Blender For Dummies E-Book

Jason van Gumster

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 617

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

So you've heard about Blender, the free 3D animationsoftware. You really want to know more about the features ofBlender, where to get it, and how to use it. You're in luck!It's all in Blender For Dummies, including Blendersoftware on the bonus DVD. Because there's a lot to learn about Blender, you'llbe glad this book takes it step by step. First, you'll learnto install Blender 2.48 and think the Blender way. Thenyou'll start creating 3D objects and setting them in motionwith animations and rigging. Soon you'll be texturing withBlender, rendering with Blender, and sharing your creations.You'll learn how to: * Create almost anything with meshes, save time with the Mirrormodifier, and use Blender's secret weapon, Dupliverts * Understand texture mapping, know when to use which type oflamp, and use radiosity in animation * Work with curves and surfaces, and add color, shades, texture,and reflections * Rig your characters for animation with shape keys, hooks, andarmatures, and understand kinematics * Navigate in three dimensions * Make your animations more believable, and let Blender do theanimating for you * Use the video sequence editor * Export, render, composite, and edit for output You'll even get tips on common problems new Blender usersface and how to avoid them. Blender For Dummies will haveyou creating eye-popping 3D animations before you know it! Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials arenot included as part of eBook file.

Leseprobe

Blender For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Wrapping Your Brain around Blender

Part II: Creating Detailed 3D Scenes

Part III: Get Animated!

Part IV: Sharing Your Work with the World

Part V: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Wrapping Your Brain Around Blender

Chapter 1: Discovering Blender

Getting to Know Blender

Discovering Blender’s History

Making Open Movies and Games

Getting to Know the Interface

Fast to use versus fast to learn

The Blender non-blocking interface

Chapter 2: Understanding How Blender Thinks

Looking at Window Types

Understanding the Buttons window

Working with screens

Setting user preferences

Navigating in Three Dimensions

Orbiting, panning, and zooming the 3D view

Changing views

Selecting objects

Taking advantage of the 3D cursor

Chapter 3: Getting Your Hands Dirty Working in Blender

Grabbing, Scaling, and Rotating

Differentiating between Coordinate Systems

Transforming an Object by Using the 3D Manipulator

Switching manipulator modes

Using the manipulator

Saving Time by Using Hotkeys

G, S, and R: Transforming with hotkeys

Hotkeys and coordinate systems

Using gestures to work faster

Numerical input

The Transform Properties floating window

Chapter 4: Working in Edit Mode and Object Mode

Making Changes Using Edit Mode

Distinguishing between Object mode and Edit mode

Selecting vertices, edges, and faces

Blender’s #1 modeling tool: Extrude

Adding to a Scene

Getting to know the toolbox that lives in your spacebar

Adding objects

Meet Suzanne, the Blender monkey

Joining and separating objects

Creating duplicates and links

Discovering parents, children, and groups

Saving, opening, and appending

Part II: Creating Detailed 3D Scenes

Chapter 5: Creating Anything You Can Imagine with Meshes

Pushing Vertices

Working with Loops and Rings

Simplifying Your Life as a Modeler with Modifiers

Doing half the work (and still looking good!) with the Mirror modifier

Smoothing things out with the Subsurf modifier

Using the power of Arrays

Sculpting Multi-Resolution Meshes

Sculpt panel

Brush panel

Texture panel

Chapter 6: Using Blender’s Non-Mesh Primitives

Using Curves and Surfaces

Understanding the different types of curves

Working with curves

Understanding the strengths and limitations of Blender’s surfaces

Using Meta Objects

Meta-wha?

What meta objects are useful for

Adding Text

Adding and editing text

Changing fonts

Deforming text with a curve

Converting to curves and meshes

Chapter 7: Changing that Boring Gray Default Material

Playing with Materials

Changing colors

Adjusting shader values

Reflection and transparency

Assigning multiple materials to different parts of a mesh

Coloring Vertices with Vertex Paint

Chapter 8: Giving Models Texture

Adding Textures

Using Procedural Textures

Distorted Noise

Voronoi

Musgrave

Noise

Blend

Magic

Wood

Stucci

Marble

Clouds

EnvMap

Understanding Texture Mapping

Unwrapping a Mesh

Painting Textures Directly on a Mesh

Baking Texture Maps from Your Mesh

Using UV Textures

Chapter 9: Lighting and Environment

Lighting a Scene

Knowing when to use which type of lamp

Lighting for Speedy Renders

Three-point lighting in Blender

Creating a “fake” Area light with buffered Spots

Outdoor lighting

Setting Up the World

Changing to something other than bright blue

Understanding ambient occlusion

Mist, stars, and sky textures

Part III: Get Animated!

Chapter 10: Animating Objects

Working with Animation Curves

Inserting keys

Editing motion curves

Using Constraints Effectively

The all-powerful Empty!

Copying the movement of another object

Putting limits on an object

Tracking the motion of another object

Chapter 11: Rigging: The Art of Building an Animatable Puppet

Creating Shape Keys

Creating new shapes

Mixing shapes

Knowing where shape keys are helpful

Adding Hooks

Creating new hooks

Knowing where hooks are helpful

Using Armatures: Skeletons in the Mesh

Editing armatures

Putting skin on your skeleton

Bringing It All Together in a Single Rig

Taking advantage of parenting and constraints

Understanding the difference between inverse kinematics and forward kinematics

Making the rig more user-friendly

Chapter 12: Animating Object Deformations

Working with the Action Editor

Animating Shape Keys

Animating with Armatures

Principles of animation worth remembering

Making sense of quaternions (or, “Why are there four rotation curves?!”)

