This chapter called "Introduction to Blender and Architectural Visualization", is as
you would expect from the name, an introductory chapter covering very briefly the
background of what architectural visualisations are; and information on contrasting the
older and newer ways of producing them (made and crafted out of physical materials
versus produced in a 3D computerised environment such as Blender).
The chapter then moves on to giving a little information on the features that Blender
has that make it ideal for powerful visualisation works. Here is the first hiccup I
noticed; It has a link to the older Elephants Dream movie (www.elephantsdream.org), showing
that this book is slightly out of date as regards the version of Blender it is using as
the newest movie is Big Buck Bunny (www.bigbuckbunny.org). That said, this book will mostly be covering
Architecture type modelling concerns and not doing character animations or wanting
anything furry, so this will probably not be too much of an issue. You will just have
to keep an eye out for slight interface mismatches and Buttons, Panels not being where
the book says. Let's just hope this doesn't happen to often.
Then the chapter moves onto how to obtain Blender and gives a little background
information on the Blender Foundation and their role in coordinating Blender as a
whole. This is where the next slight weakness kicks in. They explain where to download
Blender but not how to install it for the different platforms, or mention where to get
platform specific version for different operating system. A section on installing from
package management systems and repositories for Linux users would have been
helpful.
Then the text moves on to detail the hardware specifications both minimum and
recommended specs.
Next some of the extra tools that can be used to post process visualisations are
covered, such as Gimp and various CAD systems. Though Blender in my opinion can carry
out most of the CAD tasks itself without any help. Same goes for the tools the chapter
describes for doing presentations, Blender has a video sequence editor and would be
ideal for doing that sort of stuff internally rather than externally with other
tools.
They also give a few locations for obtaining freely available models in both native
Blender format and various other formats that Blender can import. Though strangely the
official blender model repository (http://e2-productions.com/repository) doesn't seem to be included
in the list of places. But since the official model repository may be lacking in models
that would be any good for visualisations, this may be why.
Finally the chapter lists some sites of visualisations made with Blender and rendered
with various renders and shows a screen shot of a dining room that is made throughout
the course of the book.
This is after all an introductory chapter so all it really does is demonstrate how your
going to proceed through the rest of the book. I do wish more examples of what can be
done with visualisations had been included in this chapter so we could see what was
possible with Blender without having to flit about from website to website. Still on
the whole a clear chapter, if a little incomplete as regards to installing
Blender.
(Is it just me or does anyone else find it strange that a publisher in the United
Kingdom England uses American spellings; they should get told off by the Queen!)
