> hello all,
>
>      I'm still trying to navigate the world of Croquet:
>      I'm a Blender Head and have been for about a year(on and off) so I guess I
> talk from a somewhat priveledged (and selfish) position. Is Blender difficult
> to learn? Yes. But why? and can this be overcome?
>      First: I think that the average user does not(I didn't) fully appreciate
> the scale of an animate package or better put: how much goes into making 3d
> content. Regardless of what you use there are very basics that create the
> complexity in authoring tool. Modeling, material and texture
> settings,animatingadding interaction to the object are un-avoidables. these are
> concepts and skills that are application independent. If your learning about
> these concepts (which was my case) in addition to learning an interface or tool
> with which to do something with them then your learning twice as much[twice as
> hard...twice as confusing}.
>      As you delve deeper into the process the load thickens. For instance
> modeling deals with manipulation of meshes:(booleans or just joining, rotation,
> scale, duplication, selection [edge, vertices, face] etc.) Materials:
> (unwrapping, material indices, dealing with shaders ) Textures: ( procedural,
> animation, applying multiple textures) Animating: (Bones, armatures, parenting,
> vertex groups, constraints).
>  Aain I'll restate that this is not a Blender thing it's a learning about the
> 3D creation process thing. if your a programer and your suddenly overwhelmed by
> how much time your investing learning how to create content for 3d environments
> then you feel the same when I did when I decided to move from painting to
> learning to create digital content;from creating digital content to 3D content;
> from creating 3d content to placing in an evironment in which others can
> interact with it(which is where I am now).  in essence about moving from a
> place where your mind is fluid to one where the are obstacles between concept
> and object.
>     Croquet is a beautiful thing and since it is still the relatively early
> development stages some realities have to be faced. the creation of rich
> emersive environments is conmposed of separate entities,two of which are
> programmers and designers. As a 3d designer I want to spend as little time as
> possible hacking into Croquet and as much time as possible making things to
> place inside it...things my imagination needs a place for.(he alternative is to
> have electricians fixing your roof.)
>      Regardless of which package is chosen,the key is that in its selection you
> should not limit the power of designers. Croquet worlds will be very dismal
> environments if its design tool is catered to minds whose enjoyment is writing
> code (though some coders would obviously be capable of beautiful content and
> vice verse). further, I believe time will show that some of the things that
> Blender can do now will not be outside the bounds of 3d world creation. in fact
> what I find particularly appealing and promising about Croquet is that its
> design places processing on each individuals machine a limitation of Blenders
> game engine for immersive content creation.
>       Blender is -the- open source alternative to otherwise expensive authoring
> tools. It has a very large, active user community and a developement team that
> is in a constant effort to add features and make improvements to the existing
> package. Meaning that by adopting it the Croquet community will attract members
> of the Blender community (e.g. attract designers). To develope a Croquet based
> creation package exclusively will stunt the growth of the community both in
> numbers and infusion of ideas. The idea part is the big issue because its not
> only the potential content that goes but its the features that Blender coders
> haven't invented yet that go too (remeber Blender isn't going anywhere).
>       As far as learning the interface and basic modeling technique I would
> suggest a Croquet based Blender tutorial series housed in proximity to Croquet
> proper ducumentation. that way people can enter into the Blender Croquet
> relationship with knowledge of what to disregard when using Blender for Croquet
> specifically. I'm frankly still unclear about the import process (me not much
> of a programmer) for use with the skeletal animation package. any words on this
> would be greatly appreciated. I should also mention that I'm in the process of
> creating video tutorials to compliment the DMU tutorial "holy trinity" series
> I've been following(posted most likely by the end of next weekend.) Blender
> specific.
>       But really, I've OGRE exported xml files sitting on my desktop just
> waiting to be imported into Croquet...help help help :=
>    
> I'm a bit of a dreamer and I think we are all inspired at least in part by
> notions of a holodeck. I would hate to spoil the imagination of the future by
> the limitations of now.
>      ciao, waufrepi