Introducing Character Animation with Blender 1st Edition

by Tony Mullen (Author), Ton Roosendaal (Foreword), Bassam Kurdali (Foreword)

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ISBN-13: 978-0470102602

ISBN-10: 0470102608

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Introducing Character Animation with Blender
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Let this in-depth professional book be your guide to Blender, the powerful open-source 3D modeling and animation software that will bring your ideas to life. Using clear step-by-step instruction and pages of real-world examples, expert animator Tony Mullen walks you through the complexities of modeling and animating, with a special focus on characters. From Blender basics to creating facial expressions and emotion to rendering, you’ll jump right into the process and learn valuable techniques that will transform your movies.

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

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From the Back Cover

Open your mind to the possibilities

Let this in-depth professional book be your guide to Blender, the powerful open-source 3D modeling and animation software that will bring your ideas to life. Using clear step-by-step instruction and pages of real-world examples from talented Blender users, expert animator Tony Mullen walks you through the complexities of modeling and animating, with a special focus on characters. From Blender basics to creating facial expressions and emotion to rendering, you'll jump right into the process and learn valuable techniques that will transform your movies.

Walk through the complete process of building a character
Master mesh modeling tools and organic modeling
Fashion skin, hair, and clothing with material shaders, textures, and other tools
Learn to sync lip movements with a sound file
Understand interpolation curves, keyframes, and the basics of animating

Model your characters using a variety of mesh editing techniques

See how armatures, lattices, and IK interact

Light and render your work for exactly the effect you want

Valuable DVD with complete Blender installation

The companion DVD provides the Blender installer for Windows®, Macintosh®, and Linux®. You'll also find:

All the source files you need to produce the examples and tutorials in the book
The short film Elephants Dream and all the files used to create it
An impressive gallery of short animations created by Blender artists around the world
Plenty of useful links to related Blender resources
A large collection of third-party software and plug-ins, including Audacity, Python, and the popular BlenderPeople

www.sybex.com

About the Author

Tony Mullen, Ph.D., teaches at Tsuda College, Tokyo, where his courses include modeling and animation with Blender as well as the Python programming language. Mullen has been a cartoonist and an illustrator. His screen credits include writer, co-director, or lead animator on several short films, including the award-winning Gustav Braüstache shorts.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sybex; 1st edition (February 27, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0470102608
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0470102602
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.24 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.4 x 0.92 x 9.15 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,005,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #364 in 3D Graphic Design
- #1,143 in Digital Video Production (Books)
- #2,343 in Computer Graphics

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Tony Mullen

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I'm a lecturer in computer science at Tsuda College, Tokyo and an independent filmmaker. I'm interested in animation of all kinds, but especially in CG animation using Blender, the open source 3D modeling and animation package.

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Michael Tiemann

More than an introduction--it's an invitation to a whole new world!

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2007

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The blender community has accomplished some amazing milestones in the past few years, creating an open source 3d production environment that rivals the best (and most expensive) proprietary systems in terms of power, performance, and flexibility. It is truly amazing that one can download for free software that's been used to create artistic and commercial works that have been seen at film festivals and mainstream television worldwide. Sooner or later, one who is interested must ask: what shall I do with all this power? This book helps answer the question, at least when it comes to character animation.

I have been to Blender workshops around the world, and I have seen amazingly talented artists demonstrate methods they've developed over the years to create all sorts of characters, from humans to monsters, from animals to dragons. Watching these creatives who are half my age do more in 30 minutes than I ever thought I could do in a lifetime has been a humbling experience. When I learned that some of these folks would be sharing their knowledge in the form of this book, I pre-ordered it right away.

I have now had the book for a week, and I am *thrilled* that it has turned out as well as it has. The examples are well organized, the methods are completely explained, and the book ships with a DVD that contains everything, and I mean *everything* you need to follow along and/or check your work. The quality and quantity of information is perfectly balanced with the pace of instruction, and I cannot wait to continue reading it in more detail, practicing the methods, and bringing new characters to life.

Well done!

