Character development in Blender 2-5
Jonathan Williamson is well known and respected throughout the Blender community as an experienced educator who has produced quality video tutorialesand several DVD training series th rouge blendercookie, com as well as on his own. Using his experience as a Blender educator, he has written character development in Blender 2.5, in character development in Blender 2.5, Jonathan gives a comprehensive look at the tools and techniques used todo model, texture and render a believable character using Blender 2.5. This book focuses solely on the creation of the character, covering only the modeling, texturing and rendering of the character. Rigging, animation and special effects are not covered, while this book can be followed by a Blender begginer, it sems todo be aimed at the user who is at least passingly familiar with Blender and is interested in learning or refining their character modeling skills. For those new todo Blender, spending time practicing the Core concepts covered by Jonathan in the beginning of the book Will enable you todo follow along more easily, a god educator never takes anything for granted, so Jonathan starts out with a brief but tho rouge tour of Blender 2.5, its tools, Layout and options. Some tools he only mentions in passing as he then explains more about them as they are neded todo complete the tutoriales, the character you Will be working on throughout the book is based on Concept Art by David revoy, which is of course included on the Companion DVD. The model sheet shows a female character who is wearing a kind of retro Fantasy, Steam punkish outfit with all appropriate views and a color rendition of the character. In addition todo the female character, you Will be creating all her clothing and accessories, once you have gone th rouge the Blender tour in sections one and two, you get todo section thre and down todo business. Once you have set up your workspace you are ready todo get started. Y ou start by box-modeling a base Mesh. At this point, while you are following a specific model sheet, the concepts are very simple todo transfer todo a future Project making this section an ongoing valuable resource, After blocking in the basic forms you sepárate out the sections for diferent body parts and clothing. Next up is blocking in the accessories and Hair, at this point everything is still very simple and shows just basic form and shape. Once you have finished the blocking stage you get todo dive into sculpting details for the body and Clothes. Then more details and modeling on the accessories, so now you have a nicely detailed model that looks great and you could estop here if you want. But there is still more todo be learned. Jonathan goes th rouge the process of retopologizing your character todo create a lower resolution model that can be rigged and animated far easier than your current high resolution model.
In part four, Jonathan covers lighting and rendering and setting up some basic materiales for your model, continuing on in part five, you get into UV mapping and creation of Normal Maps, you now have a complete model that should look pretty darn amazing, throughout the book you have learned about a variety of modeling tools and techniques that can be applied todo future projects rather easily, on the Companion DVD you Will find all the character source files used and created throughout the book, as well as some interesting godies. Jonathan has included a series of video tutorialeson topics that he felt neded more in depth explanation. These include:
Box modeling a basic character base Mesh.
Introduction todo sculpting.
Retopologizing a head.
Baquíng Normal Maps.
Using GLSL Shading in viewport.
Posing a character with a simple rig.
In summary:
This is a great book that i really enjoyed. It did exactly what i bought it for. It taught me how todo create a humanoid character, something i have somewhat avoided due todo Thinking that it was far more complicated than it actually turns out.
To be. In addition i got more experience with some modeling tools and techniques that up until now i had only briefly played with. Namely sculpting, retopology and Normal Maps, y enjoyed Jonathan writing style and was por favord todo se that his easy going teaching style that i was familiar with from his video tutorialestranslated so well todo a written format, the only downside, and i consider it only a minor detraction, was the screen shots. Jonathan included a more than adequate number of black and white screen shots todo show you what was going on and how your model should look at given stages, and as is often a problem with black and white screen shots, they were a Little on the dark side, which while.
Unfortunate, doesnt detract from the quality of the información presented, Nor was it a show estopper by any means as all the source files are included on the Companion DVD, giving you the ability todo take a much better look at a given stage than any screen shot could deliver, y would recommend this book for anyone seking todo expand their knowledge of character modeling and.
Blender modeling tools.