Copying mirrored poses

Seeing the big picture with ghosting

Visualizing motion with bone paths

Doing Non-Linear Animation

Mixing actions to create complex animation

Taking advantage of looped animation

Chapter 13: Letting Blender Do the Work for You

Using Particles in Blender

Knowing what particle systems are good for

Using forces and deflectors

Using particles for hair and fur

Giving Objects Some Jiggle and Bounce

Dropping Objects in a Scene with Rigid Body Dynamics

Simulating Cloth

Splashing Fluids in Your Scene

Part IV: Sharing Your Work with the World

Chapter 14: Exporting and Rendering Scenes

Exporting to External Formats

Rendering a Scene

Creating a still image

Creating a finished animation

Creating a sequence of still images for editing or compositing

Chapter 15: Compositing and Editing

Working with the Video Sequence Editor

Adding and editing strips

Adding effects

Rendering from the Video Sequence Editor

Working with the Node-Based Compositor

Understanding the benefits of rendering in passes

Working with nodes

Rendering from the Node Compositor

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 16: Ten Problems for New Users in Blender (and Ways around Them)

Auto Saves and Session Recovery Don’t Work

Blender’s Interface Is Weird or Glitchy

A Notorious “Black Stripe” Appears on Models

Objects Go Missing

Python Not Found

Edge Loop Select Doesn’t Work

A Background Image Disappears

There’s a Limit to Zooming

Lost Simulation Data

Blender Doesn’t Create Faces as Expected

Chapter 17: Ten Tips for Working More Effectively in Blender

Use Blender’s Tooltips

Constantly Check Models from Different Views

Lock a Camera to an Animated Character

Occlude Background Geometry in Edit Mode

Name EVERYTHING (Organize Your Projects)

Use Layers Effectively

Do Low-Resolution Test Renders

Mind Your Mouse

Turn on Passepartout for Your Camera

Have Fun, but Take Breaks

Appendix: About the CD

Author-created material

Big Buck Bunny

Blender

VLC

Blender For Dummies®

by Jason van Gumster

Blender For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Jason van Gumster got into animation when he realized that he wanted to create movies . . . but that actors are generally intolerant of having pianos dropped on them. Using open source tools at nearly every step, Jason has produced animations and visual effects for television, film, and video games in his official capacity as a Production Monkey for Hand Turkey Studios, the company he helped start in 2005. A Blender user since 1998, Jason has given numerous live demonstrations and workshops on Blender internationally and his Advanced Blender Fluids training DVD from cmiVFX is recognized as one of the best learning resources for Blender’s integrated fluid simulator. In January of 2008, Jason worked with the Blender Foundation to assemble the Blender Certification Review Board and lead the launch of the Blender Foundation Certified Trainer (BFCT) program. He also periodically writes for BlenderNation (www.blendernation.com), the primary news Web site for Blender users. Based in Richmond, Virginia, Jason can often be found in cafés and diners drawing, espousing the virtues of open source software, or catching confused looks from strangers as he contorts his body to better visualize a scene he’s animating.

Dedication

To my friends and family, which I consider one and the same. You tolerate my eccentricity, encourage my success, and give me a swift kick to the pants when I’m completely full of it. I couldn’t appreciate you more.

Author’s Acknowledgments

My first thanks go to Blender’s team of developers, lead by our “benevolent dictator,” Ton Roosendaal. Without them, Blender would never exist in the state that it does today. Of course, equally deserving of gratitude is the overall Blender community, without which Blender would never have been made open source.

Thanks, also, to everyone at Wiley, particularly my acquisitions editor, Kyle Looper, and my project editor, Linda Morris. They are refined professionals, and I’m grateful for their ability to keep me on task and (mostly) on schedule. I’d also like to thank Bassam Kurdali for agreeing to work as the book’s technical editor. He’s one of the most knowledgeable and talented members of the Blender community, and I hate to think of how little sense this book would’ve made without his input.

I’d also like to give a quick thank-you to the first human who learned to filter water through coffee grounds. Without your precious discovery, I’m certain that not just this book, but many of my accomplishments would’ve never occurred.

And finally, I’d like to thank my fellow Hand Turkeys, Warren Belfield and Roberto Rubet. Not only are these guys talented artists and business partners, but they are definitely true friends whose feedback (and insults) I value greatly.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Project Editor: Linda Morris

Acquisitions Editor: Kyle Looper

Copy Editor: Linda Morris

Technical Editor: Bassam Kurdali

Editorial Manager: Jodi Jensen

Editorial Assistant: Laura Moss-Hollister

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Katie Key

Layout and Graphics: Reuben W. Davis, Joyce Haughey, Melissa K. Jester, Sarah Phillipart, Christin Swinford, Ronald Terry

Proofreader: Broccoli Information Management

Indexer: Broccoli Information Management

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

Blender: an awesome little 3D content creation suite that animates characters, surprises nay-sayers, simulates physics, and gives you foot massages if you’ve had a bad day! Okay, the last part is an exaggeration, but it’s difficult to imagine a task in computer animation that Blender can’t do. With it, you can create 3D models, animate those models, edit those animations into a movie, and even create video games with them. All this in a free program that’s as small as a 9 MB download. Crazy!

Blender sits at a very unique position in the world of 3D computer graphics. It used to be that to get into 3D modeling and animation, you only had a few options and most of them were too expensive, too limiting, or – ahem – too illegal for people just trying to see what this whole 3D thing was all about. Blender circumvents all of that because it’s free. And it’s not just free as in, “This costs me zero dollars.” It’s truly free software that a world full of developers and users constantly contribute to, enhancing and improving it at a mind-boggling pace.

