Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.5

is now shipping!Let’s clear up three bits of grief first. The book cover and text reads “Blender 2.6″. Unfortunately, when the cover art was finalized and locked at the printer’s several months ago, the official (and unofficial) word was that the released version of the Blender after all of these alphas and betas would be called Blender 2.6. That has changed. We had to make a call, and we made the wrong one. So don’t be scared of the “2.6″. It’s entirely cosmetic.

I’ve also heard a couple of grumbles from people that the book was written based on “pre-release” software. The simple fact is that Blender is pretty much always “pre-release.” We’re not like these giant, sluggish software companies that do a release once every two years, giving writers and other documenters a huge amount of time to make docs that last. With Blender, if you start to write a book about an official release on the day it’s released, your resulting book will be out of date and probably at least one release behind by the time it starts to ship. So choose your poison: the future or the past.

Finally, the title. There was some controversy (hopefully all internal) regarding the book’s title. The Blender Foundation posed an object to the publisher that the title would could confuse people into thinking that the book was both an officially sanctioned publication of the Foundation it isn’t), and/or that it was a sequel to The Essential Blender. The Foundation and Focal Press were able to come to an agreement that the parties satisfied (I believe). Personally, I think it’s pretty clear what items come directly from the Foundation or have official sanction: you buy them in the e-shop on blender.org. That’s pretty much it. If I’m wrong, and you were personally confused, please put me some knowledge in the comments. On the notion of it being a sequel to Essential… If The Essential Blender was important for you because the title and who published it, then this is definitely not a sequel. However, if you appreciated Essential for the quality of instruction and the thought that went into it, then in spirit this book is a sequel.

With that stuff out of the way, here is what you get with Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.5 (2.6). The book takes you from zero knowledge, through the interface and into a field-tested practical instruction project that has a number of goals. First, you’ll produce a (very) short scene with an animated character, full set and production lighting. The final product of the book can be seen below in the embedded video. If you’ve been using Blender for a long time, that’s not going to be amazingly impressive to you, but the fact is that if you’ve never done 3D before or only dabbled, you’ll go from knowing nothing to producing that by the end of the book which is significant. Also, if you’re wanting to transition from another piece of software (Blender 2.4 series included), the examples demonstrate all of the major skill areas you’ll need to know. Third, I’ve gone to great lengths to give this book a “point of view” when it comes to art and working in 3D. It’s not just a tutorial (and it certainly isn’t a tools reference!) that shows you what buttons to push. Instead, I’ve tried to teach you how to think when you’re working in 3D.

The support website for the book, located at www.blenderfoundations.com, is a work in progress. It currently has all of the screenshots from the book, all of the sample files and textures, and a number of sections of added content that were not in the book. For example, the book tutorials on building a table and chair don’t have a screen shot with every single step. That would be silly to put into a book. However, you get a screen shot for every step of the way for those projects on the website. Also, there are a pile of animation clips and examples from the animation chapter. There are a couple of pieces I’m still working on (a hair styling video is one example), and I’m putting them up as quickly as I can make them.

One last bit that I need to implement on the site is an erratta section. I’ve had a few reports from readers so far of minor errors, or things that I should probably note. Probably by next weekend I’ll have the errata section for each chapter working, so you can always check the web site for the latest updates in case the developers do something that breaks the book horribly. Of course, I don’t anticipate that happening. Most of the stuff in the book is fairly basic, already hammered-out functionality. The only real difference is in the tools panel for the sculpting and painting tools. I’m working to get updated screen shots into the website for those so you can see what they look like if the minor differences bother you in the book.

So, if you’re looking to learn the new Blender series (2.5) and you like to learn via books (which not everyone does), I highly recommend this one. You get the same superior quality of instruction as my last two works (The Essential Blender and Creating Short Animations with Blender — just pop over to Amazon and read the reviews), as well as the superior production values that Focal Press brings to their publications (full color throughout, top grade paper, very nice typesetting).

