33,59 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
This book teaches you how to model a nautical scene, complete with boats and water, and then add materials, lighting, and animation. It demystifies the Blender interface and explains what each tool does so that you will be left with a thorough understanding of 3D. This book starts with an introduction to Blender and some background on the principles of animation, how they are applied to computer animation, and how these principles make animation better. Furthermore, the book helps you advance through various aspects of animation design such as modeling, lighting, camera work, and animation through the Blender interface with the help of several simple projects. Each project will help you practice what you have learned and do more advanced work in all areas.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 783
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Blender 3D Basics Beginner's Guide
Second Edition
Blender 3D Basics Beginner's Guide
Second Edition
Copyright © 2014 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: June 2012
Second edition: August 2014
Production reference: 1190814
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78398-490-9
www.packtpub.com
Cover image by Gordon Fisher (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Gordon Fisher
Reviewers
John W. Allie
Olivier Amrein
Michael Dunn
Jasper van Nieuwenhuizen
Brian Rocz
Commissioning Editor
Ashwin Nair
Acquisition Editor
Vinay Argekar
Content Development Editor
Anila Vincent
Technical Editors
Aman Preet Singh
Nachiket Vartak
Copy Editors
Roshni Banerjee
Sayanee Mukherjee
Karuna Narayanan
Alfida Paiva
Project Coordinators
Sanghamitra Deb
Priyanka Goel
Proofreaders
Paul Hindle
Clyde Jenkins
Bernadette Watkins
Indexers
Hemangini Bari
Mehreen Deshmukh
Rekha Nair
Tejal Soni
Production Coordinator
Shantanu Zagade
Cover Work
Shantanu Zagade
About the Author
Gordon Fisher got his start in computer graphics, working with industry pioneers at Information International, Inc. Since then, he has made 3D animation for clients including the U.S. Army, Ford Motor Co., the Dallas Cowboys, the Southeastern Conference, Costco, and Southwest Airlines.
He has been using Blender professionally since 2002, and has given classes on using Blender and using Python with Blender at Python conferences in Texas and Arkansas. His short film, Land and Sky, made with Blender, was shown at the Ozark Foothills Film Fest. His work has been displayed at the National Air and Space Museum.
He is the Creative Director for Point Happy Interactive and spends his spare time as a bicycling advocate and space activist. He has written articles about 3D modeling and animation for the American Modeler magazine and Digital Video Producer e-zine.
I would like to thank the people without whom this book would not exist. I would like to thank the staff at Packt Publishing, Ton Roosendaal, and the many Blender users around the world.
About the Reviewers
John W. Allie has been using Blender since 1999, when it wasn't even open source. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife. Comics and other artwork can be found on his website http://www.johnwallie.com.
Olivier Amrein has been working on 3D for over 15 years. He is a CG generalist, interested in production aspects and workflows. Right now, he is working for RGBprod, a studio in Switzerland. He is a Blender Foundation Certified Trainer who loves all kinds of visual experiments.
He has been giving talks and workshops in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Brazil, Venezuela, and Russia. You can find more information about him at http://www.olivieramrein.com/.
I would like to thank my wife, Qiongyao, and my two kids, Milla and Louis.
Michael Dunn is a Python developer at the University of Notre Dame and an aspiring 3D artist.
A sophisticated 3D studio such as Blender comes with a pretty steep learning curve. When he started to learn Blender, it was difficult to find good training materials for beginners—which made the learning process quite disheartening. So, it is with joy that he is able to contribute as a technical reviewer to Blender 3D Basics Beginner's Guide and hopes that it will help many other aspiring artists get off to a successful start with Blender.
Jasper van Nieuwenhuizen is a freelance animation professional with a special interest in the technical side of things. After graduating from an art school in 2004, he picked up Blender and has been using it ever since. Because he really enjoyed animation and 3D in particular, and wanted to learn as much as he could about it, he decided to go back to school. In 2010, he graduated in 3D Computer Animation and Visual Effects from Utrecht School of the Arts.
After this, he co-started the animation studio Fube, where he played his part in making commercials and an animated short film. During this time, he picked up Python and slowly evolved from a CG Generalist to a Technical Director, but still kept in touch with the artistic side of animation.
At the moment, he freelances under the name Lines of Jasper, and is involved in the startup of an animation collective. When he's not in front of his computer, he spends time with his family, grows vegetables on the balcony, and makes paper planes and robots. You can find more about him and his work at http://www.linesofjasper.com.
Brian Rocz received a BA in English from the University of Colorado, Denver, where he began studies in Math and Physics before transferring to the more subjective realm of literature and writing. His interest in 3D art grew out of his traditional art background, which, he admits, was left uncultivated and even less practiced. He has been using Blender for a number of years and is largely self-taught, though he cannot get away without saying that he owes a debt of gratitude to the Blender community for sharing their knowledge. He goes by the name Rocz3D in the digital space and on his website http://www.3dblenderstuff.wordpress.com.
