Blender For Dummies [Paperback]

 

 

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Went into this book hoping for a book that would explain things to someone brand new to Blender. Sadly the author's years of experience don't translate well here at least in the beginners section. He roams about the interface not really explaining where things are found. Some explanations are not clear as in prior reviewers comments. For some reason the people who really know blender have a difficult time conveying their knowledge to those of us who don't. Its not like I don't know how to use interfaces, I'm familiar with Gimp, Sony Vegas Pro and a very good mid range Fx and compositing program. Yet after reading the first 60 pages of this book I felt dummer than before and frustrated. I did go on some of the websites the author suggests and on one of the forums where old guys like me were asking for help, I'm 49, someone had suggested checking out the blender book in Wikkibooks. I highly recommend you check that out first and save your money.

Blender for Dummies promises how to teach us to create eye-popping 3d animations, work with meshes, curves, add material and create animations, among many other things.

Well, let me start by saying that it is very thorough as a REFERENCE guide, but to learn Blender from scratch it is a little less helpful. Don't get me wrong, it is a great book. The author clearly is very enthusiastic about Blender, and knows how to convey it.

There are a few reasons why I can't give it 5 stars, though. Personally, I learn the fastest when I am shown a finished project, and then taken by the hand re-creating it step by step and click by click, with explanations along the way and being taught the basics of the program on the fly.

This book has a totally different approach. It offers an odd mixture of a general description of what Blender is capable of, and then a highly detailed explanation of different techniques and tweaks. The author spends so much time explaining the interface, yet he seems to forget that when somebody has no CLUE yet what 3d modeling is about (after all, this IS a book for supposed dummies), knowing all there is to know about the interface and windows is not exactly exhilarating.

For example, he explains the difference between "box modeling" and "point-for-point modeling", but he never tells you HOW to actually MODEL something using the box or pfp method. The book just shows one picture of a human head created using both methods, and that is all you ever learn about it.

Another example: the author spends a few pages explaining the difference between a "good" and a "bad" edge loop, but the only explanation of what IS an edge loop is this: "Generally speaking, an edge loop is a series of edges that connect to form a path where the first and last edges connect to each other". This might be crystal clear to a professional 3d modeler, but to someone like me, a 3d dummy, this is almost gobbledygook. My first question would be "Nice, but what's it FOR?" The example of the car bumper made me scratch my head, and I think this could have been a perfect candidate to show us HOW to create this car in the first place, instead of skimping over it in five lines.

With every chapter you read, it seems, you are expected to find your own tutorials by surfing the Internet so that you can learn how to master what has been explained. It would have been more accurate if this book had been advertised as a reference guide, rather than a learning tool.

One of the fun tutorials was how to create a super simple skyscraper, but it does not really seem in place along the highly detailed explanations surrounding it. (Also, a little nitpicking note: if you follow the tutorial to the letter, it doesn't work. Between step 6 and 7 he forgot the mention you need to select the area first for the subdivide to work, and if you follow step 13 to the letter, the skyscraper implodes within itself.)
However, nitpicking aside, if there had been such a tutorial concluding each chapter to summarize what was taught, my review would have been at least one star more.

In my opinion, this book would have been infinity more enjoyable and less tedious to read through if it had used a cumulative approach: that is to say, in chapter 1 you learn how to view your default cube from all sides, in chapter 2 you would have learned how to extrude it, chapter 3 vertices handling, chapter 4 modeling it, chapter 5 material and texture... etc. In the end you could admire a beautiful skyscraper in technicolor and know you master all the techniques explained in the book.

I would recommend this book mostly to people who already know the basics of 3d modeling, and need a reference guide to get into the nitty gritty of Blender. If you expected a tutorial book that leads you by the hand from A to Z in 99 steps, you might be disappointed.

Summary, if you are serious about learning Blender, get it! But beware, it is not for the faint of heart.

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