The Blender Book 64
| The Blender Book | |
| author | Carsten Wartmann |
| pages | 311 |
| publisher | No Starch Press |
| rating | 8.5 |
| reviewer | Craig Maloney |
| ISBN | 1-886411-44-1 |
| summary | One of the best books around to learn how to use Blender, the free 3D modelling and animation suite from Not A Number. |
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.
Perfect example of the lack of documentation (Score:2)
Well.. (Score:1)
I'm not sure what other part of "faster" you want; Blender does pretty good at keeping up. Maya's renderer is definitely slower and a pig for memory(having taken a course at school, it would regularly devour dual P3/800s w' 256M of RAM for lunch). Of course, you don't get ray-tracing in Blender, which some people feel is important..
The only other problem is the IKA system; it's rather primitive compared to anything else. It takes a lot of practice in rigging to get anything complex going(check out Barry Bond's work, though).
My main complaints are the added cruft of the gaming system(which I'm completely uninterested in), and the fact that both Matrox and NaN blame each other for the fact that Blender hates Matrox OpenGL, leaving a poor G400 user to disable it each and every time.
Too bad (Score:1)
Online Blender Documentation in PDF/html (Score:3)
I use blender for some film projects ... (Score:2)
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 [openflick.org] (freely available under the Free Media License [openflick.org])
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
Re:Come on dude... (Score:1)
The community aspect lets you learn by playing (Score:1)
Making Blender more user friendly wouldn't hurt, but once you've acclimatised by mucking around a bit, you can start creating some quite complex, attractive models.
DS
Blender Question (Score:1)
Blender is great! However its not perfect.. (Score:1)
I have used blender for over 3 years..
Its not that hard to use, compared to something
like Maya or 3DMax.. Its actually very intuitive
once you understand how it works.. However it
does have bugs as did Animation Master and Alias
for most of the first several years the packages
were released. However what a lot of people hate about blender is it doesn't support ray-tracing,
that's a bit of a thorn in the side, there are ways to fake a lot of stuff, but its not for people who want to simulate reality. Its mostly for people who want to get stuff done quickly..
Toy Story is a perfect example of faking reality, it was entirely rendered (not ray-traced). BugsLife did contain some ray-tracing, but Gerry's Game didn't, and I'm pretty sure Shrek didn't contain a whole lot of ray-tracing.
Blender uses reflection mapping, which is excellent for simulating metals. It's lights are
not accurate but using layers you can get the effects you want. I would suggest learning how
to use surfaces instead of polygons.. The NeoGeo
guys liked polygons but their best feature is
the surface modelling.. Maybe I'll write a tutorial on it, unless ol' Carsten beat me to it.. Carsten I owe you a Heiniken!!
Anyhow, the biggest things lacking are accurate
Inverse Kinematics with surface deformation and support for texture vertices. The game engine for blender does support texture vertices and there is a rudimentary texture vertex like support using sticky vertices. You also can't import or export texture vertices. The accurate IK (ball & joint) is needed to do real character animation,
limiting Blender to just BAbylon 5 style animation, flying static things, railroad trains, rollercoasters, etc.. Non-character animation..
I take that back, it is possible but you have to use vertex interpolation (3D morphing).. Look in the book for vertex keying. There is also facial-keying support. There is a more intuitive method of producing walks (out of M&M's commercials) using vertex keying, even though its like playing with clay without a armature. See my website, the character animation in the bird was done mostly with vertex-keying and rotation-about-target and vertex selection brush (in edit mode type B twice).
Some of blenders strengths: duplication/instantiation, and the first program where you can select a number of objects that are
instants and make them duplicates, and vice versa. Lofting of surfaces is intuitive and
the same key command can be used to complete a face in polygon mode "f", for face (or fill), however you want to look at it. You can
do adobe-after effects like image sequencing
even before you have your rendering done (programmers out there will remember lazy evaluation from their LISP programming experience), blender has lazy compositing (a film strip can be a scene).
The biggest feature of blender is everything is in one file, and files are more or less forward and backward compatible, so if you have a older
version of blender, you can load newer files in
(don't hold your breath though because game blender files won't exactly show up correct in a
old 1.6 version of blender).. Blender also
has python support (MEL users in Maya would respect this).. No feature for creating MEL like scripts from a sequence of performed commands..
Animation scenes can be copied (the entire scene,
including objects, cameras, lights, motion),
the motion can be instanced (linked) in two
scenes, meaning you change motion in one it changes in the other.. Actually everything
is capable of being done this way. You can have
material attributes on objects change over time.
The buttons used for moving and zooming in the
3D view can be used in the interface to zoom..
If you need to enter precise values into a
parameter, hold the shift key down and click on
the entry (this is true of most all parameters)..
And the list goes on..
The list goes on..
-Kiernan
////
(out of money??) (Score:1)
I think they are simmering on the game engine..