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book.
Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at <[email protected]> for more details.
At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks.
http://PacktLib.PacktPub.com
Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. Here, you can access, read and search across Packt's entire library of books.
Why subscribe?
Free access for Packt account holders
If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access PacktLib today and view nine entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for immediate access.
Preface
When researching, in preparation to write this book, we discovered that some Blender users try to learn Blender three times and give up twice before they become comfortable with Blender's effective, if unusual, interface. The editors at Packt and I decided that this was a problem that could be solved. The answer is to explain the basics in depth, give you practice so that your hands can learn Blender just as your mind does, and then you build on what you have learned. This isn't just a subject-by-subject reference book. It's a workbook to give you experience.
The theory behind Blender 3D Basics Beginner's Guide Second Edition is to start out simply and delve deeper and deeper into Blender in gradual stages, coming back to important topics several times. This book will start with an introduction to Blender and some background on the principles of animation, how they are applied to computer animation, and how these principles make animation better. Then you will be gently guided through the Blender interface, and introduced to using Blender with simple projects that cover the full process of modeling, lighting, camera work, and animation. Then you will continue to practice what you have learned and do more advanced work in all areas. Finally, you will bring it all together with an advanced project covering these subjects and edit animations made in this book; creating a video and a stereoscopic 3D animation. This may be a workbook, but it's a fun workbook with surprises, humor, and the projects build on each other, so it's not just a random series of exercises. When you are finished, you'll be prepared to show the world your skills.
Let's go!
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introducing Blender and Animation, will help you to get your first hands-on use of Blender, a brief but very relevant bit of history of animation and computer animation and an overview of the basic principles of animation.
Chapter 2, Getting Comfortable Using the 3D View, includes some fun exercises that explore the usage of the Blender window system and the basic elements that are found in the 3D View window.
Chapter 3, Controlling the Lamp, the Camera, and Animating Objects, explains the basics of lights in Blender, good use of the camera, and making your first animation.
Chapter 4, Modeling with Vertices, Edges, and Faces, teaches you the fundamentals of 3D modeling, using Vertices, Edges, and Faces. You'll be introduced to Blender's library of premade objects and have fun bending and distorting Blender's lovely mascot, Suzanne.
Chapter 5, Building a Simple Boat, will teach you box modeling techniques. You will learn how to use them to make a small jon boat, give it a color, and make wooden seats. Then you will study the different lights that Blender has.
Chapter 5A, Lighting a Small Boat, will help you explore Blender's different lights. This chapter can be found online at https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/4909OS_05A_Lighting_a_Small_Boat.pdf.
Chapter 6, Making and Moving the Oars, focuses on the oars for the boat. You will use more advanced modeling and animation techniques and discover how to create more complex keyframe animations.
Chapter 6A, Using Stereoscopic Cameras, gives you a brief introduction to setting up stereoscopic 3D cameras. This chapter can be found at https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/4909OS_06A_Using_Stereoscopic_Cameras.pdf.
Chapter 7, Planning Your Work, Working Your Plan, teaches you to create templates to help you plan your modeling. You will get an introduction to modeling with Bézier curves, take a look at storyboarding and planning an animation, as well as being introduced to some charts and guides that help you plan your work.
Chapter 8, Making the Sloop, helps you to make the hull of the sloop using box modeling and subdivision surfaces. You will learn to make holes in objects with Boolean operations and create the ship's wheel with Spin Tools and DupliVerts.
Chapter 9, Finishing Your Sloop, explains how to use text and fonts in naming your sloop. Then you will assemble all the objects you made in this and the previous chapter, build some sails using NURBS surfaces, and add a few extras that have been provided in your download pack.
Chapter 10, Modeling Organic Forms, Sea, and Terrain, helps you build and paint an island and the ocean. You make trees for it, and assemble some prefab buildings, and also make a pier from four simple parts.
Chapter 11, Improving Your Lighting and Camera Work, focuses on professional lighting and camera techniques. You will also learn more about animation and ways to speed up performing test renders and improve the final rendering quality.
Chapter 12, Rendering and Compositing, covers assembling strips of animated sequences in the Video Sequence Editor to create a completed and edited animation with sound. You will use the node editor to assemble a 3D stereoscopic animation and get introduced to the cycles renderer, which adds even more realism and possibilities to a Blender scene.
What you need for this book
You need to download a copy of Blender available at http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/. This book was written and tested on Blender 2.71. It should work with later versions of Blender as well, but we cannot guarantee it.
