The Essential Blender: The Official Guide to Blender

No Starch Press releases The Essential Blender: The official guide to Blender, the powerful, cross-platform, and free 3D design and animation tool.

No Starch Press has a long-standing relationship with the Blender Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the Blender software. The Essential Blender (No Starch Press, Oct 2007, $44.95, ISBN 978-1-59327-166-4) is the most recent product of that cooperation. "I've always been amazed by the Blender community's base of knowledge and desire to teach," said No Starch Press Publisher Bill Pollock. "They wowed us with their Blender 2.3 Guide and they've done it again with The Essential Blender. This is without a doubt the comprehensive and definitive guide to using the latest version of Blender."Blender is a free and open source 3D design and animation tool that is a real alternative to commercially available 3D design software. A cross-platform software package with millions of downloads annually, Blender is now one of the world's most popular 3D design tools. And although Blender is free, it's serious software--intended for design professionals and others motivated to become 3D artists. That also means that Blender can be just a bit more complex than your basic image editor.

As with prior Blender Foundation publications, amateurs and professionals alike will find that The Essential Blender provides them with the hands-on knowledge they need to help integrate Blender into their work and begin to master its powerful creation tools. Those new to 3D design will find an introductory chapter with relevant terminology and concepts. Then, following a tour of Blender's 3D modeling, animation, and rendering capabilities, readers will learn how best to use Blender for:

• Object manipulation and animation
• Mesh and sculpt modeling and shape animation
• Materials and texturing (including UV unwrapping)
• Lighting and rendering
• Particle animation
• Character rigging and animation
• Node-based composition

The Essential Blender is the product of the combined expertise of key members of the Blender community, including Blender's founder Ton Roosendaal, coupled with the experience of editor Roland Hess. The information in The Essential Blender is sure to help readers at all levels unlock their artistic potential and get the most out of this seriously powerful--and fun--software.

Includes a complete version of Blender 2.44 on the CD-ROM for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (x86 and PowerPC), Solaris, FreeBSD, and IRIX.

This book produced in cooperation with The Blender Foundation.

Introducing Character Animation with Blender

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

The companion DVD provides the Blender installer for Windows(r), 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

Available at Amazon.com.

Blender Tricks

A video tutorial containing a collection of generally unknown tips and tricks relating to the open source 3D suite known as Blender.