Blender.org

Hi,

I was thinking if there is a probability of including a set of Help html files with blender. Having an offline brief but consistent documentation/help file could help many users (both new and old).

This documentation could include the sections that already come with blneder (that blender.html file):

1. About Blender
2. Installing Blender
3. Getting Started
4. Resources
5. Troubleshooting
6. FAQ...

But in the "getting started" section we could add help reffering to every button of blender, or the basic workflow of every window type in blender....

There could even be a "New features" section with simple tutorials regarding the use of the new features... (this is probably the link I would appreciate the most, because I know there's a web page reffering to these new features at blender.org, but including these new feautues could encourage all the users who don't know about this page...)

Tell me what you think...

Good idea.

But I think you are talking more about a full manual then a getting started.

The internet has the advantage of being quickly updated. So a troubleshoot internet page can have many more info on the current release.

For people who buy the guide (in a shop) a thing like this could be helpfull, because they maybe don't have access to internet. Then again, they have the book.

There used to be a quick start 1.5 (and it's now formatted at http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_Us ... 224.0.html I think).

I don't think there is not enough information already, it's just that, or people can't find it, or they don't want to read it.

But I think that if you create these helppages, the foundation is glad to include them in the release.

We have two quick start guides, it is unknown yet what will be included in the release (there might be others proposed before release or either of the two might be changed), see this thread,

http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=54567

LetterRip

also there are complete keyboard maps being done for the different modes,

LetterRip

Thanks for the links LetterRip, those quickstart guides are quite interesting... but my ideas for an offline kind of reference guide/documentation/help file... was of including:

A beginners tutorial:
A simple tutorial covering the simple aspects of blender, modelling, lighting and materials, and rendering... easy enough as to answer some basic newbie questions...

A new features section:
Showing the newest features integrated in blender, like what is in http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_ ... 598.0.html...

It would be excellent if a series of pages explaining how every button works could be included, that is, you press Ctrl+Shift+F1 when your mouse cursor is over a button and a new browser window appears with a html file explaing what that button does in a more detailed manner...


I've taken a look at the blender.html file included with blender, and I must admit, it's quite good... the only bad thing is that I don't know if everybody knows it exists...

I really consider these type of projects an essential part of making blender availabe to more and more people. A simple tut that makes someone pull up a simple render in a couple of minutes would greatly encourage others to try blender too (not to mention a slight reduction of really really newbie questions at the forums...)

Another thing I have been thinking of too... is that, maybe all this documentation will take up a lot of space (not more that 1Mb I hope). If I remember correctly, Ton (and most of us) have a attitude towards making Blender as compact as possible (in file size). A quick solution to this could be to partially include part of the documentation in the main download. The other part of the documentation will simple be pages that will say "download the full documentation for this url". Once you finish the download the old pages will be replaced with the new pages and the doc would be complete...
Well, I think that's a pretty complex operation... but I'm open to suggestions

tell me what you think...

I'll try to pull up a simple demo of what I'm talking about in a couple of days...