Who this book is for
This book was written to reduce the frustration that beginners who use Blender face, by offering a thorough introduction to the unique and powerful Blender interface, starting with simple projects and working up to more complex scenes and animations. It's intended to provide plenty of practice in using Blender, advice on things to keep in mind when doing 3D animation, and an exploration of Blender so that the students, when they finish the book, will have a solid background in using Blender and know enough that they can confidently participate in the worldwide Blender community.
This book also takes a peek into some arcane subjects such as the Cycles render engine, so that the reader will not be afraid, and will have a start on how to understand them. The student will have a sufficient solid basis in using Blender that they can continue and learn all of the higher functions of Blender including the physics engine, game engine, particles, armatures for character modeling, and more.
Conventions
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.
To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
Time for action – heading
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:
What just happened?
This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
Pop quiz – heading
These are short multiple-choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.
Have a go hero – heading
These practical challenges give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Copy the file to your Image directory."
Newterms and importantwords are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Go down to where it says Normals."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title through the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.
Customer support
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Downloading the example code
You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
Downloading color versions of the images for this book
For your convenience we have also provided a PDF that contains higher resolution color versions of the images used in this book. These can be extremely useful as you work through various stages of the project when working with materials or examining small detail changes as we tweak individual parameters. You can download the PDF from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/4909OS_coloredimages.pdf.
Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the erratasubmissionform link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title.
Piracy
Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.
Questions
You can contact us at <[email protected]> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.
Chapter 1. Introducing Blender and Animation
Welcome! It's a good guess that you are interested in learning how to create 3D animations or model 3D objects, maybe for use in games or 3D printing. You've chosen Blender 3D and you want to learn how to use it. This book is a good choice for learning Blender 3D. We did research on what hurdles new users faced and what were their frustrations with other training methods. So we will go step-by-step, learning how to use Blender comfortably to create animations, and do modeling, lighting, camera work, and much more. We will start out with simple steps and get comfortable at using the Blender interface, making and animating a rowboat and a sloop, and creating our own private island as shown in the following screenshot:
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
Welcome to the world of Blender 3D
The following is a screenshot of the Big Buck Bunny movie that was made using Blender:
The world of Blender is not an animated world as seen in films such as Big Buck Bunny or Sintel that was also made in Blender. It's the amazing community of people all over the world who use Blender. Artists, programmers, scientists, professionals, amateurs, teens, and retirees all use Blender, and now you will be one of the newest members of our community.
One thing that makes this community remarkable is the concept that since Blender is free, you pay for it by helping out the Blender community. There are many ways to give back to the community. You can recommend Blender to your friends, have fun helping other Blender users on websites such as www.blenderartists.org, critique their works, or pass along tips that you have learned. Blender is an open source software. Once you have mastered Blender, you can help create new functions for Blender itself or work with the Blender foundation team to make new cutting-edge examples of what Blender can do; for example, the films Sintel, Tears of Steel, and The Gooseberry Project were all created using Blender. There are as many ways to help the Blender community as there are Blender users and, most importantly, helping others will help you as a Blender user. Blender is not a solo sport, so join in!
Tip
Big Buck Bunny, Sintel, and Tears of Steel are animated films created by the Blender Institute
They were made with the dual purposes of improving Blender by bringing the best Blender users in the world together to push Blender to its limits, using its full capacity, and demonstrating to people what Blender is capable of. You can download Big Buck Bunny, Sintel, or Tears of Steel, or watch them at these locations:
Big Buck Bunny can be seen at http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/.
Sintel can be seen at http://www.sintel.org/.
Tears of Steel can be seen at http://mango.blender.org/.
Discovering Blender and animation
As Sintel, shown in the following screenshot, learned about her little Dragon, you will be learning a lot about how to use Blender. We will start out with some quick exercises to introduce you to the basics, and as you progress, you will be able to do more and more. As you study and practice, your hands will learn the Blender commands, freeing your mind to let it concentrate on modeling, lighting, camera work, and animation.
This book is about using Blender 3D; we will cover things that can help you build 3D objects for games, models, real-time simulations, 3D printing, and more. Blender began as an animation program, so it's good to start there.
However, there is more to animation than knowing which buttons to push while using Blender. Animators who are skilled at using the software but do not have a broader understanding of animation do not get the full use of the tools. They don't understand the culture or the history of animation or how animation principles have been used by masters such as Ub Iwerks, Chuck Jones, and Hayao Miyazaki, and therefore, they cannot profit from them. Thus, in this chapter, we will look at animation in general, and then computer animation specifically.
As you go through this book, you'll start by creating some simple animations such as moving the lights and camera in Blender. Once you are confident with this, you'll study the fundamentals of modeling and complete a simple modeling and animation project; finally, you will work on a more complex scene to expand your skills and get comfortable with the whole Blender production cycle.