Kiernan
Re:Not intuitive? (Score:1)
If you want intuitive get Truespace (aka Caligari which has been around for almost two decades [see
amiga and turnkey systems]).. 3DMax is
only useful with plugins, without it its worse
than blender. I would rather use Lightwave than 3DMax but lightwave lacks perspective modelling,
something that few 3D apps have like Maya and
3Design (TDI Explore), Softimage..
3Dmax is only the most pirated 3D app on the net,
that's why its more popular.. Blender is free,
and people instantly assume its not useful for anything. Its practically the fastest rigid body
modelling program and it does quite well for
organic modelling as well.. Its not meant to be a all around 3D app like Max.. It was first designed to be a game design kit for NeoGeo (the
internal copy can toast Playstation games).
Ton released it as a 3D app first because the game side was a bit proprietary and the source
code a bit unstructured because it was designed
In-house to make games and multimedia presentations. NeoGeo decided not to make games,
they decided to make multimedia presnetations and
Ton went off on 60K of his own money to develop
the package fro a year.. Then he took a vacation
in greece, for three weeks and wrote the
manual. He then tried to make money
selling C-keys and the manual.. That didn't
work so well.. Once he got angel investment of
5 million, he decided to make the package completely free and bought together some of his
friends from past projects to help him out
in making NaN into a startup.. He hired 10 engineers, and is supposedly developing the game engine..
I know Ton and the crew, a bit of a black sheep,
though, I did attend game blender with 30 others,
and we did have fun and saw a lot of the early
blender and NeoGeo work.. Ton was first a artist
before he became a programmer, he painted
in his youth up until he was 30, and then started
NeoGeo.. He is very talented an considering
he made most of blender by himself, considering
the complexity of the interface and considering that 3DMax used some kind fo canned library
and was developed by 10s of engineers for Autodesk.. The comparison is a bit unfair, but
I'm not backing out on what a terrible interface 3DMax has, the fact that instead of using construction history that Maya has, they use stack modification, it really only appeals to
engineers who just learned how to art, and not
to the general population..
-Kiernan
Re:PLEASE TON DON'T OPEN SOURCE BLENDER (Score:1)
angel investment last april, if you do the
math that's enough for two years of
development. They are working on the game
engine and B@rt told me while I was at
gameblender conference that they want to go for
the virtual world market.. Allowing game designers to connect blender games together..
When you go to the blender site, you are not
talking to Ton's crew anymore, you are talking to B@rt and the business side of NaN which is
about 6 business people.. The engineers are in Eindenhoven working on the full gameblender..
I don't think he plans to open source it,
its still too popular..
-Kiernan
Re:Actual use? (Score:1)
The blender UI is a two handed thing, you need one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse. Gestures and keystrokes get you in and out of all the different modes and functions. As for modeling features I will say blender is currently lacking althought it is catching up, it's also much younger than Max, lightwave, maya etc., it still has a way to go. the other nice thing about the ui is that it's totally customizable and the gui setup is saved in your one file with everything else.
Once again, I'll say it, please try to learn the blender interface before calling it obtuse and impossible and discarding it as a very useful tool, because that's what it is. It's even useful to 3D modelers who mostly work in other programs.
Re:OT, but.. POV-Ray! (Score:1)
You have got to be kidding me. Have you ever used Blender? You know you can do Python scripting in Blender, if you want to do scripting?
simlar interfaces? (Score:1)
Re:Actual use? (Score:2)
Re:Actual use? (Score:3)
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.
good book, but nothing you cant find on the net (Score:1)
the only problem that i had with it was that it seemed to be a collection of tutorials, and a lot of them looked very similar to ones that i had already seen on the internet. that being said, it is convinient to have a hardcopy of the tutorials, so that you dont have to switch windows (or desktops). they also seemed to be well written, which cant always be said about tutorials (hey, they do it for free).
all in all, if you have the money, and are willing to spend it, it would be a good purchase. but the blender communitiy is very strong, and you can probably find enough to at least help you get started for free, online.
just my two cents
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:1)
No doubt NaN has put a LOT of effort into their design of the UI, i.e. it's deliberate.
It isn't that difficult to understand, once people understand the 3 or 4 big conventions that are used. It's those that are the stumbling block.
I too picked up Blender perhaps a year ago, played with it, and couldn't figure out how to do anything. But a couple hours and a couple of chapters into this book, I was rather productive, and could then experiment and figure out lots of the rest.
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:1)
> be it Photoshop, Maya, or Blender, is to sit
> down and play with the thing.
Normally, I'd agree with you - but Blender's
interface is *extremely* arcane...to the point
where probably half the people who try it give
up in disgust having failed to figure out
ANYTHING.
OTOH, people who *do* 'grok' the interface seem
to *love* it and are very vocal in saying so.
