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The Blender Book
What it's about This book was originally published in German as "Das Blender Buch." I was a little wary of picking it up simply because it is a translation of the original. Thankfully, I didn't have to worry, as this translation is very fluid and natural. The topics themselves, however, might be a little dense for the first-time reader and may require several re-readings to get the full meaning.
Blender is a free (as in beer) 3D modelling and animation software package. It was developed internally by Not-A-Number (NaN) for their studio work, but was later released to the general public. Blender is very powerful, and likewise very complex. The Blender Book is a gentle introduction for anyone who is interested not only in getting the most out of Blender, but also for anyone who is curious about 3D graphics.
Chapter by chapter The book starts off with a general overview of what Blender is, how to get it, and why you would want it in the first place. It then gives a very thorough, non-mathematical synopsis of color, 3D graphics, and animation techniques. Chapter 3 begins the Blender-specific topics with a quick overview of the blender interface, culminating in a simple keyframe animation. Chapter 4 introduces the basics of the Blender interface, with descriptions of the different mouse and keyboard functions that Blender uses. Chapter 5 delves into actually modelling objects in Blender, and Chapters 6 and 7 discuss materials and lighting. Chapters 8 deals with path animation, keyframe animation, interpolation curves (IPO curves), and vertex keys. Chapter 9 is a whole chapter about Inverse Kinematics (IKAs), which have been rather troubling for some Blender users. The chapter begins with tutorials for animating a robot arm, and ends with a skeleton animation of a bottle. Chapter 10 discusses particle animation, animating not only a camp fire, but also a rocket with a smoke trail, and a school of fish.
The last sections of the book deal with putting all these concepts together. Chapter 11 introduces the sequence editor, which allows the user to integrate clips with a pretty sophisticated post-production system. The example described in this chapter is a video titling sequence for a beach vacation in Indonesia. Chapter 12 discusses Python scripting in Blender, and how to use it for your animations and as a function plotter. Chapter 13 is the big reward: rendering. Naturally rendering has been discussed before this point, but this chapter contains all the neat tricks which Blender can do with the final rendering. Chapters 14 and 15 are full-scale, top-to-bottom animation and modelling tutorials, which are very useful for both beginners and experts to see how Blender manages to take a project from concept to completion.
The appendices are very well thought out, including a keyboard reference, tips and tricks, command line arguments, a Blender/Python API reference (Overview of Blender Modules), installation instructions, a glossary, and a listing of what's included on the CD. The index is also quite useful, allowing me on several occasions to find information rather quickly.
The pages of the book are very well laid out, with a 10-page full-color insert for those images that need the added benefit of color. The CD-ROM includes the 1.8 version of Blender (an older version, since as of this review Blender is now up to 2.12), and all the .blend files used in creating the animations. It also includes a gallery of the finished animations.
The upshot I have very few gripes with this book after reading it. The Blender Book was published before the program's 2.x series came out. While little in Blender's human interface has changed, it would be nice to have had an addendum for the changes from 1.8 to 2.x. Also, it would have been nice to have this book in full color, but the cost in doing such would have made this book prohibitively expensive.
The Blender Book is a book that I would give (and have given) to any aspiring 3D artist looking to use Blender. With its rich tutorials and its clear explanations of difficult concepts, The Blender Book is the perfect companion for teaching budding and intermediate 3D artists about this exciting and powerful tool.
Chapter Listing:
- Introduction
- Basics of 3D Graphics
- Quick Start
- Blender Basics
- Modeling Tutorials
- Material Tutorials
- Light, Shadows, and World Tutorials
- Keyframe, Path, Lattice, and Vertex Key Animation Tutorials
- Inverse Kinematics Tutorials
- Getting Small: Particle Animation Tutorials
- The Final Cut: Postproduction
- Python Tutorials
- The Big Reward: Rendering
- Laser Tutorial
- Animating a Torpedo Through A School of Fish
- Keyboard Commands
- Tips, Tricks, and Useful Programs
- Command Line Arguments
- Overview of Blender Modules
- Installing Blender
- Glossary
- What's on the CD?
