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)

Animating a bouncing ball

The bouncing ball is our first, simplest animation, and a classic beginner's exercise. We'll utilize some of the core principles of animation with this simple subject:

  • Pose to pose: This is where we get the bedrock extremes keyed in first to nail the timing, then create in-between frames after.
  • Arcs: A bouncing ball doesn't travel in a straight line from the high to the low poses. Instead, it will flow along a guiding arc.
  • Ease in, Ease out: A bouncing ball should slow at the top of each arc for a bit, and attain quicker velocities as it slams into the ground and ricochets back up.
  • Squash and Stretch: The ball will stretch out, arrow-like, as it approaches and leaves the ground. When it hits the ground, it will squash down into the ground.
  • Timing: Each bounce will get shorter as the ball loses momentum. Also, we'll give the animation...