Of course, 3D computer graphics is a complex topic and all software of this type is dense with buttons, options, settings, and unique ways of working. Perhaps more than any other program like it, Blender carries a pretty heavy reputation for being difficult to understand. It’s not typically viewed as software for beginners. But, if I’ve done my job right, this book will help simplify things. Blender For Dummies is not just a book on using Blender. Sure, I explain why things in Blender work in their peculiar Blenderish ways, but I also make it a point to explain core principles of 3D computer graphics as they are relevant. There’s no use in being able to find a button if you’re not really sure what it does or how it works. My hope is that with this combined knowledge, you can actually take advantage of Blender’s unique traits to create your own high-quality 3D art as quickly and efficiently as possible. Perhaps you can even become as addicted to it as I am!

About This Book

Blender is an extremely complex program used for the even more complex task of producing high quality 3D models and animations. As such, there’s no way I could cover every single feature and button in Blender within a mere 400 pages. For that, I recommend you refer to the very excellent online documentation available through Blender’s Web site at wiki.blender.org. The purpose of this book is to bring you up to speed on working in 3D space with Blender so you can start bringing your ideas to life as soon as possible. To that end, I focus on introducing you to the fundamental “Blender way” of working. Not only do I show you how something is done in Blender, but I often take the time to explain why things are done a certain way. This approach should hopefully put you on the fast track to making awesome work and also allow you to figure out new parts of Blender on your own when you come across them.

You’ll notice throughout the book that I frequently make reference to the Blender community. Blender’s user community is probably one if its most valuable assets, and I would be remiss to neglect bringing it up. Not only do many members of the community create great work, but they also write new code for Blender, write and edit documentation, and help each other improve. And understand that when I use the word “we” in reference to the community, I include you in that as well. As of right now, you are a Blenderhead: a fellow Blender user and therefore a member of our community.

It’s worth mentioning here that Blender is a truly cross-platform program, running on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, and even variants of the Unix operating system. Fortunately, not much in Blender differs from one platform to another. However, for the few things that are different, I’ll be sure to point them out for you.

Foolish Assumptions

This book is written for two sorts of beginners: people who are completely new to the world of 3D, and people who know a thing or two about 3D, but are completely new to Blender. That being the case, I tend to err on the side of explaining too much rather than too little. If you’re someone who is already familiar with another program like 3DS Max, Maya, or Softimage, you can probably skip a number of these explanations. Likewise, if you’re a complete newbie, you might notice that I occasionally compare a feature in Blender to one in another package. However, that is mostly for the benefit of these other users. I write so you can understand a concept without having to know any of these other programs.

I do, however, make the assumption that you have at least a basic understanding of your computer. You should know how to start programs, find files, and have a basic idea of the difference between a computer’s processor and its hard drive. I assume you know how to use a mouse, and I highly recommend that you use a mouse with at least two buttons and a scroll wheel. You can use Blender with a one or two-button mouse, and I provide workarounds for the unfortunate souls in that grim state (*cough*Mac users*cough*), but it’s certainly not ideal. Because Blender makes use of all your mouse buttons, I make it a point to stipulate whether you need to left-click, right-click, or middle-click. And in case you didn’t already know, the middle mouse button is accessed by pressing down on your mouse’s scroll wheel.

Another assumption of sorts that I make is that you’re working with Blender’s default settings and theme. You are more than welcome to customize the settings for yourself, but if you do that, Blender might not behave exactly like I describe. In most instances, I do make it a point to mention what Blender’s default behavior is, so you know what to expect, but I can’t account for every different configuration that Blender allows you to have.

One last assumption that I make is that you can access the Internet from time to time. You don’t need an Internet connection to use Blender, but there are a lot of resources online that definitely come in handy.

How This Book Is Organized

As with most books in the For Dummies series, Blender For Dummies is structured as a reference that you can refer back to over and over again. You should be able to go to the Table of Contents or the Index and jump straight to the topic you’re interested in. Of course, if you’re completely new to Blender and 3D, the chapters build upon one another so you can read from cover to cover.

Also, rather than give you tutorials that are only useful for creating one specific thing (“this is how you model a teacup” or “making the perfect tooth material”), I tend to lean towards more broad explanations of a tool’s use and purpose. That said, I use certain specific examples because they tend to be fairly common tasks.

The book’s chapters are grouped into relatively cohesive sections called Parts. Like the chapters, each part is meant to be modular and stand on its own, but is also structured in such a way that each one adds to the next. The following section describes the content of each part.

Part I: Wrapping Your Brain around Blender

Not only is Blender complex, but it also has some pretty unique ways of approaching the problem of creating in three dimensions. This part is dedicated to melding your mind with the Blender way of thinking. If you’ve ever started up Blender and wondered, “Why in the world is it doing things this way?!” this part is well worth the read.

Part II: Creating Detailed 3D Scenes

Each chapter in this Part is dedicated to getting your work to look good, focusing on the skills of modeling, adding materials, and lighting your scenes. The techniques here are geared primarily toward creating static images, but nearly all of it is also relevant to getting animations to communicate clearly and be believable (not to mention, totally sweet to look at).

Part III: Get Animated!

Motion! Motion! Motion! Very few things in the world compare to the excellent feeling of bringing an inanimate object to life. It’s hard work and can be very time-consuming, but the payoff of seeing a character move and watching people react to it is worth every little bit of toil you put into it. This Part shows you the basics of rigging and animating, as well as touching on getting Blender to do a little animating for you with simulated physics.

Part IV: Sharing Your Work with the World

You could sit in a room and create a mountain of awesome work just for yourself, but there’s certainly something rewarding about putting your work out for the world to see. That’s what this Part is all about. I walk you through the adventures of rendering out still images and animations so you ultimately have something worth sharing. This part also introduces the beautiful cheating that you can do with post production and video sequencing.