- Index
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
in free software. This is one of the major Achilles heels of free software. When it is almost impossible to use a program because of the complex interface, detailed documentation is very important. Yet this is the one thing that NO ONE likes to do. You could argue that the interface whould be intuitive, but 3d modeling and rendering are very complex my their very nature. Even the cream of the proprietary crop have very dense interfaces. Some publishers try to produce documentation for very popular software, but if it's popular, you can generally find enough information on line to use it. But smaller, less popular software is generally doomed by bad docs. If no one can use the software to its full potential, no one will recommend it to friends, coworkers, etc, and the software will wither on the vine. So come on people, DOCUMENT YOUR SOFTWARE. I know that it's about as much fun as self-dentistry, but it's for your own good.
http://www.blender.nl/gameBlenderDoc
-------------- I don't speak for my boss. My boss can speak himself.
... and it is outstanding.
... what one can do with Blender in a very short time is truly amazing.
... contrary to what some anti-free software bigots are saying (it shouldn't be necessary, but I will point out that Blender is not, I repeat, not free software, although NaN currently doesn't charge for it, making such anti-free software criticisms doubly misguided).
Yes, it took me a couple of weeks to learn (3-4 hours / evening) surfing the online tutorial sites and trying stuff out, but this is not unreasonable for a piece of software of this sophistication and power.
DivX v. 3 files (viewable under xmms-avi and xine using the most excellent avifile library) of some of my work can be seen here (freely available under the Free Media License)
I bought "The Official Blender 2.0 Guide" from NaN in order to support the free (as in beer) nature of Blender and encourage the making of blender GPLed, i.e. free (as in speech). Whether or not NaN choose to do so is of course up to them, although I think with their business model of giving away the software and charging for the documentation GPLing the software would give them much wider exposure (e.g. availability in all Linux distributions, etc.).
However, although my initial purchase of the book was somewhat alturistic, I have found it to be an invaluable reference. The same can be said for "The Blender Book" which I purchased later in order to learn some of the more advanced modelling techniques.
Very cool software, and very excellent documentation
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yes. Blender has been used by FX companies in Europe to do 3D graphics for TV commercials and studios for a number of years now. This is originally how Blender got started - NaN developed the product in house (on SGI) to do their own work, and then decided to release it for free to the public.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
OK. Slight misunderstanding by your friend. None of Blender is GPLed - it's free as in beer only. Perhaps he was confused about the fact that NaN have released the code for some of the tools they use back into the community as GPLed software. On to your other points...
I have never heard anything of the sort and I HIGHLY doubt it.
It's true - almost. Blender was originally written to provide 3d graphics for games and TV commercials in Europe. AFAIK it hasn't been used for any kind of SFX rendering on film - yet.
1. Poor rendering. Blender doesn't have the quality or features neccesary in its own rendering engine and does not have renderman scene output.
I think Blender compares very favourably with 3DS Max rendering output. And Blender's Renderman plugin works just fine - through a Python script. It's not complete but that won't take too long. Combine it with BMRT (which I do regularly) and you have a winner.
The 'Magic Four' described above have many animation features that can aid in about every area of animation. What separates Softimage and Maya from Lightwave and 3DS is for the most part very powerful animation tools.
Agreed.
3. Blender's interface is wretched. It is beyond reproach and it pains me to say it, but I cannot think of how it could be any worse. It seems that features were just tacked on an buttons were thrown into the panel. It is not elegant in any way. I have used a lot of different 3d packages so anyone who replies and says 'its great when you get used to it' doesn't understand.
No doubt about it, it's written by engineers for engineers - not by artists for artists. And yet, once I learnt how everything fits together in the Blender interface, I found it easy to use - which is I think different from "intuitive." Maya is a good example of intuitive - give it to an artist and away they go.
When stuff needs to be done, and done well, the people under the gun reach for the best tool and Blender isn't it. Maya unlimited costs $16,000 per license. Blender is a low-end program, and could be a good one at that. ... Maybe if it stays around as long as the other programs mentioned here it will aproach the same functionality.
