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Character Development in Blender 2.5

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Product Details

Binding:	Paperback
EAN:	9781435456259
Label:	Course Technology PTR
Feature:
Publisher:	Course Technology PTR
Studio:	Course Technology PTR

Editorial Reviews

Written for everyone from beginning Blender artists to experienced animators and game developers, CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN BLENDER 2.5 shows readers how to model believable characters using Blender, a free, open source 3d animation package. Covering the technical, artistic, and theoretical aspects of character development, the book provides an in-depth look at Blender's modeling tools and includes information on modeling, sculpting, materials, lighting, rendering, and more. Written in a tutorial style with step-by-step instructions the book also includes an accompanying CD-Rom that features the Blender 2.5 software and sample art.

About the Book

Character Development in Blender 2.5 provides instruction both to Blender and to character modeling, explaining the various Blender tools and how to use them to create amazing, believable 3D characters. Providing both the how and why behind each new tool or skill presented, the book is written in a step-by-step format so you can easily follow along. Divided into five parts, the book covers box modeling, poly-by-poly modeling, sculpting, retopologizing, normal mapping, and more. You'll begin by learning the raw basics of Blender, giving you an understanding of how the Blender interface works, how you can manipulate objects in 3D space, and how to customize your Blender experience. You'll then get an introduction to some of the modeling features of Blender and how you can manipulate meshes with Bender's various modeling tools, modifiers, and sculpting functionality. In Part Three, you'll move on to the real focus of the book: modeling the character, focusing on the workflow, and various modeling techniques. Part Four provides a brief introduction to lighting and rendering characters, before the final section of the book walks you through the process needed to prepare the character for complete texturing, and shows how to bake and apply normal maps to a low-resolution version of the character. Character Development in Blender 2.5 shows you everything you need to get started as a character modeler and Blender artist.

Covers the latest Blender release, version 2.5.

Suitable for animators, game developers, and filmmakers interested in creating characters.

The accompanying CD-ROM features the Blender 2.5 software, sample art, and complete video tutorials.

Customer Reviews

This book is an invaluable resource. As a long time 3d artist, I have picked up little tricks here and there that really bring pieces together well. Jonathan manages to cover these little tricks and more, assisting even the beginner 3D artist in creating a piece of art that feels well polished. A great book and a great read. Also, their website (blendercookie.com) is another amazing resource. Check it out.

The only con I have is the pictures in the book are kind of dark, but the included dvd remedies that nicely.

I ordered the book back on July 2nd, with a target ETA of early August. The book turned up yesterday (July 18), at least 2 weeks earlier than expected.

That being said, the content of the book is exactly what I paid for; after spending countless hours trolling the Internet for character modelling tutorials over many months, I had been waiting patiently since reading the publication date for this book. It guides you through the interface of Blender 2.5 (as there was an overhaul since 2.49b), then gives you the context to use just about any model sheet or blueprint in Blender and turn it into something resembling a work of art (ultimately, you can decide if you require low-poly or high-poly models for your project).

5*, worth every cent, and would highly recommend this book to anyone else wanting to delve into character modelling with Blender. For me, this has become my character modelling bible.

Jonathan Williamson has been one of the fore front artists who have taken the initiative of presenting high quality blender training. As I have followed the tutorials made by Jonathan on his website on blendercookie.com, I was interested in buying the book and I was not disappointed. His skills especially as a character modeler are excellent and this book specially deals in modeling a character. This book in itself is a great introduction to character modeling and if you are a blender artist who follows Jonathan's tutorials, it will serve as a great complementary book that will help fill the gaps in understanding modeling if there are any.

This book has helped me in my character modeling with Blender considerably. Easy to follow technique for modeling a hi-poly character followed by a low(er)-poly model for animating. It has significantly changed my workflow for the better and I have already been able to put it into practice professionally. Thank you.

First off, Mr. Williamson has done so much for the blender community. blender-cookie-.-com- (remove the dashes) is a great resource for anything blender, beginner to advanced.
This book does a great job introducing you to blender. Its focus is on character modeling, topology, and surfacing.
No animation is covered here, but that is ok. Jon's formal tone really makes this an easy read.
The only bad thing about this book is the pictures. They are a little dark, but readable. Just a little annoying.
I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn character modeling.

