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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Generally quite good but some screenshots and documentation are based on 2,5x alpha and will not match 2.5 final, July 30, 2010
This review is from: Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 (Paperback)
First off a disclaimer. I contributed a chapter to 'The Essential Blender' which Roland edited, I also contributed the animation script 'The Beast' for which Roland adapted for his book "Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish". I also am writing a book for the upcoming Blender 2.5. So I have 'conflicts' of interest in both directions :)
As always Roland has excellent writing skills with a enjoyable style, and is a great instructor. The graphics are of high quality, and being in full color is greatly appreciated. I love the coverage of the animation system, which has received some major upgrades, and so there is a lot of new stuff to learn. It is clear that a lot of work has gone into this book, and it will make a useful addition to ones Blender book shelf.
Unfortunately there are a few things that really bug me about the book - firstly I feel the title is misleading. This book is not associated with the Blender Foundation nor is it a sequel to 'The Essential Blender', both of which seem somewhat implied by the title. The Blender Foundation contacted the publisher regarding concerns about the title, but since the book had already gone to press, the title could not be changed. Instead a disclaimer about it not being endorsed by Blender Foundation is to be included inside the book. From talking with Roland he didn't have any control over the title choice.
The title is also misleading in that there in no Blender 2.6 in the immediate future. The Blender Foundation has decided to call the next version 2.5. I think this could be quite confusing both in the near future for this coming release. But also for whatever future release is actually called 2.6 which will likely differ in some significant ways from the current release. This title error is reasonable since there was confusion on the naming and at one point it seemed to be agreed on that the upcoming release would be called 2.6.
Roland recently contacted me noting that the title had been mentioned in some threads at [...] , including one I had posted in so he feels that any concerns could/should have been addressed earlier. That is a fair point, on the other hand I feel that it should have been obvious that the title would be considered a questionable choice.
Aside from the title, there is also the issue that the book is based on an Alpha version of Blender 2.5. The interface for some tools has undergone fairly significant changes, ie the screenshots for sculpting, painting, and uv editing toolbars are all significantly changed. The multires modifier interface and possibly others have changed. Tool shortcut keys and preference options have had some changes. Indeed most of the tools and improvements of the sculpt system were not in the alpha version of Blender that this book documents.
The book however is primarily focused on other parts of Blender. So unless your interest is primarily the sculpt and paint system, or your ability to follow a tutorial where the interface does not agree exactly with the tutorial text, this is a quite good all around introduction to Blender.
Based on the content and quality I'd recommend this book, however the title issues, and using of prerelease software for screenshots I think are a disservice to the readers and could lead to some confusion.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is the book you're looking for, September 7, 2010
This review is from: Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 (Paperback)
I assume that if you're reading this you're new to Blender and are looking for a great Blender book to get you up to speed. This is the book. I hate long-winded book reviews that boil down to a few relevant sentences so I will get straight to it.
There are three good reasons to buy this book.
1. Roland Hess knows Blender inside and out having been both a Blender artist and a software developer for some of its features. You can have tremendous confidence in what he tells you and know that it will save you time and make you a productive Blender user.
2. Hess focuses like a laser beam on the most important features of Blender and there are a lot of them. He doesn't wander into things that are nice, but you may use once in the course of a year. His writing is clear and direct. He gets to the point and offers professional advice that would take you years to learn on your own. He tackles the main pillars of the Blender platform: modeling, texturing, lighting and animation. His chapter on lighting is the most coherent and useful I have ever read. In addition, he has a number of extras on his web site like great videos on texturing and modeling. You can get most of the .blend files from his site as well.
3. This book will take you beyond the basics. Even though this is billed as a beginner book, Hess isn't afraid to build into the more advanced topics. Some of the stuff he covers like texturing aren't covered half as well in so called "advanced" texts. As an experienced Blender user I can highly recommend this book to intermediate and even advanced users. You will pick up some valuable info from the book. The tutorials are not cheesy little "let's make a coffee cup" tutorials. They're first rate and if you work through them you will be learning some important Blender skills and when you're done with the tutorials you will actually have something you can be proud of.
If you are new to Blender, get this book and study it. Do the tutorials if you can. It will be valuable practice. If you're a veteran Blender user and want to get up to speed with the totally new Blender interface and some of the new features, get this book. The proposition is simple: you can spend 6 months hacking away at Blender and just scratch the surface or you can get this book and spend a few weeks studying it and spend the next 6 months building dazzling CG.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book, must be a diligent student., October 31, 2010
This review is from: Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I recently got this book as I was trying to learn Blender by myself with the help of videos I found online.
To start with, this book covers the newest version of blender 2.54 beta (as of this moment) which is very different from the past version, user interface that is , this book helped me a lot in that respect.
The book has plenty of pictures to help you get a clearer view or you can also visit : [...]
The book consists of 404 pages.
Pros:
covers all areas from downloading and installing blender to creating models, animation, scenes etc.
Pictures in the book are all in color. :)
The author takes you from creating a single flower to creating a full blown scene step by step.
Cons:
Later on the author assumes you have memorized plenty of shortcuts to do things in blender so if you have a bad memory like me, you will have to go back to remember how to do stuff.
Shortcut commands should be bold to make them easier to search for.
In the end, the book is good, I gave it 4 stars because I think it could have been a bit clearer explaining things. If you are a rookie or completely new to 3D modeling, this book along with Blenders online video tutorials will help you get off to a right start on things.
I managed to create my flower, vase and chair and also a small animation so I feel like I have learned a lot, in just 1 week. So I feel like its been worth the time spent on it.
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