Table Of ContentBlender 3D By Example
Design a complete workflow with Blender to create
stunning 3D scenes and films step by step!
Romain Caudron
Pierre-Armand Nicq
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Blender 3D By Example
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First published: September 2015
Production reference: 1220915
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-78528-507-3
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Credits
Authors Project Coordinator
Romain Caudron Bijal Patel
Pierre-Armand Nicq
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Reviewer
Fernando Castilhos Melo
Indexer
Rekha Nair
Acquisition Editor
Tushar Gupta
Production Coordinator
Aparna Bhagat
Content Development Editor
Athira Laji
Cover Work
Aparna Bhagat
Technical Editor
Menza Mathew
Copy Editor
Kausambhi Majumdar
About the Authors
Romain Caudron is a French 2D/3D artist. He is a cofounder and CG artist of
Main Digitales, a new video game studio in Montpellier in the south of France, and
he specializes in virtual reality. Also, he is an assistant to Patrice Stellest, the Swiss
contemporary artist.
Romain has had a mostly self-taught career, but he received a master's degree in
cinema and game design from Paul Valery University, Montpellier III, France. Then,
he studied 3D animation using CGTrainer. His interest in hacker culture and open
source software led him to start working with Blender in 2012.
Before this book, in 2014, he was a reviewer on Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures
Cookbook by Enrico Valenza.
Pierre-Armand Nicq started learning how to generate 3D images with Blender
2.4x at a young age. He is really passionate about all types of multimedia creation
and uses Blender for projects such as 3D images/animations and games. He codes
in different programming languages, such as C/C++, C#, AS3, JavaScript, and
PHP, to create games and other kinds of programs. Pierre-Armand loves to share
his knowledge. This is why he founded a French YouTube channel (http://www.
youtube.com/ToutApprendre). It has more than 9,500 subscribers and 200 tutorials
about 3D and programming. Currently, he is in his fifth and last year of school at IIM
(Paris/La Défense). During his free time, he loves to play jazz music, participate in
GameJams, and perform card tricks.
I would like to thank my family and all my friends for supporting
me in my passion. Also, I would like to thank my coauthor, Romain.
Moreover, I am really grateful to the entire Packt Publishing team for
believing in our project and helping us throughout the creation of
this book. Last but not least, I hope you will have fun mixing tons of
ingredients in your Blender.
About the Reviewers
Fernando Castilhos Melo lives in Caxias do Sul, Brazil, and works in a software
company as a software developer and systems analyst. In his spare time, he works
on 3D modeling using Blender. He has been using Blender since 2009. He has
given several lectures on Blender and 3D modeling at several Brazilian free / open
source software events, such as FLISOL and TcheLinux. Fernando holds a degree in
computer science from UCS (University of Caxias do Sul).
This is the second book on Blender that he has worked on. The first one was Blender
Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook in 2013. He had developed an integration
between Blender and Kinect named "Kinected Blender" to generate 3D animation.
This project is currently in the alpha version. For more information, you can go to his
web page at http://www.fernando.melo.nom.br/.
I want to thank my wife, Mauren, my parents, Eloir and Miriam, and
all my friends for their support during the review of this book.
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Table of Contents
Preface ix
Chapter 1: Straight into Blender! 1
An overview of the 3D workflow 1
The anatomy of a 3D scene 2
What can you do with Blender? 5
Getting used to the navigation in Blender 6
An introduction to the navigation of the 3D Viewport 6
What are editors? 8
The anatomy of an editor 8
Split, Join, and Detach 9
Some useful layout presets 11
Setting up your preferences 11
An introduction to the Preferences window 11
Customizing the default navigation style 12
Improving Blender with add-ons 13
A brief introduction to the projects 14
The Robot Toy 14
The Alien Character 14
The Haunted House 15
The Rat Cowboy 15
Summary 15
Chapter 2: Robot Toy – Modeling of an Object 17
Let's start the modeling of our Robot Toy 18
Preparing the workflow by adding an image reference 18
Adding the head primitive 19
The Edit Mode versus the Object Mode 20
Using the basic modeling tools 21
Modeling the head 22
Modeling the antenna 24
[ i ]
Table of Contents
An introduction to the Subdivision Surface modifier 27
Improving the head shape 29
Modeling the thunderbolts 30
Modeling the eyes 34
Modeling the chest 34
Modeling the neck 38
Modeling the torso 39
Modeling the buttons 40
Modeling the fork 41
Modeling protections for the fork 44
Modeling the main wheel 46
Modeling the arm 47
Using Blender Internal to render our Robot Toy 51
Summary 52
Chapter 3: Alien Character – Base Mesh Creation and Sculpting 53
Understanding the sculpting process 54
An introduction to sculpting 54
Choosing sculpting over poly modeling 55
Using a pen tablet 55
The sculpt mode 56
Optimizing the viewport 56
Anatomy of a brush 57
Dyntopo versus the Multires modifier 60
First touch with the Multires modifier 60
First touch with Dyntopo 61
Creating a base mesh with the Skin modifier 63
Visual preparation 66
An introduction to artistic anatomy 68
Sculpting the body 69
The head 69
The torso 78
The arms 81
The legs 82
The belt 85
Summary 88
Chapter 4: Alien Character – Creating a Proper Topology
and Transferring the Sculpt Details 89
Why make a retopology? 90
Possibilities of arranging polygons 90
Errors to avoid during the creation of retopology 92
Density of polygons 94
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
Making the retopology of the Alien Character 94
Preparing the environment 94
The head 95
The neck and the torso 103
The arms and the hands 106
The legs 108
Unwrapping UVs 110
Understanding UVs 111
The placement of the seams 111
The placement and adjustment of the islands 115
The baking of textures 116
The baking of a normal map 117
What is a normal map? 117
Displaying the normal map in the viewport 118
The baking of an ambient occlusion 119
Understanding the ambient occlusion map 119
Displaying the ambient occlusion in the viewport 121
Summary 122
Chapter 5: Haunted House – Modeling of the Scene 123
Blocking the house 124
Working with a scale 124
Blocking the bases of the house 125
Refining the blocking 129
Adding instantiated objects 129
Reworking the blocking objects 133
Breaking and ageing the elements 135
Simulate a stack of wooden planks with physics 137
Creation of the simulation of a stack of planks 137
Modeling the environment (8 pages) 139
Modeling the cliff 139
Modeling a tree with curves 140
Enhancing the scene with a barrier, rocks, and a cart 144
Organizing the scene 149
Grouping objects 149
Working with layers 150
Summary 151
Chapter 6: Haunted House – Putting Colors on It 153
Unwrapping UVs 154
Using Project From View 154
Unwrapping the rest of the house 155
The tree with the Smart UV Project 158
Unwrapping the rest of the environment 159
[ iii ]
