Excellent news, Tony!
I have some ideas, etc., and I’ll be e-mailing you 
RobertT
Tony,
Just wanted to throw a shout-out to say that this is, indeed, a wonderful thing.
The general feel of the feedback so far is, if nothing, very encouraging. Even if it seems, somewhat, negative, at times…just the fact that you’re given the opportunity to follow-up on your initial endeavor…
Well, that’s just plain friggin’ awesome!
I’ve been gaining a lot of insight from the first book. And it’s nice to see that the veterans are behind you on this next step to really building up the community effort. I for one am getting tired of looking at the motley collection of Maya books in my library, and would love to see the number of Blender books take over…
Great job!
p.s., loving the new SSS panel. I can’t wait for 2.5. I think the overlords at AutoDesk are going to start sweating the competition from Ton & co. Great time to be alive!
Hi,
Thanks everybody for the feedback!
Hopefully there is enough content to justify the inclusion of a CD/DVD.
It’s not out of the question. It’s definitely good to get feedback and suggestions. Another thing that will probably be different about this as opposed to the last book is that Introducing Character Animation was basically one big project tutorial, with lots of steps, which meant that it would be impossible for people to start in the middle without having .blend files included. I am thinking this one will be much more modular, so it won’t be quite as necessary to have intermediate stage .blends. Still, depending on the kind of supplementary media there is, a disk might be warranted.
The book sounds very interesting Bugman. Any idea (quick estimate)
of how much it will cost?
My quick estimate is probably in the neighborhood of Introducing Character Animation, or perhaps a bit more, since it will be printed in color, but I really don’t know about this, and it’s not something I have much say in. I think there is usually a discount from Amazon, in any case, although if the Blender e-Shop carries it, I recommend that for obvious reasons.
What I am wondering is what new features would be added to
Blender’s physical simulation system that could be covered
in the new book?
Will it cover particles? And if so, will it be Jahka’s system?
Mostly the book will cover what’s already in Blender, although I’m keeping my eyes open for developments in all the simulators. It will cover particles, and I very much hope that it will be Jahka’s new particle system, but that’s going to depend on how that development progresses. My understanding is that he’ll have some time to get those worked on in the summer, but I haven’t spoken to him yet personally about it. Short answer: I hope so.
If “Essential Blender” does not give me a good enough
understanding of doing fluid simulation, soft body,
and particles, then I would maybe buy this book.
I haven’t seen Essential Blender, but it should be out soon enough for me to see it and try to avoid too much overlap. I want to make sure that my book covers things which haven’t been covered in other books, mainly. My understanding is that Essential Blender will not get into these simulations features very deeply, so I think that there will be a lot of new information in the book.
On a side note, is your character animation book available on
the Blender Wiki?
The book’s for sale from the Blender e-Shop, but it’s not online. As far as I know it is not available as an e-book either. This is something the publisher takes care of, and it is a traditional publisher, so the book itself is not open content.
However, there’s a lot of open content material available that covers similar ground. I’d strongly recommend you check out the BSoD introduction to character animation here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation
The introduction to rigging here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Rigging
The introduction to the principles of animation here
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_the_Principles_of_Animation
And look through this forum for the many excellent rigs to download and take apart and learn from.
Finally, if you’re on a tight budget (or even if you aren’t), please consider asking your local public library or school library to order a copy of Introducing Character Animation with Blender. That way you can read the book for free and other people will also have the chance to be exposed to it.
T
Thanks for answering all my questions (maybe too many) 
Tony (I hope you don’t mind me calling you by my first name since I’m only thirteen and a half year).
I have ordern Essential Blender and introducing Charakter Animations fron Blender e-shop. Thay are both shipped in the history so I will hopefully get them soon.
But now to the new book…
… It’s something to loock forward to and I can’t wait to get it myself. I hope it will do a big and deep dig in to the stoff of blender fysiks.:evilgrin:
Thanks for the responses and to those who have PM’d me or mailed me. If I haven’t gotten back to you I will try to do so soon.
Sergeant_Oreo, no worries, you can call me whatever you like… 
I can’t for the life of me understand why you are not requiring image submissions to be at least 90 percent done in Blender? What’s the use of showing images in a book about Blender if they are done in 3ds max, Maya or Carrara? It just doesn’t make any sense. The point is, you have to require a blend file and render it yourself.
It would probably be more interesting if those submissions were done entirely in Blender, one hundred percent. Not even Photoshop or Gimp postwork. Let’s go even further. Share those files and make them accessible to the public. Perhaps this will finally show to the whole world what this little program could do.
tyrell: Most people with “good” renders floating around have been on these forums for a long time. (They have posted many work in progress screenshots.) And their is no reason to think they would use anyother program but blender for the main output.
Concerning your second question… some of images can take ALL DAY to render. Making Tony render them all could put him behind a year or so.
bugman_2000: Good Luck on the book!
Let’s go even further. Share those files and make them accessible to the public.
That would severely limit the content since many people are not going to want to let their source files loose for others to mess with. Of course, if you’ve got quality stuff you want to give to Tony and are willing to provide the source files for DVD or download then I doubt he’ll knock you back.
