Key FeaturesBook DescriptionWhat you will learnUnderstand the basics of 3D and how to navigate your way around the Blender interfaceCreate a 3D robot toy model from start to finish using the basic modeling tools of BlenderMake a full alien character using the skin mesh modifier and the sculpting tools with an artistic approachUse retopology techniques to create a clean 3D version of the previously sculpted alienModel a full haunted house and its environment using more advanced modeling tools and techniques such as the Array Modifier, Instance duplication, or CurvesDiscover the power of the texture paint tool in order to add color to the haunted houseGet to know the Cycles render engine by creating different materials for the house and the environmentWho this book is for

Blender 3D by example : design a complete workflow with Blender to create stunning 3D scenes and films step by step!

Caudron, Romain, Nicq, Pierre-Armand

Pierre-Armand Nicq; Romain Caudron

Adobe InDesign CS6 (Windows)

Community experience distilled, Birmingham, 2015

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

1, 2015

producers:
Adobe PDF Library 10.0.1

Cover 1
Copyright 3
Credits 4
About the Authors 5
About the Reviewers 6
www.PacktPub.com 7
Table of Contents 8
Preface 16
Chapter 1: Straight into Blender! 22
An overview of the 3D workflow 22
The anatomy of a 3D scene 23
What can you do with Blender? 26
Getting used to the navigation in Blender 27
An introduction to the navigation of the
3D Viewport 27
What are editors? 29
The anatomy of an editor 29
Split, Join, and Detach 30
Some useful layout presets 32
Setting up your preferences 32
An introduction to the Preferences window 32
Customizing the default navigation style 33
Improving Blender with add-ons 34
A brief introduction to the projects 35
The Robot toy 35
The Alien character 35
The Haunted House 36
The Rat Cowboy 36
Summary 36
Chapter 2: Robot Toy – Modeling of an Object 38
Let's start the modeling of our robot toy 39
Preparing the workflow by adding an image reference 39
Adding the head primitive 40
The Edit Mode versus the Object Mode 41
Using the basic modeling tools 42
Modeling the head 43
Modeling the antenna 45
An introduction to the Subdivision Surface modifier 48
Improving the head shape 50
Modeling the thunderbolts 51
Modeling the eyes 55
The modeling of the chest 55
The modeling of the neck 59
Modeling the torso 60
The modeling of the buttons 61
Modeling the fork 62
Modeling protections for the fork 65
The modeling of the main wheel 67
The modeling of the arm 68
Using Blender Internal to render our Robot 72
Summary 73
Chapter 3: Alien Character – Base Mesh Creation and Sculpting 74
Understanding the sculpting process 75
An introduction to sculpting 75
Choosing sculpting over poly modeling 76
Using a pen tablet 76
The sculpt mode 77
Optimizing the viewport 77
Anatomy of a brush 78
Dyntopo versus the Multires modifier 81
First touch with the Multires modifier 81
First touch with Dyntopo 82
Creating a base mesh with the Skin modifier 84
Visual preparation 87
An introduction to artistic anatomy 89
Sculpting the body 90
The head 90
The torso 99
The arms 102
The legs 103
The belt 106
Summary 109
Chapter 4: Alien Character – Creating a Proper Topology and Transferring the Sculpt Details 110
Why make a retopology? 111
Possibilities of arranging polygons 111
Errors to avoid during the creation of retopology 113
Density of polygons 115
Making the retopology of the alien character 115
Preparing the environment 115
The head 116
The neck and the torso 124
The arms and the hands 127
The legs 129
Unwrapping UVs 131
Understanding UVs 132
The placement of the seams 132
The placement and adjustment of the islands 136
The baking of textures 137
The baking of a normal map 138
What is a normal map? 138
Displaying the normal map in the viewport 139
The baking of an ambient occlusion 140
Understanding the ambient occlusion map 140
Displaying the ambient occlusion in the viewport 142
Summary 143
Chapter 5: Haunted House – Modeling Of the Scene 144
Blocking the house 145
Working with a scale 145
Blocking the bases of the house 146
Refining the blocking 150
Adding instantiated objects 150
Reworking the blocking objects 154
