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Blender 2.49 Scripting
terrywallwork writes "A few days ago I received an email from Packt Publishing informing me of their new Blender 2.49 Scripting book. I was very interested in reading this book as there are very few Blender books that cover the scripting aspect of Blender 2.49 and Python. So I navigated my way to the packt publishing website and ordered myself the ebook version. They were having a special at the time and I ended up getting a full color ebook for less than £9. If nothing else the price is extremely impressive." Read on for the rest of terrywallwork's review.
Blender 2.49 Scripting
author
Michel J. Anders
pages
292
publisher
Packt Publishing
rating
7.5/10
reviewer
terrywallwork
ISBN
1849510407
summary
This book is for users comfortable with Blender as a modeling and rendering tool who want to expand their skills to include Blender scripting
The author is Michel Anders, known as varkenvarken on Blender Artists forum. He is an extremely talented Blender Python scripter and has written many very useful scripts for Blender. Knowing who is behind this book explains a lot about the way this books is constructed.
The teaching approach taken, is to present a series of tasks that need to be achieved and then present sections of scripts that demonstrate the most important concepts and Blender Python code, to allow the tasks to be carried out.
At the beginning of the book a basic explanation of some of the terms and concepts are gone over and a few very simple Blender python commands are demonstrated to do the equivalent of a Blender Hello World script. This beginning part of the book is the only part that really can be classed as beginner level, everything after this has a much steeper learning curve.
Many of the scripts written by Michel are very technically advanced scripts, the same also holds true for this book. Most of the scripts and techniques described within require a very good level of understanding. I debated with myself as to weather it is an Intermediate/Advanced level book, but one thing is certain, if you are a beginning Blender user and your Python knowledge is beginner level, you will struggle to get much from Michel's latest work. I think that to get anything out of this material a very good understanding of Python, Blender and Mathematics (especially vector math and 3D related mathematics) will be required.
Assuming you have the requisite knowledge all the bases of using Blender through Python scripting are covered, for example, setting up materials, ipo manipulation, texture setting, texture nodes and so on. But again very simple things are not covered. To me it seems that it is assumed that you will just read the Blender Python API docs for the very simple things such as how to do rotations and scaling on objects, deleting and adding vertices, etc. You will have to be prepared to get a lot of information from the scripts supplied rather than be spoon fed information.
So if you are very knowledgeable with Blender and Python you will likely find that this book is very handy as it covers ways of scripting and leveraging Blender Python scripting to do some very clever things. I do think it would have been very helpful to have a less steep learning curve but that's a matter of my personal taste.
I am not a Python expert and so this has probably affected my ability to properly appreciate this book, that said I can see that a lot of time and effort has gone into putting this book together, especially given thw fact the Python scripting books for Blender are so few and far between.
It probably hasn't escape most Blender users notice that Blender 2.5 is now currently in Alpha state and it uses completely different scripting model, so stuff learned in this book unfortunately won't transfer to Blender 2.5, as it uses Python 3 and has a completely different API structure.
This book would of been much more relevant if it have been released a year or 2 earlier. Still if you're used Blender 2.49 and need an advanced Blender scripting book, you now have one to read.
I really hope Michel does a Blender 2.6 version when it comes out, and maybe makes it slightly more targeted at beginners and experts, so my head doesn't hurt quite so much.
You can purchase Blender 2.49 Scripting from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The teaching approach taken, is to present a series of tasks that need to be achieved and then present sections of scripts that demonstrate the most important concepts and Blender Python code, to allow the tasks to be carried out.
At the beginning of the book a basic explanation of some of the terms and concepts are gone over and a few very simple Blender python commands are demonstrated to do the equivalent of a Blender Hello World script. This beginning part of the book is the only part that really can be classed as beginner level, everything after this has a much steeper learning curve.
Many of the scripts written by Michel are very technically advanced scripts, the same also holds true for this book. Most of the scripts and techniques described within require a very good level of understanding. I debated with myself as to weather it is an Intermediate/Advanced level book, but one thing is certain, if you are a beginning Blender user and your Python knowledge is beginner level, you will struggle to get much from Michel's latest work. I think that to get anything out of this material a very good understanding of Python, Blender and Mathematics (especially vector math and 3D related mathematics) will be required.
Assuming you have the requisite knowledge all the bases of using Blender through Python scripting are covered, for example, setting up materials, ipo manipulation, texture setting, texture nodes and so on. But again very simple things are not covered. To me it seems that it is assumed that you will just read the Blender Python API docs for the very simple things such as how to do rotations and scaling on objects, deleting and adding vertices, etc. You will have to be prepared to get a lot of information from the scripts supplied rather than be spoon fed information.
So if you are very knowledgeable with Blender and Python you will likely find that this book is very handy as it covers ways of scripting and leveraging Blender Python scripting to do some very clever things. I do think it would have been very helpful to have a less steep learning curve but that's a matter of my personal taste.
I am not a Python expert and so this has probably affected my ability to properly appreciate this book, that said I can see that a lot of time and effort has gone into putting this book together, especially given thw fact the Python scripting books for Blender are so few and far between.
It probably hasn't escape most Blender users notice that Blender 2.5 is now currently in Alpha state and it uses completely different scripting model, so stuff learned in this book unfortunately won't transfer to Blender 2.5, as it uses Python 3 and has a completely different API structure.
This book would of been much more relevant if it have been released a year or 2 earlier. Still if you're used Blender 2.49 and need an advanced Blender scripting book, you now have one to read.
I really hope Michel does a Blender 2.6 version when it comes out, and maybe makes it slightly more targeted at beginners and experts, so my head doesn't hurt quite so much.
You can purchase Blender 2.49 Scripting from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
With the excitement around 2.5, it's easy to forget that Blender 2.49 still very much alive and kicking.
Still, 2.49 feels ancient, probably because it's UI is still kind of idiot-savant. It's horrendous at most things, but incredibly good at many things that matter. On top of that, it just looks very dated. 2.5 looks like it's on its way to cleaning most of that up while keeping the core strengths.
As for scriptability, I'd really love the see the Blender Foundation detach RNA to the point where one can start to create bindings in other languages, like Javascript, C# (Mono), etc.
Is this review going to make it onto the "Book Reviews" sidebar? That Excel one has been there forever. Nothing against the author, but I'm sure I'm not the only slashdotter that shudders at every thought of having to code something in Excel macros.
Spread over the thousands (or millions) of units that are produced, that cost is relatively minor compared to the cost of producing the actual unit. It is natural to conclude that a digital copy should cost much less because you don’t have to pay for the physical object.
A digital copy can be copied which essentially costs nothing, and so you can get even more volume, spreading that R&D and marketing over even more people and costing even less. That was my whole point.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The cost of a PDF is intangible. Writing, typesetting, marketing, webhosting. It already happened. It happened once; it’s paid for.
No, it's not paid for: It's borrowed and owed.
Millions of copies can be sold with very negligible overhead. It’s nothing but a giant number. Ones and zeros. Costly to produce, but easy to replicate.
£9 for an e-book is borderline ridiculous in my opinion. I guess some people will buy that, though.
Millions of copies of a technical book on an (lets face it) obscure product? In magical-thinking land, sure, but in reality there's but a niche market for this item and if he's going to recoup the cost of rent, food and utilities he had to pay during the time it took to research, write and polish the book he has to price it where the numbers will add up to black ink at the bottom line.
That being said, the line about how nine pounds is a fantastic price is just born out of a habit of seeing computer books go for ridiculously high prices.
You can't take the sky from me...