Book Image

Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines

Book Image

Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines

Overview of this book

Blender 3D provides all the features you need to create super-realistic 3D models of machines for use in artwork, movies, and computer games. Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines gives you step-by-step instructions for building weapons, vehicles, robots, and more. This book will show you how to use Blender 3D for mechanical modeling and product visualization. Through the pages of the book, you will find a step-by-step guide to create three different projects: a fantasy weapon, a spacecraft, and a giant robot. Even though these machines are not realistic, you will be able to build your own sensible and incredible machines with the techniques that you will learn in this book along with the exercises and examples. All the three sections of this book, which cover three projects, are planned to have an increasing learning curve. The first project is about a hand weapon, and with that we can image a small-sized object with tiny details. This first part of the book will show you how to deal with these details and model them in Blender 3D. In the second project, we will create a spacecraft, adding a bit of scale to the project, and new materials and textures as well. With this project, we will be working with metal, glass, and other elements that make the spacecraft. Along with the object, a new space environment will be created in the book too. At the end we have a big and complex object, which is the transforming robot. This last part of the book will cover the modeling of two objects and show how you can make one transform into the other. The scale and number of objects in this project are quite big, but the same principles as in the other projects are applied here with a step-by-step guide on how to go through the workflow of the project.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

Installing LuxRender


Before we go any further, we will have to install LuxRender to set up the materials of the robot model. This is necessary because LuxRender works more independently than YafaRay. If we choose to use LuxRender materials, all of them must be set up in the exporter. To use LuxRender, visit http://www.luxrender.net and download the most recent version of the renderer, which is version 0.6.

Downloads are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. With the download of the LuxRender package, the Blender 3D exporter is already packed together with the installer. If you have trouble installing the exporter, the Python script called LuxBlender is available as a separate download. Download the file and copy it to the Blender 3D scripts folder. If you are using Blender 3D 2.49, it is necessary to install Python 2.6.x (http://www.python.org) to use LuxBlender without any errors.

During the installation process of LuxRender, the installer will ask for the location of the Blender 3D...