So when I heard that Packt Publishing had released a Blender specific book on architecture and scenery modelling, I was on their site in an instant.
One of the things I always like to check is how/if it is possible for me to actually order the book online. This is not always possible for me as I am in the United Kingdom, and often the sites that I want to get books from are not based in the UK and if they don't support PayPal or WorldPay or my specific card type then generally I'm stuffed. This was not the case with Packt Publishing, because they are based in the UK (cheer) and they support WorldPay and my card type. So ordering for me in the UK was a breeze. The only criticism I would level at the online ordering process was that they don't seems to support PayPal, which they really should, but that said WorldPay is pretty good.
Ok so ordering was not going to be a problem.
The product choices available with regards to "Blender 3D Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery" direct from the Packt Publishing website are:
Blender 3D Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery (book) - Price £25.19
Blender 3D Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery (eBook) - Price £16.14
Blender 3D Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery (book + eBook) - Price £28.54
That price does not seem too bad when you consider that you get roughly 330 pages in the eBook. I would be very surprised if you can't get the book cheaper from one of the bigger bulk book sellers such as www.amazon.co.uk.
I decided to buy the eBook (pdf format) version of the Book because I did not want to wait for the book to be shipped and also the eBook has pages which are in colour and not black and white, which the printed book version unfortunately is. This may not be a problem but often I have found that when there are pictures which are black and white and used as reference pictures to describe things and processes within Blender it's often difficult to make them clear to see, so you end up trying to decode some blurry grey looking pictures. I know that colour pictures are a lot more expensive to print but I do wish more publishers would give people an option of getting full colour versions of a book, even if we do have to pay more, given that it is so useful to have colour pictures in a 3D modelling book.
After having bought and downloaded the eBook (which both went without a hitch and very quickly), I hit upon my first annoying issue. The downloaded pdf books on the www.packtpub.com are password encrypted, this is very very annoying, because apart from anything else it's encoded with the purchasers email address which can be annoying to type in every time you open the file. Second and this is even worse is that each page in the encoded eBook contains the purchasers address, this is infuriating and pointless. Third it will take anyone less that 30 seconds searching on google to find out how to remove the password from a pdf file, which I have to do to get a eBook that I paid for legitimately to open without asking me for a password and also when a pdf is encrypted it does not work as well in most operating systems with things like pdf previews in file managers. So Packt Publishing you really need to get rid of the encryption if for no other reason than it won't stop people who do want to make illegal copies, but will annoy the heck out of legitimate users who don't want to search the more murky sides of google to find ways to get rid of passwords from things they bought!
Anyway those gripes aside, what about the actual eBook itself.
The author of the book is Allan Brito, I have never read any other books by him so I don't have any benchmark to go off with regards as what to expect from his writings. It will be interesting to see how he does.
Looking at the table of contents of the eBook it seems to take a broad approach of covering a lot of topics, here's a list of that table of contents:
- Preface 1
- Chapter 1: Introduction to Blender and Architectural Visualization 5
- Architectural Visualization 5
- How about Blender 3D? 6
- Download Blender 7
- Hardware and Software Requirements for Blender 7
- Other Tools for Visualization 8
- CAD and 3D-Architectural Modeling 9
- 3D Models from the Internet 9
- Visualization with Blender 10
- Summary 11
- Chapter 2: Blender 3D: Quick Start 13
- Interface 13
- Windows and Menus 16
- Multiple Windows 18
- Merge Windows 18
- Header 19
- Add and Remove a Header 20
- Active Window 20
- Keyboard Shortcuts 22
- 3D Visualization 22
- Selecting Objects 23
- Selecting by Name 25
- Renaming Objects 26
- 3D Cursor 27
- Cursor Snap 27
- Modes 28
- Creating Objects 29
- Duplicating Objects 30
- Transforming Objects 30
- Cameras 32
- Render Basics 34
- Render Preview 35
- Summary 36
