Tony Mullen - Mastering Blender

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Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing Mastering Blender, Second Edition . 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 my family

As always, my thanks go first and foremost to Ton Roosendaal and all the Blender developers for all their hard work and dedication. You guys are doing important work and deserve the heartfelt gratitude of the entire community of Blender users.

Many other developers and users have helped me in researching and writing this book, and Im very grateful for all the support Ive received from the Blender community. I cant list all of the individuals at BlenderArtists.org whose artwork, comments, and tutorials have helped me to learn what I know about Blender, but I am particularly grateful for those who helped me as I ventured outside my comfort zone to write about the Blender Game Engine. Special thanks to BlenderArtists.org forum members Social, Mmph!, Blendenzo, and the other BGE gurus who were always eager to help me with my questions and investigations of this sometimes arcane functionality. Im also very grateful to Dolf Veenvliet (macouno) and Campbell Barton (ideasman_42), who helped me enormously to deepen my knowledge of Blenders Python API.

Throughout this book, I have referred to websites, tutorials, support threads, and other resources created by members of the community, and I am very grateful to all of those who have shared their knowledge. Once again, many thanks to Bart Veldhuizen and the contributors to BlenderNation.com and to Roel Spruit and all the moderators and administrators at BlenderArtists.org for their support and for the great service they provide the Blender community.

This book would not have been possible without the efforts of my editors and colleagues at Sybex/Wiley, and Im very grateful to all of them. Thank you to Mariann Barsolo, Pete Gaughan, Dassi Zeidel, Linda Recktenwald, and everyone else who had a hand in publishing and promoting the book. Thanks are also due to Oscar Baechler for his work as technical editor.

As always, I am grateful to my wife, Yuka, and my two daughters for their love and support.

Tony Mullen is a college lecturer, animator, independent filmmaker, and writer living in Tokyo. He has worked as a newspaper cartoonist, a graphic designer, a software developer, and a researcher in natural language processing, among other things.

Since discovering Blender, he has been involved in CG animation to the point of obsession, but he also maintains a keen interest in stop-motion techniques, notably as the lead animator and codirector of the award-winning 16mm film Gustav Brastache and the Auto-Debilitator and other independent shorts. He is currently working on a short film using Blender, which he blogs about at http://electrictownmovie.wordpress.com .