Product Description

Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite that is a real alternative to commercially available 3D design software. A cross-platform software package with millions of downloads annually, Blender is now one of the world's most popular 3D design tools. Although Blender is free, it's intended for design professionals and others motivated to become 3D artists. The Essential Blender will provide you with the knowledge you need to help integrate Blender into your work and begin to master its powerful creation tools. If you've never tried 3D design before, an introductory chapter will familiarize you with relevant terminology and concepts. If you're already experienced with commercial 3D software, "The Essential Blender" will get you up to speed with Blender quickly. After a tour of Blender's 3D modeling, animation, and rendering capabilities, you'll learn how best to use Blender for these tasks: Object manipulation and animation Mesh and sculpt modeling and shape animation Materials and texturing (including UV unwrapping) Lighting and rendering Particle animation Character rigging and animation Node-based composition The book is modular in its approach, with each topic addressed independently and accompanied by hands-on tutorial sections. The combined expertise of key members of the Blender community, coupled with the experience of editor Roland Hess, bring you "The Essential Blender"-the definitive guide to Blender. You'll find a wealth of 3D design information inside that will help you to unlock your artistic potential and get the most out of Blender. Includes a Complete Version of Blender 2.44 on the CD-ROM. Covers Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (x86 and PowerPC), Solaris, FreeBSD, and IRIX.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18974 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-19
• Platform: Not Machine Specific
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.02" h x 1.06" w x 6.77" l, 1.54 pounds
• Binding: CD-ROM
• 376 pages

About the Author
Editor Roland Hess is a professional writer who has used Blender for almost a decade.

Ton Roosendaal is Blender's creator and the chairman and founder of the Blender Foundation, the non-profit organization that maintains Blender under the GNU/GPL license. He co-authored The Official Blender 2.3 Guide, The Official Blender GameKit (both No Starch Press), and The Official Blender 2.0 Guide (Premier Press).

Customer Reviews

A great effort...
I purchased this book quite recently. I am a teacher and I am learning Blender so I can offer it as a no-cost solution to my students who want to learn 3D modelling. I have some experience with Maya previous to this.

I really, really wanted to rate this book more highly- there are a number of really positive features to it, and the aims of the Blender Foundation are laudable and should be supported. However a couple of big irritations stalled me.

First the plus side:

The book is intelligently, humourously written and the editor's bookended comments in particular stand out as amusing and accessible. Also, most of the information covered is presented with sufficient depth to get the new user familiar with most key aspects of Blender.

The commentaries are clear and concise. The theory discussions cover some potentially difficult ideas in a style that grants confidence to attempt using them. The books removes any intimidation a new user might feel.

All of this is good. Finally, the material on the accompanying disc is great (newer Blender is available online but it is unfair to criticise the book for this as Blender's generation cycle is about as lengthy as a fruit fly's!).

What holds the book back from being absolutely essential comes down to a couple of things.

Firstly, the quality of supporting images is appalling. There really is no way to avoid this; greyscale, low contrast images that are on average less than 1.5" across are pretty much useless. This is exacerbated by the fact the text reads as if the writers assumed the images would be in colour, so refer to distinctions that cannot be seen in greyscale (shades of pink for active objects, for example). Even if the option to print in colour was prohibitively costly, some image manipulation to add highlights, arrows, etc. would have fixed this.

Secondly, the book is largely written by contributors, which means in places it has a slightly inconsistent tone, as some take a project-based approach, while some are more general in their application of principles. Also, the quality of the end product varies from chapter to chapter, with the Sculpting chapter monster head being particularly poor (the writer even includes a screenshot of his *second* attempt to show that "another go may well look better"!). This is a shame as it undermines what Blender is capable of- I accept accessibility for newbies is important but this book will be many people's first choice and should be aspirational as well as educational!

So, would I recommend this book? Yes- I enjoyed it, found the discussion sections very useful and the discreet chapters well constructed. Would I work through all of the projects? No. some of them aren't worth it, but the principles can be aplpied to the reader's own work easily. Do I think a second edition is needed? Yes- to address the above, easy fix image isue and have a second pass at the projects and contributions to improve quality and intorduce some of Blender's newer functions. Overall, a great effort and a welcome,but not perfect, primer.

A guide for us mere mortals...
I'm not a computer expert, I'm certainly not an artist, and I'm not rich - I just wanted to construct a 3d animation to illustrate how a horse's hoof works for an assignment. I got hold of a copy of the open sourced Blender 3D and then it began to dawn on me that it was really written by experts, for experts. If your not a computer whiz-kid or a professional 3d artist who is already familiar with the terminology and ideology, then you're going to struggle.

Fortunately, Ton Roosendaal has come to the rescue with this book. It doesn't assume you already know anything about 3d graphics, only that you are reasonably familiar with how to handle a computer and want to create a 3d work of art or animation. It explains all the concepts in plain English that even I can understand, with easy to follow instructions to get you designing and playing within minutes.

Maybe it's not what experts have come to expect from 3d texts, but it's a solid, understandable guide to the essentials for the rest of us.

Great book, really easy to understand
I've wanted to get into the world of 3D modelling/animation for sometime. After looking at the likes of Maya and 3DS Max, I stumbled across Blender. As you know Blender is a free, open source fully featured(more or less) 3D modelling suite. As I am new to Blender, I chose to purchase this book. And I am not disappointed! I have worked through the first few chapters and I have found the book extremely easy to follow. Before using Blender, my knowledge of 3d modelling software was somewhat poor. Just by reading the first few chapters, its made me realise that Blender is not as daunting as it first seems, however, its still not easy to learn. If your a beginner to Blender, this books will be perfect for you!