Bounce, Tumble, and Splash!: Simulating the Physical World with Blender 3D [Paperback]

Tony Mullen (Author), Erwin Coumans (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470192801 | ISBN-13: 978-0470192801 | Publication Date: June 30, 2008 | Edition: 1

Learn all about Blender, the premier open-source 3D software, in Bounce, Tumble, and Splash!: Simulating the Physical World with Blender 3D. You will find step-by-step instructions for using Blender’s complex features and full-color visual examples with detailed descriptions of the processes. If you’re an advanced Blender user, you will appreciate the sophisticated coverage of Blender’s fluid simulation system, a review Blender’s latest features, and a guide to the Bullet physics engine, which handles a variety of physics simulations such as rigid body dynamics and rag doll physics.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Defy the Rules of 3D and Get Physical with Blender

Bounce, Tumble, and Splash! is the only book to cover the advanced simulation features of Blender, the premier open source 3D software that is a must-have for your animation toolbox. Expert author Tony Mullen provides you with the real-world know-how to create dynamic, highly realistic images of flames, cloth, hair and other physical phenomena from the world around you. This unique guide will help you push the boundaries of 3D and take your Blender skills to the limit.

You'll discover the very latest Blender physics and dynamics tools, including simulations for soft body, fluid, rigid body, and rag doll dynamics. Hone the skills to create stormy seas, flowing hair, or fiery flames with the sophisticated coverage of advanced Blender features included in this beautiful, full-color guide.

• Set particle parameters, define systems, and discover new Blender particle functionality

• Explore the new cloth simulation, improved tools for soft bodies, and the Demolition Python script
• Style the latest look in hair with strand particles, new styling tools, and new features for hair and fur
• Make a splash with fluid simulations and modifiers
• Use the Blender Game Engine and the Bullet physics library to create rigid body physics simulations

• Build realistic trees and plants with Blender scripts and third-party tools

Create dynamic hair effects using hair styling and soft body simulation for particles

Use the improved soft bodies to create jiggling, bouncing objects

Valuable Companion CD
Access the CD for Blender 2.46 installers for Windows and Macintosh and a source tarball for users of Linux and other flavors of Unix. You'll also find a variety of .blend files to support the projects in the book.

About the Author

Tony Mullen, PhD, teaches at Tsuda College, Tokyo, where his courses include modeling and animation with Blender as well as the Python programming language. Mullen has been a cartoonist and an illustrator and has a broad background in CG-related work. His screen credits include writer, codirector, or lead animator on several short films, including the award-winning Gustav Braüstache shorts. He is also the author of Introducing Character Animation with Blender (Sybex).

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Sybex; 1 edition (June 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470192801
• ISBN-13: 978-0470192801
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #725,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a lecturer in computer science at Tsuda College, Tokyo and an independent filmmaker. I'm interested in animation of all kinds, but especially in CG animation using Blender, the open source 3D modeling and animation package.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You need this book. Definitely., July 18, 2008

By 

Renato Perini (Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bounce, Tumble, and Splash!: Simulating the Physical World with Blender 3D (Paperback)

I ordered this book without much hesitation, once I discovered Tony was writing it. Having read his past book "Introducing Character Animation with Blender", I ordered this one without thinking twice. Now that this book is in my hands, I can't regret for my choice. The overall quality of the publication is impressive. Not only for the contents but also for the technical production: fine paper with color quality images. It's not common these days. The book is composed of 400 pages (7 chapters) plus an appendix and they are:

Chapter 1 - Re-creating the World: An overview
This chapter describes those tools and techniques that are not well explained elsewhere by the Blender literature. It covers topics like material creation with nodes, transparency, subsurface scattering, sky maps (sphere maps and angular maps) and those tools that can be used to fake physics, when accurate simulations are not necessary at all but you still need a "quick and dirty" method to achieve an effect efficiently and with sufficient speed (an example: water simulation with surface tension displacement or cloth simulation using a displacement modifier). Obviously, these techniques are useful for everyone involved using Blender. No doubt. Much appreciated.

