Jennifer's Classroom

[Junee]

Great Junee!! I'm looking forward to visit that shell - will there be a lot of beer bottles? And maybe a little hedgehog sleeping in a corner somewhere ? Just kidding, I seriously think you're very courageous /me shivers when thinking of An Own Shell

No hedgehogs!! Beer bottles...? That bottle I made was with soda ("Driven(tm) - Now with moar caffeine!")
Anyway I figured that at the moment I'd rather do a shell than an entire age.

boblishman: I haven't used the "Smart projections" before. Neat! It works pretty well and with some tweaking it might even look good. Thanks!

[Sophia]

I am bumping your classroom, Jennifer, I found it by far the easiest way to learn Blender and I just noticed it had disappared to page 3... let's make this as accessible as possible

[Raider7]

Jennifer,
Thankyou very much for posting the lessons, they were a great help and were easy to understand for me as a beginner to Blender.

[Jennifer_P]

Well, I'm glad you found them useful Sue; see anything that could use improvement?

And thanks for the bump, Sophia; it's been way too long since I put up a new lesson!

[Raider7]

I cannot think of any of the lessons or anything else that need to be improved.

[Jennifer_P]

Well, that's good; if you do remember any areas that were unclear or difficult to figure out though, I would really appreciate your pointing them out.

[Raider7]

Ok, I will do that if I come across anything that is unclear or difficult to work out as I have not yet gone through all the lessons.

[Junee]

*walks in, coughs and removes some spiderweb*

I'm baaack! Jennifer will you write more lessons? I'll probably have to go over a few of them again since I've been gone so long (eeep, it's been months! ) but it would be nice to have something new as well.

[Jennifer_P]

Sure I will, it's on my Christmas break to-do list.

[Jennifer_P]

Okay, I'm going to work on updating these lessons for 2.49 in preparation for adding onto them. Lesson 1 really wasn't coherently organized and it was posted by someone else so that I could edit it, so I'm just going to repost it here:

Lesson 0
Setting up Blender
Okeyday, so a few quick questions need answers before we begin:
1. Do you have Blender 2.49 installed? (Version 2.49 shows a picture of an alien critter against the background of space when you start it up, and when it is running there will be a little green bar towards the upper right hand corner where it says "www.blender.org 249")

If you need to download Blender, you can do so here: http://www.blender.org/development/rele ... ender-249/

2. If you have Blender 2.49 installed, then open it up...two windows should pop up, one the standard blender screen where you have a picture of a cube, and the other a black window with plain white lettering on it. What does the lettering in the black window read? (That black window, called the console window, tells us how happy Blender is with us--or not. )
It should read:

Compiled with Python version 2.5.2.
Checking for installed Python...got it!



If it doesn’t say that, then you should download Python from here: http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.5.2/
Beats me why it has to be Python 2.5.2 instead of Python 2.6.2, since Blender 2.49 is supposed to use Python 2.6--maybe that’s just my computer. Oh well, the important thing is that you get some version of the message above, whatever version that entails, and that you don’t get the following message:

Compiled with Python version 2.5.2.
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Checking for installed Python... No installed Python found.
Only built-in modules are available. Some scripts may not run.
Continuing happily.

This message means that you still need to install Python. Catastrophe won’t occur if you don’t do this, but the lessons might not turn out like they’re supposed to. Better safe than sorry, right?

3. What sort of mouse do you have? I.e., does it have one button, two buttons, three buttons, two buttons with a wheel, or...?
These lessons are intended for a two button mouse (without or without a central roller wheel), so if you don't have this configuration you'll have to simulate an equivalent "second button" for your mouse. There are instructions on how to do that here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:M ... _and_Mouse

Okay, you’re ready to go. If you had any problems, you can post in the “Builders” subforum (viewforum.php?f=7) or in this thread and ask for help—everyone will be happy to answer your questions.