Blender™ For Dummies^®, 4th edition

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019956695

ISBN 978-1-119-61696-2;

ISBN 978-1-119-61698-6 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-119-61699-3 (ePDF)

Blender™ For Dummies®

To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Blender For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

Table of Contents

Cover

Introduction

About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here

Part 1: Wrapping Your Brain Around Blender

Chapter 1: Discovering Blender
1. Getting to Know Blender
2. Getting to Know the Interface
Chapter 2: Understanding How Blender Thinks
1. Looking at Editor Types
2. Understanding the Properties editor
3. Navigating in Three Dimensions
4. Extra Features in the 3D Viewport
5. Customizing Blender to Fit You
Chapter 3: Getting Your Hands Dirty Working in Blender
1. Grabbing, Scaling, and Rotating
2. Differentiating Between Coordinate Systems
3. Transforming an Object by Using Object Gizmos
4. Saving Time by Using Hotkeys
Chapter 4: Working in Edit Mode and Object Mode
1. Making Changes by Using Edit Mode
2. Adding to a Scene

Part 2: Creating Detailed 3D Scenes

Chapter 5: Creating Anything You Can Imagine with Meshes
1. Pushing Vertices
2. Working with Loops and Rings
3. Simplifying Your Life as a Modeler with Modifiers
Chapter 6: Sculpting in Virtual Space
1. Adding Background Images in the 3D Viewport
2. Setting Up Your Sculpting Workspace
3. Sculpting a Mesh Object
4. Sculpting with the Multiresolution modifier
5. Freeform Sculpting with Dynamic Topology (Dyntopo)
6. Understanding the Basics of Retopology
Chapter 7: Using Blender’s Non-Mesh Primitives
1. Using Curves and Surfaces
2. Using Metaball Objects
3. Adding Text
Chapter 8: Changing That Boring Gray Default Material
1. Understanding Materials and Render Engines
2. Quick ’n’ Dirty Coloring
3. Setting Up Node Materials
4. Playing with Materials in Blender
Chapter 9: Giving Models Texture
1. Adding Textures
2. Using Procedural Textures
3. Understanding Texture Mapping
4. Unwrapping a Mesh
5. Painting Textures Directly on a Mesh
6. Saving Painted Textures and Exporting UV Layouts
Chapter 10: Lighting and Environment
1. Lighting a Scene
2. Lighting for Speedy Renders
3. Setting Up the World
4. Working with Light Probes in Eevee

Part 3: Get Animated!

Chapter 11: Animating Objects
1. Working with Animation Curves
2. Using Constraints Effectively
Chapter 12: Rigging: The Art of Building an Animatable Puppet
1. Creating Shape Keys
2. Adding Hooks
3. Using Armatures: Skeletons in the Mesh
4. Bringing It All Together to Rig a Character
Chapter 13: Animating Object Deformations
1. Working with the Dope Sheet
2. Animating with Armatures
3. Doing Nonlinear Animation
Chapter 14: Letting Blender Do the Work for You
1. Using Particles in Blender
2. Giving Objects Some Jiggle and Bounce
3. Dropping Objects in a Scene with Rigid Body Dynamics
4. Simulating Cloth
5. Splashing Fluids in Your Scene
6. Smoking without Hurting Your Lungs: Smoke Simulation in Blender
Chapter 15: Making 2D and 2.5D Animation with Grease Pencil
1. Getting Started with the 2D Animation Workspace
2. Working with Grease Pencil tools
3. Understanding Grease Pencil Materials
4. Mastering Grease Pencil Layers
5. Automating Your Drawings with Grease Pencil Modifiers
6. Animating with Grease Pencil
7. Integrating Grease Pencil with a 3D Scene

Part 4: Sharing Your Work with the World

Chapter 16: Exporting and Rendering Scenes
1. Exporting to External Formats
2. Rendering a Scene
Chapter 17: Editing Video and Animation
1. Comparing Editing to Compositing
2. Working with the Video Sequencer
3. Rendering from the Video Sequencer
Chapter 18: Compositing Images and Video
1. Understanding Nodes
2. Getting Started with the Compositor
3. Rendering in Passes and Layers
4. Working with Nodes
5. Discovering the Nodes Available to You
6. Rendering from the Compositor
Chapter 19: Mixing Video and 3D with Motion Tracking
1. Making Your Life Easier by Starting with Good Video
2. Getting Familiar with the Motion Tracking Workspace
3. Tracking Movement in Blender
4. Where to Go from Here

