Coumans Erwin Mullen Tony - Bounce, tumble, and splash!: simulating the physical world with Blender 3D. - Description based on print version record. - Includes index

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Cover Images: Milos Zajc (school corridor)

Mike Pan (strawberries and milk)

Luma Studios (ClubSilo racing game)

Tony Mullen (pop bottle and boxes tumbling)

Blender Foundation | peach.blender.org (cartoon animals)

Copyright 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-0-470-19280-1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mullen, Tony, 1971

Bounce, tumble, and splash! : simulating the physical world with Blender 3D / Tony Mullen. -- 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-470-19280-1 (paper/cd-rom)

1. Computer graphics. 2. Computer simulation. 3. Blender (Computer file) 4. Computer animation. 5. Three-dimensional display systems. I. Title.

T385.M8425 2008

006.696--dc22

2008014650

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing Bounce, Tumble, and Splash! Simulating the Physical World with Blender 3D. This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

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To Yuka

Acknowledgments

One of the most frequent things I hear from people seeing Blender for the first time is, Wow, and this is free ? Of course, in the sense of free as in free software , it most certainly is. It is free for users to copy and distribute, and it is free to be developed and modified by anybody who wants to do so. But the truth is that nothing as good as Blender comes without a cost. The cost of Blender is paid in the form of countless hours donated by the dedicated and highly skilled team of volunteer developers who make Blender what it is. For this reason, I would first and foremost like to thank them, the Blender developers, and Ton Roosendaal, Blenders own benevolent dictator for life, for all their hard work and dedication. Without them, there would be no Blender. Please visit http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/List_of_Contributors for a complete list of the current developers and the specific work they have done.

I would especially like to thank some of the developers who have been particularly helpful to me in my work on this book: Martin Poirier (theeth), Janne Karhu (jahka), Daniel Genrich (Genscher), Jens Ole Wund (bjornmose), Dolf Veenlivet (macouno), Joe Eagar (joeedh), Ramon Carlos Ruiz (RCruiz), Erwin Coumans, and Nils Theurey for their patience and responsiveness to my various questions and pestering. Id like to give a special thank you to Tom Musgrove (LetterRip) and all those who worked to prepare the 2.46 release for placing such a high priority on maintaining a release schedule that facilitates the creation of good documentation, and also to Roland Hess for his work as technical editor of this book.

Thanks also to the Peach team of developers and artists: Campbell Barton, Sacha Goedegebure, Andy Goralczyk, William Reynish, Enrico Valenza, Brecht van Lommel, and Nathan Vegdahl, for raising the bar yet again for Blender features and artwork, and for putting up with me hanging around, drinking their espresso, and peeking over their shoulders for a week. Many other developers and users have also helped me in various ways, and Im very grateful for all the support Ive received from the Blender community. I cant begin to list all of the individuals at BlenderArtists.org whose artwork, comments, and tutorials have helped me to learn what I know about Blender, but if you spend a little time reading the forums, you will know who many of them are soon enough. Thanks also to Bart Veldhuizen and all the contributors to BlenderNation.com for their support and for the great service they provide the Blender community.