Book Image

Blender Quick Start Guide

By : Allan Brito
Book Image

Blender Quick Start Guide

By: Allan Brito

Overview of this book

Blender is open source 3D creation software. With a long history and an enthusiastic community of users, it is the ideal choice for almost any kind of work with 3D modeling or animation. However, for new users, its power and ?exibillity can sometimes be daunting, and that’s when you need this book! The book starts by showing you round the all-new Blender 2.8 user interface. You'll look at the most commonly-used options and tools, such as navigating in 3D and selecting objects. You will then use and manipulate one of the most important windows of the interface, the 3D View. You'll learn how to use essential tools for working with 3D modeling. To give your models the feel of real-world objects, you'll learn how to create materials and set up surfaces. You'll see how to use Physically-Based Rendering (PBR), which allows you to craft realistic surfaces such as wood, stone, and metal. You will also work with Eevee, a new real-time render engine in Blender. You will see how to add motion to objects, making use of Blender's impressive 3D animation features. Finally, you'll learn how to create scenes and organize them for rendering, and later add titles and effects using built-in Blender tools. By the end of the book, you will be able to use Blender 2.8 new UI, Create 3D Models with textures, Animations, and Render them in real-time using Eevee.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

How animation works in Blender 2.8

A key feature for most 3D tools, such as Blender, is the ability to create animations from 3D objects that you can render into a video. The video could go in all types of production, from feature films to your YouTube channel.

The easiest way to create animations in Blender is with the use of keyframes and interpolation. You can add keyframes to objects in the 3D View and all other windows in Blender. In the user interface, you will see that most properties in Blender can be animated.

Some properties that we will animate won't display a preview in 3D View, but you will be able to see the changes once we get the animation as a video.

Creating the scene for our animation

Before we start...