Part 5: The Part of Tens

Chapter 20: Ten Tips for Working More Effectively in Blender
1. Use Tooltips and Integrated Search
2. Take Advantage of the Quick Favorites Menu
3. Look at Models from Different Views
4. Don’t Forget about Add-ons
5. Lock a Camera to an Animated Character
6. Name Everything
7. Do Low-Resolution Test Renders
8. Use Annotations to Plan
9. Ask for Help
10. Have Fun, but Take Breaks
Chapter 21: Ten Excellent Community Resources
1. Blender.org
2. BlenderArtists.org
3. BlenderNation
4. BlenderBasics.com
5. blender.stackexchange.com
6. CGCookie.com
7. Blend Swap (blendswap.com)
8. Blender.community
9. Social Media
10. Blender.chat

Index

About the Author

Connect with Dummies

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 1

TABLE 1-1 Open Projects from the Blender Institute

Chapter 2

TABLE 2-1 Keyboard/Mouse Keys for Navigating 3D Space
TABLE 2-2 Hotkeys on the Numeric Keypad

Chapter 3

TABLE 3-1 Useful Hotkey Sequences for Transformations

Chapter 11

TABLE 11-1 Basic controls in the Graph Editor

Chapter 17

TABLE 17-1 Helpful Mouse Actions in the Sequencer
TABLE 17-2 Common Features/Hotkeys in the Sequencer

Chapter 18

TABLE 18-1 Commonly Used Mouse Actions in the Compositor
TABLE 18-2 Commonly Used Hotkeys in the Compositor

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

FIGURE 1-1: Blender through the years: Blender 1.8 (top left), Blender 2.46 (to...
FIGURE 1-2: Open projects from the Blender Institute help drive Blender develop...
FIGURE 1-3: The Blender splash screen.
FIGURE 1-4: The default Blender interface.
FIGURE 1-5: A typical Blender workspace includes at least one window containing...
FIGURE 1-6: Your first pie (menu)!

Chapter 2

FIGURE 2-1: The Editor Type menu.
FIGURE 2-2: Navigation controls at the top right of the 3D Viewport give you fa...
FIGURE 2-3: The View menu in the 3D Viewport (left) and the pie menu version of...
FIGURE 2-4: The numeric keypad is your ultimate tool for navigating 3D space.
FIGURE 2-5: Viewport shading types from the 3D Viewport’s header (left) and fro...
FIGURE 2-6: You can control the position and orientation of your 3D cursor from...
FIGURE 2-7: The Pivot Point menu in the 3D Viewport’s header (left) and as a pi...
FIGURE 2-8: The Snap menu.
FIGURE 2-9: Using the Ctrl+Alt+Q hotkey, you can quickly switch between Blender...
FIGURE 2-10: You can open a floating Last Operator panel by pressing F9.
FIGURE 2-11: The Annotations panel in the View tab of the Sidebar is where you ...
FIGURE 2-12: Blender’s integrated search menu is a great way to get familiar wi...
FIGURE 2-13: Add any workspace to your Blender window by navigating the menu in...
FIGURE 2-14: Customizing a hotkey sequence directly from Blender’s menus.

Chapter 3

FIGURE 3-1: The Transform Orientations menu from the 3D Viewport’s header (left...
FIGURE 3-2: The Global, Local, Normal, Gimbal, View, and Cursor coordinate orie...
FIGURE 3-3: Blender gives you an assortment of transform tools: Move, Rotate, S...
FIGURE 3-4: The Gizmos menu in the 3D Viewport’s header gives you the ability t...
FIGURE 3-5: The Snapping menu.
FIGURE 3-6: You can view changes in the 3D Viewport’s header.