Agreed - but consider the fact that there are 250 000 users of Blender out there. Not bad for a program less than five years old. Blender is a staggeringly popular tool at graphic design shops and colleges worldwide - because it's free and produces amazing results in a short time. The high-end competition will both benefit and - paradoxically - hurt because of this. They'll benefit from the hordes of students who've been introduced to the basic principles of rendering through Blender and want to go on to the high-end, and they'll hurt because of the momentum of people writing scripts, giving feedback and pushing Blender to its limits, thus improving the program.
I agree with your main tenet, but it sounds very similar to the arguments that Microsoft used to trot out about Linux a couple of years ago. Unless the high-end boys keep orders of magnitude ahead in terms of fuctionality and start making their prices a little more affordable for students and beginners, they could well be eaten alive by Blender.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
The Blender Book is about modelling and non-interactive content. At the current stage, for a beginner, using 2.x would just be foolish. Most modelling/animation work done in Blender right now is being done in 1.80, simply because it's a whole lot more reliable and more supported platform-wise.
;).- -------------------
Eventually, the tools in 2.x will outweigh the few problems it has and more people will make the switch. As of now, however, The Blender Book is perfectly applicable to the current modelling version
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Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey...
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Everybody's got something to hi
DXF (Autodesk's Drawing eXchange Format) only contains a subset of an object's attributes. Import/export in
Among the things that are not supported are textures and texture mapping, object hierarchies, unified face normals, and smoothing groups.
DXF has always been my "format of last resort", and I've found that even when a program claims to support DXF i/o, it's often a broken implementation. Plus, since it's ASCII, there are CR/LF issues when moving objects across platforms.
The 3DS file format is just as "open" as DXF, retains more attributes, and is smaller, too.
k., turning caffeine into animations since 1989
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"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Latin chars have NOTHING in common with their meaning. They are in NO way "self-explanatory", not even close. And still we find them easier because they require little basic learning to achieve great flexibility.
A complex software product must have an interface that makes it efficient to use. If it isn't self explanatory, it doesn't matter much, you'll have to learn anyway. My experience is that many tools that do not follow the "usual" way of manipulation become more efficient, faster and easier to use - after you grasped the philosophy behind.
Examples:
- bash (no visual presentation, no icons)
- vim (different editing modes, keybindings)
- Gimp, Photoshop & Co. (yes, you need to learn here too)
and so on.Of course, there are the programs that only perform very simple tasks and are simply horrendously difficult to use. But most apps that do not use the UI interface standards have a reason.
IMHO.
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I tried to use the blender to make 3D graphics, but all i got was a big bloddy mess.... that spinning blade kept getting in the way...
That won't help with Blender. If you just launch it and try to play with it, you won't get anywhere. Download it and try. Not only is it hard to figure out how to do something, often something will seem to happen by accident, and you won't be able to do it again. The mouse interface is not "point, click, and drag"; it uses gestures. Plus there are many, many, function keys, some of which have mouse equivalents.
I've used Softimage and Maya. They have tough learning curves too, but Blender seems worse.
For those that want it, there's a popular (shareware? I've never used it) graphical system for Windows called Moray. It apparently allows you to graphically setup your scene, and it generates the POV source for you to tweak as you see fit.
I've started working on entries for the Internet Ray Tracing Competition, it's been a lot of fun. The current topic is "Fantasy and Mystic", and is due August 31st. Some of the work done is simply *incredible* (check out Gilles Tran, freaking awesome). Come on you Fantasy and Sci Fi folks, you'll love it. (And you're not required to use POV-Ray for the IRTC, btw, but it's sponsored by the great folks who bring us POV.) Go browse the IRTC galleries, some of the winners are truly stunning.
