Book for new Blender Developers - Core Blender Development by Brad Hollister

I just found this book and haven’t seen it posted anywhere so thought I would share it where people might see it. Published December 2020, so relatively new, although some things are a little out of date.

The author is a professor who has been working with Blender since at least 2015 according to my Google Fu. I haven’t read much, but the first chapter is enough to convince me that it could help anyone asking, “Where to start?” ’

I’m fairly new so interested if those with more experience have thoughts.

Table of Contents

  1. Intro to the “Core” Blender Source Code
  2. Blender “DNA” and Serialization
  3. ghost: Soul of the windowmanager Module
  4. The blenlib and blenkernel Modules
  5. Blender’s Embedded Python
  6. Blender “RNA” and the Data API
  7. The editors Module, Operators, and Event System
  8. Editor Creation
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That’s interesting to know that such a book even exist)

Thanks for the heads-up, gonna take a look at this

wow cool, gonna take a deeper look into it!

Wonder if the author is related to this Brad Hollister?
I’ve bought the tree version. It’s on its way. Remarks here in the good, sweet fullness of time.

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Blendernation remarks. Ton doesn’t seem to be entirely repelled. :wink:

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Any news/review? It’s a very interesting looking book and I’m wondering if it’s worth a buy.

I read the first six chapters, then circled back to re-read the first few again. There’s a lot of information in there and it’s dense, but really helpful for understanding how the pieces fit together. It says up front that it’s not a comprehensive book. It’s a nice deep dive into the selected topics.

If you’re interested in any of the chapter topics, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a better resource for technical details. The author has also been really responsive to email/GitHub, which I appreciate.

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