Foundation Blender Compositing [Paperback]

Roger D. Wickes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1430219769 | ISBN-13: 978-1430219767 | Publication Date: August 7, 2009 | Edition: 1

This is the only book that shows how Blender can be used to create video effects in post-production. Blender is a popular open source modeling, animation, and rendering tool, and while recent Blender books are selling well, but they tend to focus on the basics or only on animation. This book addresses the next step.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Roger Wickes is a Producer, Project Manager, and IP Portfolio Manager for commercials, pre-visualizations, games, training materials, and other assets of the creative enterprise. He has authored large parts of the Blender on-line wiki documentation for compositing nodes, animation, and video sequence editing, has used Blender for over ten years, and is an active member of the community. He has managed over a hundred software professionals and consulted for Fortune 100 companies on various aspects of software development and business process, and his company produced some of the first Internet-based business software.

Product Details

• Paperback: 487 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (August 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430219769
• ISBN-13: 978-1430219767
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #850,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow! Just what I have been waiting for!!!, August 8, 2009

By 

Joel Godin (Venice, Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Foundation Blender Compositing (Paperback)

Blender is an amazing 3D software with incredible potential for Film/Video effects, compositing, and editing, and now a great book to explain it all.
If you're making movies, full featured films, or just exciting videos for the internet and you want to do it yourself you have got to get Blender (free) and this book.
Roger has written this information in such a way that makes it an easy read, an easily remembered instructional format by associating what is being done and why it is being done, and a touch of history as to how it has been done, that really makes it hard to put this book down.
I wish more hi-tech writers would write in this non-dry style as Roger has.
Roger is one of those few writers that obviously thought out before-hand the best way to get an idea or instruction across in the best method possible and not just how to get another book out on the shelves.
I swear if I had to write this book it would have taken 10 years to cover all the information that is covered here in an easily understandable way.
After reading this book I'll be using Blender instead of all those other expensive programs I've used in the past such as After Effects, Morph Age, Shake, and even Final Cut. Blender can do it all and now I have a road map on understanding how it can be done.
This book should have been called 'Film/Video/Animation/Special EFX Bible'.
At $31 this is the best books I've bought in a long time.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars most extensive resource for editing and compositing video using blender, December 10, 2009

By 

lyndon "lyndon" (south africa) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Foundation Blender Compositing (Paperback)

as a professional 3d artist with more than a decade of experience in maya, max and now blender; i have been searching for an open source alternative to a compositing application rivaling after effects, for linux. this book has, theoretically, provided me with the most viable solution yet, and has left me with a sense of accomplishment in completing it.
however, as i do feel that a book of this type is not just purely about the text contained therein, but also about the exercises and the accompanying graphics for those exercises i can't give it a full five stars. the exercises are pretty basic and simply just tools to demonstrate a methodology (this is not, however, to the disadvantage of the book in general). if you can look past the mediocre screen captures and other graphics this book will work wonders for you.
i personally feel that, as a visually oriented person (as i'd imagine most people reading this book will be), it is easier for me to remember a concept or idea if i have a strong visual representing that idea. the visuals in this book are not what i would consider to be 'strong imagery'. assets are reused across indirectly related/unrelated exercises which makes some concepts difficult to recall in retrospect. this generally means, for me, having to re-read through a chapter or two again at a later stage.
all that said, i thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and learned many, many new concepts and workflows that i can now confidently incorporate into my own workflow and achieve my original objective of replacing my old proprietary compositing suite with blender.
many thanks to the author!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Any computer video producer needs this, November 17, 2009

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Foundation Blender Compositing (Paperback)

A DVD is included with this in-depth survey of how to use the Blender program to maxim advantage. It's the world's foremost open source computer graphics digital content authoring system and has been used to create cartoons, shorts, TV commercials, and more. The software and references on the companion DVD support a step-by-step approach to animating elements and sequencing shots with audio. Any computer video producer needs this.