Customer Reviews

Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines

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This book has excellent goals and seems to be laid out in a logical fashion. It does approach some good topics for a beginner with some experience in Blender. However, the devil is in the details, and on that front this book has missed completely.

I'll use the Hand Gun exercise as an example. When modeling the hand grip details, the author unnecessarily prompts the user to created a new mesh on page 60, rather than simply adding a couple of edge loops to the existing mesh. This mesh is an exruded "U" shape. He closes the front end on pgs 68 & 69. On page 77, he declares this mesh "done!" To that point, he had never advised to close the top or back of the mesh, instead just focusing on details on the front and sides ( with an unnecessary use of the "Spin" tool on page 68 that results in some ugly jagged edges once subsurf is applied ). In order to not have the mesh look a complete disaster, a good 45 minutes of hand-stitching was required. This could have been saved if the detail extrusions on previous pages had been made to a complete object rather than parts of an object. He then declares the entire _model_ done, without ever having added any detail to the rest of the gun. The result is a completely out-of-place smooth detailed hand grip on a Tron-esque ( original 80's CG Tron ) cludgy flat gun.

Screenshots showing details never explained are everywhere. Tool descriptions are glossed over, leaving the reader to fumble around at best to try to achieve the results described. Steps are left out entirely. He briefly alludes to avoiding triangles in your mesh early on in the book ( a very good piece of advice to avoid ugly subsurf results and bad deformations ), then proceeds to use triangles all over the place. He uses the "Hooks" procedure apparently just because it's there, when some simple cursor snapping would have saved the publisher several pages and the user several minutes.

While brevity is appreciated in some respects, and I understand that these are just simple examples, SO very much is left for the reader to fumble around with. The author could have taken more care to explain the steps he was using to achieve the non-trivial results shown in many sections. Curve editing is covered as "make it look like this". Mapping a set of tubes to follow the curve's shape is covered as "make it look like this". Then pages and pages and pages are devoted to some very simple extrusion modeling.

His "steampunk spacecraft" and "transforming robot" sound very grand. The results shown are utterly horrible. Blocky unrefined models. Ridiculous texture applications. Again, over-detailed in some areas? Completely haphazard and slap-dash in others. If you were to just literally follow the steps he outlines, you would get something that in no way approximates the results shown.

The publishing quality is to say the least sub-standard. The images are fuzzed-out, low contrast greyscales. You'll find yourself peering at a particular screenshot for 30 seconds trying to figure out which vertices are selected before realizing that it's absurd that you have to.

I can say that there are a few interesting ideas covered, but you really have to use your own imagination to figure out how they would be used to create an effect that's in any way pleasing or even reasonable. And, in many cases, how the tools actually work at all.

My advice? Save your money. This book isn't worth it.

Bender3D is one of the most popular 3D modelers. It is open source and has been used in the making of many cinema productions, and in the development of many computer games.

This book, Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines, tells you how to construct machines that doesn't exist in our world, but belong to sci-fi or steampunk fantasy, and have amazing capabilities.

This title is focused to those that already know how to model with Blender, and uses a project-based learning approach. You learn following several projects, that are like tutorials, and you learn the workflows, the tricks, and everything in this easy way.

The author also gives you some hints on how is the usual workflow in a software (games) company. You are given some concept art, and you model using them as a reference. These reference images can be downloaded from Packt Publishing's site.

The book illustrates its lessons with 3 projects: a handgun, a steam punk spacecraft, and a transforming robot.

As you read, you are introduced to the different modeling techniques, their advantages and disadvantages for every project.

In the first project, you learn how to model from a reference image. You'll also get deep into YafaRay. If you remember, YafRay was the renderer used in the other book by Allan Brito. This application is now called YafaRay. They changed its name because of a complete rewrite and improvement of the source code.

YafaRay runs, like Blender, on Windows, Linux, and Mac Os X, and can integrate with Blender.

And what about texturing? You are told everything: advanced UV mapping with Blender, the use of procedural textures and image-based textures, layered UV layouts, UV map edition, exporting texture maps to modify them in graphics edition applications (like GIMP).

