The Essential Blender: Guide to 3D Creation with the Open Source Suite Blender
£30.99
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.
Needs more work... - This book falls into the usual trap for books trying to explain 3D graphics - greyscale images. Some are so vague, they re indecipherable.Worse, many of the graphics are so small as to be readable (I suspect) only with a microscope. I gave up trying to set my parameters to those shown in a shown figure while following a tutorial.The features covered seem thorough - remember this is the essentials of Blender - it s just a pity the dreadful presentation of the pictures lets the whole endeavour down.
Great information - Shame about the diddy diagrams - I would love to give this book five stars - the written content really is very good. It makes no claims to be a complete manual and what it does cover is more than a beginner needs to get started.Examples are clear and the book is sufficiently modular in its composition that you can dip into the bits you need for reference - you do not have to read, understand and inwardly digest every page before you can do anything.It s not expensive, it s easy to follow and it s very, very informative and it would be a five star book if it weren t screen shots. As any blender user knows, the interface is large and complicated and attractively designed in muted tones. So WHAT ON EARTH where the designers thinking when displaying them in tiny 5cm wide boxes? The paper on which the book is printed exacerbates the problem as its rough finish (nice normally) means the image reproduction comes out rather dark - flattening all those nice muted colours even further. Fortunately, as I said, the text normally is clear enough to suffice and I still would heartily recommend this book. Just a shame about those images...
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!
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.