Buy used: $7.62

FREE delivery February 5 - 9. Details

Or fastest delivery January 30 - February 1. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

D. Roland Hess

Follow

Animating with Blender: Creating Short Animations from Start to Finish 1st Edition

by Roland Hess (Author)

4.1 23 ratings

See all formats and editions

Blender has become one of the most popular 3D and animation tools on the market, with over 2 million users, and it is free! Animating with Blender is the definitive resource for creating short animation projects from scratch, the ideal platform for experimenting with animation.

Blender expert and author Roland Hess walks you through the entire process of creating a short animation, from writing to storyboarding and blocking, through character creation, animation and rendering.

ISBN-10

0240810791
ISBN-13

978-0240810799
Edition

1st
Publisher

Focal Press
Publication date

September 30, 2008
Language

English
Dimensions

7.5 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches
Print length

368 pages
See all details

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Roland Hess is the leading expert on Blender. He is one of a handful of people who has been involved with Blender since its inception, and is a key voice in the community. Hess brings a unique perspective to Blender instruction that bridges the difficult gap between technical knowledge and artistic expression. Hess wrote Focal Press titles: Animating with Blender (2009) and Tradigital Blender (2011)
Roland Hess is the leading expert on Blender. He is one of a handful of people who has been involved with Blender since its inception, and is a key voice in the community. Hess brings a unique perspective to Blender instruction that bridges the difficult gap between technical knowledge and artistic expression. Hess wrote Focal Press titles: Animating with Blender (2009) and Tradigital Blender (2011)

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Focal Press; 1st edition (September 30, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0240810791
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0240810799
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,463,378 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #176 in Photography (Books)
- #294 in Computer Graphics
- #384 in Digital Video Production (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.1 23 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Important information

To report an issue with this product or seller, click here.

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

D. Roland Hess

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

D. Roland Hess has worked in machine learning and operational excellence at Google, and has written about art and software for Focal Press, John Wiley & Sons, and Taylor & Francis, winning an American Publishers Association PROSE Award in 2011 for his book on character animation.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5

23 global ratings

1 star

0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Dave B

Fabulous! I really like this book!

Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2009

Verified Purchase

This is a great book.

First, the production quality is very high. The pages are heavy stock and all of the illustrations are in full color. This is extremely important for a book such as this, where color illustrations can make the difference from being able to tell what's going on, or not. (I also really like Tony Mullen's Introducing Character Animation with Blender , but most of the illustrations in that book were in black-and-white, and at times, I really struggled to see what was going on.)

Coverage of the material is excellent. Having used Blender enough now that I'm starting to get comfortable, I found that I didn't really know how to proceed to create an animated short. This book really covers the material, explaining how to develop your story and storyboards, then proceeding to cover topis on production and post-production.

This book is not in tutorial form, so there aren't lots of step-by-step instructions on doing something. Instead, it covers how to create your animated short, given that you have some familiarity with Blender.

That said, there's still quite a bit of information for relative beginners. It's a bit surprising sometimes that the book will cover some fairly basic information in some areas and then assume you already know the basics in other areas.

All-in-all, this is a great book. It's fun to read and it's also a great reference. It's filled with valuable and useful advice and techniques on accomplishing the goal of completing an animated short.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Ronald P. Garner

Animating with blender

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2014

Verified Purchase

Great book for learning animation with blender. I just wish it was
a little nore thorough in its explanation of commands.

Helpful

B. S. T.

Not for the Blender newbie

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2009

Verified Purchase

If you are looking for a book on how to use or learn Blender, this is not the right one for you. It focuses more on the process of writing and developing an animated short film than it does on using the software. In the early part of the book it focuses on story development rather than software interface, assuming that you are already familiar with this.

If you are familiar with Blender and done simple animation with it, then this book may be helpful in guiding you through a more complex project. But for someone new to Blender, a different book would be more helpful.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Lloyd Willis

Exactly what I was looking for

Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2012

Verified Purchase

It is a fine guide to animating, without bogging the beginning animator in tiny details or a multitude of options. Good buy for the money.

Helpful

Mugs_Malarky

Animating with Bender

Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2009

Verified Purchase

This purchase was for my son who reports it is an excellent book and he was able to use it to improve his Blender projects. Highly recommended for Blender users.

