Venom's Lab! Shipping *NOW*! :)

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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hey there!

http://blog.venomgfx.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/yay2.jpg

So glad to open a thread after long time, and with cool news!

Venom’s Lab! is the 4th Training DVD by the Blender Foundation, it is part of the Blender Open Movie Workshop, same as Creature Factory, Mancandy FAQ, and Learning Character Animation.

Teaser trailer animation:
at Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/4510373
at YouTube:


Download ~15mb .AVI:
http://www.venomgfx.com.ar/lab/teaser/venomslab_teaser.avi

Quick walkthrough:
http://vimeo.com/5452577

The DVD will cover several topics, you can check the list at the e-shop article:
http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info.php?products_id=118
Pre-order already started today, it is scheduled to start shipping during mid-june.

As well as the other DVDs, this one will be released under Creative Commons, (yep including the characters! :slight_smile: )

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Breathtaking News: The DVD will contain both English and Spanish audio tracks for the tutorials!

We figured out that I spent more time doing the subtitles than what I would spend if I record the audio in english as well.

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One special thing about it is that it will be the first made with the audio spoken in English and Spanish, there are also already volunteers for translating it into italian and french! (if you want to add your language here just contact me! :slight_smile: ) So this could be a very international one, I love that!

So that’s all folks!
Now I gotta run back to work, please feel free to leave any comment/suggestion here or on my blog, will reply as soon as possible.

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Gracias! I always wanted to know how he ends up creating those characters. I’ll order as soon as they enable my internet banking service lol

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this looks great

I have to confess though that I’ve spent the past 3 years familiarizing myself with these topics using online tutorials and also I tend to spend more time with the game engine than with rendering animated scenes.

In other words I’m saying it looks like one of the best Blender Foundation DVDs yet.

However the DVD or book I’d like to buy would be a book that teaches you how to program and script specifically for the game engine. Maybe even include some GLSL stuff. You know a real hardcore game engine manual.

Maybe not many people would want that but I’d pay up to $100 for something like that if it was nice and filled with good info. 3 years in I can say I never started using blender because it was free, I started using blender because it has a game engine.

If Mikepan or Ideasman wants to write that one xD

I know this comment is off topic… but the DVD really does look super just not what I’m looking for currently.

Also as an aside I did look at the table of contents of the second gamekit and it doesn’t quite look like it has anything in it that I don’t already know. So yes, “hardcore” game engine manual ^^ <-- I’m looking for that; I’m not sure how many others are though

and again this dvd does look great although I’m familiar with the contents pretty much already ^^ from what I see on the website

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I was about to pre-order this then i read it was in spanish :frowning: I know it contains english sub-titles but i tend to not use subtitles as i find them distracting.

I hope it does well though, it looks like you’ve put alot of effort into this, loved the video for it :slight_smile:

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“Mastering Blender” covers the game engine + python scripting for it.

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venomgfx are the subtitles the standard type built into the video? Or are they more visual like how the trailer worked?

would you be open to someone translating the video and adding english audio?

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Yeah, seriously you guys have to include an English audio track too, else you will miss out on a lot of potential customers (myself included).

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The subtitles will be standard, plain text files as .srt so you can load them everywhere and change the font/size/color/position whatever in your video player, and also easier for others to translate into more languages.

Adding an english audio track to the videos is possible, and would be nice to keep things even more open, so whoever wants to take the challenge, contact me! :slight_smile:

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Haha I’ll buy it I wanna learn spanish anyway :D.

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SnifiX: personally i don’t think anyone should uploada torrent file. Not for a while atleast, give venom and the blender foundation enough chance to make a little bit of money from their investment and then do it, personally i’d be quite annoyed if some one torrented this straight away.

Hmm well i may purchase it :slight_smile: i could live with subtitles :stuck_out_tongue:

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Looks great, I will have to preorder it.

@Snifix - You do this when every dvd comes out. By buying the dvd you get to get it when it comes out. If your not going to pay money then you can wait till a torrent becomes avaible.

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artists need money too, so support the blender foundation with money if you think they deserve it which I think they do, just can’t figure out exactly what I should buy I guess I should buy Yo Frankie ^^

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I almost pre-ordered the DVD, but then I read about the Spanish language thing. I’m truly sorry, but I’d rather buy an English version instead. I dislike subtitles as well (even for products in my own country, I’m always buying without subs).

The current way is clear enough: people buy it, if they want to share they are free to do so, but it’s better to buy because you’ll support the Blender Foundation, thus they will be able to make more improvements to Blender in a shorter period of time.

Please, don’t be the whining twat again. Creative Commons or Open Source does not equal free (at least, not free in the way you like it).

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Sweet! This looks like an excellent DVD and really nice to learn some tricks from the best! Thanks venomgfx!

About the release under CC:
I think it is bold and requires confidence to release under CC, and it deserves respect. Most people will probably wait to download the torrent, but as I see it most of those would download a copy anyway, CC or not. I just preordered the DVD because I want BF to collect some money, and I think many here feel the same way. It’s like a donation but with something in return. The licence has nothing to do with it, and still it’s beautiful that those without resources can also get it without pirating. I hope that many will buy it (and other stuff from the Blender e-shop) because Ton and the core blenderheads really deserve it, but they are not a commercial institution. Deciting not to buy it because you can get it for free is missing the picture, IMO.

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If you hire an english speaker I suggest http://www.videocopilot.net/
He made a dvd instructing Blender in The Bullet dvd as well as tons of after effects stuff.

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The rules are unclear, and they should become clear.
the rules are very clear. it’s CC licensed. if you don’t want to order it you probably have to be patient until someone decides to put it online.

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SnifiX: What i am trying to say is that, we are all part of the comminuty and with out the support for each other, we would have nothing, so if you can hold out for a little bit, after all it wouldn’t kill anybody if they waited for a few weeks until the author made a little benefit from this so he could be spurred on to develop further DVD’s.

Money may not be the main issue here, but it’s certainly a good way of making sure that the comminuty has access to future DVD’s and even more important is that the blender foundation stay’s a float, after all they depend largely on DVD and book sales to keep going.

We aren’t questioning the license here, or saying that it’s bad to download it, what we are saying is that give the author and the foundation a little chance to benefit from the time the author has spent on this, if you decide you don’t wan’t to wait then the only thing you can do, if no one else uploads a torrent is to buy it.