And lastly, for those interested, here's my first submission to the IRTC contest (topic: "Insects and Spiders"), it's called Pond Life
Seriously! Everybody go check it out! No, it's not as easy as lots of other packages. But I must say this is the most fulfilling programming I have ever done. (Probably because my robots don't work yet. ;)
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Anyone here knows if blender was actually used for some serious work like a movie or special fx? No sarcasm here, I'm just curious
The reason this is so long is because my friend swears by Blender, almost entirely because some of it is GPLed, and I have a difficult time convincing him that right now there is no Free equivelent to high end commercial 3D graphics, not by a longshot.
I have never heard anything of the sort and I HIGHLY doubt it. The four main 3D packages are Lightwave 6.5b, 3D Studio MAX 4, Softimage XSI 1.5, and Maya 4. Most of the special effects that you see are done with Softimage and Maya. Almost everything that is rendered for film is rendered with a program created by Pixar called Photorealistic Renderman. Things that aren't rendered with it (things that need true shadows, reflections, and refrections, which don't come along as often as you might think) are rendered with eighther BMRT (free for non commercial use, and adheres to the Renderman scene description standard that Pixar invented) or Mental Ray (Very high quality renderer that comes with Softimage. The reasons that Blender has probably never been used in commercial serious production of film, television, or games are the following:
1. Poor rendering. Blender doesn't have the quality or features neccesary in its own rendering engine and does not have renderman scene output.
2. Animation features. The 'Magic Four' described above have many animation features that can aid in about every area of animation. What separates Softimage and Maya from Lightwave and 3DS is for the most part very powerful animation tools.
3. Blender's interface is wretched. It is beyond reproach and it pains me to say it, but I cannot think of how it could be any worse. It seems that features were just tacked on an buttons were thrown into the panel. It is not elegant in any way. I have used a lot of different 3d packages so anyone who replies and says 'its great when you get used to it' doesn't understand. Just because you suffered through documentation, manuals, and experimentation to finally be able to use it doesn't mean it's intuitive because it isn't. Lightwave, Maya, and 3d studio are intuitive interfaces. If you can't use Blender don't worry, it doesn't mean that you aren't cut out to do 3D.
I don't want any of this to detract from Blender, because the main reason it isn't used in high end production is that it doesn't matter that it is free. When stuff needs to be done, and done well, the people under the gun reach for the best tool and Blender isn't it. Maya unlimited costs $16,000 per license. Blender is a low-end program, and could be a good one at that. Magazines and websites are starting to pay attention to it as they should, but just because (some) of Blender is GPL doesn't make it the best thing out there. Maybe if it stays around as long as the other programs mentioned here it will aproach the same functionality. Most have been through about least 8 very major revisions, and each revision usually takes at least a year with a full team 10+ people working on it. The exception is Lightwave which is worked on by a very small team but manages to more than keep up because of phenomenal programmers.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I know it sounds like anti-open source tripe and that's why I hate to make the argument but its the truth. The point I am trying to make is that Blender is different from the other major open projects out there in that high end 3D graphics are constantly making leaps and bound. Linux is gaining on MS because it is moving fast while MS is not. I didn't know about the python script to renderman interface and I am actually not that surprised, although I am also not surprised it isn't complete. I don't know much about the rendering quality to be honest, but I don't really like 3D studio's eighther.
Part of the reason I love lightwave, 3ds, and am starting to love Maya as I learn more about it is elegance. This is something that Blender does not have. It is the main crutch holding it back. The interface is horrible, and I don't feel there is any excuse. By engineers for engineers doesn't make sense eighther, the interface is awkward and makes accuracy difficult. I have used Lightwave, 3DS, Maya, Truespace, and Imagine and they are all much easier to work with then Blender, even Truespace.
The reason it is used so much is simply because it is free. I don't think as it stands anyone would buy it until the interface is redone.
From the Blender website: Because we have always believed in Open Source products we decided to open some parts of Blender 2.0. Also we have used some Open Source packages in the creation of Blender and we must of course give these back to the OS community. Here is a short overview of what you can expect in the near future: So I guess 'it's coming' which could mean anything really.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
It should most certainly be noted that on the website (www.blender.nl) some excellent tuturial material can be found. With these a new user should be able to master the basics of Blender (which is quite an ellaborate program) in a couple of weeks. Trying to learn the program by trying random key/mouse combination is a pain (believe me, I've tried it, there wasn't much documentation available a couple of years ago).