Chapter 4

FIGURE 4-1: On the left, the Mode button allows you to switch between Object mo...
FIGURE 4-2: The Modeling workspace gives you quick access to Edit mode and a sc...
FIGURE 4-3: The Edit mode Select buttons.
FIGURE 4-4: Vertex Select, Edge Select, Face Select, and Combo Select modes.
FIGURE 4-5: Use the Viewport Overlays roll-out menu to enable face centers so i...
FIGURE 4-6: Border Select, Circle Select, and Lasso Select.
FIGURE 4-7: You can open a little Toolbar menu near your mouse cursor by pressi...
FIGURE 4-8: Suzanne!
FIGURE 4-9: Editing duplicated Suzannes!
FIGURE 4-10: Three objects are sharing this datablock.
FIGURE 4-11: A data schematic of linked Suzannes.
FIGURE 4-12: Linking cubes to Suzanne.
FIGURE 4-13: The Outliner is where you manage collections. Four chapters into t...
FIGURE 4-14: The Blender File Browser.

Chapter 5

FIGURE 5-1: From left to right, box modeling, point-for-point modeling, and scu...
FIGURE 5-2: You can expand the Toolbar in Blender’s 3D Viewport by clicking its...
FIGURE 5-3: Insetting (right) creates a nicer border on a complex shape than ju...
FIGURE 5-4: Insetting can cause ugly overlapping intersections at corners.
FIGURE 5-5: Clean corners on your inset, thanks to the power of the Merge opera...
FIGURE 5-6: Using the Knife tool, you can prepare your mesh for other mesh oper...
FIGURE 5-7: The Bisect gizmo allows you to adjust your bisecting cut after you’...
FIGURE 5-8: The Bevel tool gives you the ability to add realism to your models ...
FIGURE 5-9: The Last Operator panel gives you all the necessary controls for tw...
FIGURE 5-10: Using the Spin tool, you can turn flat profiles into beautiful cyl...
FIGURE 5-11: Use the Last Operator panel to tweak the number of steps or to hav...
FIGURE 5-12: A closed edge loop (left) around a sphere and a terminating edge l...
FIGURE 5-13: Some face loops selected on a sphere.
FIGURE 5-14: An edge ring selected on a UV sphere.
FIGURE 5-15: All the modifiers you can use on mesh objects.
FIGURE 5-16: The Array and Bevel modifiers in Modifier Properties.
FIGURE 5-17: The Mirror modifier.
FIGURE 5-18: Vertex groups are created within the Object Data tab of the Proper...
FIGURE 5-19: A cube with increasing levels of subdivision from 1 to 6.
FIGURE 5-20: Adding the Subdivision Surface modifier to Suzanne.
FIGURE 5-21: The Subdivision Surface modifier.
FIGURE 5-22: Using Optimal Display on a mesh with three levels of subdivision.
FIGURE 5-23: Filling a room with chairs by using the Array modifier.
FIGURE 5-24: (1) Model the step. (2) Add an Empty for Object Offset and rotate ...

Chapter 6

FIGURE 6-1: Blender’s sculpt tools give you the ability to create highly detail...
FIGURE 6-2: The three kinds of image objects: Image Empty, Reference, and Backg...
FIGURE 6-3: The Object Data tab of the Properties editor is where you can modif...
FIGURE 6-4: The default work environment when you choose File ⇒ New ⇒ Sculp...
FIGURE 6-5: Use the Texture panel in Active Tool Properties to make use of a te...
FIGURE 6-6: The Multiresolution modifier block.
FIGURE 6-7: The Dyntopo panel in Active Tool Properties allows you to enable dy...
FIGURE 6-8: Beginning to model with the Poly Build tool. You start with three v...
FIGURE 6-9: Using the Poly Build tool to start retopologizing your sculpt.
FIGURE 6-10: On the left, a model sculpted with Dyntopo; on the right is the sa...