Part V: The Part of Tens

In a way, I really kind of wanted to write this entire book as a series of helpful lists that would help get you started in Blender, but that’s not really the best structure for the entire thing. That said, I had a lot of fun writing this part. These chapters are geared to making sure your time with Blender is well-spent, so I cover troubleshooting and tips on improving your experience.

Icons Used in This Book

This icon calls out suggestions that help you work more effectively and save time.

These are things that I think you should try to keep in mind while working in Blender. Sometimes it’s a random tidbit of information, but more often than not, it’s something that you’ll run into repeatedly and is therefore worth remembering.

Working in 3D can involve some pretty heavy technical information. You can usually work just fine without ever having to know these things, but if you do take the time to understand it, I bet you dollars to donuts that you’ll be able to use Blender more effectively.

This icon doesn’t show up often, but when it does, I definitely recommend that you pay attention. You won’t blow up your computer if you overlook it, but you could lose work.

Conventions Used in This Book

As a Blender user, I absolutely love hotkeys, and I use them generously in examples throughout the book. Blender makes use of nearly every key on your keyboard, so some keys are a bit difficult to put in writing, particularly punctuation keys like the period (.) or tilde (~). When I suggest you press these keys, I do just as did in the last sentence: I spell the symbol and then put the actual symbol in parentheses.

I also make use of this cool little arrow (⇒) for indicating a sequence of steps. It could be a series of hotkeys to press or menu items to select or places to look in the Blender interface, but the consistent thing is that they are used for steps that you need to do sequentially.

Where to Go from Here

The easy answer here would be to say “Just dive on in!” but that’s probably a bit too vague. As I mentioned before, this book is primarily intended as a reference. If you already know what you’re looking for, flip over to the Table of Contents or Index and start soaking in the Blender goodness. For those of you who are just starting out, I suggest you merely turn a couple of pages, start at Chapter 1, and enjoy the ride. And even if you are the sort of person who knows exactly what you’re looking for, take the time to read through other sections of the book. There are a bunch of valuable little bits of information that may help you work more effectively.

Regardless of how you read this book, though, my one hope is that you find it to be a valuable resource that makes you as addicted to Blender as I am.

Part I

Wrapping Your Brain Around Blender

In this part . . .

Typically, when people first come into contact with Blender, they feel an incredible shock of “Ahhh! What is this crazy thing?!” The purpose of this part is to ease you into the Blender swimming pool so you can start to have fun with the rest of us. You get an idea of how Blender thinks and how to start taking advantage of the tools it provides you with. If you’ve got experience in another 3D program, these chapters explain some of the essential interface concepts that permeate nearly all tools and features in Blender.

Time to have some fun. Wheeeeeeee!

Chapter 1

Discovering Blender

In This Chapter

Figuring out what Blender is and what it’s used for

Understanding Blender’s history

Getting familiar with the Blender interface

Becoming a part of the Blender community

In the world of 3D modeling and animation software, programs are usually expensive: Like, really, really, thousands-of-dollars-and-maybe-an-arm expensive. And there are some valid reasons for that. Software companies spend millions of dollars and countless hours developing these programs. And the large production companies that buy these programs for their staff make enough money to afford the high cost.

But what about us? You and I, the little guys? We are the ambitious dreamers with big ideas, high motivation . . . and tight budgets. How can we bring our ideas to life and our stories to a screen, even if it is our own computer monitors? Granted, we could shell out that cash (and hopefully keep our arms) for the expensive programs that the pros use. But even then, animation is a highly collaborative art and it’s difficult to produce anything in a reasonable amount of time without some help.

We need quality software and a strong community to work, grow, and evolve with. Fortunately, Blender can provide us with both of these things. This chapter is an introduction to Blender, its background, its interface, and its community.

Getting to Know Blender

Blender is a free and open source 3D modeling and animation suite. Yikes! What a mouthful, huh? Put simply, Blender is a computer graphics program that allows you to produce high quality still images and animations using three-dimensional geometry. If you’ve seen one of the recent animated feature films or watched a television show where they explain how they made an actor look like he’s being chased by a giant monster even though he’s really just standing in a big green room, you’ve seen what can be done with 3D computer graphics. In the right hands, Blender is capable of producing this kind of work. With a little patience and dedication, your hands can be the right hands.

One of the things that makes Blender different and special compared to other comparable 3D software is the fact that it is freeand open source. This means that not only can you go to the Blender Web site (www.blender.org) and download the entire program right now without paying a dime, but the code that makes up the program, called the source, is also freely available for download. For most programs, the source code is a heavily guarded and highly protected secret that only certain people can see and modify (mostly programmers hired by the company that distributes the program). Because it’s open source, anybody can see Blender’s source code and make changes to it. The benefit of this is that, rather than having a small group of paid programmers work on the program, Blender can be improved by programmers all over the world!

Because of these strengths, Blender is an ideal program for small animation companies, freelance 3D artists, independent filmmakers, students beginning to learn about 3D computer graphics, and dedicated computer graphics hobbyists. Blender has a reputation for being difficult to understand for new users, but at the same time, it is also known for allowing experienced users to bring their ideas to life. Fortunately, helping you bridge that gap is the very reason this book exists.

Discovering Blender’s History

The Blender we know and love today wasn’t always free and open source. It’s actually pretty unique in that it’s one of the few software applications that was “liberated” from proprietary control by its user community.

Originally, Blender was written as an internal production tool for an award-winning Dutch animation company called NeoGeo, founded by Blender’s original (and still lead) developer, Ton Roosendaal. In the late 1990s, NeoGeo started making copies of Blender available for download from their Web site. Slowly but surely, interest grew in this less-than-2MB program. In 1998, Ton spun off a new company, Not a Number (NaN), to try to market and sell Blender as a software product. NaN still distributed a free version of Blender, but also offered an advanced version with more features for a small fee. There was strength in this strategy and by the end of 2000, there were well over 250,000 Blender users worldwide.

