Table Of Contents

ABOUT THIS BOOK

14

BLENDER FOUNDATION FOREWORD

16

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

18

01 INTRODUCTION

22

02 INSTALLATION

28

03 UNDERSTANDING THE INTERFACE

38

What is Blender? .......................................................................... 22

Blender's History.......................................................................... 23
About Free Software and the GPL .................................................. 25
Getting support - the Blender community........................................ 26
Downloading and installing the binary distribution............................ 28

Windows, MacOS X, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris................................... 29

Building Blender from source ........................................................ 33
Technical Support ........................................................................ 37

Blenders Interface Concept .......................................................... 38

Keyboard and mouse .................................................................... 38
Window types .............................................................................. 41
Contextes, Panels and Buttons............................................................ 42

Toolbox ....................................................................................... 45
Screens ............................................................................................ 45
Navigating in 3D Space...................................................................... 46
The viewing direction (rotating) ........................................................... 46
Translating and Zooming the View ....................................................... 48
Perspective and Orthographic Projection .............................................. 48
Draw mode........................................................................................ 50
Local view......................................................................................... 50
The layer system................................................................................ 50
The vital functions ............................................................................. 51

04 QUICKSTART

Your first animation in 30 + 30 minutes ......................................... 56

Warming up................................................................................. 56
Building the body ......................................................................... 56
Lets see what Gus looks like......................................................... 63
Materials and Textures .................................................................. 68
Rigging ....................................................................................... 74
Skinning...................................................................................... 76
Posing ........................................................................................ 78
Gus walks! .................................................................................. 82

56

Table Of Contents
05 OBJECT MODE

86

06 MESH MODELING

96

Moving (translating) objects........................................................... 87

Rotating objects........................................................................... 87
Scaling/mirroring objects .............................................................. 89
Transform Properties Panel ........................................................... 90
Duplicate .................................................................................... 90
Parenting (Grouping) .................................................................... 90
Tracking ...................................................................................... 91
Other Actions .............................................................................. 92
Boolean operations....................................................................... 92

Basic Objects .................................................................................... 96

EditMode .......................................................................................... 98
Basic Editing .................................................................................... 100
Mesh Undo ....................................................................................... 103
Smoothing ........................................................................................ 103
Proportional Editing Tool .................................................................. 106
Extrude............................................................................................. 108
Spin and SpinDup ............................................................................. 112
Screw ............................................................................................... 117
Noise ............................................................................................... 118
Warp Tool ......................................................................................... 119
Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surfaces ..................................................... 120
Edge Tools ........................................................................................ 124
Knife Tool......................................................................................... 124
Face Loop......................................................................................... 125
Meta Objects..................................................................................... 126

07 CURVES AND SURFACES

128

08 MATERIALS AND TEXTURES

146

Curves ........................................................................................ 128

Bziers ....................................................................................... 128
NURBS....................................................................................... 130
Working example.......................................................................... 131
Surfaces ..................................................................................... 136
Text ............................................................................................ 137
Special Characters ....................................................................... 138
Extrude Along a Path.................................................................... 140
Skinning...................................................................................... 143

Diffusion ..................................................................................... 147

Specular Reflection ...................................................................... 148
Materials in practice ..................................................................... 150

Table Of Contents
Material Colors ............................................................................ 150
The Shaders ................................................................................ 151
Tweaking Materials ....................................................................... 152
Textures ...................................................................................... 153
ImageTexture ............................................................................... 158
Multiple Materials ........................................................................ 160
Special Materials.......................................................................... 162
Solid and Hollow Glass ................................................................. 171
UV editor and FaceSelect.............................................................. 175
Texture Plugins ............................................................................ 179

09 LIGHTING

180

10 THE WORLD AND THE UNIVERSE

208

11 ANIMATION OF UNDEFORMED OBJECTS

216

12 ANIMATION OF DEFORMATIONS

230

Introduction................................................................................. 180
Lamp Types ................................................................................ 181
Sun Light .................................................................................... 182
Hemi Light .................................................................................. 184
Lamp Light.................................................................................. 184
Spot Light ................................................................................... 189
Spot Buttons ............................................................................... 190
Shadows ..................................................................................... 190
Volumetric Light .......................................................................... 192
Tweaking Light............................................................................. 194
Three point light .......................................................................... 196
Three point light - Outdoor ............................................................ 198
Area Light ................................................................................... 200
Global Illumination (and Global Shadowing) .................................... 204

The World Background.................................................................. 208

