nemesis wrote:
> Best way to get into Blender is to slowly learn your way through both 
> its 3D space and through its interface, which is organized in panels 
> containing related functionality.  All of it via keyboard, of course.

 From what I can tell, most everything can be accessed without the mouse at 
all, which is nice. When you can't remember the button, you can grope around 
thru the menus until you find something.

My main stumbling blocks seem to center around the system doing the wrong 
thing to be fast by default, in preference to doing the right thing slowly, 
which you have to figure out how to set up.

Otherwise, it seems pretty straightforward. Altho there are a couple (so 
far) of bothersome limitations, particularly in the textures. (Like, I don't 
know how to do checkerboards or hex shapes or some of the other stuff POV 
has built in, and you can't rotate a texture directly, so your wood rings 
are fixed in one axis - just minor stuff like that).

I've played with Hash Animation:Master, so most of the concepts (bones, 
strides, texture stacks, etc) are familiar, at least.

This is an awesome site for the parameters of the simulators:
http://www.pkblender.it/index.html
(What should be in the documentation to start with. :-)

And this guy does a great job of showing how to model something that isn't 
organic, which HAM made exceedingly difficult in my limited experience:
http://www.vimeo.com/groups/9075/videos/812311

Hope that helps anyone else who might be playing with Blender soon.

> I don't know, I'm a single-monitor guy. ;)

It's amazing how helpful it is, altho I don't understand people who put the 
space between the monitors right in front.

I saw one video of a UI idea, where when you're doing drag-and-drop, you can 
peel back the corner of the window you're over to expose the window 
underneath. I think D-a-D is the biggest win with a bigger monitor. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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