Customer Reviews

The Official Blender 2.3 Guide: Free 3D Creation Suite for Modeling, Animation, and Rendering

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Blender is the most powerful 3D modeling and design program I've had the fortune of using. NOt being able to afford to spend thousands, the price is fantastic. But it's really hard to get rolling on it without good documentation, since the interface is far from intuitive or easy to grasp--it's unlike anything you've ever seen. A manual is really a basic.

Fortunately, the 2.3 guide provides everything you need to not only get started, but learn how to understand the software and figure out how to do more advanced things on your own. Most astounding about this is that the book was written along the same lines as the software--through an open source, community effort.

Just about every instruction is illustrated and walks you through the maze of control panels, menus and tabs. Instructions are explicit and specific (for the most part), and explain just enough to let you know what you're doing (for the most part) without burying you in details. Yes, it has some weird grammar at points, weird typos in various places, and sentences that seem like they came out of babelfish in a few more. Yes, the tone shifts from basic "make a box. click on the little handle dohickey and drag (click and pull the mouse)" in some chapters to three pages of derivatives and formulas for calculating and understanding light falloff ratios that assume advanced expertise in understanding computer graphics programming. Overall, however, it's a very good read, a very good how-to guide.

Before I had it, it took me three weeks to model a stage and a set I've been designing. After reading it, i started from scratch and built the same scene in 1 hour, fixed all my lighting problems in just a few minutes, and got into applying textures and rendering in just an hour more. Great timesaver--now I don't feel like I should really be looking at Maya.

I got started with Blender just a few months ago. Bought a DV camera, then got interested in editing my homemade movies, bought some software, later got interested in adding effects, bought some software again, to finally wanting to add CG animation. I didn't want to spend more money in software so I decided to give Blender a try. Now it has become a very steady hobby for me. The software is FREE and it's managed through a foundation. In Blender free by no means is equivalent to "basic", "unsuported" or "buggy". The community is incredible, updates are constant and you will get support very quickly. The book is based on version 2.3 and as we speak the version is about to be 2.36 but the material it's still very valid. Much of the material you would find in the internet, since the manual itself is a worlwide collaboration from different tutorial available. But You get a cd with all models used and its intermmediate steps which is extremely useful. The book is mainly a general reference guide and covers most if not all functions and buttons. Includes some tutorials but don't expect a tutorial driven training book. CG as I have found takes time and PATIENCE but the results are very rewarding. Blender's interface will drive you nuts at the beginning, but later you will see it as its greatest asset. So come on and join all the "blenderheads".

For those of you who did not grow up with Open Source being a mainstream concept, and who first delved into graphics before 1995, this book describes an amazing thing. The latest version of Blender. Free source code that has this voluminous guide. The book offers a laundry list of major capabilities - modelling, animation, rendering, post production and even an interactive real time ability. The latter being best suited for game developers. And Blender runs on most Microsoft and unix/linux platforms.

Blender incorporates what were once cutting edge research ideas, like radiosity. I remember a Siggraph in the late 80s, where papers and images were first shown using it. Damn exciting then! Now, you get it trivially here. Right out of the box.

The book has chapters contributed from all over the world. Some sections were written with English that's a little clumsy. But allow for this. The authors' first languages were not English. The book does show how a Blender community has thrived, with a global scope. Not a trivial consideration, if you're considering adopting Blender. It means there is support for your questions, so your investment in time won't get stranded.

Take a look at the full colour glossies in the book. Lovely images from Blender experts. Something to inspire you. Realistically, if you are new, your efforts won't yield such beauties. But it is great motivation.

Being a freely available program under the GNU GPL license, I believe in supporting this magnificent program by purchasing the guides - however...
When working from the book, there have been numerous menu changes between the version the book is written for (2.3) and the current version. This leaves you searching around for stuff and wasting a lot of time. I also ran into a problem with being unable to select a group of points as described in the book. I joined a blender forum, posted my question, and had an answer within 10 minutes. Make use of forums - their response time is like calling 911! When I decided to see what the version of the same tutorial that I had difficulty with was like in the online version, wouldn't you know, it gave a complete warning, with illustrations, about the problem I had encountered and how to deal with it! It also reflected the procedural steps for the latest version (menu item location changes, etc.).
If you are thinking that you will get a little something extra by buying the book, DON'T. The entire contents of the book are available online at blender.org, and are updated continuously. If you do buy this book to help support the cause, do as another reader suggested and install the older version of the program from the CD accompanying the book.
I would recommend finding other ways to financially support the Blender organization and skip purchasing the book. The reason I rate it 3 stars is because it was a sincere, effective effort for the version accompanying the book. I understand that the author's primary language is not english, and he did a much better job than I would do trying to write a book in italian. However, it seems that nobody in the publishing process with an average American or British grasp of the language bothered to edit the book before print. How can an organization go to the trouble of printing a book that is very well laid out and attractive and not actually edit the text to remove the awkward phrasing of a foreign author?
Bottom line: Support the cause, skip the book. It's better online.

I've been a blender user since 2001, i've got all kinds of tutorial books on blender, and this is the best one so far.
If you've been looking fo cool tutorials on character animation for blender 3d, this is the book you've been waiting for.
I recommend this book for all blender users. The book has the contents of the previous guide and fresh stuff too. The authors did a good job on it.

This is THE BOOK on Blender. It starts with the CD in the back of the book (with Blender Version 2.32) tells you how to load it, how to get started, and how to make your way through the sometimes confusing procedures.

This book is both a tutorial guide - as in do this, then do that - and a reference book where you can look up how to do something. It is written by the Blender organization, so you can be pretty sure that what it says is correct. Sometimes the English is just a bit strange, but that's because it is being written by someone who is not a native English speaker. Hey, he writes a lot better English than I'd be able to write in his language.

As mentioned the CD and the book cover Blender 2.32. The latest version is Blender 2.37. You can get it from www.blender3d.com. But I'd suggest loading 2.32 first and going through the book. Then upgrade before you start the actual development project.

blender gamekit
blender 2.3 guide

If you want to know how to use blender, these are the books. They might not be up to date on the latest version, (especially the gamekit) but I managed to use both and found blender3d much easier to use. The online tutorials helped too, however there's so much missing that you need this book (both if you want to use blender for games). Maybe someday there'll be a pdf or something.. I find the books themselves a bit awkward if I am reading and following along.

All in all, if you're serious about 3d/blender/games here are your manuals.

Yes, it has grammar issues. But if you can understand the intent, then you can learn & get your work done.

Yes, its available in electronic format. But Blender loves to run full screen & I hated toggling between it other on-line tutorials.

Bottom-line, I still bought the book and am not dissappointed in the investment.

After getting incomplete lessons on how to work with this program, I decided to purchase this book - and I'm glad I did. Most of the lessons I've encountered on the Web required some prerequisite knowledge of simpler tasks - trouble was, I was unable to tell if I could learn them without stopping somewhere in an area that was impossible to understand (like environmental mapping). This book helps.

As mentioned by other reviewers, Blender is and outstanding 3D Development Environment. With its capabilities I find it amazing that the software is free ([...]).

There are a lot of tutorials and information available online to support the software, but none are complete. The Bender Guide fills in all the holes left from the online resources.

The only reason the book did not recieve 5 stars is it does go a little to fast. Understandable though, for with all the applications available in Blender the book would have to be a couple thousand pages.

Blender is an excellent way to get started in 3D graphics, this book is required if you want to shorten the time needed to learn the program.