Unfortunately, even though Blender was gaining in popularity, NaN was not making enough money to satisfy its investors, especially in the so-called “dot bomb” era that happened around that time. Because of this, in the early part of 2002, NaN shut its doors and stopped working on Blender.

Ironically, this is where the story starts to get exciting.

Even though NaN went under, Blender had developed quite a strong community by this time, and this community was eager to find a way to keep their beloved little program from becoming lost and abandoned. In July of 2002, Ton provided a way. Having established a non-profit called the Blender Foundation, he arranged a deal with the original NaN investors to run the “Free Blender” campaign. The terms of the deal were that, for a price of €100,000, the investors would agree to release Blender’s source to the Blender Foundation for the purpose of making Blender open source. Initial estimations were that it would take as much as six months to raise the necessary funds. Amazingly, the community was able to raise that money in a mere seven weeks.

Because of the Blender community’s passion and willingness to put its money where its metaphorical mouth is, Blender was released under the GNU General Public License on October 13, 2002. With the source in the community’s hands, Blender had an avalanche of development and new features added to it in a very short time. We were even finally able to have Undo, a functionality that was conspicuously missing and highly desired since the initial releases of Blender by NeoGeo!

Six years later, the Blender community is larger and stronger than ever, and Blender itself is a powerful modern piece of software that competes with quality on par to similar software that costs thousands of dollars. Not too shabby. Figure 1-1 shows a screenshot of Blender from its early days compared to the Blender of today.

Figure 1-1: Blender of old (left) versus Blender of today (right).

Making Open Movies and Games

One of the cool things about the programmers who write Blender is that many of them also use the program regularly. They’re writing code not just because they’re told to do it, but because they want to improve Blender for their own purposes. Part of this has to do with Blender’s open-source nature, but quite a bit also has to do with the fact Blender was an in-house production tool, built for artists, based on their direct input, and often written by the artists themselves.

Seeking to get even more of this direct artist feedback, the Blender Foundation launched “Project Orange” in 2005. The purpose of the project was to create an animated short movie using open source tools, primarily Blender. A team of six members of the community were assembled in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, to produce the movie. Roughly seven months later, Elephants Dream premiered and was released to the public as the first open movie, meaning not only that it was created using open-source tools, but all of the production files — 3D models, scenes, character rigs, and so on — were also released under a permissive and open Attribution Creative Commons license.

Due to the success of the Orange project, Ton established the Blender Institute in the summer of 2007 for the expressed purpose of having a permanent space to create open movie and game projects, as well as provide the service of training people in Blender. The first open project to come out of the Blender Institute was Project Peach, which, following the model of Orange, assembled a team of artists who produced a short comedic animation called Big Buck Bunny, which premiere in April 2008. Like Elephants Dream, all production files for the Peach project were released under an open license. Figure 1-2 shows an image from Big Buck Bunny.

Figure 1-2:Big Buck Bunny.

Not being inclined to rest on its laurels, the Blender Institute launched Project Apricot as the team creating Big Buck Bunny was wrapping up its production. Apricot was a project similar to Orange and Peach, but rather than create an animated movie, the goal here was to create a video game by combining Blender’s strengths with the strength of the Crystal Space game engine. The result of this was Yo Frankie!, a game based on the “leader squirrel” character from the Big Buck Bunny project. The DVD containing this game shipped out in November 2008, containing playable levels in the Blender game engine as well as the Crystal Space engine. And of course, all of the content is freely available under a permissive Creative Commons license.

With the completion of each of these projects, the functionality and stability of Blender increased by a large degree. Orange brought improved animation tools, basic hair, and a node-based compositor. Peach provided enhanced particles for better hair and fur, optimizations for large scenes, improved rendering, and even better animation and rigging tools. Apricot revitalized Blender’s internal game engine, which extended to better real-time visuals when modeling and animating in Blender. In fact, much of the content of this book wouldn’t even exist without these projects. For example, Chapter 13 starts with using Blender’s particle system to do exciting effects along with hair and fur. Half of Chapter 15’s content is focused on the node compositor, a way of combining and enhancing still images and animations. In fact, nearly all of Part III is devoted to features that were enhanced or directly added for one of these three projects.

All of these projects continue to exhibit the strength of the Blender community. This is because each of them are financed in a large part by DVD pre-sales from users who understand that regardless of the project’s final product, great improvements are the result and everyone benefits from that.

Joining the community

Congratulations! You’re part of a community. As a Blender user, you’re joining a very diverse group that spans all age ranges, ethnicities, professional backgrounds, and parts of the globe. We are a passionate bunch: proud of this little 3D program and more than willing to help others enjoy using it as much as we do. Have a look at Chapter 18 for a list of community resources that are invaluable, not only for discovering the intricacies of using Blender, but also for improving yourself as an artist. You can find innumerable opportunities for critique, training, discussion, and even collaboration with other artists, some of whom might also be Blender developers. I’ve made quite a few good friends and colleagues through the Blender community, both through the various community Web sites as well as by attending events like the annual Blender Conference. I go by the name “Fweeb” on these sites and I look forward to seeing you around!

Getting to Know the Interface

Probably one of the most daunting aspects of Blender for newcomers and long-time 3D professionals alike is its unique and somewhat peculiar interface. It’s arguably the most controversial feature Blender has. In fact, merely calling it a “feature” might raise the blood pressure of some of you who tried using Blender in the past, but gave up in frustration when it did not behave as you expected. Figure 1-3 shows what you’re presented with when you start Blender for the first time. It’s been called everything from “brilliantly thought-out” to “thrown together by a pack of monkeys.”

