Learning Blender: A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Characters

by Oliver Villar

Create Amazing 3D Characters with From Design and Modeling to Video Compositing Learning Blender walks you through every step of creating an outstanding animated character with the free, open source, 3D software Blender, and then compositing it in a real video using a professional workflow. This is the only Blender tutorial to take you from preproduction to final result, and it’s perfect for both 3D novices and those who’ve used other 3D Software. Focusing on Blender 2.71 and above, 3D-professional Oliver Villar explains all the basics, including Blender’s interface, controls, and how to manipulate objects. Once you’ve mastered the fundamentals, you’ll follow a realistic 3D workflow through a complete project. You’ll find chapters on every aspect of the character design, modeling, unwrapping, texturing, shading, rigging, and animation. Once your character is ready and animated, you’ll learn how to integrate it into a real video using camera tracking techniques, lighting, and compositing. Each skillset is taught hands on, and available online video tutorials (more than 5 hours) will guide you through Blender’s trickier tasks. By the time you’re done, you’ll understand how the whole process fits together, and how to use Blender to create outstanding characters for all media. You’ll also build strong Blender skills you can apply in any 3D project, whether it involves characters or not. Learn How To Register your book at informit.com/register to access all of this book’s production files, plus bonus video tutorials, and a useful Blender keyboard shortcut reference.

Genres: Art, Reference, Nonfiction, Software

312 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2014

Reviews

[Alexander Fontana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is well organized by each part of the process steps as Villar takes us on an adventure to turn his 2d sketch of "Jim" into a colorful moving 3d character. The book is very suitable for a college or even an advanced high-school course in 3D animation. For experienced Blender users there are several tips and tricks that one might miss or forget so this book makes a good review in that respect. There is also a large set of downloadable movies and Blender files that come with the book.

Unlike many other tutorials this book does not note every key stroke. Instead it teaches concepts and techniques which are supported by the videos and with the exercises at the end of each chapter. More specific exercises might be in order, such as with rigging to gain further understanding though.

There are dozens of screen shots that show what is going on, but due to Blender's black background they are sometimes difficult to see where the small/thin orange colored vertex lines are located.

Rigging can be plagued with unseen issues that even an intermediate user might not catch. Villar does a good job of noting some of these issues and how to fix them. In Video 12 you can even see Villar getting tripped up as he endeavors to explain several concerns. While this video could be edited to remove some of the issues that occur in rigging, it does benefit the viewer in showing just how many things are going on at once. For the reader this is when the Villar videos become invaluable as he shows several ways of catching and, more importantly, fixing things.

The tracking and compositing sections of this book definitely add to the end goal. Like rigging, doing much more than a walk cycle or additional film compositing techniques would easily fill another book each. But within this book's scope this was an added treat that brings the user to a natural conclusion.

Personally the book's cover doesn't work for this hobbist. I don't see the connection between the cover art and the character 'Jim' which is what the book is about creating. Nor was the formatting of the table of contents something I would do. With outside cosmetics and a few orientation typo's aside though, overall this is a GOOD BOOK for learning Blender and I would recommend it to any new Blender user.

And as Villar would say, "There you have it!"

[Ondrej Sykora · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice and well organized/well written introduction to Blender. The book takes one concrete example (creating an animated character) and takes the reader through all stages of the project and shows how to efficiently use Blender through them.

The only issue (in 2020) is that the user interface recently went through a significant redesign and while the basic principles still hold, most of the guides on how to accomplish things in the UI do not. I hope there will be an updated version for the new UI soon.

[Osamuyi Okpame · Rating 5 out of 5]

The updated edition is One of the best books on Blender 3D modeling and Animation

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first time I read learning blender was oh, maybe a year ago. I wanted to make the project in the book but, I never did.

Then this time which is the second time I have read the book I was sure I was going to make Jim. I did not. I did go through and try all the modeling tools in chapter 6: Modeling tools. And I did try to model Jim's face. I did not do a good job at modeling it. I don't know if I will ever try to complete Jim. Probably not.

My favorite chapter was Chaper 5: character design which talks about how to design a character. Which I hope will help me when I design my own characters.

And I thought Chapter 4: project overview was also good. That chapter talks about preproduction, production, and postproduction. I will try to remember that I need to think about a project before starting the modeling.

I though learning blender was OK. It talks about everything you need to do to make a character named Jim. From modeling, texturing, light etc. There is a lot of information in it that is for sure.

The author also had a download on his website with everything you need to make Jim. The blueprints, materials, textures, and even blend files of different stages of the models. And I think there is even video tutorials of different parts of the modeling process.