This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. Master the Newest Blender Techniques for Creating Amazing 3D Characters: From Design and Modeling to Video Compositing Now fully updated for Blender 2.78b and beyond, Learning Blender, Second Edition, walks you through every step of creating an outstanding 3D animated character with Blender, and then compositing it in a real video using a professional workflow. This edition covers the powerful new selection and modeling tools, as well as high-efficiency improvements related to other parts of the project such as texture painting, shading, rigging, rendering, and compositing. Still the only Blender tutorial to take you from preproduction to final result, this guide is perfect for both novices and those moving from other software to Blender (open source and free software). Author Oliver Villar provides full-color, hands-on chapters that cover every aspect of character creation: design, modeling, unwrapping, texturing, shading, rigging, animation, and rendering. He also walks you through integrating your animated character into a real-world video, using professional camera tracking, lighting, and compositing techniques. The rich companion website (blendtuts.com/learning-blender-files) will help you quickly master even the most complex techniques with bonus contents like video tutorials. By the time you’re done, you’ll be ready to create outstanding characters for all media–and you’ll have up-to-date skills for any 3D project, whether it involves characters or not. Learn Blender’s updated user interface, navigation, and selection techniques Create your first scene with Blender and the Blender Render and Cycles render engines Organize an efficient, step-by-step pipeline to streamline workflow in any project Master modeling, unwrapping, and texturing Bring your character to life with materials and shading Create your character’s skeleton and make it walk Use Camera Tracking to mix 3D objects into a real-world video Transform a raw rendered scene into the final result using Blender’s compositing nodes Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and corrections as they become available.

Leverage expert advice, step-by-step guidance, and comprehensive visual aids to pave your way towards excellence in the art of 3D character rigging with the help of this part-color guide Key Features Learn how to use automatic and manual weight painting to merge skin and bone Enhance any rig with a sweeping host of automatic controls and aids for animation Keep your rigs efficient and clean for an optimal end user experience Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook Book DescriptionIn the intricate world of 3D character rigging with Blender, aspiring artists often find themselves grappling with the daunting challenge of achieving results akin to seasoned professionals. This book is your guide to overcoming that very challenge, providing you with the necessary knowledge and skills to excel in this complex art form. As you embark on this creative journey, this book will guide you through a carefully crafted flow. Beginning with the basics, the first part of the book will teach you how to add structure to an empty canvas and master the art of weight painting in Blender. You'll delve into the intricacies of rigging humanoid characters, gain a deep understanding of the essential buttons and techniques, and discover invaluable success-boosting tips. Starting with simple mesh deformation using a single bone, you'll progress steadily toward the mastery of fully rigging a human character, all while comprehending the reasons behind each step in the process. Furthermore, the book leaves you with a selection of advanced techniques, fully explained, paving the way for a natural progression in your artistic journey and allowing you to continuously refine and enhance your skills. By the end of the book, you'll excel at crafting character rigs, seamlessly meeting professional pipeline demands in diverse teams and studios.What you will learn Understand the basic terminology of rigging and learn how to create and modify rigs Find out how bones interact with topology Get to grips with weight painting through the mesh Know when and how to add constraints such as Inversion Kinetics, Point To, and Child Of Make rigs visually appealing with advanced techniques such as shape keys and bone drivers Familiarize yourself with advanced techniques used by industry leaders Who this book is for If you are an animator, modeler, or someone who wants to start rigging with a solid foundation, then this book is for you. You’ll need no prior knowledge of Blender to get started with this book, as we’ll go step by step with shortcuts and UI pointers provided.