Chapter 7

FIGURE 7-1: With the exception of the slats for the seat and back, this entire ...
FIGURE 7-2: The Add ⇒ Curve menu.
FIGURE 7-3: An arbitrary shape created with Bézier curves (left) and NURBS curv...
FIGURE 7-4: The Add ⇒ Surface menu.
FIGURE 7-5: The same Bézier curve, cyclic (left) and non-cyclic (right).
FIGURE 7-6: The Draw tool’s settings give you a lot of additional power when cr...
FIGURE 7-7: Using the curve’s Draw tool along the surface of another object, yo...
FIGURE 7-8: The controls for editing curves.
FIGURE 7-9: Some of the different things you can do with an extruded curve.
FIGURE 7-10: Having fun by adding a bevel object to a Bézier circle.
FIGURE 7-11: Using a taper object to control a curve’s lengthwise shape.
FIGURE 7-12: Fun with the tilt function! Mmmmmm … twisty.
FIGURE 7-13: The same curve with aligned, free, auto, and vector handles.
FIGURE 7-14: Decreasing curve weights on a control point, differences between t...
FIGURE 7-15: Using lofting to create the hull of a boat.
FIGURE 7-16: Merging two metaballs.
FIGURE 7-17: The five metaball object primitives.
FIGURE 7-18: The Metaball panel.
FIGURE 7-19: Taking advantage of the curve-based nature of Blender text objects...
FIGURE 7-20: The Object Data tab of the Properties editor, sometimes referred t...
FIGURE 7-21: Blender’s File Browser can give you previews of what the fonts on ...
FIGURE 7-22: Using the Bold and Italics fonts to use widely different fonts in ...
FIGURE 7-23: Wheeeee! Metaletters!
FIGURE 7-24: Using text boxes to get multi-column text layouts.
FIGURE 7-25: Text on a curve.

Chapter 8

FIGURE 8-1: From left to right, the same 3D model rendered in Workbench, Eevee,...
FIGURE 8-2: The Material tab of the Properties editor with a single basic mater...
FIGURE 8-3: Blender’s color picker.
FIGURE 8-4: Creating a beach ball with a UV sphere and four material slots.
FIGURE 8-5: Material slots on curves, surfaces, and text objects.
FIGURE 8-6: A schematic showing a material linked to a mesh and to an object.
FIGURE 8-7: Linked duplicates of Suzanne, except they don’t share the same mate...
FIGURE 8-8: The paint tools in the Toolbar.
FIGURE 8-9: The Active Tool tab of the Properties editor gives you a bunch of s...
FIGURE 8-10: You can add multiple layers of vertex colors to a single mesh obje...
FIGURE 8-11: On the left, the Surface panel of the Material tab of the Properti...
FIGURE 8-12: The Shading workspace is ideal for working with node materials.
FIGURE 8-13: Use the Shading rollout to change the HDRI used to light your scen...
FIGURE 8-14: From the Shader Editor you can add shaders to your material.
FIGURE 8-15: The Principled BSDF node makes our lives as artists easier.
FIGURE 8-16: Use the Settings panel in the Material tab of the Properties edito...
FIGURE 8-17: The Mix Shader node doesn’t look like much, but there’s a bucketfu...
FIGURE 8-18: Suzanne is here, ready to be made angry!
FIGURE 8-19: With the ColorRamp node, you can control what parts of Suzanne’s f...
FIGURE 8-20: The temperature is rising and Suzanne is getting angry. You wouldn...
FIGURE 8-21: The lowly Shader to RGB node. Just wait until you see what this th...
FIGURE 8-22: The Shader to RGB node can give you Suzanne with cartoony or comic...

Chapter 9

FIGURE 9-1: If you render with Cycles, you add textures directly in your materi...
FIGURE 9-2: Blender’s texture nodes.
FIGURE 9-3: Most texture nodes have a Texture Mapping panel in the Item tab of ...
FIGURE 9-4: Using the Texture Coordinate node and the Mapping node to put an im...
FIGURE 9-5: Bump mapping is easy. Just connect your texture to the Displacement...
FIGURE 9-6: Using the Pointiness socket, you can procedurally add rust on an ob...
FIGURE 9-7: Positioning a texture on an object using the UV Project modifier.
FIGURE 9-8: UV unwrapping a 3D mesh is like making a map of the Earth.
FIGURE 9-9: The UV Editing workspace is, as you might expect, for editing UV co...
FIGURE 9-10: The New Image floating panel for adding a test grid image.
FIGURE 9-11: An unwrapped Suzanne head.
FIGURE 9-12: You can use the Texture Paint workspace to paint textures on your ...
FIGURE 9-13: On the left, the Active Tool tab of the Properties editor in Textu...
FIGURE 9-14: Create custom textures for painting in Texture Properties.