Breaking and ageing the elements 156
Simulate a stack of wooden planks with physics 158
Creation of the simulation of a stack of planks 158
Modeling the environment (8 pages) 160
Modeling the cliff 160
Modeling a tree with curves 161
Enhancing the scene with a barrier, rocks, and a cart 165
Organizing the scene 170
Grouping objects 170
Working with layers 171
Summary 172
Chapter 6: The Haunted House – Putting Colors on It 174
Unwrapping UVs 175
Using Project From View 175
Unwrapping the rest of the house 176
The tree with the Smart UV Project 179
Unwrapping the rest of the environment 180
Tiling UVs 181
What is tiling for? 181
The UV layers 181
Adding colors 182
Basics of the Texture Paint tool 182
Discovering the brushes 183
The Stroke option 185
Delimiting the zones of painting according to the geometry 186
Painting directly on the texture 187
Painting the scene 187
Laying down the colors 187
Tiled textures 188
The settings of our workspace 189
Advice for a good tiled texture 189
Painting the roof-tile texture 190
Quick tips for other kinds of hand-painted tiled textures 191
Baking our tiled textures 192
Why bake? 192
How to do it? 192
Creating transparent textures 193
The grass texture 193
The grunge texture 196
Doing a quick render with Blender Internal 197
Setting lights 198
Placing the camera 199
Setting the environment (sky and mist) 199
Summary 201
Chapter 7: Haunted House – Adding Materials and Lights in Cycles 202
Understanding the basic settings
of Cycles 202
The sampling 203
Light path settings 204
Performances 204
Lighting 205
Creating a testing material 205
Understanding the different types of light 205
Lighting our scene 210
Painting and using an Image Base Lighting 212
Creating materials with nodes 216
Creating the materials of the house, the rocks, and the tree 216
Adding a mask for the windows 220
Using procedural textures 221
Making and applying normal maps in Cycles 223
Creating realistic grass 226
Generating the grass with particles 226
Creating the grass shader 228
Baking textures in Cycles 229
Cycles versus Blender Internal 229
Baking the tree 230
Compositing a mist pass 233
Summary 234
Chapter 8: The Rat Cowboy – Learning To Rig a Character for Animation 236
An introduction to the rigging process 237
Rigging the Rat Cowboy 238
Placing the deforming bones 238
The leg and the foot 242
The arm and the hand 244
The hips 246
The tail 247
The head and the eyes 248
Mirroring the rig 250
Rigging the gun 251
Rigging the holster 253
Adding a root bone 254
Skinning 255
The Weight Paint tools 255
Manually assigning weight to vertices 257
Correcting the foot deformation 257
Correcting the belt deformation 258
Custom shapes 259
The shape keys 261
What is a shape key? 261
Creating basic shapes 261
Driving a shape key 263
Summary 266
Chapter 9: The Rat Cowboy – Animate a Full Sequence 268
Principles of animation 269
Squash and Stretch 269
Anticipation 269
Staging 270
Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose 270
Follow Through and Overlapping Action 271
Slow In and Slow Out 272
Arcs 272
Secondary Action 273
Timing 273
Exaggeration 274
Solid drawing 274
Appeal 275
Animation tools in Blender 275
The timeline 275
What is a keyframe? 276
The Dope Sheet 276
The Graph editor 277
The Non-Linear Action editor 278
Preparation of the animation 279
Writing a short script 279
Making a storyboard 281
Finding the final camera placements and the timing through a layout 283
Animation references 284
Organization 284
Animating the scene 287
The walk cycle 287
Mixing actions 290
Animation of a close shot 293
Animation of the gunshot 294
Animation of the trap 297
Render a quick preview of a shot 301
Summary 302
Chapter 10: The Rat Cowboy – Rendering, Compositing, and Editing 304
Creating advanced materials in Cycles 304
Skin material with Subsurface Scattering 305
Eye material 307
The fur of the rat 308
The Raw rendering phase 313
Enhance a picture with compositing 314
Introduction to nodal compositing 315
Depth Pass 317
Adding effects 319
Compositing rendering phase 321
Editing the sequence with the VSE 321
Introduction to the Video Sequence Editor 322
Edit and render the final sequence 322
Summary 323
Index 324

