Book Image

Blender 3D By Example - Second Edition

By : Oscar Baechler, Xury Greer
Book Image

Blender 3D By Example - Second Edition

By: Oscar Baechler, Xury Greer

Overview of this book

Blender is a powerful 3D creation package that supports every aspect of the 3D pipeline. With this book, you'll learn about modeling, rigging, animation, rendering, and much more with the help of some interesting projects. This practical guide, based on the Blender 2.83 LTS version, starts by helping you brush up on your basic Blender skills and getting you acquainted with the software toolset. You’ll use basic modeling tools to understand the simplest 3D workflow by customizing a Viking themed scene. You'll get a chance to see the 3D modeling process from start to finish by building a time machine based on provided concept art. You will design your first 2D character while exploring the capabilities of the new Grease Pencil tools. The book then guides you in creating a sleek modern kitchen scene using EEVEE, Blender’s new state-of-the-art rendering engine. As you advance, you'll explore a variety of 3D design techniques, such as sculpting, retopologizing, unwrapping, baking, painting, rigging, and animating to bring a baby dragon to life. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to work with Blender to create impressive computer graphics, art, design, and architecture, and you'll be able to use robust Blender tools for your design projects and video games.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)

What is a rig?

The dragon needs a rig to fly. A rig is a set of joints, controls, and features that lets us control and animate a three-dimensional character. In claymation, a clay character is built on top of a wire armature to give it structure and make sure its limbs bend at the elbows, knees, and other joints. In three dimensions, the process is the same but backward. We make the character first, then we place an armature inside it with joints and bones.

The Armature object type stores a rig composed of these bones. Bones utilize parental hierarchies to move correctly; rotating your chest will move your arm, which moves your forearm, which moves your hand. Before working on the dragon, let's play around with armatures to control the simple tasks of a basic tentacle rig.

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