There are many excellent books that teach you how to animate. In this book, we will focus on Blender and include pointers about animation that will help you educate yourself about animation in general and get the most from Blender.
Repetition is important when learning a skill. It takes repeated usage before your arms know what to do when the mind says "scale this box." So be patient. Play, learn, and have fun!
Learning Blender will literally change how you think
You'll be able to look at an object and think of several ways to create it. You will perceive everything differently. As you walk down a street, you will be imagining how you might model it or render it in Blender.
One thing to remember is that there are no buttons in Blender that say "Don't touch". As long as you back up your files and use the Ctrl + Z keys to undo any mistakes, not much is likely to go too wrong.
Now, it's time to begin our discovery of Blender. Using Blender is as simple or complex as you want it to be.
Let's begin simply. To start, we will open Blender and render a scene. Rendering is like taking a picture in Blender. When you take a picture in real life, you have a camera, some light, and something or someone you are taking a picture of.
In a Blender scene, there is a camera, a lamp, and something to render. When you render, Blender scans the scene from the camera's point of view. It notes which objects are where, and what lights are available. It figures out how each object will be lit, what the surface of the object looks like, what part of the object the camera can see, how big it should appear to the camera, and other factors, and then Blender creates a picture. It's pretty amazing.
We'll dip our toe into Blender, just so you can see that using Blender is not difficult and that you can do it. Then, we will do a little background study on animations so that you will understand what animators are trying to accomplish in Blender. Then, using what you have learned, you'll be ready to learn more about Blender.
Installing Blender
Go to http://www.blender.org/ to download Blender for free. There is a Download button on the main menu, which will direct you to the location from where you can download the latest version of Blender for your system. Blender runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Follow the instructions and you should have Blender up and running quickly.
To use Blender, you need to first check that your machine has certain minimum system specifications so that it is capable of running Blender. Here's where to find your system information:
The following is what Blender needs in order to be able to run:
Tip
Using a three-button mouse and the numeric keypad
After looking at the hardware specs, you may have noticed that Blender is designed to be used with a three-button mouse. Whether you are running a Mac and using a single-button mouse, or you have a laptop with a touchpad or trackpad, this is a great time to go to the store and buy a three-button optical or wireless mouse with a mouse wheel. They are not expensive. You shouldn't need anything special. I took one from a PC, plugged it into the USB port of a MacBook Air running Snow Leopard, and it worked fine. I polled a number of Blender users and they all said that using the three-button mouse was faster and easier than other devices.
If you are using a tablet with a higher end system, check your tablet documentation on how to reproduce right, middle, and left mouse-button clicks.
Also, if your computer does not have a numeric keypad built in, treat yourself to an external one. They are not expensive and will add a lot to your enjoyment of Blender, as well as improve your productivity.
Using Blender
Now that you have the latest version of Blender on your system, it's time to try it out.
Time for action – rendering your first scene in Blender
Although Blender is very powerful and has a lot of features, it's easy to get started using it. Blender has a default scene all set up for you to render. The following steps will help you render your first scene in Blender:
The following are the changes you should make to optimize your Mac for Blender. When you have made these changes, you will be able to use Blender in the same manner as Windows and Linux users, and you will be able to press the F12 button to start rendering:
What just happened?
Congratulations! You've now rendered your first scene in Blender. You can see the scene to be rendered in the preceding image. The cube is easy to guess. The dot surrounded by dashed lines is the lamp. The four-sided cone with a triangle on top is the camera, and there is a reference grid beneath the cube.
When the scene is rendered, as seen in the following screenshot, Blender shows you what the camera would see. The cube is colored gray because you haven't chosen a color. There is only one lamp in the scene, and Blender calculates where the lamp is and where the sides of the cube are. The lamp is not an object like a light bulb, so it is not seen in the rendered image, but its light is used to set the brightness of the scene.
While it's rendering, Blender figures out what portion of the light would bounce off a particular side of the cube and into the camera lens. Some sides point away from the lamp, so they appear darker. The sides facing towards the lamp appear to be brighter. Blender even does a trick that you don't see at all. Blender figures out which parts of the cube the camera does not see, and to save itself from additional work, it doesn't render what cannot be seen.
Rendering this image was simple for you. Blender doesn't get any more difficult to use; you just learn more things to do with Blender. In the following chapters, we will break down the sections into easy-to-do steps using Blender.
Mac users, thank you for making changes to the interface of your Mac. Now, you can use the standard Blender commands. These will pay off by making the using of Blender much easier and fun. You can still access the Dashboard via the Mac menu bar.
Time for action – closing Blender
Now, let's close Blender and study some basics of animation. Steps for closing Blender are as follows:
