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

This book falls into the usual trap for books trying to explain 3D graphics - greyscale images. Some are so vague, they're indecipherable.

Worse, many of the graphics are so small as to be readable (I suspect) only with a microscope. I gave up trying to set my parameters to those shown in a shown figure while following a tutorial.

The features covered seem thorough - remember this is the 'essentials' of Blender - it's just a pity the dreadful presentation of the pictures lets the whole endeavour down.

Great information - Shame about the diddy diagrams (1/1 people found this helpful)

I would love to give this book five stars - the written content really is very good. It makes no claims to be a complete manual and what it does cover is more than a beginner needs to get started.

Examples are clear and the book is sufficiently modular in its composition that you can dip into the bits you need for reference - you do not have to read, understand and inwardly digest every page before you can do anything.

It's not expensive, it's easy to follow and it's very, very informative and it would be a five star book if it weren't screen shots. As any blender user knows, the interface is large and complicated and attractively designed in muted tones. So WHAT ON EARTH where the designers thinking when displaying them in tiny 5cm wide boxes? The paper on which the book is printed exacerbates the problem as its rough finish (nice normally) means the image reproduction comes out rather dark - flattening all those nice muted colours even further.

Fortunately, as I said, the text normally is clear enough to suffice and I still would heartily recommend this book. Just a shame about those images...

Great book, really easy to understand (1/1 people found this helpful)

I've wanted to get into the world of 3D modelling/animation for sometime. After looking at the likes of Maya and 3DS Max, I stumbled across Blender. As you know Blender is a free, open source fully featured(more or less) 3D modelling suite. As I am new to Blender, I chose to purchase this book. And I am not disappointed! I have worked through the first few chapters and I have found the book extremely easy to follow. Before using Blender, my knowledge of 3d modelling software was somewhat poor. Just by reading the first few chapters, its made me realise that Blender is not as daunting as it first seems, however, its still not easy to learn. If your a beginner to Blender, this books will be perfect for you!

A guide for us mere mortals... (8/8 people found this helpful)

I'm not a computer expert, I'm certainly not an artist, and I'm not rich - I just wanted to construct a 3d animation to illustrate how a horse's hoof works for an assignment. I got hold of a copy of the open sourced Blender 3D and then it began to dawn on me that it was really written by experts, for experts. If your not a computer whiz-kid or a professional 3d artist who is already familiar with the terminology and ideology, then you're going to struggle.

Fortunately, Ton Roosendaal has come to the rescue with this book. It doesn't assume you already know anything about 3d graphics, only that you are reasonably familiar with how to handle a computer and want to create a 3d work of art or animation. It explains all the concepts in plain English that even I can understand, with easy to follow instructions to get you designing and playing within minutes.

Maybe it's not what experts have come to expect from 3d texts, but it's a solid, understandable guide to the essentials for the rest of us.

A valiant effort, but... (5/5 people found this helpful)

...I found it to lack some of what I have come to expect from 3D software texts.

The positives about this book...

It provides a good overview of Blender and is very throughly illustrated. It contains information on features added with Blender 2.43 which can only be found in online forums otherwise.

But the book is structured in a somewhat irratating way.

The index of the book is not at all complete, so it does become frustrating when you want information on a specific topic. I have found myself either having to thumb through entire sections of the book to find the information I need (due to an index which really could have used a bit more consideration) or resorting in frustration to online resources .

As an example, I was searching for information on adding an audio track to my animation... nothing in the index whatsoever about audio... quite an oversight, I would think. I have encountered this looking for information on other topics as well.

Hopefully, this will not be a template for future publications by the Blender Foundation. Remember that proceeds from the book do go to the Blender Foundation, so that alone would merit buying the book, but even having said that... consider this book more an introduction and overview of the software, rather than an exhaustive and indispensable resource.

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

Roland Hess

Reader Reviews:

Needs more work... (1/1 people found this helpful)

Great information - Shame about the diddy diagrams (1/1 people found this helpful)

Great book, really easy to understand (1/1 people found this helpful)

A guide for us mere mortals... (8/8 people found this helpful)

A valiant effort, but... (5/5 people found this helpful)

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