Chapter 10

FIGURE 10-1: Different lighting configurations can drastically affect the look ...
FIGURE 10-2: A typical three-point lighting setup.
FIGURE 10-3: Suzanne, lit with the back light placed a few different ways.
FIGURE 10-4: Adding a light in the 3D Viewport.
FIGURE 10-5: From left to right, Point, Sun, Spot, and Area lights.
FIGURE 10-6: Panels and options available for all light types. On the left are ...
FIGURE 10-7: Using a Voronoi texture mapped to a Spot light, you can fake under...
FIGURE 10-8: Controls for the Sun lights in Eevee and Cycles.
FIGURE 10-9: The angular diameter of a Sun light is the perceived size of the s...
FIGURE 10-10: The controls for Spot lights in Eevee and Cycles.
FIGURE 10-11: The controls for Area lights in Eevee and Cycles.
FIGURE 10-12: Emitting light from any mesh in Cycles is as easy as wiring an Em...
FIGURE 10-13: Getting a mesh light to be invisible in your scene requires playi...
FIGURE 10-14: To get Look Dev to more faithfully represent your scene lighting,...
FIGURE 10-15: World Properties when the active renderer is Cycles (left) and Ee...
FIGURE 10-16: Eevee and Cycles treat the World like a material, so most of your...
FIGURE 10-17: You can use high dynamic range images (HDRIs) as an environment t...
FIGURE 10-18: A node network for generating a flat gradient background in Cycle...
FIGURE 10-19: You can control the amount of ambient occlusion (AO) in your scen...
FIGURE 10-20: From left to right, with their render times: no ambient occlusion...
FIGURE 10-21: From left to right, the Reflection Cube Map, Reflection Plane, an...
FIGURE 10-22: The Indirect Lighting panel in Render Properties is where you bak...

Chapter 11

FIGURE 11-1: Animating the location of the default cube object.
FIGURE 11-2: Blender’s Animation workspace is an excellent place to animate.
FIGURE 11-3: Right-click any property in the Properties editor to insert a keyf...
FIGURE 11-4: The Timeline’s Keying rollout has controls for choosing your activ...
FIGURE 11-5: The Keying Sets panel is where you add new custom keying sets.
FIGURE 11-6: The properties of your active keying set are listed in the Active ...
FIGURE 11-7: Changing the interpolation type on selected f-curve control points...
FIGURE 11-8: The four extrapolation modes you can have on f-curves.
FIGURE 11-9: The Sidebar (N) in the Graph Editor.
FIGURE 11-10: The types of constraints available by default within Blender.
FIGURE 11-11: Parenting an object to a vertex group.

Chapter 12

FIGURE 12-1: The three different looks that the Shape Keys panel provides.
FIGURE 12-2: Creating a bug-eyed shape key for Suzanne.
FIGURE 12-3: Suzanne with excessively pinched and bulged eyes, just by changing...
FIGURE 12-4: Creating a scream shape key.
FIGURE 12-5: A cube smoothly deformed by a hook.
FIGURE 12-6: An armature object with a single bone. Woohoo!
FIGURE 12-7: Three different ways to directly name your bones.
FIGURE 12-8: Press Ctrl+F2 to activate Blender’s Batch Rename operator so you c...
FIGURE 12-9: Bones that are unparented (top), with an offset parent (middle), a...
FIGURE 12-10: Armature-specific tabs in the Properties editor.
FIGURE 12-11: The different display types for bones in Blender from top to bott...
FIGURE 12-12: Splitting your Properties editor can give you the ability to see ...
FIGURE 12-13: The Bendy Bones panel in Bone Properties gives you full control o...
FIGURE 12-14: Adjusting Curve In X bends the bone about the X-axis of its head ...
FIGURE 12-15: A single bendy bone, currently unbent.
FIGURE 12-16: All the various bending, twisting, and scaling you can do on a be...
FIGURE 12-17: You can use the Vertex Groups panel to manually create vertex gro...
FIGURE 12-18: Envelope weights can give you unpleasant vertex group assignments...
FIGURE 12-19: Stickman has an armature for his centerline.
FIGURE 12-20: A half-skeleton Stickman!
FIGURE 12-21: Stickman with a skeleton in him. He’s almost rigged, but he still...
FIGURE 12-22: Adding a root bone to the rig prevents the top of the body from u...
FIGURE 12-23: The Stickman rig, now with head control!
FIGURE 12-24: A basic IK rig for the legs of Stickman.
FIGURE 12-25: A completely working Stickman rig.
FIGURE 12-26: Stickman … rigged with sticks!
FIGURE 12-27: The Bone Groups panel with controls for bone groups and bone colo...

