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Since the publication of the first edition of this book, things have continued to change rapidly in the world of Blender. The availability of training material has continued to grow, the Blender code base has grown another 50 percent since 2009, and Blender has seen wider user adoption than ever. The new interface and underlying event recode of version 2.5 has helped usher Blender into a whole new era. With the recent camera and object-tracking functionality and the development of the built-in Cycles unbiased render engine, Blender has begun to make serious inroads into visual effects, as evidenced by the latest Blender Foundation Open Movie, the live-action/CG effects bonanza Tears of Steel.
All of this progress is driven by the ongoing explosion of the Blender user base. Blender is widely used by students, hobbyists, artists, scientists, and CG professionals, and its use by these groups and others is growing every day. As the world of 3D software applications has become increasingly consolidated, Blender has emerged as the major alternative for people who want a free, open, and independent 3D solution. The Blender community is active in its support for the software, and as it grows and gains momentum, so does every aspect of Blender—from the availability of professional support and training to the stability and functionality of the software itself.
This book is also a product of that expanding user base. Until a few years ago, there were not enough intermediate or advanced Blender users to warrant a book like this. Those intrepid users who did gain a high degree of expertise did so by studying the code and release notes, participating in extensive forum and chat discussions, and putting in endless hours of experimenting with the software itself. My intention in writing this book is to provide today’s intermediate and advanced users with the book those early pioneers might have wished for. This is not a book for beginners. This is a book for Blender users.
The second edition of this book is completely revised and expanded to match the most recent versions of Blender and the most exciting new features. Furthermore, the book you hold in your hands contains not just revised material from the first edition of Mastering Blender but also fully revised material from my previous book, 2008’s Bounce, Tumble, and Splash!: Simulating the Physical World with Blender 3D. The content of the latter book seemed to be a natural fit with the overall goals of Mastering Blender. It has become the basis for the new section on physical simulation.
To get the most out of this book, you should already know how to get things done in Blender. You should know your way around a polygon mesh, and you should be able to set a keyframe and tweak an Ipo curve. In some areas, you may be pretty confident of your skills. Perhaps you are an expert modeler or a master at texturing and materials. You might be able to create beautiful, photorealistic scenes and render them in eye-popping quality. Maybe you’re a top-notch character animator.
If you’re like the vast majority of Blender users, however, there’s a lot you’ve been quietly ignoring about your application of choice. You may have long since stopped wondering about that obscure buttons panel that you never touch. You may have disregarded some new development and now feel left too far behind to bother trying to catch up on it. You may have been under the impression that some areas of functionality, such as scripting, were too dry and difficult to get into, or maybe you’ve simply never been clear on how they might be useful to you and what you want to accomplish. Hopefully, this book will be a step in the direction of changing that.
In short, this book is for Blender users who wish to deepen and expand their knowledge of the software. As the title suggests, this book is for people who want to master Blender. If there are areas of Blender that you’ve wondered about but never looked into deeply, if there is functionality you’ve toyed with but never truly mastered, then this book is for you.
This book is an attempt to cover functionality in Blender that has not been sufficiently dealt with in other books and to cover specific workflow topics that will help intermediate Blender users boost their productivity and improve the quality of their work. The functionality of Blender is so extensive that even with the available books and training materials, there remains a great deal that has not received the attention it deserves.
For this reason, the subject matter covered here is broad. The first part of the book is the most varied, with chapters on a wide variety of Blender 3D features. The second part of the book focuses on Python and scripting for Blender, and the third part of the book deals with the Blender Game Engine. The only background that is assumed is an intermediate or advanced level of standard Blender usage. No knowledge of Python or the game engine is required. By the end of the book, you will have an advanced skill set in both of these areas, as well as numerous new insights in other areas of Blender.
The chapters in Parts I, II, and III of this book are organized in a loosely logical order but do not depend on each other in any significant way. As an intermediate or advanced Blender user, you should have no trouble reading them in whatever order you choose. Parts IV and V are more strictly ordered. Both of these parts of the book are organized in such a way as to give complete introductions to the topics they cover. Part IV first presents an introduction to Python itself and then works through Blender Python scripting topics, starting with the most generally applicable and finishing with the most specialized. The information is presented sequentially, so you should skip only what you feel confident that you already know. Correspondingly, Part V begins by describing how to create assets for use in the game engine and ends with the relatively advanced topic of using Python in the game engine environment.
The version release scheduling of open-source software is not constrained by co-marketing considerations, and it is inevitable (and wonderful) that development will continue at a brisk pace regardless of the publication schedules of books. Experienced Blender users know this, and they know that mastery of one version sows the seeds for mastery of the next version.
In general, this book was written to be accurate to Blender version 2.63. However, some parts, notably those concerning the Clip Editor in Chapter 10, have been written based on developmental versions looking ahead to 2.64. The usual caveats apply: For the most predictable results, you should use the appropriate version of Blender to follow the tutorials in the book. I heartily encourage you to forge ahead into newer versions, armed with this book and the online release notes, in order to keep your knowledge as up to date as possible and to cultivate the mindset of regarding Blender as a constantly developing tool. Even as you read this, new and exciting functionality is being added to Blender and released in official or unofficial versions that you will be eager to learn about.
My advice on keeping up with all the latest developments: Read fast!
The Mastering series from Sybex provides outstanding instruction for readers with intermediate and advanced skills, in the form of top-notch training and development for those already working in their field and clear, serious education for those aspiring to become pros. Every Mastering book features the following:
As I mentioned previously, the book is organized into five parts. Part I includes Chapters 1 through 4. This part deals with general Blender topics, and each chapter within it covers a specific aspect of Blender functionality. Part II covers physics simulation in its various forms, from soft bodies and cloth, to particles and hair, to volumetric fluids and smoke, and finally to rigid body simulations using the Bullet Physics library and the Blender Game Engine (BGE). Part III covers Blender’s video post-production functionality, including nonlinear video editing node-based compositing and camera tracking. Part IV gives a complete overview of Python scripting in Blender, beginning with a basic introduction to Python itself, suitable for nonprogrammers. Part V gives a thorough introduction to the BGE, including using Python in context of the BGE. In more detail, the chapters’ contents are as follows:
To help ensure maximum clarity for the illustrations, there is a 16-page color insert full of images from the discussions and tutorials throughout the book.
You will find a variety of .blend files intended to support the text on the Sybex website for this book: .
If you run into trouble at any point in reading this book, or if you have any insights or tips you would like to share, the first place I recommend to turn for quick responses and knowledgeable feedback is to the community itself at , where I post under the handle bugman_2000. You can also contact me directly at . Follow me on Twitter at @
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