Blender 3D: Noob to Pro

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro is a product of shared effort by numerous team members and anonymous editors. Its purpose is to teach people how to create three-dimensional computer graphics using Blender, a free software application. While you can learn simply by reading the book, you’ll get more out of the tutorials if you follow along. In order to do this, you’ll need access to a computer with Blender installed.

The core of this book is a series of tutorials that increase in complexity, with later tutorials building on the preceding ones. While experienced users can skip ahead, beginners are urged to proceed through the tutorials in sequence. The tutorials in the core series are grouped into four units:

• Background
• Basic Modeling and Shading
• Broadening Horizons
• Taking Off

Blender is a powerful and complex 3D modeling and rendering package. Before you can use it effectively to make things, you need to know a few things about how it works:

• the process of 3D modeling and rendering (what Blender does)
• some rudiments of 3D analytic geometry (axes and coordinates)
• orthographic and perspective views of a 3D object
• local coordinate systems and child objects
• the fundamentals of Blender’s user interface (hotkeys, windows, and menus)
• how to view a 3D scene from different vantage points (in Blender)