- Chapter 3: Modeling 37
- Types of Objects 37
- Mesh Primitives 38
- Mesh Editing 41
- Transformations 43
- Transforming with Precision 43
- Loop Subdivide 44
- Knife Tool 48
- Selecting Loops 50
- New Edges and Faces 51
- Merge 53
- Removing Double Vertices 54
- Extrude 56
- Extrude with Vertex 56
- Extrude with Edges 57
- Extrude with Faces 57
- Constraining the Extrude 58
- Modeling Example 58
- Modifiers 60
- Subsurf Modifier 62
- Smoothing Faces 64
- Array Modifier 64
- Array Example 65
- Boolean Modifier 66
- Mirror Modifier 68
- Groups 71
- How to Create a Group 72
- Proportional Editing 74
- Summary 76
- Chapter 4: Modeling for Architecture 77
- Architectural Modeling 77
- Modeling by Proportions 78
- Planning Is the Key to Success 79
- Precision Modeling 82
- Edge Length 84
- Transforming with Precision 85
- Layers 86
- Modeling in Practice 87
- Walls 88
- Rounded Corners 91
- Symmetry 96
- Openings 101
- Floors and Lining 105
- Modeling Using the Walls 106
- Modeling with Separated Objects 107
- Starting From a CAD Drawing 110
- Preparing the DXF Files 110
- Importing DXF files 110
- Summary 112
- Chapter 5: Modeling Details 113
- Level of Detail 113
- Windows 113
- Doors 129
- Summary 137
- Chapter 6: Modeling Furniture 139
- Create Models or Use a Library? 140
- How to Get Started? 140
- Appending Models 141
- Importing Models 143
- Modeling a Chair 144
- Modeling a Sofa 152
- Summary 157
- Chapter 7: Materials 159
- Creating and Organizing Materials 160
- Material Color 164
- Gradient Colors 165
- Shaders 168
- Diffuse 168
- Specular 169
- Ray Tracing 170
- Creating Glass 171
- Simple Glass 172
- Mirrors and Reflections 172
- Ray-traced Shadows 173
- Wireframe Materials 174
- Self-illumination 175
- Summary 176
- Chapter 8: Textures 177
- Procedural Textures vs. Bitmap Textures 177
- Texture Library 178
- Applying Textures 178
- Mapping 184
- Normal Map 185
- UV Mapping 187
- Unwrapping Scripts 191
- Summary 192
- Chapter 9: UV Mapping 193
- What is UV Mapping? 193
- Why UV Mapping? 194
- What Makes a Good Seam? 196
- Unfold the Model 197
- Editing the Unfolded Model 198
- Export the Unfolded Mesh 200
- Unwrapping Scripts 202
- Summary 203
- Chapter 10: Light Basics 205
- Lamps 206
- Energy 207
- Distance 207
- Color 208
- Controlling Light 208
- Hemi 209
- Sun 210
- Lamp 210
- Area 211
- Spot 212
- Volumetric Shadows 213
- Soft Shadows 215
- Lighting Exercise 215
- Summary 220
- Chapter 11: Radiosity and Ambient Occlusion 221
- Global Illumination 221
- Radiosity 223
- Vertex Paint 227
- Ambient Occlusion 229
- Outdoor Scene 231
- Indoor Scene 233
- Summary 235
- Chapter 12: Global Illumination with YafRay 237
- Installing YafRay 238
- Blender and YafRay 238
- YafRay Setup 240
- YafRay GI Setup 242
- SkyDome 243
- Lighting with SkyDome 244
- Full 247
- Interior Light with the Full Method 249
- YafRay Materials 252
- YafRay Lights 252
- Summary 255
- Chapter 13: Animation for Architectural Visualization 257
- Animation 257
- Planning the Animation 258
- Animation 258
- Animation and Frames 260
- Keyframes 261
- Creating Keyframes 262
- Timeline 264
- Managing Keyframes 265
- IPO Curves 266
- Editing the Curves 268
- Using Curves 269
- Animating a Camera 270
- Adding a Target 271
- Rendering Animation 273
- Video Sequence Editor 274
- Editing Video Files 275
- Preview the Video 278
- Effects 278
- Meta Strip 280
- Exporting the Video from the Sequencer 280
- Interactive Animation 281
- Logic Bricks 282
- Sensors 282
- Controllers 283
- Actuators 283
- Walkthrough 283
- Export Walkthrough 286
- Summary 287
- Chapter 14: Post-Production with GIMP 289
- GIMP Interface 289
- Selection Tools 290
- Selecting Regular Shapes 291
- Selecting by Color 295
- Color Adjustment 297
- Color Balance 297
- Hue and Saturation 298
- Color Level 299
- Layers 301
- Create a New Layer 302
- Create a New Layer from a Selection 303
- Adding a Background Image 303
- Fixing Errors 304
- Watermark 306
- Summary 308
- Index
As any long time Blender users knows, there is a distinct lack of Blender specific books out there; so I really do hope this one is as good as it's index suggests. If Blender books are rare then Blender books which cover architectural modelling concepts are rarer still. I would say the benchmark that I will be holding this book to will be "Blender Precision Modelling Guide" by Robert Andrew Burke (www.rab3d.com). Although Mr Burke's book covers the smaller engineering side of things, it's focus on precision and accuracy means a comparison between the books will likely be useful and given the quality of Precision Modelling Guide (not to mention that fact that it is free!), Allan Brito's book will have to work hard to match it.
Now I just have to get my reading head on and work my way through the chapters.
