03 June 2012

Blender 3D Architecture, Buildings and Scenery - Chapter 14 Review

This is the last chapter of the book and covers the Post Production tasks which could maybe, be done in Blender, but which is much easier in other external applications.

In the case of this chapter Gimp is used as the external application for carrying out various tasks on Blender Rendered graphics output.

A brief explanation of what GIMP is, and what it can be used for, is run through. Followed on by an explanation of the interface that GIMP uses. After having described the interface, the difference types of selection methods are described. These descriptions are relatively clear. Though obviously the amount of detail that can go into describing features is limited because GIMP in it self could warrant a book 3 times the size of this book.

When the simpler selection tools are gotten out of the way the discussion moves onto paths and their uses. The uses of colour tools and described, such as Selecting by Colour and the fuzzy select/lasso tool are covered.

The various technical colour manipulation techniques such as colour balancing and hue and saturation are covered. There are examples of the effect of these tools shown on the resultant renders.

Using the GIMP layer tools are described and an example is shown, using these layer tools to add a different background to a rendered scene. And finally a section covering how to correct errors in a rendered scene and doing touch ups are explained.

It would have been nice to have a section on using the Blender Node Editor, as this could of kept us within the Blender application, as the Node Editor is very, very powerful system. That said GIMP is a very useful application and this section is well worth a read.