:]
About the question if there has been done any professional work with Blender: yes there has been, and there will be. Not only used by NaN but also used as teaching material for future generations of 3D artists, this tool could quite well set a new standard to 3D modelling and game creation.
After having used the program for around 3 years and heard many many user feedback, I'm quite certain of the following points:
- User interface is quite hard to learn, but pays back once you're common with it.
- *Very* quick modelling posibilities
- multiplatform
- free
- fast
- nice modular setup of UI
- bit edgy on some things, used to have some bugs which caused the program to crash. Many of them are removed right now.
- fully OpenGL (including the GUI)
I think if you're only faintly interested in 3D modelling, you should give it a try, it's worth the effort.
The book seems to be good material, although I have not bought it yet (I've seen it though). Excellent fullcolor images, clear layout, good texts. It also supports NaN ofcourse, which is generally a good thing
This is a replacement signature.
I think No Starch Press does a good job of making Linux applications accessible to non-technical/creative users. Yes, there's no substitute for experience, but Linux Music and Sound opened my eyes to applications on Linux that I had no idea existed, and I found The Blender Book to be very accessible. Now, I wish they would write a book on using Broadcast 2000, which was treated briefly in Linux Music and Sound. I think the press might evangelize a few users simply by having their book available at Barnes & Noble or whatever, reminding users there are free alternatives to Photoshop or Media 100, which can be out of the reach of many starving artists.
In additon, the instructions in the book are written for the layman, unlike much of the documentation included in RPMs or on websites, which seem to focus on revisions or technical feature discussions. Its about how to use the program, not how the program works or was made.
Finally, although the CDs No Starch includes with the books may not be the most up-to-date versions of the software, they are very useful for users who do not have broadband connections and may not be able to easily download large applications. Since they are all on one CD, it is trivial for a user to try many applications, finding which ones best suit his or her needs.
Somebody please, tell this machine I'm not a machine.
I agree the the Blender Book is a handy and informative tutorial and reference. I've paged through the v.1.8 and v.2.0 at the local Barnes and Noble. However, I'll be damned if I'll pay $40 US for the thing. It's not even spiral bound. There is NO pdf available (compare to the Linux Documention Project) and the material is copyrighted. Nor is Blender itself GPL at the moment.
Blender is neat and (mostly) free, but I think I'll pass on this one for awhile.
Are nice to have, but the only real way to learn *any* Graphic app, be it Photoshop, Maya, or Blender, is to sit down and play with the thing.
Just like a traditional media artist must experiment with brushes and canvas for years before producing, so must a digital artist excecise his tools.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
If you consider dxf useful, then "Yes". Also, there are export python scripts to create RenderMan and POV files.
Calli's book is great, but it's already outdated. It doesn't describe any of Blender 2.x advanced features (like the game engine) and IMHO you should consider buying the Blender manual instead (which is much more beautiful and there's also a lot of Calli's work in it - he works for NaN now).
the manual
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With the last versions of Blender, not detailed in the book, you too can design 3D games, with a geometry and physics engine (you can specify friction and gravity for example). Download the games demos & Blender and you can play those games (I think a player is on the way or even released right now), wich are really fine and professionnal. Blender may not be (or only parts of it) OpenSource, but it IS a heck of a good proggy... except that, in my opinion, the UI designer really need to be push to the blender itself ! Of course, if you do not want to pay for the book, you still can have a look on some really good tutorials on http://www.blender.nl Another thing that is really interesting in Blender is that it does NOT use ray tracing, so it IS really fast to render, and you can render a video sequence in human-scaled time.
Yeah, if you wanna be good you have to play, but explanations of the UI always speeds things up for me...
Yep, you're right you wouldn't have seen any press as Not a Number were up and running within 2 weeks with new investment. Check out the newly designed website (www.blender.nl)and download Blender 2.14 which will be released at the end of the week.