The Official Blender 2.0 Guide w/CD (Miscellaneous) (Paperback)

by Not a Number (Author) "Blender has grown into a mature 3D design suite, a fully integrated package that allows artists to do the modelling, animation, rendering and post production..." (more)
Key Phrases: previous window display size, initiated mouse movement, start translation mode, Functions Method, Object Key, Deform Max Dist (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This book is intended as a travel guide, an atlas to the Blender World. Everything you need to bring your creative ideas to fruition is inside. Developed originally as an in-house tool for a leading European animation studio, Blender is capable of creating broadcast-quality videos and has been used in hundreds of professional productions for major corporations. Find out how you can use the Blender software to create professional 3D graphics packages at a fraction of the cost and size of comparable products. Explore Blender's versatile animation system, contemporary modeling principles, advanced rendering tools, deformation tools, inverse kinematics, and post-production editor. Soon you'll be creating commercials and other broadcast-quality content, as well as multimedia and 3D game content. CD includes full version of Blender V2.03. ItemID: 0761535136

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology PTR; 1 edition (January 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761535136
• ISBN-13: 978-0761535133
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,091,454 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Knowing is not Doing, April 1, 2001

By	"3-deed" (Minneapolis) - See all my reviews

I speak as a complete newbie to creating 3d art & animation. However, I have been programming and using computers since the teletype and paper strip days. Blender is a fantastic bit of code. That said, the potential Blender god needs to be aware that you will work, sometimes very hard, to understand and master it. It is no different than any other killer app. You will reap what you sow. Is the Blender Manual perfect? No. Is it helpful? Very. Will it answer your every question? Not a chance. Any book that could cover every aspect of Blender would be thousands of pages. What the book will do is get you started, give you a big peek at some of the things you can do with this great software. It will get you started experimenting. Learning Blender from a book is impossible. Learning Blender with this book beside your keyboard can be exciting. Pros: Shows you how to do some really cool stuff, and the demos on the CD are great. Helps decypher the somewhat cryptic interface. Cons: Really weird layout, the chapters seem to be tossed around in random order, and there can be some pretty big gaps in the how-to's

P.S. For those out there whining about the price of the book, it's one of the cheaper user manuals you will find. Go drop $1500 on Adobe or $5000 on 3dMax. Then you'll whine.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for Beginners, or experienced users, June 30, 2001

By	"brijcharan" (Victoria, BC) - See all my reviews

If you are new to 3d, or you want to support the open source movement, or you are a starving student who can't afford the large 3d apps, here is your solution. This application is awsome(and free). Blender is a Freeware 3d application, and there is a huge user community that uses it. You can also use blender to make "3D GAMES". Thats right, blender itself can make 3d games(yup, like those quake like games), and you don't have to be a hardcore programmer to be able to tackle it.

Now, if you want to learn blender, this guide is a definate asset. I went to the store, and I thought, "na, this isn't that great", so I put it down. I assumed it was more for beginners. Then I started to use blender again(after a year of not using it), and man...I was looking for questions all over the internet. So I went back, and bought it, i'ts worth every penny!

Trust me folks, this book saves major time. And the tutorials are written quite well, except some terminology is not for the new-to-3d-user.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty and Useful, June 12, 2001

By	Chris Milliken "milksie" (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you don't have time to learn Blender the hard way (and you'll need alot of time to learn it without instruction) this book is essential. Face it, for the beginner, learning blender without some kind of guidance is a strange kind of torture. You feel stupid and frustrated and cannot shake the feeling that everything isn't working properly. This book provides the operational foundation, interface concepts and design methodolgy needed to begin to educate yourself. This book won't show you everything, nor turn you into an ace Blender dude, but it will provide the understanding necessary so that you can effectively play and teach yourself.

One word of caution concerning Blender, it is an awesome package, but it is finicky about video cards. It can get quirky and flake out on many popular cards. The recommended card is any nVidia card especially any of the GeForce line. Forewarned is forearmed!