This book explains some of the design decisions in Blender’s interface and ultimately allows you to be productive with it. Who knows, you might even start to like it and wonder why other programs don’t work this way!

Figure 1-3: The first time you start Blender, the entire world might seem like an alien planet.

Fast to use versus fast to learn

One of the key things to remember is that Blender was originally designed as an in-house tool for commercial production. Working in that industry (especially television production) requires very short turn-around times and extremely tight deadlines. For this reasons, 3D artists have to work very quickly to produce high quality work in a short period of time. Blender was built from the ground up to facilitate this need. And because artists worked side-by-side with the developers, they could tailor the whole program to match the way they worked.

The upside to this is that the program evolved with the artists and enabled them to successfully produce great work at a blazingly fast rate. The downside is that, as with most things that are customized, Blender became somewhat difficult to understand for people who had never been exposed to it before. This is what I mean when I say “fast to use versus fast to learn.” You can be extremely productive with Blender after you understand how it thinks. However, your first few projects with Blender might be arduous. Of course, alleviating that potential pain is what this book is all about.

The Blender non-blocking interface

The first thing to understand about Blender’s interface is the concept of a non-blocking interface. This means that windows in Blender never overlap one another and working in one window typically won’t restrict you from working in any of the others. As an example, in most software, if you want to open a new file or save your project, a file browser dialog box pops up for you to do this. This is an overlapping window. Not only does it block things behind it from view, but it usually also prevents you from making any changes to your file. This isn’t the case with Blender. In Blender, the file browser shows up in a window just like any other, and it makes perfect sense to be able to make a couple tweaks to your scene before hitting the save button. Figure 1-4 shows what this might look like.

At first, this way of working might seem to be really restrictive. How do you see different types of windows? Can you see them at the same time? Everything looks like it’s nailed in place; is it even possible to change anything? Fortunately, all of these things are possible and you get the benefit of never having your view of one window obstructed by another. This is a great way to be able to see what’s going on in your file at a glance.

Figure 1-4: Doing those last couple of tweaks before finally saving.

The windows can all be modified and changed in the same way: Change the size of windows by left-clicking the seam between windows and dragging it to a new position. This increases the size of one window while reducing the size of some of those that adjoin it. You can also add new windows by right-clicking the seam and choosing Split Area from the menu that pops up. After you do that, a line appears under your mouse cursor. Move your mouse to where you would like to create a new seam and left-click to confirm. If you decide you no longer wish to have this additional window, you can remove it by right-clicking that seam and selecting Join Areas. This darkens the window your mouse is in and draws an arrow to indicate which window you would like to remove. Figure 1-5 shows the process of splitting an area to create a new window and then removing that window by joining areas. When I work in Blender, I find myself constantly changing the screen layout by splitting and joining new windows as I need them.

When you right-click the seam between windows, you see a third option that says No Header. Choosing this option removes the header bar from the window your mouse cursor was in last. You can put the header back by right-clicking the seam again and choosing Add Header. You can also change the location of the header to either the top or bottom of the window it belongs to. To do so, right-click the header bar and choose one of the three available options: Top, Bottom, or No Header.

Figure 1-5: Creating a new window and then removing that window.

When working in Blender, you also occasionally need to maximize a window. This is particularly useful when you’re working on a model or scene and you just want to get all of the other windows out of your way so you can use as much screen space as possible. To maximize any window, hover your mouse over that window and press Shift+Spacebar. You can toggle back to the tiled screen layout by pressing Shift+Spacebar again. These options are available in almost all window types by choosing View⇒Maximize/Tile Window from that window’s header. The only exception to this is the Buttons window. In this window, the option is available by choosing Panels⇒Maximize/Tile Window.

You might notice that the hot keys next to these menu items are Ctrl+UpArrow for maximizing and Ctrl+DownArrow for tiling, rather than Shift+Spacebar. Those hotkeys also work, but I find that I don’t have to move my left hand as much to hit Shift+Spacebar, so that’s much more convenient for me.

This non-blocking window philosophy, combined with the fact that Blender’s entire interface is written in a standardized programming library for graphics called OpenGL, is the precise reason that Blender looks the same, no matter where you run it. Whether you run it from Linux, Windows, a Mac, or even a cell phone, Blender looks and behaves like Blender. There’s an additional benefit to being written in a 3D library like OpenGL: Many parts of Blender’s interface allow you to zoom in on them. Try it! Place your mouse in the Buttons window (the bottom window) and hold Ctrl while scrolling your mouse wheel. You can make the panels in this window much larger or smaller than they are by default. Pretty cool!

So now you have a taste of how Blender thinks. That’s not so bad, is it? Of course not! Of course, this little bit is just a start into the wild world that is Blender and it’s interface. The next chapter goes into the interface in more detail and gets you started with editing objects in Blender.

Chapter 2

Understanding How Blender Thinks

In This Chapter

Familiarizing yourself with Blender’s windows

Customizing Blender to fit the way you work

Working in three-dimensional space

It’s time to get intimate with Blender. No, I don’t mean you need to start placing scented candles around your computer. I mean this chapter’s focus is a detailed introduction to Blender’s interface and how you can start finding your way around in it. First of all, it’s pretty important to have an understanding of the various types of windows that Blender has, and how to access them. These windows are the gateways and tools for creating whatever you want. And with the knowledge of what you can do with these windows, the next thing is actually building those creations. To do that, you need to understand how to work in a virtual three-dimensional space, and specifically, you need to understand how Blender handles that space. These topics are also covered in this chapter.

