Embark on a creative journey with Blender, from learning its user interface to rendering impressive 3D art for your portfolio
Key Features
- Learn 3D modeling basics in Blender from an expert team of tutors who've taught over 200,000 students worldwide
- Get to grips with Blender and the principles that make animation, lighting, and camera work come alive
- Start with the basics and build your skills through a series of projects to create a complex world
- Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook
Book Description
Master the use of Blender with this comprehensive guide crafted by educators who've successfully taught 3D modeling to over 200,000 students worldwide. While Blender's complex interface can overwhelm beginners, this book will help you learn the ropes by explaining the workspace, keyboard shortcuts, and menus, and most importantly, by guiding you through projects that put your new skills to the test. Through highly visual presentation, this book equips you with essential skills—from navigating the user interface to actionable projects, offering keystroke guidance and technical definition to prepare you for complex tasks. You'll learn how to install Blender, use all the overhead and side menus, make simple 3D models, and set up your Blender asset manager to maximize software usability. Working through examples, you'll see how primitives work, as well as how to texture, mark seams and sharps, UV map, and retopologize high and low-poly 3D models. The book also guides you through creating basic rigs and animations, and explores geometry nodes introduced in Blender 2.92. The book's project-based approach ensures you're not just learning theory—you're building practical skills to create sophisticated 3D models and animations, complete with lighting and camera work worthy of your portfolio.
What you will learn
- Explore Blender's unique user interface and suite of modeling and animation tools
- Speed up your workflows by using the most commonly used shortcuts and menus
- Understand camera control and layout preferences
- Improve the quality of your 3D models and basic animations
- Discover texturing, material creation, and 3D assets optimization and learn more about game engine compatibility
- Extrude, bevel, and bend your text for 3D modeling
- Use advanced modeling techniques like sculpting and retopology
- Set up a chain using the all-new geometry nodes
Who this book is for
If you are a video games enthusiast looking to gain experience in 3D modeling, game design, and animation for game props, assets, and environments, this is the book for you. Character artists, game designers, motion graphics designers, animators, environment artists, or other technical artists would also benefit from this book. Basic Blender knowledge and experience are not required but general digital art know-how will help you get the most out of this book.