35 people found this helpful

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Theodore Gage

Just buy this and think about it later

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2007

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Blender is a free open source 3d application that includes a complete compositing and non-linear video editing system, with a ton of user-created extensions, plugins, scripts, tutorials and guides. However it can be intimidating to people starting out and let's face it, you have to be pretty motivated to teach yourself anything (downloading and collecting all the files you need to start, finding a good tutorial to get started, peering back and forth between two screens if you're lucky to look between the web page and blender as you slowly pick it up after a few weeks. it's annoying there are so few print resources for this amazing tool that collect everything in one place. combing blender with a program like aftereffects and photoshop and you are a one-man production studio. you don't even need that great a computer.

so anyway, this is a complete class in a book. The price is ridiculous, at a minimum because it includes many files and programs that although are free, most people either haven't heard about or are too lazy to find all together. it is excellently written, with great diagrams and a long section of glossy color renders, and really "gets it" in terms of focusing on the aspects of blender you will need to know for character rendering and modeling in general. THIS BOOK WILL TEACH YOU 3D ANIMATION FROM THE GROUND UP. while never insulting your intelligence. incredible value for what it is and even advanced users can get a lot out of it. highly recommended

26 people found this helpful

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Great Blender Intro and Character Design

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2007

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Of all the books I've read on 3D, this is the first that actually has been useful and direct to me. I have been using Blender 3D for a year now, but I found that there was alot of cool features that I missed that I then learned from this book.

Besides a great introduction, this book flows smoothly with the creation of a face from only a reference photo (with all the intermediate steps to get there), and then the rest of the book is showing how to build a a fully rigged (ready for animation) character from scratch. I am so amazed with this book.

This is a definitely a worthwhile book. I teach Blender 3D for a organization at Texas A&M University, and I suggest this to them all.

2 people found this helpful

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Bradley J. Krause

simply awesome

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2008

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Not just the writing is extremely clear. This book has the most awesome DVD I have ever gotten with a book. There is just an incredible amount of clearly-written, helpful information in the book. You will have no regrets whatsoever when you buy this book.
I am a professional freelance 3d artist, and I am switching from LightWave to blender, and have spent 2 months studying Blender. It is probably best if you have spent a similar amount of time before diving into this book, especially if you are new to 3d. Character animation is an advanced tool set and requires a thoroughly grounded understanding of basic 3d skills and concepts. That said, this is the best written tome on the subject I have ever owned.

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Ashtree

Flawed, but still an essential purchase for the Blender user!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 18, 2007

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I reviewed this book when it was first released, and gave it a 5-star review. I've come back to edit that review because, in retrospect, I realise that I was so delighted to find ANY book on Blender character animation that I overlooked some definite flaws. I now rate it as 4-star (but while Amazon allows me to revise my wording, it won't let me change the number of stars.)

I've recently been working through the book again, and have come back to give the following revised review.
==========================

For several years, I downloaded Blender on a regular basis, tried to learn how to use it, and gave up because I found it far too difficult.

The appearance of this book changed that. Now for the first time, I 'get' Blender, and see that its quirky and apparently non-intuitive interface really makes a lot of sense.
I'm also even more awestruck at how jaw-droppingly good Blender actually is. Yes, this FREE downloadable program is shockingly *better* than 3D software packages I've purchased at several hundred pounds/dollars a shot.

This book takes you all the way on your journey, from the interface basics, to modeling your figure, to full-fledged animation. I highly recommend it, and would go so far as to say that it *is* an essential purchase for a Blender user.

There are a few minor annoyances - not everything that's supposed to be on the accompanying disk is actually there, and there are a few minor typos scattered through out the text and places where the instructions could have been a little clearer.

Sadly there are some that are not quite so minor. For example in setting up the rig to animate my model, I followed the instructions exactly, yet always ended up with a rig that just didn't work. After many, many frustrating attempts, I loaded up the author's figure from the accompanying disk, and checked through it bone by bone...

And found that an important set of bones in the author's rig were set up differently from the instructions in the book. I guess the sentence about re-parenting the hand IK bones must have dropped out somewhere.

Thereafter, having wasted days trying to figure out what was going wrong, I kept two instances of Blender open. In one, I had my own work-in-progress, in the other I had the author's model, and I kept comparing them every step of the way.

I would go so far as to say that if you don't have the accompanying disk, this book will be... well, not *useless*, but you'll never succeed in following the projects it outlines.