Oh, and the last thing you get is me. I’m always available through animation@harkyman.com. I love to hear success stories and to see what you’ve produced. I’m also sensitive and responsive to problems you have with the stuff I’ve built. I think that I’ve created a superior educational product with this book, and I care very much about how it works for you. If you have a problem with it, I want to know about it so I can either fix it, or do it better the next time. In any case, I’ll do my best to help you.

Blender Foundations Beginner Project from Roland Hess on Vimeo.

And that’s it. Get the book. It’s really good. You won’t be sorry (unless you’re perpetually and indiscriminantly sorry, in which case I can’t help you).

Cheers!

Programming. Animating. Writing. These are the things I did as a kid, lo those many years ago. I wrote games, utilities and graphics demonstrations on my Dad’s TI. I wrote stories and poems constantly. I made elaborate flip-book animations in every notepad I could find. And always, the three would cross-pollinate. I’d write on the word processor that I’d developed on my own. I’d program graphics visualizations and put animation into my games.

And now, how very fitting that I find myself doing the same thing as an adult. I write books about animation software, software of which I’m both one of the (very minor) developers, and one of the users. But writing isn’t my new job. It’s software development. Almost thirty years after I touched my first keyboard and typed

10 PRINT "YOU SUCK"

20 GOTO 10

Someone is actually paying me to write and maintain software, and that’s probably what I’m going to end up doing in one capacity or another until I’m too old to make my fingers strike a keyboard. It’s funny, and a long, weird road.

Ton used to say to me, when I’d start talking about some coding project I wanted to do in Blender “No! No! Write books! That’s what you’re good at!” And it turns out that I am good at that, and I’m grateful for the shot he gave me with organizing “The Essential Blender.” It also turns out that development, or coding, or whatever you want to call it, is buried just as deeply within my bones as writing.

As I was mowing the lawn tonight, I was contemplating the path ahead for many people in my position: management. The thought came into my head: “Nope. If I’m not inside the computer, I’m not happy.” And thinking back, it’s always been that way for me.

So I want to give a huge thanks to Ton, and to Blender, and to the community that recognized its potential, payed the ransom for, and ran like the wind. Without the Open Source nature of Blender to fiddle around with, so many things for me just wouldn’t have happened like they did. Working on Blender has allowed me to be “inside” the computer in a very meaningful way over the last several years.

Of course, I’m still waiting for the day when I’m independently wealthy enough to take a whole summer off of work, drag my family to the Netherlands and donate my time just doing whatever needs to be done. But until then, I’m going to enjoy my new job, enjoy my family, and keep trying to become more than just a hack animator.

So, you can click on the thumbnail below to get the full sized image of the network.

Film Look node tree

Download a .BLEND file here.

The effect is created from an old tutorial I had found on some kid’s website for adding a film style look to his digital photography in Photoshop. I re-purposed the decently complicated Photoshop layer-based work flow into a nodes-based one for Blender. I went looking for that original one, so I could link and credit, but I’ve been unable to find it since that one lucky strike a couple of years ago. To be fair then, the general theory behind this technique isn’t my own, although I added and adjusted a bit while I was nodifying the process. As a reminder, the results are:

Before

After

You adjust the way that the shadows, highlights and midtones cast by changing the colors in the RGB color node, and in the Color Ramp node. If you’re going to use this, make sure to set the render dimensions to match the dimensions of your input image.

Merry Christmas!

But really, who am I kidding? I’m going to end up fighting with this all weekend and into next week when I should be writing my book.

Tracker link: Similar Surface modifier patch

Obviously, there are workarounds, but I have a solution that I’m not going to have time to implement myself. I built the modifier structure and basics, but once I realized I’d never coded with the modifier system or dealt with mesh data directly I understood that it would require more time than I had, and would be fairly easily accomplished by someone already familiar with it.