<p>Design a complete workflow with Blender to create stunning 3D scenes and films step-by-step!<br></p><p>About This Book<br></p><ul> <li>Give life to a character within a full animated short film by learning the rigging and animation process </li> <li>Make use of the powerful tools available in Blender to produce professional-quality 3D characters and environments </li> <li>Discover advanced techniques by adding fur to a character, creating a grass field, and fine-tuning a shot with post-processing effects to enhance your creations </li></ul><p>Who This Book Is For<br></p><p>This book will give any beginner the necessary skills and knowledge to create own 3D projects with Blender. You don't need to have any previous experience in 3D modeling, but if you do, then this book is a great way get you started with Blender. This book is for anyone who wants to learn Blender by creating concrete projects.<br></p><p>What You Will Learn<br></p><ul> <li>Understand the basics of 3D and how to navigate your way around the Blender interface </li> <li>Create a 3D robot toy model from start to finish using the basic modeling tools of Blender </li> <li>Make a full alien character using the skin mesh modifier and the sculpting tools with an artistic approach </li> <li>Use re-topology techniques to create a clean 3D version of the previously sculpted alien </li> <li>Model a full haunted house and its environment using more advanced modeling tools and techniques such as the Array Modifier, Instance duplication, or Curves </li> <li>Discover the power of the texture paint tool in order to add color to the haunted house </li> <li>Get to know the Cycles render engine by creating different materials for the house and the environment </li></ul><p>In Detail<br></p><p>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.<br></p><p>Through this book, 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.<br></p><p>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.<br></p><p>Each project in this book will give you more practice and increase your knowledge of the Blender tools. By the end of this book, you will master a workflow that you will be able to apply to your own creations.<br></p><p>Style and approach<br></p><p>This is an easy-to-follow book that is based on four concrete projects, with increasing levels of difficulty. Each chapter will teach you how to create these projects step-by-step. New tools and techniques are introduced in a theoretical and practical way, so you can apply them in your own projects later.<br></p>

Design a complete workflow with Blender to create stunning 3D scenes and films step-by-step!About This Book Give life to a character within a full animated short film by learning the rigging and animation process Make use of the powerful tools available in Blender to produce professional-quality 3D characters and environments Discover advanced techniques by adding fur to a character, creating a grass field, and fine-tuning a shot with post-processing effects to enhance your creationsWho This Book Is For This book will give any beginner the necessary skills and knowledge to create own 3D projects with Blender. You don't need to have any previous experience in 3D modeling, but if you do, then this book is a great way get you started with Blender. This book is for anyone who wants to learn Blender by creating concrete projects. What You Will Learn Understand the basics of 3D and how to navigate your way around the Blender interface Create a 3D robot toy model from start to finish using the basic modeling tools of Blender Make a full alien character using the skin mesh modifier and the sculpting tools with an artistic approach Use re-topology techniques to create a clean 3D version of the previously sculpted alien Model a full haunted house and its environment using more advanced modeling tools and techniques such as the Array Modifier, Instance duplication, or Curves Discover the power of the texture paint tool in order to add color to the haunted house Get to know the Cycles render engine by creating different materials for the house and the environmentIn Detail 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. Through this book, 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 book will give you more practice and increase your knowledge of the Blender tools. By the end of this book, you will master a workflow that you will be able to apply to your own creations. Style and approach This is an easy-to-follow book that is based on four concrete projects, with increasing levels of difficulty. Each chapter will teach you how to create these projects step-by-step. New tools and techniques are introduced in a theoretical and practical way, so you can apply them in your own projects later

2024-06-27