Blender v1.5 Manual

This book is the a great introduction for 3D newbies and a great resource for any 3D artist who would like to become intimately familiar with Blender. The book is is a work of art by itself and I highly recommend it. Read below for the full review. Blender v1.5 Manual author Ton Roosendaal pages publisher Not a Number rating 9/10 reviewer Del Simmons ISBN 90-76519-01-3 summary A great book for Linux fans who want to get started with 3D graphics or for 3D artists who want to get to know Blender better. A wealth of information for experts and newbies alike, put together like a work of art itself.

I have always been interested in 3D modeling and rendering but never took the time to learn the interface for any of the popular modellers. I wanted to play around with animation without spending a bundle on software. And most importantly, I wanted a sophisticated product that ran on my Linux box. So I was thrilled when I first came across Blender. Blender is a professional modelling and animation environment. As with any sophisticated 3D program, the interface can at first seem rather complex. This book was the key to unlocking the power of the Blender interface for me.

Ton really gives you what you need to get started. In Part 1 he describes how to install Blender for Linux, FreeBSD or SGI and then jumps right in to a description of the Object Hierarchy of the data structures and then a hands on tutorial of basic editing commands. Luckily he has made the install very easy, so all you need to do is download, uncompress and set one environment variable. You have to love that.

In the Basic Editing section you will find information on all the standard 3D operations. You'll learn how to move, rotate and scale objects within your scene. How to apply materials and textures to your objects. You'll also be taught how to save and load your data files. If you're already an experienced 3D artist then this will be a handy chapter for learning how to translate these basic functions into the Blender way of doing things. Blender's interface is definately unique in many ways and might take a small amount of getting used to. Once you familiarize yourself with the basic functions, though, I think you'll find it to be a very efficient interface for design work. If you're a newbie like me, then this section also serves as a nice introduction to these basic modelling concepts as well.

The second section of the book is called "Do it yourself" and is where the real power of Blender starts to become apparent to the reader. Topics covered inlude things such as View Modes and Presets working with Layers, 3D View Maipulation and many other useful items. This section also contains a Coffeecup Tutorial and a Flying Logo Tutorial that gave me a true sense of accomplishment when I finished. For an experienced artist, these might be laughable but I really enjoyed doing them and it taught me alot about Blender and 3D in general.

Flying Logo Tutorial Results ~ 69K

In part three you really start to get into the guts of the application and you can really tell that Ton was involved heavily in the development of this application. He conveys an understanding of not only design of the application but also why it was designed that way. He goes into detail about the data structure that Blender uses and explains the relationships between Objects, ObData and Materials. He also goes into a much more complete discussion of the interface of the program and the structure of the many available menus. This is a section that makes you glad that this book was written by someone who understands what goes on under Blender's hood.

Part four goes into a higher level of detail in discussing diferent types of objects including The Mesh, Curves and Surfaces, including Bezier, Nurbs and how to model with curves. He also covers Metaballs, Font usage, Lattice usage. I really enjoyed this section because it allowed me to start creating scenes that didn't look like diagrams out of a geometry textbook. (Spheres and cubes get old real quick!). Again, this section will be a valuable reference for experienced artist, and it also serves as a great introduction to these concepts to us newbies.

In the next few sections of the book there are chapters on Animation and using Ika's to create skeletons for your objects, enabling complicated motion in animation sequences. He also covers some Special Animation Techniques including the use of Motion Paths, and Object Tracking. This section allows you to bring your objects to life. After reading these sections I was able to create this humble creation. I thought it was pretty good for someone with literally three evenings reading this manual and no previous 3D experience at all. Please keep the flames to a minimum. :-)

Del's Flower Fly-by

• Small version (200x150) ~ 344K
• Large version (400x300) ~ 1MB

The rest of the book is an incredible Reference to every option, every menu and every button in Blender. I can't see any rock that Ton has left unturned when documenting Blender's interface. Since he was so heavily involved in the development, he definately knows what features are available.

The last thing I want to make sure you know about this book is that it is a work of art itself. It is beatifully decorated with artwork on almost every page and the design of the book is such that reading it is really a pleasure. I commend Ton and his team on a job well done and I highly recommed this title for anyone interested in Blender specifically or for someone who would like to get started with 3D design.

Purchase this book at the Blender Shop and help support the continued development of this incredible program.