John M. Blain - The Complete Guide to Blender Graphics: Computer Modeling & Animation

SEVENTH EDITION

JOHN M. BLAIN

The Complete Guide to Blender Graphics - 7th Edition provides instruction in the use of the Computer Graphics 3D Program Blender. The book is an operation manual for those who wish to undertake a learning experience and discover a wonderful creative new world of computer graphics. The book also serves as a reference for established operators.

Instructions throughout the book introduce Blenders features with examples and diagrams referenced to the Graphical User Interface (GUI).

The Complete Guide to Blender Graphics originated when Blenders Graphical User Interface was transformed with the release of Blender version 2.50. Subsequent editions of the book have kept pace with developments to the program and have included new material.

The 7thEdition of The Complete Guide to Blender Graphics is applicable to Blender Version 2.93.4 LTS \ 3.0.0 incorporating changes to the program such as a modified application of Materials (color) and Textures, the inclusion of Geometry Nodes and revised procedures for using Drivers.

For new users this book provides a fantastic learning experience in Computer Graphics using Blender, by introducing the operation of the Blender program through the use of its Graphical user Interface. The book is intended to be read in conjunction with having the program in operation, with the interface displayed.

Instruction is presented using the tools displayed in the Graphical User Interface, with basic examples demonstrating results. Understanding where tools are located, their uses and how they are implemented will allow the reader to more easily follow detailed instruction in the many written and video tutorials available on the Internet.

Blender is a 3D Computer Graphics Program with tools for modeling and animating objects and characters and creating background scenes. Scenes may be made into still images. Animated sequences may be used for video production. Models and Scenes are enhanced with color and texture producing brilliant realistic effects. The still images and video may be for artistic appreciation or employed as architectural or scientific presentations. There are also tools for 2D animation production. Stand alone models may be used for 3D Printing.

The Blender program is maintained by the Blender Foundation and released as Open Source Software which is available for download and FREE to be used for any purpose.

The program may be downloaded from:

www.blender.org

A comprehensive display of the Blender features is available at:

www.blender.org/features/

A computing platform or digital platform is the environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system (OS)

Blender is a cross platform application for Windows, Linux and MacOS operating systems.

The operation of Blender in this manual is applicable to all operating platforms but operations ancillary to the program, such as, saving work to the computers hard drive, have been described exclusively using a Windows operating system.

Always make sure to install the latest drivers from the graphics card manufacturer website. These requirements are for basic Blender operation. Cycles rendering using the GPU has higher requirements.

NVIDIA

GeForce 400 and newer. Quadro Tesla GPU architecture and newer, including RTX-based cards, with NVIDIA drivers (list of all GeForce and Quadro GPUs).

AMD

GCN 1st gen and newer. Since Blender 2.9.1, Terascale 2 architecture is fully depreciated, try using 2.90 (albeit not supported)

Intel

Haswell architecture and newer. [list of all Intel GPUs]

macOS

Version 10.13 or newer for Intel processors on supported hardware. Version 11.0 for Arm-based processors (Apple Silicon).