#BlenderSkool a new chat room for Blender seminars

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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Last night, I woke up and had this great idea(Figures, all my great ideas always seem to happen in the middle of the night). My idea was to organize a way to have seminars/classes on Blender. I have decided to actually attempt this.

I have opened up the channel #BlenderSkool. In this channel there will be scheduled classes. Blenderers will be notified of the dates and times, weeks in advance. These classes can be very interactive or limited interactive, using the +v mode, and only allowing the students to speak when the teacher asks for questions. These classes will be free and anyone who wants to learn can attend.

As for doing a class, interested instructors must contact me about what you want to do and we will schedule a date for you. When doing a class it is useful to use lots of images, to help learn, and the teacher should be prepared for what they are going to teach. To prepare I recommend you find some good info on what you are doing, have some notes, and prepare some images for what your teaching.

#BlenderSkool will be even more then just a chatroom. There shall be an official site, which as html versions of every seminar. I, or someone else, who wants to will, take transcripts of seminars, edit them and put them together in an html file. If the teacher included any images in his class I will include those also in the file. A person can then goto the site and see all the seminars.

Seminars will usually be held once every couple weeks. What do we do when we do not have a seminar? Well in the chatroom, people can randomly bring up topics they’d like to know more about, and we can have in depth group discussions, unless there is no one who knows anything about it in the room. If these discussions are good enough, they may also be edited into an html file.

#BlenderSkool is not a q&a chatroom, if you want to ask a question and get a quick answer ask in #Blenderqa or #Blenderchat. But if you would like to get in depth on a subject, you may try asking it in the chatroom.

If… comments or suggestions, please reply. If you would like to do a class, you can post here. Thank you for your time.

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Erratum:

Line 7: limeted -> limited
Line 11: “you must…” -> “interested instructors must…”
Line 12: usefull -> useful
Line 33: “If…reply” -> "If … comments or suggestions, please reply. "
Line 33: Remove “Or” then capitalise `i’ in “if”

The idea sounds pretty good. I’d be interested in helping out. I could “Teach” a thing or two about env and mapping as a combined lecture or something.

Ideas for topics:
Nor/Env-Mapping as applying two textures to one material
Basic modelling
Use of Nurbs
Advanced Subsurfs (S-Meshes also?) (and relation to normals etc…)
Modelling components of <insert noun here>

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I think it’s a great idea. I’ll be eagerly watching for the first seminar.

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ScottishPig: Thanks for the spelling corrections, I edited it and fixed the mistakes. Oke we have one interested teacher. I’ll be sure to chat with you and arrange something.

Dreamsgate: We should be having a first seminar in the next few weeks. But don’t come only for the seminars, there also will be mini seminars not scheduled, which start by a person suggesting a topic, and if anyone in the rooms knows about it they can attempt to teach them. Every time I see one of these or if I’m not there, one of the ops sees one, or if no ops are there. They should transcript the “Mini-seminar” and give me a transcript. I will save every one of these as a .txt file and they will be put in a directory for future refernce of people. If the “Mini-seminar” is good enough I may edit it and post an html version of it.

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Sounds interesting. I could maybe do a session myself on modelling or texturing. I am very familiar with radiosity and lighting as well.

Just give me the nod and I can probably get something together.

I am moving to a new house in a couple of weeks, so probably some time after that.

Great idea!

BgDM

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okay how do I get there, do you have a link or something set up?

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bgDM: Great. Tell me what you’d like to do, and I’ll set you up. I was kindof thinking on doing a radiosity one, so maybe you could do one on lighting.

Dreamsgate: connect to #blenderchat then type ‘/join #BlenderSkool’

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Heya Lerp ^^ I wouldn’t mind teaching something as well heh. maybe more of the adnvace stuff like animation, duplivert, fur/grass (with particles) and various material/texture techniques like cartoon shading. oH and seeing up reference images (that a good tut to teach ^^)

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Hey!!! I’d love to teach the lighting techniques and how to make it more dramatic or something similar :smiley:

I’m so interested… I want to help each others since I have been using Blender since June 2000. :wink:

A great idea!!! Maybe I should start waking up in the middle of night to see if I have any ideas 8)

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i would be interested in this as well.

One suggestion:

Though the tool(s) will be based primarily on Blender, I would try to approach the content from a “general 3D concepts” approach as much as possible…as opposed to a purely “this is how Blender works approach”. In this way you will attract a larger audience 7 probably do a better job of promoting blender.

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Thanks for all your intrest in my idea. I am going to try and do the site this weekend. After the site is up I’m going to try and have you guys start doing seminars about once a week.

Yes not all the seminars have to be specifically for blender. I plan on doing one on polygon reduction techniques, and also some subsurf techniques on how to get the model to your liking. Also we could do one on modeling with wings for use in Blender.

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hey this is a really good idea! i hope it gets popular =D

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I’m in…

I am currently teaching a small group of students at a local college.
This could be of real benefit to all blender users.

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Ok, email me [email protected] and I will try to schedule a time for those who want to teach. Each class will be a week apart, so please email me with the best dates and times for you, and also what you would like to cover.

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Great Idea! I will probably be atending quite a few of these, but I would be willing to teach a Mini-Seminar to beginners on some basics such as armatures (wich I allready have a tutorial up for) or basics of modeling (for people JUST beginning…done nothing at all yet). I don’t know…should probably leave that up to the masters to handle :slight_smile:

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Great idea!!

I just hope that the course material will be usable outside the classroom…

Wa-a-a-a-a-a-y back, IceMan also tried to start something like that. As I recall, he had to stop because of lack of interest. He did put a nice tutorlal onlne: http://members.yourlink.net/gruff/class/
Aaaah , those were the days…

Anyways, I hope you pull it off. It would be a real addition to the Blender world

Greetz,
UglyMike

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this is a VERY good idea!!
Be sure to make a lot of advertisment (to gather audience and avoid lack of success, such good idea should not sink)
Make the schedule time as clear and easy as possible, so all Blenderheads on the planet can sure know at which hour the class starts.
I’ll sure be a student!!
Just a question: how do you make teachers document display while ongoing class? And if you can’t, is there a way to?

@+

Hughes

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Well, today is saturday, and I’ve started working on the site.

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And, horay! the site is now up. http://mysite.iptic.com/wurxware/blenderskool/ check it out

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yea!, I’ll be there for the first seminar!