Helpful

JC Bernardo

2nd Edition for Version 2.83 LTS

Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2020

Hi,

I think a 2nd. Edition is now due considering 2.83 will be supported for 3 years. This was a great book on the old version and I'd love to see a new edition for the new version of Blender.

Thank you.

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2008

Some days ago I got a copy of Animating With Blender - How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish on my mailbox, and I have just finished reading it.

It was written by Roland Hess (also known as harkyman) while he produced his recently released and Suzanne Awards nominated short The Beast. I've never written a book, but I believe it is at least as hard as making a short animation, and this guy managed to make them both at the same time. This alone already made him deserve my kudos even before I started reading.

Now that I've finished this reading, I'm very happy to say that this book is a clear sign of evolution of the Blender Community. Until its release we already had some great books, but all of them had the same purpose: teach how to use Blender or how to achieve an specific task. That is great - and still necessary - but this new book goes a step further: now that you already know how to use Blender, how about being productive and making something cool with it?

As I said, the biggest source from where he gathered the information to write this book was his own short production. The author stated that he knows about some shortcomings in the movie, and I really recommend you to read his book without being too picky on the movie itself, since he put on those pages the result of what he learned during that production.

Believe me, there are lots of things we learn when producing a short and having that information written, on your hands to make you avoid some common mistakes is great for you, aspiring to be the next Brad Bird. :)

One of the first ideas you'll find on the book is that it will help you avoid your movies' "death" by natural causes. This kind of death for short movies is actually very common, and it happens for a number of reasons he points out while suggesting some possible solutions.

This book aims to cover most production aspects of your new award winning short, with a very easy language and bits of humor on it. From your first idea to the final release, there are some great tips on common mistakes and ways to avoid those "natural causes".

The book comes with a DVD with the movie, all the production files and examples, HD versions of Big Buck Bunny and Elephants Dream, and some softwares like Blender (O RLY? heh), Audacity, a renderfarm manager and the VLC video player for anyone who may face trouble playing the movies.

It was also a nice idea to add at the end of each chapter the Peach Perspective on the subject. There are some questions answered by the Peach team, talking about their experience in all aspects of their production.

I wrote down some topics I found interesting while reading the book:

* Tips for story creation, maintaining it interesting and not over complicating things;
* Some clever ways to organize and naming your files and assets (believe me, that's important);
* Important and often overlooked tips like setting up the correct aspect ratio for your renders;
* An interesting way to test your maximum working polygon count, to avoid future headaches;
* How to prepare your meshes and let'em ready for animation;
* How to work with libraries and linked assets - an often overlooked feature that is extremely important to animation workflows;
* Good habits when working with Blender;
* Tips for audio recording;
* Rigging and skinning even with info on the recently added Mesh Deform modifier;
* Creating facial controls and eyes rigging;
* Useful tips on working within the Action Editor, like grouping and some overlooked and rather obscure features;
* Tips on specific tasks, like making your character hold something or making a simple walk;
* Very cool tips for decreasing render times while still maintaining good quality renders;
* Ways to light your scene in a good way, from exterior to interior scenes;
* The good use of simulations (fluid, cloth, hair...), their drawbacks and workarounds;
* How you can handle the final composition, rendering your frames and even setting up a renderfarm;
* Good info on putting it all together in your masterpiece, making sure it will work on all kinds of media: from the web to DVDs;
* There are tips even on asking help in the forums. :)

I really think this is a great book, with some valuable information that will sure help you taking your idea to the final production in a sane way. Aimed for who is already somewhat comfortable with Blender, this book is a must have during all of your production stages as a good reference on how to (and - important - how NOT to) do things.

It is good to see that our Community is getting this kind of publication, going a bit further than just using the tool to how to make some interesting with it. It is a great addition to our Blender bookshelf. :)

What else can I say? Well... go for it! ;)

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

M. J. Anders

A great way to get professional with Blender

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2008

Verified Purchase

A great book for anyone who wants to grow from just doodling around to more professional animations and actually finishing them. Besides great production value (full color, fine paper, well authored DVD) this book is fun to read as well. Although certainly not suitable for people without any Blender experience it is clear and concise and has good descriptions of asset management and video sequence editing that are not documented elsewhere. This should be the book you read just after you had your brilliant idea for an animation but before you even touch your PC.

See more reviews