I think a good solution to this problem would be a “Similar Surface” (name for artists) or a “Hook Web” (name for devs) modifier. Simply put, the modifier is a “bind” type one, a la the cage deformer. The user creates a fairly simple structure upon which to run a cloth sim (or any other deform technique, actually). Then, the user creates their “high res” clothing, which includes all the nice things like buttons, epaulets, cuffs, pockets, layering, etc. Clearly that would never survive an actual cloth sim. When the user BINDS the high res clothing to the sim’ed simpler one, the following happens:

1. For each vert in the high res, a virtual hook is created. Within the modifier, it would be an array of hook objects (obHook). The hook data structure is deprecated in favor of the hook modifier, but the DNA is still there.
2. Where does the virtual hook attach? The shrink wrap “nearest point on mesh” procedure is used to identify. Then, the verts that make up the identified face of the underlying mesh become the vertex parents of the virtual hook.

That’s it. This would allow complex, multi-layered clothing to be driven by an underlying cloth simulation.

From reading the DNA and modifier code, it appears that everything is already there. We need someone who is familiar with mesh coding and modifiers to put it together. Unless I miss my guess, the Durian team WILL be asking for something like this in the near future.

Edit: If you’re interested in patching your own for working on a laptop, click here to get it. Remember, this isn’t a permanent solution.

Egad. Karmic broke my wifi. It’s an Atheros card (AR2413), and there is a long list of gripes on teh Internets about Atheros not playing nicely with Linux. There is a set of open drivers (ath5k) for the cards, but after finally getting Ubuntu to use them, I got really really horrible connection. Oh well. That’s why they say not install the beta on a production machine! The solution I came up with? Order a different card. Edimax makes cards that play very well with Linux, and for $20 I not only get a card I don’t have to fight with every time I do a system upgrade, I get one with an extensible antenna with a cable. Hopefully I’ll be able to position it more freely than a card with the antenna attached directly and nab some extra signal.

So from a Blender perspective, just remember that beta really means beta. Don’t use it for production unless you are either extremely fault tolerant or can fix problems yourself. When 2.5 rolls out (hopefully) at the end of the month, by all means grab it and pound on it. It’ll help the development process. But don’t think you’re going to be doing end-to-end production with it.

Blender 2.49 is still where it’s at, and really, I don’t think I’d roll 2.5 into my production pipeline until after Durian is over and the gold release (or 2.60 or whatever it will be called) happens next summer. That in mind, if you’re foggy on the higher order aspects of using Blender in a real production, it wouldn’t kill you to check out my book in the sidebar (turn your ad blocker off for a second!) It’s been called both “the best software book I’ve ever read” and “a replacement for Inspired Short 3D Film Production“, and not just by my mom!

Bad bad bad.

Apparently, there’s now an active worm, er, worming its way around demolishing unpatched older versions. With a sense of urgency, I’ve just followed the “detailed upgrade” instructions from wordpress.com, which worked flawlessly for me. My old plugins and the changes and new code I had done for my theme worked perfectly after the upgrade. If you use WordPress for your blog and haven’t updated/upgraded in a while, now is the time!

It’s actually just an image filter! You render your water and objects from directly overhead into a sequence of images. Make the water shadeless white and the objects shadeless black. I’ve written a little image processing Python script that uses that image sequence as input and generates the ripples into a new image sequence. That sequence is then used as either a displacement map or bump map for the water back in the original .BLEND file.

There’s a lot of tweaking to do, but this was just a proof of concept.

NOTE: This isn’t a Python script that runs within Blender, although I suppose it could. It’s just a command line program. I’ll post it when it’s finished.

Did I freak?

No. Because I keep backups. Twenty-one days worth, with a full backup every ten and incrementals in between. Yeah, it took several hours to acquire a new HD and load all the data back into it, but it was all there.

Why am I writing this? I’m sure you’ve all read “All my file are gonerz man!” articles and posts elsewhere, which then proceed to admonish you to have a backup system in place. This is the other side of the coin. Success. Everything’s fine. Nothing’s gone.

1. Have a backup system.
2. Check on it every now and then to make sure that it’s actually making backups.
3. When you check to make sure, do a little test restore to make sure that it’s working from end to end.

That’s what I did, and why I’m not thinking about walking in front of a bus today.

Which reminds me, I need to get my home backup server running too.