Table Of ContentRomain Caudron, Pierre-Armand Nicq,
Enrico Valenza
Blender 3D:
Designing
Objects
Learning Path
Build your very own stunning characters in Blender
from scratch
Blender 3D:
Designing Objects
Build your very own stunning characters
in Blender from scratch
A course in three modules
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Blender 3D: Designing Objects
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing
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Published on: September 2016
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-78712-719-7
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Credits
Authors Content Development Editor
Romain Caudron Parshva Sheth
Pierre-Armand Nicq
Enrico Valenza Graphics
Jason Monteiro
Reviewers
Fernando Castilhos Melo Production Coordinator
Aparna Bhagat
Luo Congyi
Waqas Abdul Majeed
Reynante M. Martinez
Jordan Matelsky
Ian Smithers
Romain Caudron
John E. Herreño
Sanu Vamanchery Mana
Preface
Blender is a powerful tool, stable, with an integral workflow that will allow you to
understand your learning of 3D creation with serenity. Today, it is considered to be
one of the most complete 3D packages on the market and it is free and open source!
It is very efficient for many types of productions, such as 3D animated or live action
films, architecture, research, or even game creation with its integrated game engine
and its use of the Python language. Moreover, Blender has an active community that
contributes to expanding its functionalities. Today, it is used in many professional
products and by many companies.
What this learning path covers
Module 1, Blender 3D By Example,
Through this module, you will create many types of concert projects using a step-
by-step approach. You will start by getting to know the modeling tools available
in Blender as you create a 3D robot toy. Then, you will discover more advanced
techniques such as sculpting and re-topology by creating a funny alien character.
After that, you will create a full haunted house scene.
For the last project, you will create a short film featuring a rat cowboy shooting
cheese in a rat trap! This will be a more complex project in which you learn how to
rig, animate, compose advanced material, composite, and edit a full sequence.
Each project in this module will give you more practice and increase your knowledge
of the Blender tools, and Blender game engine. By the end of this book, you will
master a workflow that you will be able to apply to your own creations.
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Preface
Module 2, Blender 3D Cookbook,
This module will take you on a journey to understand the workflow normally used
to create characters, from the modeling to the rendering stages using the tools of the
last official release of Blender exclusively.
This module helps you create a character mesh and sculpt features, using tools
and techniques such as the Skin modifier and polygon merging. You will also get a
detailed, step-by-step overview of how to rig and skin your character for animation,
how to paint textures and create shaders, and how to perform rendering and
compositing. With the help of this book, you will be making production-quality 3D
models and characters quickly and efficiently, which will be ready to be added to
your very own animated feature or game.
Module 3, Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook - Third Edition
This module will teach you how to utilize the power of the Blender series to create a
wide variety of materials, textures, and effects with the Cycles rendering engine. You
will learn about node-based shader creation, and master cycles through step-by-step,
recipe-based advice. With this book, you will start small by rendering the textures
of stones and water, then scale things up to massive landscapes of mountains and
oceans. You will then learn how to create the look of different artificial materials
such as plastic, carpenter wood, and metal, and utilize volumetric shaders to create
the effects of smoke, clouds, and subsurface scattering effects of skin. You will also
learn how illumination works in Cycles, improvising the quality of the final render,
and how to avoid the presence of noise and fireflies. By the end, you will know how
to create an impressive library of realistic-looking materials and textures.
What you need for this learning path
The only software strictly needed to put into practice the content of this course is
the last official Blender release. You just have to download it from http://www.
blender.org/download/get-blender; some Python script may be necessary
in some recipes, but for the most part, they should all be included in the Blender
package. Eventually, you can quite surely find any missing add-on at http://wiki.
blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts.
Any particular texture needed for the exercises in the book is provided as a free
download on the Packt Publishing website itself. Not essential, but handy to have
is a 2D image editor, in case you want to adapt your own textures to replace the
provided ones; I suggest you try Gimp, an open source image editor that you can
download from http://www.gimp.org; any other one you prefer is perfect anyway.
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Preface
Who this learning path is for
If you are a graphic designer and are looking for a tool to meet your requirements in
designing, especially with regards to 3D designing, this course is for you. This course
will make use of Blender to meet your design needs.
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Preface
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Preface
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