The Essential Blender: Guide to 3D Creation with the Open Source Suite Blender 1st Edition

by Roland Hess (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-1593271664

ISBN-10: 1593271662

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Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite that is a real alternative to commercially available 3D design software. A cross-platform software package with millions of downloads annually, Blender is now one of the world's most popular 3D design tools.

Although Blender is free, it's intended for design professionals and others motivated to become 3D artists. The Essential Blender will provide you with the knowledge you need to help integrate Blender into your work and begin to master its powerful creation tools.

If you've never tried 3D design before, an introductory chapter will familiarize you with relevant terminology and concepts. If you're already experienced with commercial 3D software, The Essential Blender will get you up to speed with Blender quickly.After a tour of Blender's 3D modeling, animation, and rendering capabilities, you'll learn how best to use Blender for these tasks:

Object manipulation and animation
Mesh and sculpt modeling and shape animation
Materials and texturing (including UV unwrapping)
Lighting and rendering
Particle animation
Character rigging and animation
Node-based composition

The book is modular in its approach, with each topic addressed independently and accompanied by hands-on tutorial sections.

The combined expertise of key members of the Blender community, coupled with the experience of editor Roland Hess, bring you The Essential Blender-the definitive guide to Blender. You'll find a wealth of 3D design information inside that will help you to unlock your artistic potential and get the most out of Blender.

Includes a Complete Version of Blender 2.44 on the CD-ROM. Covers Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (x86 and PowerPC), Solaris, FreeBSD, and IRIX.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ton Roosendaal is Blender's creator and the chairman and founder of the Blender Foundation, the non-profit organization that maintains Blender under the GNU/GPL license. He co-authored The Official Blender 2.3 Guide, The Official Blender GameKit (both No Starch Press), and The Official Blender 2.0 Guide (Premier Press).

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ No Starch Press; 1st Edition (September 27, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 376 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1593271662
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1593271664
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.5 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 1.03 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,597,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #164 in 3D Graphic Design
- #616 in Digital Video Production (Books)
- #1,129 in Computer Graphics

Customer Reviews:
100 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		58%
4 star		13%
3 star		19%
2 star		3%
1 star		7%

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S. G. Paxman

For those that can't afford Maya or 3D Studio Max.

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2009

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Blender is a free Open Source 3D Modeling Program, much like Maya, 3D Studio Max and XSI.

Most of the time when dealing with Free Open Source, they like to say "Think Free as in Freedom, and not Free as in Free beer."

Well this Program is Free Beer my friends. but the book however is not. Well at least not the hardcopy version.

This book is a great resource to have if you can get over the steep learning curve of the Programs interface. which often time make getting started with Blender very difficult. After you get over that initial Hump Learning how to use blender get a whole lot more fun and easier.

There are however websites that have video Tutorials that are quite good. Blender Underground is one of the finer I've seen.

this is not to discredit the book, The book is fine and dandy. but can get a little too bogged down with technical terms at time and a couple of the Tutorials in the book are missing a set or two giving you different results then the ones shown in the Little Colorless and some time hard to see picture.

there is a Link to correction they added to book after publishing it, and there are a few other places you can go for help.

If you are going to get this book, I would highly recommend that you instead buy it directly from the Blender 3D e-Shop [...]

Buying it directly from them will Help them with funding for a lot of great project and development cost they run into from time to time.

As a reference Manual, this is a great tool. as a learning tool it's okay but not the greatest...

One person found this helpful

Helpful

itisgregory

Excellent Beginner's Tutorial!!

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2009

Verified Purchase

I am completely new to learning 3D animation. I wasted time and money on 3 other books. This book is EXACTLY what a beginner needs because each chapter is an in-depth tutorial. By the end of each chapter you feel confident in being able to use your new knowledge and have a complete understanding of the subject matter because you will have worked through real world examples.

Many other books on this subject are mere reference books. This book gives step by step instructions on how to actually create usable and practical animations. It is almost like having a tutor in your home or being in a class room.

The author also explains many different ways to accomplish the same tasks since Blender usually has 2 or more ways to do the same thing.

This book blows the others out of the water. I would only recommend the others when you have a thorough and confident understanding of the Blender basics and that is what you will get with this book.

3 people found this helpful

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Robofox42

Good instructions, poor illustrations, slightly outdated

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2009

Verified Purchase

This book I would say is worth the money. It gives really good explanations of Blender. I have used Blender a little bit, but still learned a lot from reading it. It had very good explanations especially in the discussion sections.

For each chapter there is a hands on tutorial, and a discussion section. Both were well done except the illustrations were very small and impossible to read. The nice thing was that there is a website for the book: [...]

Many of the poor illustrations have really good replacements. The website won't replace the book because about 75% of the pictures aren't online. However, it does seem that the 25% that are online are there to cover the really bad pictures in the book. With the online resource and the book, I could see almost all the pictures well enough to know what to do.

My biggest complaint is that the book is starting to get outdated. Blender has been changing so quickly that I don't think there was anything that could have solved this however (at least for the printed book). When you get to the later chapters such as particles and UV editing, you will need to Google a lot. It also helps to look at the release notes for the different versions of blender so that you can figure out how Blender was changed when you can't figure out the equivalent command. The interesting thing is that I like all the Blender changes better, but it can really slow you down when you are going through the tutorials.

One source that I also found really helpful to learn blender along with this book is the Blender manual at [...] . The manual really helps you to know detailed explanations for how all the tools work. The problem with the manual is that you don't see how to use the tools. Whereas the book tells you how to do things so you can see the tools in action, but it doesn't give you detailed explanations of the tools. The two go together really well, especially when you are stumped on a tutorial.

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DayOldDuck

Great book, bad images

Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2008

Verified Purchase

I've used Maya for approximately seven years, so getting into Blender has been quite a challenge. I've tried various online tutorials, but nothing has really worked for me...until The Essential Blender. The tutorials are well-paced and clear, and so I've actually started my Maya rehabilitation.

For the biggest negative, I must really agree with the other reviewers; the images are very very small in many places and therefore not very useful. It would be nice to see them in color for the places where it makes sense, although for modeling it's pretty much gray anyway, so no need for it there...but make the images BIGGER in the next edition! Please! That's why I give it four stars instead of five.

Otherwise, I think it's well-written and easy to follow. Perhaps it's just me, but I prefer having a book in front of me rather than switching between a tutorial and Blender on-screen.

There are some "errors," but since I am using Blender 2.8 I assumed they were just version differences and the book is out-of-date. I've been able to figure out what's wrong very quickly each time, so I didn't take off any stars for that.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

David

Now very very out of date

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 26, 2013

Verified Purchase

And no longer of any great use as many of the functions work very differently.

Definitely buy a more up to date version

One person found this helpful

The Oracle

... this product for my nephew who thinks it's absolutely fantastic. 10/10

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 24, 2015

Verified Purchase

I bought this product for my nephew who thinks it's absolutely fantastic. 10/10.

Andy

Was hoping to get into Blender but haven't managed it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 11, 2016

Verified Purchase

Was hoping to get into Blender but haven't managed it

VinyltoCD

Good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 18, 2015

Verified Purchase

Its a good book but I really should have bought the latest version

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 23, 2014

Verified Purchase

Great price useful text

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The Essential Blender: Guide to 3D Creation with the Open Source Suite Blender 1st Edition

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