Looking at Window Types

Each Blender window can be changed to any window type. You can see what window types are available by left-clicking the button on the far left of that window’s header. Figure 2-1 shows the menu that appears when you press this button.

Figure 2-1: The Window Type menu.

The window types available through this menu are as follows. Next to each of these types is the hotkey sequence to bring up the window type quickly:

Scripts Window: Blender has a built-in scripting engine that uses the Python programming language. Scripts give Blender additional functionality and automate tedious tasks. This window is where you load these scripts, and in the case of some scripts, it’s also where you interact with them.

File Browser: This window allows you to look through the files on your computer.

Image Browser: This window is much like the File Browser window, except it shows icons for folders and files, including thumbnails, or smaller-sized versions, of image files.

Node Editor (Shift+F3): Blender has a Node Editor for materials as well as for compositing. This window is where you modify these node structures. See Chapters 7 and 15 for more on this.

Buttons Window (Shift+F7): Nearly all of the different buttons for working on your scene reside in the panels of the Buttons Window. This window is covered in-depth later in this chapter in the section, “Understanding the Buttons Window.”

Outliner (Shift+F9): The Outliner gives a hierarchical view of all the objects in your scene and the ability to see how they are related to one another. It’s also a quick way to select objects in a complex scene.

User Preferences: Through the User Preferences window, you can customize how you interact with Blender.

Text Editor (Shift+F11): Blender’s integrated Text Editor is not only handy for keeping notes about your scenes and models, but it’s also a convenient place to write and test your own Python scripts in Blender.

Audio Window: The Audio Window displays the waveform for any audio file you load and relate it to the time and frame rate you specify for your project.

Timeline: The Timeline window offers you a convenient way to quickly jump from one part of your animation to another.

Video Sequence Editor (Shift+F8): Blender’s Video Sequence Editor (VSE) is a lightweight video editor. It isn’t as powerful as some of the programs created specifically for editing video, but it’s quite effective for stringing a sequence of scenes together and doing basic effects, overlays, and transitions.

UV/Image Editor (Shift+F10): With the UV/Image Editor, you can do basic image editing as well as edit the texture coordinates for your models. More on this in Chapter 7.

NLA Editor (Ctrl+Shift+F12): NLA stands for non-linear animation. The editor in this window allows you to mix pre-animated actions on a single character (such as mixing a waving hand animation with a walking animation to have your character walk and wave her hand).

Action Editor (Shift+F12): The Action Editor is where you create and adjust actions. Actions can be used to animate all of a character’s movement in a scene, or they can be mixed together in the NLA Editor.

IPO Curve Editor (Shift+F6): IPO is short for InterPOlation. Blender’s IPO Curve Editor shows a graphical representation of an object’s animatable attributes as they change over time.

3D View (Shift+F5): This is arguably the most-used window in Blender. The 3D View shows you the three-dimensional view of your model or scene and allows you to modify it.

The only window type that is not available through this menu is the Data Browse window. You can access it by pressing Shift+F4. This window gives you a view of the raw database-like structure of all of the objects in your project file, called a .blend file (pronounced “dot-blend file”), because Blender project files all end with “.blend”. It looks very similar to the File Browser window except it shows only the data in the file you’re currently working on. Most Blender artists never need to use this window, but it’s helpful for discovering what exactly is going on in your saved project file and for doing some technical maintenance on it. This window is more useful for Technical Directors than it is for regular 3D artists and animators.

Understanding the Buttons window

The Buttons window is probably the second-most used window in Blender. In it are a series of sub-windows, each with panels containing buttons dedicated to modifying specific parts of your scene. Below is a list of each type of sub-window:

Logic (F4): This window is dedicated to Blender’s integrated game engine. Chapter 12 touches on this topic briefly.

Script: Some Blender scripts require you to enable options in this window. In particular, the left-clicking Enable Script Links button allows .blend files to use integrated scripts when first loaded.

Shading (F5): The buttons in the Shading window allow you dramatically change the appearance of objects in your scene. Chapters 7 and 8 go into this window in much more detail.

Object (F7): The Object sub-window allows you to make changes that affect an object as a whole. This is also where physics and particles buttons live. See Chapter 13 for more on these topics.

Editing (F9): Buttons in the Editing sub-window change slightly depending on what sort of object you have selected, but their primary purpose is to make fundamental changes to the structure of an object.

Scene (F10): Scene buttons determine what the final output of your scene will look like when you decide to render it to an image or video. The Scene buttons get covered more in-depth in Chapters 14 and 15.

If you have a background in another software package like 3DS Max or Maya, you may be more comfortable with a screen layout that lines the buttons panels vertically along one side of the screen. Fortunately, Blender and the Buttons window allows for this. To get a vertical Buttons view, follow these steps:

1. Join the 3D view and the Buttons window by right-clicking the seam between the windows and choosing Join Areas. Left-click in the Buttons window to confirm the join.

2. Split a new area on the right of the screen by moving your mouse to the seam between the 3D view and the top header; right-click⇒Split Area.

Move the line until you like the position. Don’t worry too much about location; you can always adjust it later.

3. Change your new side window to the Buttons Window type by pressing Shift+F7 with your mouse in that window, or by selecting it from the Window type list.

4. Your buttons panels are still horizontally aligned. Fix this by right-clicking anywhere in the Buttons window except for its header and choosing Vertical from the Panel Alignment menu that pops up.

Figure 2-2 shows this process.

One thing that may concern you is that this vertical Buttons window layout might obscure some of the available buttons in the header. In this case, there are two things you can do. The first thing you can do is left-click the downward-pointing triangle at the left of the header. This collapses the text menus from view so they’re out of the way when you don’t need them. If that still doesn’t give you enough space, Blender has another trick up its sleeve: Middle-click the header and drag your mouse left and right. This moves the contents of the header left and right so you can bring those obscured buttons into view. This feature is very handy for people who work on small monitors.