I'm sceptical that this book will help and I
*really* wish the effort that has evidently gone
into creating it had been spent on improving the
interface such that the book would have been
unnecessary.
Blender is free - but *NOT* Free...that's a pain.
Re:free as in beer? (Score:1)
'free' as in 'free beer'
Re:No, don't worry about 2.x (Score:1)
Read the book. Carsten rocks.
-----------------------------------------
Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey...
No, don't worry about 2.x (Score:4)
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
--------------------------------------------
Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey...
Re:Blender Question (Score:2)
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 [sourceforge.net] file format is just as "open" as DXF, retains more attributes, and is smaller, too.
k., turning caffeine into animations since 1989
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Rubbish. (Partly.) (Score:2)
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.
Re:No, don't worry about 2.x (Score:1)
POVRay, Blender (Score:1)
Blender... (Score:3)
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:3)
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.
OT, but.. POV-Ray! (Score:3)
For those that want it, there's a popular (shareware? I've never used it) graphical system for Windows called Moray [stmuc.com]. 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 [irtc.org], 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 [oyonale.com], 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 [indiana.edu]
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. ;)
learning software (Score:1)
cheers,
metric
Re:learning software (Score:1)
metric
Re:Actual use? (Score:1)
I have seen him work with blender very often and i am still amazed at the speed of this program.
Not only does it render very fast, but it is allso a very fast modeler.
He has worked on two 35mm films with blender. the hires output was printed to 35 MM film.
One was "The Red stuff" by Leo the boer.
a film about the early years of russian space exploration for which he adapted paintings bij a russian kosmonaut to stunning moving 3d scenes.
Village voice about the red stuff: "The Red Stuff would make a resonant double bill with Space Cowboys."
the other was "god is my copilot" a film about religion on an american aircraft carrier. a pilot looks up into the starry night before launching an attack- stars are done in blender.
He has allso done a lot of television work with blender
Check out his work at
http://www.captainvideo.nl/rob/blender/
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:1)
Re:Actual use? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Actual use? (Score:2)
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.
Tuturials (Score:2)
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
Re:OT, but.. POV-Ray! (Score:1)
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:1)
The program relies so heavily on hotkeys that I have to wonder if they obfuscated it on purpose just to sell more books
Blender book... no PDF, no GPL (Score:2)
Blender is neat and (mostly) free, but I think I'll pass on this one for awhile.
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:1)
good book (Score:1)
----
Blender has a sweet interface (Score:1)
Not intuitive? (Score:1)
Hmm, you know, that's the way I feel when I use Blender. However, I'll let you in on a little secret - it has nothing to do with the complexity of the program. With all due respect, 3D Studio MAX 3 is still a *little* more complex (and powerful) than blender, and yet, it has a very intuitive interface I could learn within minutes, even without prior knowledge in 3d-animation/modeling.
Hmm, did you notice that the only source of income they get from distributing Blender for free is from selling a book that describes how to use the friggin program? OK, it sounds a little too much like a conspiracy theory, but it's an interesting thought. A new way of software distribution - make people download it for free, but make the interface so weird and unintuitive so people will have to pay for documentation.
Books about Graphic Software... (Score:4)
Just like a traditional media artist must experiment with brushes and canvas for years before producing, so must a digital artist excecise his tools.
Re:Blender book... no PDF, no GPL (Score:1)
Re:Well.. (Score:1)
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:1)
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:2)
I remeber when Lightwave came out with MetaNURBS. Many people were bashing it because it wasn't really NURBS, but was instead subdivision based. Now, everyone has realized the problems with NURBS (complexity issues) and is racing to implement Sub-division modelling.
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:1)
So essentially, you'll learn best from playing with the tool, but I suggest having the book on hand to guide you.
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Actual use? (Score:1)
Re:Books about Graphic Software... (Score:1)
Uh, that would be me. A friend, who is a 3-D graphics expert, suggested I give it a try, and I found the experience completely frustrating. Then again, the last 3-D package I had any success with was CAD 3-D for the Atari ST. That was a neat little program; pity it never got ported off the Atari.
Re:Too bad (Score:1)
Re:Blender Question (Score:2)
Re:Too bad (Score:1)
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A bit outdated (Score:3)
the manual [blender.nl]
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3D realtime (ie games) creation too ! (Score:2)
The Blender Manual (Score:1)
I am not artistic at all. I purchased "The Official Blender 2.0 Guide" (not the "Blender Book") and was able to create some simple 3D objects.
The book has a lot of detail, and kind of a strange columned layout, and was a little hard for me to follow at times. It did make it possible for me to actually use Blender which was more than I was getting before the book. The book still doesn't cover anything about the game engine though.
Don't need documentation (Score:1)
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The only way to get good at it you mean... (Score:2)
Re:A bit outdated: Don't buy it (Score:1)
good book (Score:1)
blender rocks
Re:Too bad (Score:2)