More examples in the manual
Well basically, I'm having a very difficult time learning geometry nodes. And one of the reasons being that there aren't many examples for what nodes actually do. All the information in Blender's manual is barebones. Which, if you can learn from, great. But I'm struggling. If there was some way to see what the maker of the node had in mind when they made it, then it would help me understand its use. A bit of philosophy. What inspired the node. How might the node be used. Say the inside thoughts out loud. Some fluff language can really help in communicating the usage of things.
I suppose this is a general idea. Since it could be applied to all aspects of the manual. Not only for geometry nodes. But personally speaking, I really want to know why some nodes exist, what was going through the creators head, and how might THEY use the node. Which will help me understand how I might use the node.
6 Comments
I agree. This could be a call for contributions.
The manual is a collaborative effort by the community. Even though the Blender org team organizes it, anyone can contribute. Read more at docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/contribute/index.html
Pablo - seriously...
Technically, this is true. But the process to contribute is... not a minor matter, to say this least.
From that link:
Getting Started The following guides lead you through the process.
Step one of many:
Installing Dependencies
etc etc etc.. follow all the rest for pull requests, reviews, etc...
It's a manual. Text and images. It's hard for me to imagine a more convoluted, multi-step process for "let's make a software manual", that somehow is intended to encourage community contribution.
Wikipedia figured out couple decades ago that it's easy to encourage public contribution if you provide them with a simple text editor, and include ways for the submitted text to go through review, acceptance/decline.
Perhaps this response should just be a separate RCS request... suffice to say, I'm sure there are a LOT of users who could make great copy contributions to the manual, but the technical process they have to go through - yeah, hard pass...
Yeah, this is how I feel. Reading that made me roll my eyes and regret even bringing up the topic. Because it's immediately asking a lot.
Yes! I would really want this in the manual! Blender would be way more interesting and deep. I too wonder why certain nodes, tools or feature exist. Having a description of why the developer made it with practical example and the philosophy behind it would be awesome!
I was just reading the documentation for Normals › Point to Target and thinking, but why? docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/editing/mesh/normals.html
Knowing what a tool does is half the story. Knowing why you'd want to do such a thing is just as important.
Fun Q/A:
Blender assigns term "user" for a specific thing in the application; an incredibly poor grammatical/term choice, as the term "user" (in the rest of the software world) means the person sitting in the chair .
On what page of the manual is this term actually explained to the reader that within many contexts, the reader themself is not the "user"? Where does the manual tell even tell the reader, "sometimes when you read User, it means you. Other times, it does not mean you. Hope you figure it out."
It's definitely not on the Data Blocks page of the manual...