Building a master list of tutorials; tutorial finder app/db

Guys,
I posted this to the Tutorials forum but it seems to have been eaten there so will try one more time here.

I am a relatively new Blender fan but am loving it. As I study, I find tutorial after tutorial that are excellent. My biggest challenge is that there appears to be too many tutorials and finding the ones I am looking for can be a challenge. What I would like to suggest is that we build a “categorized” list of tutorials that we grow over time. The categories would be fixed (“Thing being modeled”, “Function demonstrated”, “Release of product”) as well as user “taggable” attributes. Ideally we could have a “register tutorial” page which would force the poster to supply check button category selection plus free form tagging as well as the URL to the tutorial. We could host such a system from this web site (or another). The list of tutorials would be agnostic of any individual tutorial maker and free to use, post and search.

I am a programmer by trade so will be happy to assist if desired and am looking to freely donate my time to such an effort. I have no motive beyond helping us all use and learn blender. I’m sure we can think of other goodies. Is anyone interested in such an idea? If so, post here or send me a message.

Neil

Allowing users to tag the tutorials is an interesting one. Could we have some kind of (kind but useful) rating system as well?

Benu,
A rating system sounds good too … I can imagine either a thumbs up/down/neutral or a 1 2 3 4 5 numeric rating. What I believe it must not become is competition to the good folks who build and host tutorials but merely a free “listing” service that allows us to find tutorials. For example, I was looking for tutorials on “Cloth” the other day and found half a dozen … all good … all with pluses and minuses … but it took me ages to find them. So I could imagine tutorials being “listed” under categories of:

Physics > Cloth
Modeling > Clothing
tags: “cloth”
attributes: author
attributes: URL
attributes: {tags}

There are many places (including these forums) where tutorials are listed, but what I think we can do better at is “directing” the searches to categorize what we have.

Oh … and to be clear, I would imagine a database at the web site that would automatically store and index the registered tutorials as opposed to having to manually edit web/wiki pages of lists.

Neil

These kinds of ideas crop up again and again but they are just pipe dreams and nothing ever takes place. If you really want such a thing, just get on with it, otherwise get to the back of the queue of previous suggestions.

Richard,
I’ll be delighted to put my money where my mouth is. What I need to get started is:

  1. A web site that will be willing to host a Blender tutorial indexing system
  2. Knowledge of the technical services of the web site at my disposal. Ideally I would like a Java EE environment with a database as Java server programming is my forte. If we went with other scripting languages, I would have more trouble but would be willing to learn.
  3. An account on the server to execute technical tests

From there, I would write a functional specification and circulate it to the community and web site owners. This document would describe what the project would “do” what it would “look like” and capture its major use cases.

Once this has been reviewed and input taken and decisions made and balanced, what would happen next would be a design document (which again I would be willing to write) that would explain how the specification would/could be achieved. After a review of that, we would implement and open up for unit and functional testing. Once we are agreed … we would “release it” by opening it up for the general community.

Now … I could personally buy a web-site domain, I could spend my monies on a hosted server with the DB and back-end code engine to run the code … but to be honest, I’m not that interested to that extent. There are enough Blender related websites out there that we don’t need yet another one. It seems to me that specialized blender web sites like this one would be the ideal hosting environment.

I’m a 43 year old man with a full time 9-5 computer programming job. I’m not a teenager with a flight of fancy that goes from one shiny object to another. If this idea has surfaced before … I’m more surprised that it hasn’t already happened given that the nature of Blender is itself Open Source. I for one, if I had seen such a posting, would have offered them what I am offering now.

If you or anyone else wants to chat with me by phone or email me directly, I’ll be happy to accommodate that. Just send me a personal message through this forum.

If others are interested in the idea, just post here and we’ll get the ball rolling … the number one job is to determine which web-site would want to host this idea. If you own a web site and want this thing built, just ping me. I estimate a working prototype within a week and complete polish within a month. Again, less someone think I trying a “scam” … I’m not after any payment or kudos … just trying to push Blender forward for folks like me and probably you.

Neil

This is an automated message - since the last reply was more than 3 months old, I auto-marked it as the solution. If you still need help, just post a new reply.