I bought a book on python (its a sort of very basic beginners book which introduces python as well as programming basics - just what I need).
Anyway, I’ve been working my way through it and am currently at the stage where I can write a little programme to spell a word backwards! Hooray! I realise it’ll take time to learn python, which is so completely different to anything I know. However, it seems a long long way from doing what I want it to do: eg.
a) create a flat 3d plane
b) colour the plane and possibly move it
c) understand the language of Blender plugins
d) Understand why jpegs are “lossy”
So far I’ve learned a bit about strings, integers, while loops and for loops, import random, tuples, the if-elif-else structure… kind of thing.
My question is simply: am I on the right lines here? (It just seems such a long way from making shapes on the screen)
Yes you’re on the right path. You first need to understand the language, which is what you’re doing. When you get the hang of the syntax, you can then read through other people’s scripts and actually understand what it is they’re doing.
Although some people learn best backwards- they look at someone else’s script, and learn the syntax as they view it, looking up each keyword.
You don’t have to know any laqnguage except englist to understand jpeg compression. I searched and found this: http://www.vectorsite.net/ttdcmp2.html
I found it interesting.
that stuff on Jpegs was very informative Sebastian - pretty complex though when it gets to fourier analysis and harmonics. Have filed it away for reference. Pngs, bmps gifs and jpegs make a lot more sense now.
am working away at more basic stuff (reading from txt files etc) at moment. Will try reading some scripts shortly
Assuming you learn Python to enhance Blender, I don’t think creating a 3d plane is harder than spelling a word backwards. I am a Python freshman as well.
You get a lot of functions from Blender (the so called API I guess) that offer access to all the Blender stuff.