Ben Simonds - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering

This book is dedicated to my parents, James and Katrina.

This book would not have been possible without patient help from Bill Pollock, Alison Law, and everyone else at No Starch Press who helped put it together.

Thanks also to the minds behind CGTextures ( http://cgtextures.com/ ), who have put together a fantastic resource for artists and who kindly gave permission for the textures used in the projects in this book to be included on the DVD.

Most of all, thanks to Ton Roosendaal and all those who have contributed to Blender. Its my favorite piece of software and one around which my livelihood is largely built. Im very grateful for it. Thanks to Thomas Dinges, who is not only an active developer of Blender but also took the time to do the technical review of this book. Thanks to the Blender community, to the members of the Blender Artists Community ( http://www.blenderartists.org/ ), and to everyone who contributes to the Blender wiki and other resources like it. Its great to be a member of such a creative, open, and friendly bunch.

Ben Simonds is a 3D artist and co-director of Gecko Animation Ltd., an animation and post-production company based in London, England ( http://geckoanimation.com/ ). He first started messing around with Blender back in 2005, when he had no idea it would eventually become a major part of his day job. Since then hes authored a wide variety of tutorials and articles for his own website ( http://bensimonds.com/ ) and other Blender community websites, including Blender Cookie and BlenderNation.

At Gecko Animation, he produces visual effects, models, animation, and graphics for TV and advertising. His work has appeared on major UK TV channels like the BBC, Channel 4, and Dave. Gecko Animations in-house short animation Assembly: Life in Macrospace won the 2011 Suzanne Award for Best Designed Short Film at the Blender Conference in Amsterdam.

Thomas Dinges was born in 1991. He started using Blender and became interested in 3D graphics at the age of 16, after seeing the worlds first open movie, Elephants Dream . In 2009, he started working on Blender as a developer, helping create the new interface for the Blender 2.5 x project. He also has organized the German Blender conference, BlenderDay, since 2009. His website is http://www.dingto.org/ .

Welcome! This book is designed to teach you how to create models and environments in 3D, using two pieces of software: Blender, for 3D design and animation, and GIMP, for 2D image editing. In each chapter I take you through a part of the process of creating three complete 3D scenes. Youll learn how to block out and create models, sculpt and detail them, texture and create materials, use lighting, and render finished images. In the course of the book, I discuss the wide array of tools that Blender and GIMP offer and how to use them in real projects.

My goal is to teach you how to approach and finish your own projects in Blender, using three of my own projects to provide the narrative and examples of the tasks required. By the end of this book, you should be able to create your own projects from scratch using the principles demonstrated in the three example projects.