Working with screens

“Cool!” you say, “I like this vertical layout. Is there a way for me save it so I don’t have to change Blender’s layout each time I load it?” As a matter of fact, there is! Actually, you can make a variety of layouts depending on the sort of work you’re doing. In Blender, these workspace layouts are called screens, and, by default, Blender comes with five: Animation, Model, Material, Sequence, and Scripting. When you first load Blender, it puts you in the Model screen layout. You can cycle through these screens by pressing Ctrl+← and Ctrl+→. If you prefer to use a menu, you can use the one at the top of the window, as shown in Figure 2-3, and left-click the up/down arrows next to the name of the current screen.

Figure 2-2: Creating a vertical buttons screen layout.

Figure 2-3: The Screens menu.

One thing worth mentioning here is that the “SR:” that appears before the screen name is not actually part of the name. It’s just there to remind you that this menu is for screens. Any screen can be renamed by switching to that screen and left-clicking the screen’s name. From here, you can rename it to anything.

Something to note, however, is that the default screens have numbers as part of their names (such as “1-Animation” and “3-Material”). This is done to keep those screens in that specific order. The screens, and therefore the order that they’re cycled through when you press Ctrl+← or →, are arranged in alphabetical and numerical order, for fast and logical organization. Keep this in mind if you’re creating a screen that you would like to appear in a specific place on the list.

To create a new screen, left-click the up/down arrow next to the current screen name in the header and choose Add New. This produces a new menu where you can choose to duplicate an existing screen or start with an empty one. From here, you can make the changes to your workspace layout, creating a vertical Button Window layout or a traditional “four-panel” layout with a separate 3D View window for top, front, side, and perspective views. When you are happy with changes you’ve made and you want to have these screens available each time you start Blender, save your settings by choosing File⇒Save Default Settings or pressing Ctrl+U.

Before creating a new screen that you want to keep around for future use, first return to your default setup by selecting File⇒New or pressing Ctrl+X. The reason for this is that when Blender saves your user settings, it saves them to a special .blend file that gets loaded each time it starts. So any models you have in the 3D View and any changes you make to other layouts are saved, too. Fortunately, if you’ve made a mistake, you can always return to the default setup by choosing File⇒Load Factory Settings and recreate your custom layouts from there.

Setting user preferences

This section on user preferences is by no means comprehensive. The number of options available in Blender’s User Preferences is mind-bogglingly large. My intent here is to introduce you to the most helpful and relevant options to get you working effectively. For specific details on every single button, see the online documentation available at www.blender.org.

Of course, the first question is, “Where exactly are the buttons for user preferences?” If you’ve used other programs, you might expect an Edit⇒Preferences option that pops up a new window with a bunch of options to play with. Don’t go looking for that; You won’t find it. Remember that Blender uses a philosophy of non-blocking windows. So, technically, the User Preferences window can exist anywhere. Just change the window type to User Preferences and BAM! All of the options are there for you.

Actually, though, there’s an easier way. Left-click the seam between the 3D view and the topmost header and drag it down. The user preferences are conveniently tucked above the main menu. This is the fastest way to get to the preferences.

View & Controls

The first set of available options in Blender’s user preferences relate to views and controls within the 3D window (shown in Figure 2-4). Moving from left to right, some of the more useful options are as follows:

Figure 2-4: The View & Controls options in user pref-erences.

Object Info: This option is on by default and toggles whether the name of the current frame number and active object are displayed in the lower left corner of a 3D View window.

View name: Off by default, turning this option on places text in the upper left corner of a 3D View window to indicate the perspective from which you’re viewing the scene (such as Top Perspective or Camera Perspective).

View rotation: By default, Blender uses the Trackball setting. However, users who are familiar with other 3D programs might prefer the Turntable setting. The difference may seem subtle to a new user, but it can be very disorienting for people from other software packages who may be used to turntable orbit style.

Select with: This option is somewhat mislabeled because it does more than change what you select with. It actually completely swaps what the left mouse button and right mouse button do in Blender. Default is Right Mouse. I cover this more later in this chapter in the section called “Selecting objects”.

Emulate 3-Button Mouse: Blender was designed to be used with a three-button mouse. However, not all computers have three-button mice, particularly Macintosh machines and some tablet PCs. Enabling this option helps these users compensate by using Alt+left-click to do what is normally done with the middle-click.

Invert Zoom: Similar to the Trackball/Turntable option, some people are more comfortable scrolling forward to zoom out and back to zoom in. This gives users that option.

Smooth View: Smooth View is probably one of the coolest “convenience options” added to Blender in recent history. By default, it’s disabled by being set to zero. However, change that value to its maximum of 1000, go to your 3D View window, and choose View⇒Camera. The 3D view smoothly animates the change from the default Top View to the Camera’s perspective. Pretty slick, huh? The 1000 setting is a bit slow for my tastes: I prefer a setting around 250. Play with it on your own and see what works best for you.

Edit Methods

The next set of options is related to the act of editing objects. As shown in Figure 2-5, the most relevant options are as follows:

Figure 2-5: The Edit Methods options in user preferences.

Add New Objects: The two options for adding new options are new to Blender as of version 2.46. Both are disabled by default. In this configuration, Blender behaves much like any other 3D program when adding new objects. New objects are added in Object mode and aligned with the global axis. Enabling both of these options makes Blender behave like it did prior to version 2.46.

Undo: The options related to undo are pretty important. Here you can adjust how many steps of undo you have when working in Blender (default is 32), as well as toggle Global Undo on and off. Now, you may be wondering why in the world anyone would ever