Let this in-depth professional book be your guide to Blender, the powerful open-source 3D modeling and animation software that will bring your ideas to life. Using clear step-by-step instruction and pages of real-world examples, expert animator Tony Mullen walks you through the complexities of modeling and animating, with a special focus on characters. From Blender basics to creating facial expressions and emotion to rendering, you’ll jump right into the process and learn valuable techniques that will transform your movies. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Annotation Blender is an open source 3D graphics application that can be used for modeling, rigging, animating, rendering and thousands of other things. While modeling characters isn't the biggest of your worries, animating them to make them feel as-good-as alive is what differentiates a professional from an amateur. This book offers clear, illustrative, and easy-to-follow recipes to create character rigs and animations for common situations. Bring your characters to life by understanding the principles, techniques and approaches involved in creating rigs and animations, you'll be able to adapt them to your own characters and films. The book offers clear step-by-step tutorials, with detailed explanations, screenshots and support files to help you understand the principles behind each topic. Each recipe covers a logical step of the complete creation of a character rig and animation, so you're not overwhelmed with too much information at once. You'll see numerous examples and screenshots that guide to achieve various rigging and animation tasks, logically separated so you can understand each in detail. The rigging topics are divided by each region of the body (torso, limbs, face, eyes), and further separated by the specific topic (neck, fingers, mouth, eyelids, etc) for clarity. All rigging tasks are accomplished with the built-in tools in Blender, without the complexity of coding custom Python behaviors or user interface elements. The animation topics deal with common situations found in real world productions, showing good practices to understand and overcome the challenges.

Blender is a free software animation tool with 2 million + users. This book covers animating with Blender and comes to us directly from the Blender Foundation's Roland Hess, noted Blender expert and author.

This book will take you on a journey to understand the workflow normally used to create characters, from the modeling to the rendering stages using the tools of the last official release of Blender exclusively. This book helps you create a character mesh and sculpt features, using tools and techniques such as the Skin modifier and polygon merging. You will also get a detailed, step-by-step overview of how to rig and skin your character for animation, how to paint textures and create shaders, and how to perform rendering and compositing. With the help of this book, you will be making production-quality 3D models and characters quickly and efficiently, which will be ready to be added to your very own animated feature or game.

Get up and running with Blender 3D through a series of practical projects that will help you learn core concepts of 3D design like modeling, sculpting, materials, textures, lighting, and rigging using the latest features of Blender 2.83 Key Features • Learn the basics of 3D design and navigate your way around the Blender interface • Understand how 3D components work and how to create 3D content for your games • Familiarize yourself with 3D Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering and Sculpting with Blender Book Description Blender is a powerful 3D creation package that supports every aspect of the 3D pipeline. With this book, you'll learn about modeling, rigging, animation, rendering, and much more with the help of some interesting projects. This practical guide, based on the Blender 2.83 LTS version, starts by helping you brush up on your basic Blender skills and getting you acquainted with the software toolset. You’ll use basic modeling tools to understand the simplest 3D workflow by customizing a Viking themed scene. You'll get a chance to see the 3D modeling process from start to finish by building a time machine based on provided concept art. You will design your first 2D character while exploring the capabilities of the new Grease Pencil tools. The book then guides you in creating a sleek modern kitchen scene using EEVEE, Blender’s new state-of-the-art rendering engine. As you advance, you'll explore a variety of 3D design techniques, such as sculpting, retopologizing, unwrapping, baking, painting, rigging, and animating to bring a baby dragon to life. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to work with Blender to create impressive computer graphics, art, design, and architecture, and you'll be able to use robust Blender tools for your design projects and video games. What you will learn • Explore core 3D modeling tools in Blender such as extrude, bevel, and loop cut • Understand Blender's Outliner hierarchy, collections, and modifiers • Find solutions to common problems in modeling 3D characters and designs • Implement lighting and probes to liven up an architectural scene using EEVEE • Produce a final rendered image complete with lighting and post-processing effects • Learn character concept art workflows and how to use the basics of Grease Pencil • Learn how to use Blender's built-in texture painting tools Who this book is for Whether you're completely new to Blender, or an animation veteran enticed by Blender's newest features, this book will have something for you. Table of Contents • Introduction to 3D and the Blender User Interface • Editing a Viking Scene with a Basic 3D Workflow • Modeling a Time Machine - Part 1 • Modeling a Time Machine - Part 2 • Modern Kitchen - Part 1: Kitbashing • Modern Kitchen - Part 2: Materials and Textures • Modern Kitchen - Part 3: Lighting and Rendering • Illustrating an Alien Hero with Grease Pencil • Animating an Exquisite Corpse in Grease Pencil • Animating a Stylish Short with Grease Pencil • Creating a Baby Dragon - Part 1: Sculpting • Creating a Baby Dragon - Part 2: Retopology • Creating a Baby Dragon - Part 3: UV Unwrapping • Creating a Baby Dragon - Part 4: Baking and Painting Textures • Creating a Baby Dragon - Part 5: Rigging and Animation • The Wide World of Blender