I’ve got impressive renders done in TrueSpace years ago. I’m now going to heavily touch them up using Photoshop to make them even more impressive. I want to receive the new Blender book for free. How does that sound?
I can’t for the life of me understand why you are not requiring image submissions to be at least 90 percent done in Blender? What’s the use of showing images in a book about Blender if they are done in 3ds max, Maya or Carrara? It just doesn’t make any sense. The point is, you have to require a blend file and render it yourself.
I probably should have stated this more clearly. I’m looking for Blender artwork, that is, artwork whose 3D components (in this case, the simulation components especially) are done primarily in Blender. I have no problem with textures, postpro, skymaps, or other 2D effects being done in Gimp or Photoshop or Terragen or whatever, since I consider 2D stuff like this to be part of doing 3D artwork in Blender.
I trust every artist who submits work to me that the artwork is what they say it is. So far, I’ve never had any reason not to, so that seems to work fine. How and whether the artwork is released outside of the book is entirely up to the artist. I am very grateful for permission from artists to use their renders in the book. The artist retains the copyright to all of his or her work, and I wouldn’t be in a position to influence what they did with the work outside the book even if I wanted to. As AndyD said, if people want to provide more than renders, I will definitely try to accommodate that.
Of course I will also be in contact with the artists, and if I have any questions about how something was made, I’ll ask them. As Calvin said, rendering and baking these kinds of effects is often non-trivial, and I’ll be leaving that up to individual artists.
Bugman, congrats for having a new profession – writing. It must be good augmenting a living out of something you enjoy doing. On the other side, this is a dream come true for many people wanting to learn Blender in depth. I am waiting for the release of Essential Blender before moving on to the more specialized topic such as animation and physics features. I hope to be able to write my own after that on modeling. I will have my own standards in presenting it, how it pares with other apps or point equivalents. I’m sure that not a few Blender artists will be willing to submit images entirely done in Blender. They don’t have to be impressive. The “potential” is what I’m after.
Hey Bugman,
Congrats on signing for your second book. I have an idea for something to submit, but family commitments have made it difficult do do any real blending for a while.
I’ll see how I go. Either way, I’m hanging out to buy my very own Bugman Boxed Set!
(Will the third one be Tony Mullens and the Blender of Fire?)
Cheers,
JM
I’m really looking forward to buying this specialized blender book.
The idea of giving the sources of submissions and not only examples is great
I bought the Introducing Character Animation one and I have always been wondering how far it supports the blender foundation. What ratio of the 35€ is for the foundation ? And what if it’s bought from amazon ? And concerning the new book ?
I bought the Introducing Character Animation one and I have always been wondering how far it supports the blender foundation. What ratio of the 35€ is for the foundation ? And what if it’s bought from amazon ? And concerning the new book ?
My understanding is that the seller usually gets about %50 percent of what you pay for a book, so if you buy the book from the Blender e-Shop, this would go to the BF. I don’t know what their costs are, so I have no idea what the profit calculates to. The Blender Foundation decides what to sell in the e-Shop on a case by case basis, and there are a lot of factors they need to consider (shipping to the Netherlands, etc), so I’m afraid I can’t tell you in advance what the story will be in that respect with the new book. I certainly hope that it works out to be worthwhile for them to carry it.
I do recommend that people buy what they can from the e-Shop. And of course, if you can afford to, you can always give plain old donations to the Blender Foundation.
I sign up to this thread.
So the renderer used is up to the artist?
I’m looking forward to seeing what the fluid section will be like, one of the most misunderstood concepts seems to be start/end time. People usually set it way too low instead of the correct value for their sim, then they set their gravity to an insane level to make the fluid go faster…:spin::eyebrowlift2:
[Edit] Do you think a nice render of a water vortex would have a chance at the cover?:D:o jk
So the renderer used is up to the artist?
Yes. I won’t be discussing how to use other renderers, but I’ll definitely mention their existence and comment on some of the things that can be done with them and so it will be great to have a few good examples of things that make the most of external renderers’ functionality.
Do you think a nice render of a water vortex would have a chance at the cover?
Sure, it could. I actually won’t be making that decision, the graphic design department people will be… I’ll just hand over a bunch of artwork for them to choose from. I love the caustics in your image there.
I had a simple (and nice) image I did in the past for my girlfriend, rendered with Yafray… But the blend file don’t work anymore with current versions of Blender and Yafray…
Two gold rings on a table with a caustic inside… Maybe it’s too simple for a book but I like it and I’ll give it a try. After all, it could be a nice example for an introductory chapter on photon lamps and caustics … I’m short in money these times, so I like the possibility of receiving a free copy of the book.
http://utenti.lycos.it/darkcg/SXCOL/gallery/gallery_imgs/3.jpg
Don’t kill me. :no:
Nice image. I’ll definitely take everything into consideration (everything, that is, that gets submitted to the email address I posted in the first post…) but I should reiterate that this book is really about physics simulations and physical effects, not about rendering and optics (which deserves a whole other book, in case anybody out there wants to have a shot at it!) I may have a shot or two that shows a caustics example, but if so, it will probably be in the context of a fluid sim or something like that.
Now, if you make those rings splash into a glass of water we might be getting somewhere!