Mist............................................................................................ 210
Stars .......................................................................................... 212
Ambient Light.............................................................................. 212

IPO Block.................................................................................... 217

Key Frames ................................................................................. 217
The IPO Curves............................................................................ 218
IPO Curves and IPO Keys.............................................................. 222
Other applications of IPO Curves ................................................... 224
The Time IPO .............................................................................. 224
Path Animation ............................................................................ 226

Absolute Vertex Keys .................................................................... 230

Table Of Contents
Curve and Surface Keys ................................................................ 234
Lattice Keys ................................................................................ 234
Relative Vertex Keys ..................................................................... 234
Lattice Animation......................................................................... 239

13 CHARACTER ANIMATION

242

14 RENDERING

290

15 RADIOSITY

308

Introduction: Light, Camera and... ACTION ! ................................... 242

General Tools............................................................................... 243
The Armature Object .................................................................... 244
Bones Naming ............................................................................. 245
Parenting and IK chain ................................................................. 246
The Armature Panel...................................................................... 248
Skinning...................................................................................... 248
Vertex Groups .............................................................................. 249
Weight Painting............................................................................ 250
Posemode ................................................................................... 251
Action Window............................................................................. 252
Non Linear Animation................................................................... 254
Working with Action Strips ............................................................ 256
Constraints.................................................................................. 257
Constraint Types .......................................................................... 258
Constraints Evaluation Rules and Precedence.................................. 260
Influence..................................................................................... 261
Rigging a Hand and a Foot ............................................................ 262
Rigging Mechanics ....................................................................... 272
How to setup a walkcycle using NLA .............................................. 280

Rendering by Parts....................................................................... 291

Panoramic renderings ................................................................... 291
Antialiasing ................................................................................. 292
Output formats ............................................................................ 294
Rendering Animations................................................................... 296
Motion Blur ................................................................................. 296
Depth of Field.............................................................................. 298
Cartoon Edges ............................................................................. 302
The Unified Renderer ................................................................... 304
Preparing your work for video......................................................... 304
Color Saturation ........................................................................... 306
Rendering to fields ....................................................................... 306

The Blender Radiosity method ....................................................... 308

Radiosity Rendering...................................................................... 312

Table Of Contents
Radiosity as a Modelling Tool......................................................... 314
Phase 1: Collect Meshes............................................................... 315
Phase 2: Subdivision limits. .......................................................... 316
Phase 3: Adaptive Subdividing ...................................................... 316
Phase 4: Editing the solution......................................................... 318
Radiosity Juicy example ................................................................ 319
Setting up ................................................................................... 320
The Sky Dome ............................................................................. 320
The Radiosity solution .................................................................. 322
Texturing..................................................................................... 324

16 SPECIAL MODELING TECHNIQUES

330

17 EFFECTS

350

18 VOLUMETRIC EFFECTS

370

19 SEQUENCE EDITOR

376

Introduction................................................................................. 330
DupliVerts ................................................................................... 330
DupliFrames ................................................................................ 337
More Animation and Modelling ...................................................... 342
Modelling with lattices.................................................................. 345
How does it work? ........................................................................ 346

Introduction................................................................................. 350
Build Effect ................................................................................ 350
Particle Effects ............................................................................ 351
A first Particle System .................................................................. 352
Rendering a particle system .......................................................... 353
Objects as particles...................................................................... 354
Setting Dupliverted Particles ......................................................... 355
Making fire with particles .............................................................. 356
The particle system ..................................................................... 356
The fire-material .......................................................................... 357
A simple explosion ....................................................................... 359
Controlling Particles via a Lattice ................................................... 362
Static Particles ............................................................................ 365
Wave Effect ................................................................................ 367

Learning the Sequence Editor........................................................ 376

First animation: two cubes ............................................................ 376
First Sequence: delayed wireframe animation.................................. 378
Second animation: A delayed solid cube ......................................... 380
Third animation: a tunnel .............................................................. 382
Second sequence: Using the tunnel as a backdrop........................... 386

10

Table Of Contents
Fourth Animation: a jumping logo .................................................. 386
Fifth Animation: particle bars ........................................................ 386
Third sequence: Combining the logo and the particle bars ................ 388
Sixth Animation: zooming logo....................................................... 390
Assembling everything so far ......................................................... 390
Conclusion .................................................................................. 392
Sound Sequence Editor ................................................................ 392
Sequence Editor Plugins ............................................................... 394

