Add-on developer course?

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As a python novice, I made a couple of Blender add-ons but even though they work, it’s become clear that I followed bad practices and I don’t seem to be the only one in that situation.

With the 2.8 API bringing more possibilities for add-ons and the Blender community getting much bigger, more people will want to make add-ons. I would love to take full advantage of the new API and make clean add-ons that can be passed on and built upon by the rest of the community and I don’t see a better way to do that than to have a learning course truly geared for Blender, made by those who know the API best and made available to everyone so we can all get good coding standards and understand each other better.
Sure the docs are great but a course could include workshop videos and exercises that could enhance the learning experience and comfort.

What do you think?

PS: Since this would be expensive to make, I think it would be good for whoever would be kind enough to take this project on to have an idea of how many people would be ready to pay for it and how, right upfront:

  • I’m willing to pay, the model doesn’t matter to me (crowd funding, one time purchase, subscription)
  • only crowd funding to make it free for everyone when it’s published
  • Just a little, I’m not rich
  • Sorry but I can’t (or don’t want to)
  • other (reply to this post)

0 voters

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For what it’s worth, Scripting for Artists is already available on the cloud. I think this covers more general scripting than add-on development though.

A much more detailed course for add-ons would be nice, but I don’t see something like this happening until after there’s a 2.80 release candidate out. I can’t speak for the devs, but if I was making something like this, I would want to be sure that there was a static “reference version” of 2.80 that I could be sure the course materials would match with. Blender 2.80 still being in beta makes that difficult (if not impossible) to guarantee.

There are a few learning materials aimed specifically at add-on development already out, but they are all based on the 2.7x versions of Blender (or earlier). The one’s I’m aware of are:

Jaworski’s book is obviously outdated, but it still covers a lot of detailed information and the author has made the book available at no cost.

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Thanks. And of course this learning course should be done after the 2.80 release.