In spite of the above, I still think it's currently the best (uh... the only?) book available on Blender Character animation. I still think it's a must-buy for someone trying to learn Blender. But I would add this caution: Make sure you get a version that includes the disk of examples (ie, don't get a second-hand book where the disk has gone astray, and don't get an electronic download (which doesn't include the material on the disk.)

Because of the errata, I now rate this book at 4 stars, but so long as you heed the caution about needing (and using) the disk, I would still recommend it highly.

8 people found this helpful

Keyboard Gnome

Blissfully Clear & straightforward

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 16, 2011

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I found Blender 3D baffling at the start. And despite perseverance 'found the first book I got just added to the problem. But thankfully not this one. Tony Mullen has a no nonsense, blissfully straightforward style. His exercises and guides are easy to follow (no peering at the screen and wondering where he'd found such-and-such a button) and learning is near-effortless. And "near-effortless" is as good as its going to get with as powerful a program as Blender! I see he's already produced an edition for the latest version of Blender, but using this 2007 book with my recently update (Blender 2.56) isn't proving a problem.

So if you're keen to learn Blender animation, this book can take you from newbie to modelling, texturing, lighting and animating in a well paced way.

One person found this helpful

Andy

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

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 11, 2016

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

Amazon Customer

Rare, but not the best quality.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 6, 2007

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This book was like a treasure uncovered in the as yet mostly uncharted water of Blender character modelling and animation. I was delighted to buy it and work my way though almost 95% of the book. However, this was not a painless task!!! Many of the tasks and instructions are either based on a previous, now defunct version of Blender, if you install the latest one available on the website. Part of it just seemed to be carelessly written. After much struggling, as a newbie in this area, I realised that the book's basic flaw is that is it written by an obvious expert for experts. By this I mean that the content might not always be de facto incorrect... just not explained in a way that would make sense to someone who has no Blender knowledge or experience as context to make sense of it.

It is a shame that specimens like this achieve acclaim purely because there is not much else available on this subject.

4 people found this helpful

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Introducing Character Animation with Blender

Reviewed in Germany on March 4, 2011

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Ehrlich gesagt mag ich Bücher nicht in denen über mehrere Kapitel ein ganzes, fertiges Beispiel erstellt wird, lieber ist mir wenn es sich um kleine geschlossene Beispiele handeln die jeweils ein Thema behandeln. Das hat Tony Mullen im Buch "Bounce, Tumble, and Splash!" besser gelöst. Trotzdem ist das Buch gut geschrieben und die nötigen Informationen lassen sich problemlos rauslesen. Das Ziel Charakter Animation zu erlernen wird erreicht, wenn vielleicht auch nicht so wie es der Autor vorsieht. Nämlich durch nacharbeiten des Beispiels.

Trotz vieler, mir zum Teil zu langer, Erklärungen ist das Buch mit sinnvollen Informationen gefüllt. Tony Mullen ist dafür bekannt Profiwissen verständlich, anhand von Beispielen, zu vermitteln. Und da ist auch dieses Buch keine Ausnahme! Vergleichbar gute und tiefgreifende Tutorials sucht man im Internet oft vergebens.

Einige wird es freuen das hier auch relativ ausführlich auf das organische Modellieren eingegagen wird. Mich hat es leider eher gestört hat, weil es nicht der Grund war warum ich das Buch lesen wollte.

Nach "Bounce, Tumble, and Splash!" - das wirklich mal ein interessantes Spezialgebiet gekonnt abdeckt, ist es definitiv eines der besten Bücher für Blender.

ACHTUNG: Dieses Buch bezieht sich auf die Blender Version 2.4.x. Eine Neuauflage für Blender 2.5 (oder 2.6) des Buches ist bereits in Arbeit. Die Techniken die man in dieser Version des Buches lernt lassen sich zwar auch in 2.5 anwenden, allerdings sollte man dann schon bereit sein auszuprobieren, inwiefern sich das Benutzerinterface sich geändert hat. Generell ist aber der Umstieg von 2.4 zu 2.5 reine Umgewöhnungssache. Wenn man aber bisher ausschließlich mit 2.5 gearbeitet hat, ist es evtl. besser die Neuauflage (vor-) zu bestellen.

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