Blender 3D By Example

Blender 3D By Example
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
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Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the color images of this book
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. Straight into Blender!
An overview of the 3D workflow
The anatomy of a 3D scene
What can you do with Blender?
Getting used to the navigation in Blender
An introduction to the navigation of the 3D Viewport
What are editors?
The anatomy of an editor
Split, Join, and Detach
Some useful layout presets
Setting up your preferences
An introduction to the Preferences window
Customizing the default navigation style
Improving Blender with add-ons
A brief introduction to the projects
The Robot Toy
The Alien Character
The Haunted House
The Rat Cowboy
Summary
2. Robot Toy – Modeling of an Object
Let's start the modeling of our robot toy
Preparing the workflow by adding an image reference
Adding the head primitive
The Edit Mode versus the Object Mode
Using the basic modeling tools
Modeling the head
Modeling the antenna
An introduction to the Subdivision Surface modifier
Improving the head shape
Modeling the thunderbolts
Modeling the eyes
Modeling the chest
Modeling the neck
Modeling the torso
Modeling the buttons
Modeling the fork
Modeling protections for the fork
Modeling the main wheel
Modeling the arm
Using Blender Internal to render our Robot Toy
Summary
3. Alien Character – Base Mesh Creation and Sculpting
Understanding the sculpting process
An introduction to sculpting
Choosing sculpting over poly modeling
Using a pen tablet
The sculpt mode
Optimizing the viewport
Anatomy of a brush
Dyntopo versus the Multires modifier
First touch with the Multires modifier
First touch with Dyntopo
Creating a base mesh with the Skin modifier
Visual preparation
An introduction to artistic anatomy
Sculpting the body
The head
The torso
The arms
The legs
The belt
Summary
4. Alien Character – Creating a Proper Topology and Transferring the Sculpt Details
Why make a retopology?
Possibilities of arranging polygons
Errors to avoid during the creation of retopology
Density of polygons
Making the retopology of the alien character
Preparing the environment
The head
The neck and the torso
The arms and the hands
The legs
Unwrapping UVs
Understanding UVs
The placement of the seams
The placement and adjustment of the islands
The baking of textures
The baking of a normal map
What is a normal map?
Making of the bake
Displaying the normal map in the viewport
The baking of an ambient occlusion
Understanding the ambient occlusion map
Creation of the bake
Displaying the ambient occlusion in the viewport
Summary
5. Haunted House – Modeling of the Scene
Blocking the house
Working with a scale
Blocking the bases of the house
Refining the blocking
Adding instantiated objects
Reworking the blocking objects
Breaking and ageing the elements
Simulate a stack of wooden planks with physics
Creation of the simulation of a stack of planks
Modeling the environment (8 pages)
Modeling the cliff
Modeling a tree with curves
Enhancing the scene with a barrier, rocks, and a cart
Organizing the scene
Grouping objects
Working with layers
Summary
6. Haunted House – Putting Colors on It
Unwrapping UVs
Using Project From View
Unwrapping the rest of the house
The tree with the Smart UV Project
Unwrapping the rest of the environment
Tiling UVs
What is tiling for?
The UV layers
Adding colors
Basics of the Texture Paint tool
Discovering the brushes
The TexDraw brush
The Smear brush
The Soften brush
The Clone brush
The Fill brush
The Mask brush
The Stroke option
Delimiting the zones of painting according to the geometry
Painting directly on the texture
Painting the scene
Laying down the colors
Tiled textures
The settings of our workspace
Advice for a good tiled texture
Painting the roof-tile texture
Quick tips for other kinds of hand-painted tiled textures
Baking our tiled textures
Why bake?
How to do it?
Creating transparent textures
The grass texture
The grunge texture
Doing a quick render with Blender Internal
Setting lights
Placing the camera
Setting the environment (sky and mist)
Summary
7. Haunted House – Adding Materials and Lights in Cycles
Understanding the basic settings of Cycles
The sampling
Light path settings
Performances
Lighting
Creating a testing material
Understanding the different types of light
Lighting our scene
Painting and using an Image Base Lighting
Creating materials with nodes
Creating the materials of the house, the rocks, and the tree
Adding a mask for the windows
Using procedural textures
Making and applying normal maps in Cycles
Creating realistic grass
Generating the grass with particles
Creating the grass shader
Baking textures in Cycles
Cycles versus Blender Internal
Baking the tree
Compositing a mist pass
Summary
8. Rat Cowboy – Learning To Rig a Character for Animation
An introduction to the rigging process
Rigging the Rat Cowboy
Placing the deforming bones
The leg and the foot
The arm and the hand
The hips
The tail
The head and the eyes
Mirroring the rig
Rigging the gun
Rigging the holster
Adding a root bone
Skinning
The Weight Paint tools
Manually assigning weight to vertices
Correcting the foot deformation
Correcting the belt deformation
Custom shapes
The shape keys
What is a shape key?
Creating basic shapes
Driving a shape key
Summary
9. Rat Cowboy – Animate a Full Sequence
Principles of animation
Squash and Stretch
Anticipation
Staging
Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
Follow Through and Overlapping Action
Slow In and Slow Out
Arcs
Secondary Action
Timing
Exaggeration
Solid drawing
Appeal
Animation tools in Blender
The timeline
What is a keyframe?
The Dope Sheet
The Graph editor
The Non-Linear Action editor
Preparation of the animation
Writing a short script
Making a storyboard
Finding the final camera placements and the timing through a layout
Animation references
Organization
Animating the scene
The walk cycle
Mixing actions
Animation of a close shot
Animation of the gunshot
Animation of the trap
Render a quick preview of a shot
Summary
10. Rat Cowboy – Rendering, Compositing, and Editing
Creating advanced materials in Cycles
Skin material with Subsurface Scattering
Eye material
The fur of the rat
The Raw rendering phase
Enhance a picture with compositing
Introduction to nodal compositing
Depth Pass
Adding effects
Compositing rendering phase
Editing the sequence with the VSE
Introduction to the Video Sequence Editor
Edit and render the final sequence
Summary
Index