$5 eBook Bonanza Campaign from Packt Publishing

Packt Publishing have eBook/Video sale  on until 6th January 2015.

You can buy any ebook/video for $5.  So basically any ebook/video you buy from Packt is $5 per ebook/video.

To get you started, they have put together the Top 20 Titles of 2014 for you to pick up there. But you can get ANY eBook or Video for $5 in this offer. 

Click the link below for info:

http://bit.ly/13fDngD

Gustav Nilsson - Mastering Drivers in Blender

I was contacted by Gustav Nilsson a few weeks ago and asked if I would review one of his training video series "Mastering Drivers In Blender 2.7".

I previously didn't know much about Gustav other than he has a blog (http://gustavn.com/), a twitter account (https://twitter.com/gustavnilss) a youtube channel (http://youtube.com/user/gustavnils) and a G+ page (https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114446066195540713841/103800491101250773746/posts).

All of which I monitor as I knew he had made/was in the process of making these training videos.  It's safe to say though that I was not sure what to expect quality/skill level wise as far as Gustav's Blender knowledge goes, as I don't think I had ever seen any of his previous Blender work.

Turns out I need not have worried, the quality of his tutorials are excellent.

Product Specifications:

• Name : Mastering Drivers In Blender 2.7
• Author : Gustav Nilsson
• Price : €19 (Basic) €23 (Premium) €27 (Complete) (on 16th Dec 2014)
• Runtime : 390 mins
• Format : Video
• Website : http://exploreblender.com/

For those that don't know in Blender the term Driver means a control or value that is altered by another object/script.  Drivers may not sound like a very impressive feature but when used correctly they are extremely powerful.

Without Drivers achieving complex actions would have to be done entirely through scripting or using just the controls available through Blender's GUI.  Blender's Scripting features are powerful but having to learn the Python programming language just to achieve certain effects in Blender is a little overkill, and this is where Drivers can step in.

The power of Drivers comes at the cost of them not being very easy to start to use.  If you don't already know about Blender's Driver feature it can be very difficult to determine how to set them up and get them to be usable.  It's not a feature most people would be able to use without being told how to.

Gustav's videos have the aim of teaching you both what Drivers are, how to set them up and then how to use the Drivers in various ways to achieve useful effects in Blender.

When you buy his tutorial series you can select between 1 of 3 different types of course to buy:

• Basic
• Premium
• Complete

The Basic course allows you to stream the video content but only at a maximum resolution of 720p.

The Premium course allows you to stream the video content at a maximum resolution of 1080p, and you are also able to download the videos.

The Complete course has all the features of the other courses and the ability to download the Blender source files that Gustav uses through his videos.  The Blender source files will no doubt be extremely useful to those who want to pick apart how the more advanced objects work when using Drivers.

I found that the 720p videos where very clear and easy to watch, so I don't think most people will need the 1080p videos, but the source files are very handy to have and they only come with the Complete course which also gives you the access to the 1080p videos.

All the videos are hosted on vimeo, which supports HTML 5 video playback so you don't need flash to watch the videos just a internet connection and an HTML 5 compliant browser (Firefox/Chrome) if you wish to view them online.

Gustav's narration and explanation of what he is doing in the various tutorials is very clear and easy to understand.  It became apparent very quickly that he is very knowledgable when it comes to Blender's Driver system.  The myriad of inventive and clever ways he uses Drivers to achieve many different tasks in Blender was amazing to watch.

He demonstrates the various uses of Drivers by constructing a collection of different objects:

• Ladder
• Analog Clock
• Digital Clock
• Simple Domino
• Spider In Terrain
• Advanced Domino
• Glass Of Water

With the Ladder object Gustav uses Drivers to makes it's tilt, change the number of rungs and adjust the length using custom controls.

The Analog Clock uses Drivers to keep track of time and automatically update its display as frames progress in an animation.

The Digital Clock works very similar to the Analog Clock but shows how to animate a digital clock which keeps time.

The Ladder, Analog Clock and Digital Clock are reasonably easy to understand and serve as a gentle introduction to Drivers.  The remaining Simple Domino, Spider In Terrain, Advanced Domino, Glass Of Water objects are progressively more advanced in their use of Drivers and various techniques to achieve the desired functionality of the objects.

These videos are not for Blender beginners, if you are totally new to Blender you will struggle to follow along with these videos.  However if you are not new to Blender but are new to Blender's Driver system, do not worry.  Gustav's explanations of what Drivers are and how to use them are very, very thorough.

A favourite section of mine in the videos was the video covering creation of the Spider which has legs which follow terrain topology,

Even if you have no interest in the created objects that Gustav uses to demonstrate Driver functionality, just the information on why and how they are used the way they are is worth its weight in gold.

The techniques he uses to create a glass of water which reacts to being tilted (and simulates water escaping from the glass) as it's tilted, is very impressive, but it's also advanced, you may have to watch the videos repeatedly to fully grasp how they function.

As far as I know these videos are probably the best video documentation on the use of Drivers there is for Blender.  Once you have gone through all these videos you will know Drivers inside and out.

If you want to get to grips with Blender's Driver system, this series of tutorials is a must.  Just remember that you will need to be paying attention in the later tutorials as they become very involved.

Some could argue that some of the ways that Drivers were used in these tutorials would have been better implemented as full Python scripts, and this may well be true, but remember the purpose of these videos is to teach you Drivers.

I would probably have given this tutorial series 100%, I wasn't able to do this as one of the tutorials was too advanced for me to follow (the Advanced Domino).  But that is my fault not the videos (Gustav explains the Advanced Domino object very well I just wasn't able to follow it), but it did mean I had to take on faith that what was being said was correct and the best way to achieve a certain effect.  Given the quality level of the other videos I have little doubt that the Advanced Domino video is done the way it's supposed to be.