In the chapter about the spacecraft, special effects using particles are explained, and we get deeper into YafaRay's use of materials and lighting.

The last chapter may be very exciting for animators, because it's about how to build a transforming robot. In this chapter, we switch to LuxRender for rendering engine.

LuxRender can pause and resume a render, even resume the render in another computer, and also runs in all major platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux).

Like with YafaRay, the use of materials and lighting in LuxRender is also explained, and even more: render and animate lights, make videos, and change some aspects of the final result while it's still being rendered (a feature of LuxRender).

The language is plain and you can notice how the author masters the art of teaching, because it reads fast and everything is understandable.

If you got the other book by Allan Brito ("Blender 3D Architecture, Buildings, And Scenery"), or if you already have some experience with Blender, this book will help you to start building sci-fi machines, and tell you techniques that you will surely use in your own 3D projects

This book aims to cover the use of Blender in creating "Incredible Machines" which are described by the author, Allan Brito, as "a kind of machine that doesn't exist in our world, has amazing capabilities, and has a great sci-fi look". If you aren't a sci-fi fan don't be put off by the description, this book has a lot to offer away from the world of Spaceships and Robots.

A very, very minimal knowledge of Blender is assumed and the author provides some information in the introductory chapter for complete beginners. If you have modeled anything in Blender before you should have no trouble at all with this book! Also there is plenty for more experienced Blender users and the book can be used as a quick reference.

The introduction is informative and gives a basic outline of the aims of this book which is aimed at those who want to produce pictures, 3D models or videos of mechanical objects. The book will also help Blender artists looking to integrate YafaRay and LuxRender into their workflow.

The book is split into three sections, each detailing a separate project from start to finish. The projects increase in complexity as the book progresses and every new tool or concept is thoroughly explained as needed.

The first project is to model a handgun and a basic overview of the different modeling techniques is given. The author gives a very good introduction to polygon modeling and the step by step examples are easy to follow. I must make one criticism at this stage, the book itself is excellent quality however the pictures are a bit on the dark side. Even so, it did not cause a problem for me when reading through the book and I think it is a minor issue.

After going through the modeling process there is a good introduction to the Yafaray rendering engine and how to set up a studio environment in Blender. Basic lighting and materials are also covered at this stage.

Upon rendering an image of the handgun we then move on to the Steampunk Spaceship. After explaining what Steampunk means for those who, like me, didn't know, this project takes the basic skills from the first project and uses them in a bigger project, explaining and introducing new methods and concepts as needed. UV mapping is explained in detail and there is a chapter on creating flares and plasma rays with Blender Particles. After this more advanced rendering with Yafaray is covered.

The final project introduces LuxRender and a spot of animation with the Transforming Robot! Subdivision modeling is introduced as well as modifiers such as the bevel and array modifiers. There are some examples on how to use LuxRender materials and lights as well as an explanation of unbiased rendering.

Animation is quickly covered and the book finishes with how to do post production, including examples of common problems that need to be sorted out in the postproduction phase.

Overall this is an excellent and useful book, describing how to model, texture, animate and render with Blender in a comprehensive and understandable way. If you want to get to grips with project workflow, mechanical modeling or are just looking to pick up some tips on how to improve your modeling methods I would definitely recommend this book.

This is an excellent introduction to modeling with Blender, for people interested in industrial design, game design, or just if you want to design and model your own space ship, airplane or favorite car. Allan Brito not only takes you through a tutorial on modeling a handgun, a spacecraft and a transforming robot, he also shows you how to apply materials and how to animate such things as the engine exhausts, and how to attach materials. There is also a thorough explanation of how to install Yafaray, so that you can do much higher quality photo-realistic ray-tracings or renderings.

This is a wonderful book and is clearly written and easy to follow, despite the occasional English errors. The book only requires that you have a basic knowledge of some of the most rudimentary tools of Blender. In other words, it is not a guide of the many tools of Blender, rather it is an explanation of how you would go about working on some modeling projects, using Blender. It is a guide for how to understand the "work-flow" that you need to do a model thoroughly, in Blender.