With no previous experience, I needed a book that would effectively introduce me to Blender and show me the basics of character design.

This book does just that as well as imprints the knowledge so that it can be easily applied in other projects.

The only major issue I have with this product:
- The sample/tutorial images are way too dark. Making some of the steps very difficult as it is impossible to see.

Overall it is very informative.

Jonathan is an experienced Blender instructor and it shows in his book. Each chapter is well thought out and organized to provide a considerable amount of information in the best manner possible. His style of teaching is casual and easy to follow, even for a beginner.

Each chapter builds on skills learned in previous chapters and drives the project forward. At the end of the book, you have a beautiful character that not not only looks great, but that can be taken further on your own to experiment with for animation or game development.

I learned an amazing amount of new skills and areas of Blender that I hadn't experimented with yet.

I'm starting from scratch with Blender and I haven't touched 3DS in over 10 years so for the most part this book is rather basic and easy to comprehend. On the same note while I'm familiar with some of the terms, I don't know what they all mean.

I'm only a quarter of the way into the book so he'll probably bring them up in a more complete sence later, but I still am confused on some terms he uses in the book. Some of the photos he uses for examples are just examples as well and he doesn't tell you how to make all of them since they are examples, but man I frustrate myself when I try to use them.

Like I said though, I'm only a quarter of the way into the book and I'm use it's just me being unused to all that Blender has to offer and this book seems pretty great so far.

This book seems to have a great mix of beginner info and intermediate instruction. The writing was clean and well thought out. I really enjoyed it.

I used blendercookie.com long before and I relly admire the authors work. This book covers so much and doesn't waste your time.

If you are just starting using blender, this book is all you need,
as character modelling is (in my opinion)the most difficult skill to master.
However if you are a confident blender user and followed tutorials on character modelling for the past two year then this book should not probably be your next purchase.
But if you do so that it will certainly reinforce what you should already know and there is absolutly nothing wrong with that.

I was disappointed. For what the book does, it does clearly, logically, and except for the dark pictures that make it hard to see what's going on sometimes, very well done indeed. I was disappointed in what the book was not.

To me, there are two kinds of characters, usable and unusable. I have seen many books and tutorials, and a web site, Makehuman.com, that produced characters that were 50% done, 80% done, or had cartoon characters that were only good for playing with. I dearly wanted to see a book that could put it all together, from beginning to end and leave me with a posed and properly skinned realistic character, with realistic human skin, correctly constrained, with shape key drivers on the bones to correct obvious posing deformities, and the python to create the sliders for facial shape keys. Unfortunately, the character the book creates, while a genuine work of art, has none of the final parts that are so vital to putting it all together. (It does have a useful video tutorial on how to use Rigify) The book goes over again, what has been produced in many other tutorials in books and on the Internet, although in greater detail and in a particularly excellent way, but leaves one, again, without a useful character to pose.

Not everyone is fascinated with Blender as a tool to produce awesome, pretty things. Some, like me, see Blender as a tool that one might use to tell a story. To tell a story, one requires characters. Here, I saw an opportunity to show the complete process. It could be argued that the book couldn't do that for lack of space. I would say otherwise. The first seven chapters are on basic Blender techniques and, towards the end, there are chapters on lighting and creating the backdrop. I think those chapters were a bad decision. Excellent beginning Blender tutorials are all over the net. The 120 pages or so dedicated to beginners could have been used to help finish the job and make the character usable. If the book was for the beginner, then he would be left with an unusable character anyway and still face a whole lot of beginning Blender instruction to make good use of what he had, so why bother in the first place?

There is a still a vital need for a Blender book that covers it all, so good job on what it covered, but....

I downloaded the Kindle edition and then went to the site where the DVD files are advertised to be.
Apparently, they are not there yet. I hope they will appear soon.
Does anybody know when?

The DVD files are now available!
Johathan Williamson was pro-active in getting the publisher to make these files available.
Included in this are several excellent video tutorials!

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