Book Image

Blender 3D Basics Beginner's Guide Second Edition

By : Gordon Fisher
Book Image

Blender 3D Basics Beginner's Guide Second Edition

By: Gordon Fisher

Overview of this book

This book teaches you how to model a nautical scene, complete with boats and water, and then add materials, lighting, and animation. It demystifies the Blender interface and explains what each tool does so that you will be left with a thorough understanding of 3D. This book starts with an introduction to Blender and some background on the principles of animation, how they are applied to computer animation, and how these principles make animation better. Furthermore, the book helps you advance through various aspects of animation design such as modeling, lighting, camera work, and animation through the Blender interface with the help of several simple projects. Each project will help you practice what you have learned and do more advanced work in all areas.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Blender 3D Basics Beginner's Guide Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
3
Controlling the Lamp, the Camera, and Animating Objects
Index

Time for action – exploring the alpha channel


As you have shades of red, green, and blue, you also have shades of the alpha channel. The darker the shade of alpha, the closer its value is to zero, and the more transparent that pixel is:

  1. Press Esc to return to the 3D View window. Select the red sphere with the RMB.

  2. In the Properties window, choose the Material button from the header.

  3. In the Transparency subpanel, check the Transparency checkbox and set Alpha to 0.4.

  4. In the 3D View, press Shift + D to duplicate the red sphere. Move the duplicate sphere a bit, so that both overlap, but you can see more than half of each sphere, as shown in the next screenshot.

  5. Select the Render button in the Properties window header.

  6. In the Shading subpanel, check the Ray Tracing checkbox.

  7. Press F12 and the render will look similar to the following screenshot.

  8. Press Esc when you are done looking at it.

What just happened?

The alpha channel records how transparent an object is. You took one sphere and gave it a 40%...