I have been familiar with Blender for some time and 3d in general for some time but have never taken the plunge seriously into a package. Awhile back I bough several books on Blender that have been gathering dust pretty much since I bought them (due to either lack of time, motivation/inspiration, whathaveyou).
Alas now I have the time to dive right in but now I see books hitting the shelve for the upcoming Blender 2.6 release. My question/dilemma is did I waste all that money on the books that were geared toward the current 2.49 version? Will most of what I lean in those books be useless in the upcoming release?
I’ve looked and read on changes and additions, but they are kind of lost to me because I don’t know what the old Blender is to really understand what a particular change/addition/subtraction means in teh new version compared to the old one.
Anyway, I have the books Blender for Dummies, Essential Blender, Animating WIth Blender, The Blender Gamekit 2nd Ed, Bounce, Tumble & Splash, Intro to Characted Animation with Blender, and Mastering Blender.
It really pains me to think this investment is for nothing. Are these books now obsolete with the upcoming release?
Thanks for buying the books of the previous versions, but in my opinion those books will always be worth their weight in gold. If something can be in a previous version, figuring out how to do it in a later version will always be a piece of cake.
for nothing? What have you learned from them? Just where buttons and menus are? Because feature and skill set is still pretty much the same in any 3D package.
Good books should teach the essence, the kernel of knowledge, not the fragile outer shell…
Don’t worry, you’ll be surprised at how much knowledge readily transfers from 2.49 to 2.5. I think if you study the materials you’ve already purchased, you’ll have a much smoother learning experience leading up to 2.5/2.6. You won’t have to wonder so much about whether you’re doing something wrong, if the tutorial info is wrong, or if you’re experiencing a bug/missing feature.
Plus, there’s a far greater variety of learning material available for the 2.4x series.
I wouldn’t put it off much longer, though. Currently, there are still a lot of people still using 2.49, so you can easily get assistance. But, the longer you wait, the more people will start simply recommending using 2.5.
Okay, first I didn’t mean to imply these books are useless. I certainly could go through all of them with teh current version Blender leard lots of cool things and make cool stuff as the current version is solid and stable.
But as I am pretty much starting from scratch (as in I haven’t done anything more in Blender than start the program and fiddl with some of the menus) learning something in the current version that may be either outdated or completely missing and replaced by something new could be counter productive.
Anyway, I decided I am going to jump in with teh new version and let thos books gather more dust (unless someone would liek to pay a fair price for them). I did more diging and found a few key things that changed, scripting in particular, which is something I eventually want to graduate into with Blender as I approach the game engine and interactivity.
Basically if I am starting from the…well…start, may as well embrace the future of the program then muddle in it’s past.
All those books are no good anymore. You’ll just have to send them all to me.
Hahah. Actually, 2.49 is awesome. 2.5 is pretty cool but has a shit ton of bugs.
Any time you spend working with 2.49 will be worth it. I usually use 2.5 but when I get in trouble, I still have to reference 2.49 books and it is fine. The only book I have is Essential Blender.
Yo dude, I also bought the 2.49 gamekit 2 book - only to find out that all methods and scripts in this book proposed used deprecated methods. That was poor.
It is difficult enoughto make a recommendation. If there were any tutorials for 2.5 I’d say start with 2.5. However there aren’t a lot of tutorials around. If you have however a huge knowledge/logical background and you worked with 2.49 before, you won’t have that big trouble to adapt 2.5 all by yourself.
Currently what you must do if you are an absolute beginner and work with 2.5: you must look into a 2.49 tutorial and then “try to assume or guess or hope” how it works (mostly very similar) in 2.5. Sorry, it’s sux momentarily for new starters
@tmcthree = lol, we are all the architects of our own problems
I wasn’t asking advice in which peopel told me what to do I was looking for advice that would help me figure out what was best for me. I was hoping for maybe a pros/cons idea of one over the other.
Anyway, random digging through the forums has helped me decide to go with the 2.5x/2.6. I know there isn’t much in the way for tutorials, but I ordered the new foundations book and will order the 2.5 beginners dvd. I have a ways to go just learning the basics before worrying about more advanced topics, and by the time I am through the basics (slow learned here) I figure 2.5x/2.6 will be more stable and have more tutorials.
In the end I think it’s the best choice for me. Thanks again.