If you want Driver skills this is the course for you, the amount of tips and ticks I learned was stunning.

Review Score 95%

CG Masters - Character Creation Volume 3.5 - Cycles Convert

I was contacted by CG Masters and asked if I would review one of their latest Blender training products "Character Creation Volume 3.5 - Cycles Convert".

Those of you that have read my previous reviews of CG Masters products know that they have created quite a collection of high quality video training materials.  All of them have been very well made and very informative.

The instructor this time around is Greg Zaal a very accomplished Blenderhead who knows his way around lighting, shading and texturing in Blender.

Greg is a Blender Foundation Certified Trainer.  Those of you that follow Greg's Adaptive Samples blog will have seen that he produces numerous useful tutorials and articles on the use of Blender and 3D in general.  He also has a portfolio website at http://portfolio.gregzaal.com/ where you can see more examples of his work.

As you can guess from the title of the product this is a continuation in the series of the 3rd Volume series.  The 3 earlier volumes covered the different aspects of creating a Ninja character in 3D using Blender.

The previous volumes in the series are:

• Character Creation Volume 1 - Modeling
• Character Creation Volume 2 - Rigging
• Character Creation Volume 3 - Texturing

Product Specifications:

• Name : Character Creation Volume 3.5 - Cycles Convert
• Author : Greg Zaal
• Price : $20 (on 6th Dec 2014)
• Runtime : 2hrs 29mins
• Format : Video
• Website : http://www.cgmasters.net/training-dvds/character-creation-volume-3-5-cycles-convert/

As has come to be expected from a CG Masters title the quality of the material is very good.  All the training material is accessible from within a web browser or if you want to access the training videos and resources directly you are able to.  All of the resource files and blend files that Greg creates are provided with the product, so if you wish to follow along with Greg you will be able to.

The videos are encoded very clearly and are very easy to watch.  Even more of a surprise and possibly a first as far as I can remember, is the videos are encoded in webm format which not only gives very good video quality but also means that you will not need flash installed in your web browser to view these videos as they are natively supported by Firefox and Chrome web browsers.

The Cycles Convert product is a little different from the previous volumes in the series as it is more of an extension to the previous 3rd Volume which covered texturing of the Ninja character model.  This means that the runtime of the videos is only 2 hours and 29 minutes, but Greg packs a lot of information into that time and the cost of the volume is also significantly lower.

The texturing in the 3rd volume was however done using Blender Internal render.  In this 3.5 Volume the texturing, shading and lighting will all be converted so as to use the Blender Cycles rendering engine.  This results in the Ninja character having better looking shading and lighting and also shows how much easier it is to carry out the task of lighting/shading and texturing in Blender Cycles than it is in Blender Internal.

This is not a beginners volume if you have never used Blender before I think you will struggle to keep up with Greg, but if you have experience with Blender Internal render you should easily be able to keep up.  If you have never used the Cycles Render before, do not worry as Greg explains the basics of how to use the Blender Cycles render.

This volume has 7 chapters and some of the chapters are split into multiple parts.  This means that the videos range in length between 5 minutes and roughly 20 minutes meaning that the videos are very much manageable in length:

• 0. Introduction
• 1. Building a Basic Material
• 2. Texturing Overview
• 3.1. Lighting Setup
• 3.2. Fresnel
• 3.3. Subsurface Scattering
• 3.4. Metals
• 3.5. Clothing
• 4.1. Sai
• 4.2. Goggles
• 4.3. Eyes
• 4.4. Hair
• 5. Node Groups
• 6. Render Optimization

All of the chapters to me were very informative though personally the parts I liked the most were:

The video sections that covered the use of the Node Wranger which Greg helped develop.  This Blender Addon really helped speed up Greg's work flow when demonstrating and using various Blender Cycles Node features.  After seeing this in action it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people are wondering why Node Wrangler is not by default active in the Cycles Node editor.  Amazing to watch.

The video sections that covered how to make a faked glass shader using a Transparency Node, Glossy Node and Fresnel Node was another awesome piece to watch;  I can't say I entirely understand why it works (though this could just be me being super slow on the uptake), but I will be stealing that trick, plus it's an awesome quick way of making bubble like surface materials and it renders a lot faster than an actual real Glass Shader Node.

The coverage of the Hair Node also stood out as I think it's the first time I have seen the Cycles Hair node usage explained so well and easily.

If you are a big into Node Groups use, you will also appreciate the section on Node Groups as Greg does a very detailed run down on how to create and manage them.  I espcially liked the explanation of how to change the default values of Node Groups and the tip on using the Fake Users option to keep the Node Groups from being deleted.

And the final section that I found useful was the section on Render Optimizations.  It's unfortunately true that although Blender Cycles can render gorgeous looking scenes, all the awesome comes often at the cost of speed, so anything that can help the user speed up their renders is welcome.

Greg details a number of tips and techniques for speeding up Blender Cycles renders.  His explanation of how to use Multiple Importance Sampling to reduce noise in scenes, and the use of the Light Path Node Camera ray feature to also reduce noise and render times were really clever.

So if you are wanting to convert a modeled character of yours from a Blender Internal shaded character into a Blender Cycles shaded one, this is the video for you.  It cover all the nodes you need to get the job done efficiently.  While it is true that not every node or technique is covered in these videos, the ones that are you will almost certainly find to be the most used and useful.

Excellent tutorial and a good addition to the previous volumes, well worth the money.

Review Score 90%