Chapter 2 - The Nitty-Gritty on particles.
The first thing I thought after reading this chapter was:"WOW". *ALL* the latest development on Blender particles is covered here: emitters, reactors, positioning particles on a grid, chained physics systems, various types of visualizations, force fields (harmonic, magnetic, vortex, spherical, wind, etc.)
You will be guided through the creation of a convincing fire material using clouds and stencils textures! All is explained gradually and with great style. Highly informative.

Chapter 3 - Getting flexible with Soft Bodies and Cloth.
As you can expect, all that has been developed is covered here: baking, how to animate a spring, force fields and collision, using curves with softbodies (it will teach you how to animate a chain using an empty), stress maps, how to produce a fantastic cube of gelatin using lattices, simulating clothes. It will even explain how to use the demolition plugin to produce a window breaking in a spiderweb pattern!

Chapter 4 - Hair Essentials: The Long and Short of Strand Particles.
How to produce hair, fur and grass. After covering the basics, this chapter will guide you through the creation of an hairstyle on top of a practice head. One of my preferred chapters.

Chapter 5 - Making a Splash with Fluids.
One of the most interesting part of Blender: the fluid simulator. All is covered here: domains, resolution, inflow, outflow, fluid object intersection, kinematic viscosity, obstacles (considering animation, of course).

Chapter 6 - Bullet Physics and the Blender Game Engine.
One of the less undestood parts of Blender is certainly the game engine. So I was favourably impressed when I have seen an entire chapter dedicated to it. This chapter describes all the tools needed to produce hard bodies simulations, using the game engine and the powerfullness of the Bullet Physics Library. Actors, actuators, IPO curves, rigid body simulations with IPO curves, joints, ragdolls ... This is material that will be probably new to most Blender users.

Chapter 7 - Imitation of Life: Simulating Trees and Plants.
This chapter explores a few tools that can be used for creating trees and vegetation in general, like the L-System, ngPlant and Ivy Generator.

Each chapter is independent, so you don't need to read the book from the first page, with the exception of chapter 4, who strongly depends by the two previous chapters. This book is of course not intended for beginners. This book is completely updated with the latest Blender development and it covers the actual stable release. This is the documentation Blender needs. I highly recommend this book. It is well written, well presented, well structured and, most importantly, it's definitely fun!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for beginners, March 14, 2009

By 

mark benedict "Mark B" (Dayton, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bounce, Tumble, and Splash!: Simulating the Physical World with Blender 3D (Paperback)

This book is well written and beautifully illustrated. That high illustration quality is more important than you might think as in other Blender books the images are so poor it is hard to read the many many settings that are required to work through the tutorials.

I found this book to not be kidding that it isnt aimed at beginners (it seems there is no Blender resource aimed at a thorough understanding of the interface). It would have been nice if they had mentioned that on the front or back cover instead of page 16 in the introduction. It took me thirty minutes to decipher what was meant by "Create your first texture for your ocean surface material and map it using the Empty object". While all the tutorials seem to work, sometimes too little is mentioned about why you are doing certain things. Again, if not a Blender expert expect it to take a long time to get through each example. I suppose you will learn in the event you are successful, but I was sorely tempted to give up in certain cases.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The one-stop guide to all of the Blender's physical reality, October 28, 2008

By 

H. Yamasaki - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bounce, Tumble, and Splash!: Simulating the Physical World with Blender 3D (Paperback)

This is a great book. The quality of the print, color illustrations (although they sometimes don't do justice to the original RGB artwork), the bundled DVD with examples and scripts... everything is top-notch.

The text is easy to understand, and illustrations give you a very clear picture of what you need to do, and where. It covers all (and I really mean all) aspects of physics simulation: materials, shaders, hair, soft bodies, cloth, water... everything. It presents everything in a well systematized way, so you can't get lost.

The only thing that bothered my a little, is that author makes references to previous chapters, so if you're jumping around the book, you may find you need to read a few chapters more than you thought you'd need. But that's okay, because anything you read in this book is good learning material.

For an aspiring Blender newbie, this book is, probably, the quickest way of getting up to speed, and even getting the hang of some pretty advanced stuff.