwrite the Pahts age files.
6. Specify the save name as Pahts.age, then click the "Export .age" button.
7. Once the export finishes, exit Blender.
8. Copy your shell's PRP file (e.g. Pahts_District_Shell111.prp for shell 111) to your Uru's dat folder. It will overwrite the pre-existing PRP file for your shell.

Question 1 from Line 4: "All as full age, per age textures (.age)" should that read "All as full age, per page textures (.age)" because I think thats the nearest one I have (Note change underlined)

Question 2 from Line 7: How do you know the export has finished?

Question from Line 8: Copy your shell's PRP file (e.g. Pahts_District_Shell111.prp for shell 111)??? I have a Pahats.age file but nothing that ends prp?

At this point I can't get further without fear of screwing my installation. I know the questions sound stupid but the only easy questions are the ones you know the answer to.