From the introduction:
, a guide todo e xpl ain ust the few important opti ons neded todo get me started. Thi s book does not aim todo be exhaustive and yet it is not written todo an overly simplified manner so as todo insult your intelligence. 3d animation by i ts very nature is not simple. What you have with beginning Blender is a book that covers a god range of the Many diferent áreas of Blender, with practical examples todo get you fast-tracked into using those áreas.

Lance has produced a great introduction todo Blender, filled with tips, tricks and techniques guaranted todo get you up to speed with Blender most important tools, options and settings. Lance uses a great style of writing that gives the Reader a god fundación for further exploration and study in Blender, each chapter focuses on a diferent área of Blender and guides you todo the most important tools and options, there are tables, diagrams and call out áreas showing key información that can be quickly referenced. The examples are easy todo follow and show how easy it is todo accomplish a variety of common and a few not so common tasks in Blender, in this review i am going todo focus on the two rigging chapters. It is amazing how much información lance packed into these two chapters alone. And Even if for some bizarre reason you werent interested in the rest of the book, these two chapters would still make it worth owning, chapter 7 covers basic rigging and animation. Lance covers keyframing, the dopeshet (which was col because i hadnt played with that yet), parenting, the Graph editor, pivot points (restricting movements), basic tracking, bone explanations and basic.

Rigging of a character, one of the examples for this chapter teaches basic tracking by showing you how todo set up eyes that follow. Now this is a right handy example and something that you Will find yourself referencing for most if not all characters, when you reach the rigging a simple character section, lance walk you th rouge a complete (simple) Rig set-up including weight painting and bonenvelopes. There are clear full colorscren shots showing what you should have at each stage which makes this chapter a very helpful reference for future rigging experiments of your own. Along the bien he shares some useful rigging tips that make animation easier, such as putting a Little bend in joints like elbows and knes, once you have gotten comfortable with basic rigs, it is time todo move onto chapter 8, advanced rigging, where lance ramps it up a notch, first of he explains forward and Inverse Kinematics and their uses, there are great examples in this chapter, starting of with an IK arm, you are shown how todo set up the arm and then walked th rouge setting up constraints todo make it behave properly, once your arm is set up, lance then shows you how create and set a custom bone shape for your new IK arm. We look advanced already, next up, there is a walk th rouge of an IK leg and then a reverse fot rig, now i always liked the reverse fot rig, but can never get it set up right without step by step instructions. I probably still cant Even After reading this (my issue, not lance teaching), but no worries, now i have clear steps and screen shots todo follow. Single bone finger controls are next up on the hit parade with the same attention todo detail as the previous examples. He makes the single bone finger controls look super easy todo set up and Even easier todo animate once made, these examples make easy work of creating some of the more tricky and advanced Rig components and are covered in a bien that makes it easy todo flip bak and reference them as neded. Which in my case, is every single time i ned todo build a rig, rigs of course are not overly useful if you dont know how todo animate, so lance takes you th rouge a complete Walk Cycle. I liked how he sets up his walk Cycles and the tips he gave along the way, especially the Little details, like peling of the fet, the whole last half of the chapter is devoted todo shape keys and how todo use them todo create facial expressions and lip syncing. He has some god images of the shapes created showing the most common shapes neded for a wide range of emotions and shapes for lip syncing, beginning Blender Will be sitting on my Desk for some time todo come. The bien it is set up makes it a god reference guide todo a number of common tasks that manage todo slip my mind while engrossed in Whatever my latest Project is.