20 PYTHON SCRIPTING

398

21 BLENDER'S PLUGIN SYSTEM

408

22 FROM BLENDER TO YAFRAY USING YABLE

426

23 YAFRAY

448

Setting PYTHONPATH .................................................................. 400

A working Python example ............................................................ 401
Headers, importing modules and globals......................................... 402
Drawing the GUI .......................................................................... 403
Managing Events.......................................................................... 404
Mesh handling ............................................................................. 405
Conclusions ................................................................................. 407
Python Reference and Scripts ....................................................... 407

Writing a Texture Plugin ................................................................ 408

Specification ............................................................................... 409
Compiling.................................................................................... 416
Writing a Sequence Plugin ............................................................ 416
Specification ............................................................................... 416
Our Modifications......................................................................... 420
Compiling.................................................................................... 422

What is Yable? ............................................................................. 426

Which Yable? ............................................................................... 426
Where to get YableX? .................................................................... 427
Installing the script ...................................................................... 427
The Interface............................................................................... 428
Workflow philosophy ..................................................................... 428
Global Settings ............................................................................ 428
Rendering settings ....................................................................... 433
Material Settings.......................................................................... 435
Light Settings .............................................................................. 440
Yable Juicy example ..................................................................... 444

Installation .................................................................................. 449

Scene Description Language Overview............................................ 451
Shaders ...................................................................................... 453

11

Table Of Contents
Meta Shaders .............................................................................. 455
Renderable Objects ...................................................................... 461
Lights ......................................................................................... 462
Background ................................................................................. 470
Camera ....................................................................................... 472
Render........................................................................................ 472
Filters ......................................................................................... 474

24 BLENDER WINDOWS

478

25 HOTKEYS IN-DEPTH REFERENCE

480

26 WINDOWS REFERENCE

506

27 BUTTONS REFERENCE

570

The Mouse .................................................................................. 478

The Window Header ..................................................................... 479

Window HotKeys .......................................................................... 480

Universal HotKeys ........................................................................ 481
Object Mode HotKeys ................................................................... 485
Edit Mode HotKeys - General......................................................... 496
EditMode Mesh Hotkeys ............................................................... 497
EditMode Curve Hotkeys ............................................................... 500
EditMode Surface Hotkeys ............................................................ 502
EditMode Metaball Hotkeys ........................................................... 503
EditMode Font Hotkeys ................................................................. 503
Armature Hotkeys......................................................................... 504
VertexPaint Hotkeys...................................................................... 505
FaceSelect Hotkeys ...................................................................... 505

The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The

InfoWindow ........................................................................... 506

FileWindow ........................................................................... 513
3DWindow ............................................................................ 521
IPO Window .......................................................................... 529
Sequence Window.................................................................. 539
OopsWindow ......................................................................... 544
Action Window....................................................................... 549
Non Linear Animation Window................................................. 552
Text Window.......................................................................... 556
Audio Timeline Window .......................................................... 559
ImageWindow ........................................................................ 561
ImageSelectWindow ............................................................... 564
Animation Playback Window.................................................... 567

The Buttons Window .................................................................... 570

Logic Context .............................................................................. 572
Script Links - Linking scripts to Blender ......................................... 574

12

Table Of Contents
Shading Context........................................................................... 576
Lamp Sub-context ....................................................................... 576
Material Sub-context.................................................................... 583
Texture Sub-context ..................................................................... 600
Radiosity Sub-context .................................................................. 615
World Sub-context ....................................................................... 620
Object Context............................................................................. 626
Editing Context ............................................................................ 639
Scene Context ............................................................................. 666
Rendering Sub-context ................................................................ 666
Animation/Playback Sub-context ................................................... 674
Sound Sub-context ...................................................................... 675
Panels out of the Buttons Window.................................................. 678
3D ViewPort ................................................................................ 678
IPO Window................................................................................. 681

28 COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS

682

29 BLENDER 2.32 RELEASE

688

QUICK HOTKEYS LIST

704

SUPPORTED VIDEOCARDS

724

BLENDER 2.31 CHANGELOG

732

THE BLENDER DOCUMENTATION PROJECT

738

JOINING THE CODERS

740

LICENSES

742

GLOSSARY

752

INDEX

762

Render Options ............................................................................ 683

Animation Options ....................................................................... 684
Window Options ........................................................................... 684
Other Options .............................................................................. 684

Rendering ................................................................................... 688

Displacement mapping ................................................................. 693
Blender 2.32: Yafray .................................................................... 696
Blender 2.32: new features and fixes ............................................. 697

13