harkyman.com

Several weeks ago, my publisher touched base with me about doing an update to Blender Foundations. He noted that it had been their most successful Blender title to date, and obviously they would like to keep it up with the times. My response was that I understood his position as an acquisitions editor (i.e. to fill their pipeline), but that I wouldn’t be doing this for them in the traditional way.

Now, I do want to update Foundations. More than a few people (thanks everyone who trusted me enough to buy the book!) have found it extremely useful to their Blender education, and I think it deserves an update as well.

The thing is, I really hate being on deadline. I’m occasionally on deadline at work, and that’s fine. It’s work. But I write in my family time, and have found that being on deadline that way eats up the rest of my willpower. I’m short with my peeps. I don’t go the gym. I don’t floss. It’s not good.

So here’s what I’m doing: revising BF for the new 2.7 series on my own timeline. When I’m done (or the end is in sight), I’ll fill out all the paperwork with the publisher and get things going. Last weekend, I finished revising Chapter 3.

I’m basically working my way through the original text of the book, fixing things where they don’t match the current UI and workflows, and re-shooting all screen shots. The fundamentals are the same, though. It’s surprising how well the book has held up after these several years. I guess I kind of knew what I was doing way back when. Thanks, past me. The one thing I’m going to do differently is to integrate Cycles usage throughout the book. It will make it a little longer, but I’m going to parallel the materials, lighting and rendering sections with both Internal and Cycles.

Anyway, that’s the news. Cheers