Chapter 13

FIGURE 13-1: Using markers, you can add helpful notes to your animated sequence...
FIGURE 13-2: Quaternions in action! They’re nearly incomprehensible!
FIGURE 13-3: All you have to do is put one foot forward, and Blender handles th...
FIGURE 13-4: Using the Action datablock in the Dope Sheet to create a new actio...
FIGURE 13-5: An animation screen layout with the Nonlinear Animation editor add...
FIGURE 13-6: Using the Sidebar in the Nonlinear Animation editor.
FIGURE 13-7: Action strips in the Nonlinear Animation editor, looped and rescal...

Chapter 14

FIGURE 14-1: Creating a basic particle system.
FIGURE 14-2: Creating a wind force that blows your particles into a plane, whic...
FIGURE 14-3: Combing hair in Particle Edit mode. Suzanne looks so wise with a m...
FIGURE 14-4: On the left, bearded Suzanne rendered in Eevee. On the right, she’...
FIGURE 14-5: Dropping a jiggly cube into the scene.
FIGURE 14-6: Creating a simple rigid body simulation.
FIGURE 14-7: Creating a simple cloth simulation.
FIGURE 14-8: Using the Quick Fluid helper feature can get your basic fluid simu...
FIGURE 14-9: A simple smoke simulation displayed in the 3D Viewport.
FIGURE 14-10: On the left, a smoke simulation rendered in Eevee. On the right i...

Chapter 15

FIGURE 15-1: Blender’s 2D Animation start file gives you a super-comfortable en...
FIGURE 15-2: The only primitives for Grease Pencil: Blank, Stroke, and Monkey (...
FIGURE 15-3: Blender’s default Grease Pencil brushes are great, but it’s even b...
FIGURE 15-4: Material Properties with a single Grease Pencil material added to ...
FIGURE 15-5: Changing the Stroke properties of your Grease Pencil material give...
FIGURE 15-6: A single Grease Pencil object with two materials on it, one a dott...
FIGURE 15-7: With just a little bit of playing around with materials on Suzanne...
FIGURE 15-8: Use the Layers rollout in the 3D Viewport’s Topbar to quickly chan...
FIGURE 15-9: The Adjustments sub-panel for Layers lets you modify all the strok...
FIGURE 15-10: A visualization of the levels of control Blender gives you of Gre...
FIGURE 15-11: Blender gives you almost as many Grease Pencil modifiers as there...
FIGURE 15-12: The first stages of a classic bouncing ball animation with Grease...
FIGURE 15-13: Bouncing ball pencil test, complete!
FIGURE 15-14: One bouncing ball animation, ready for render!
FIGURE 15-15: One Grease Pencil rubber ball, ready to be bounced.
FIGURE 15-16: It hasn’t been animated yet, but this ball now has a rig and can ...
FIGURE 15-17: A hand-drawn ball, drawn once and bounced with technology from th...

Chapter 16

FIGURE 16-1: To view your renders, choose Full Screen, Image Editor, or New Win...
FIGURE 16-2: Use render slots to compare renders between changes.
FIGURE 16-3: The Output panel in the Output Properties.
FIGURE 16-4: Use the File Output node in Blender’s Compositor to automatically ...

Chapter 17

FIGURE 17-1: The default Video Editing workspace for when you start a project.
FIGURE 17-2: You can edit video and preview it all in the same space using Prev...
FIGURE 17-3: Choose AV-sync to ensure that your audio plays back in sync with y...
FIGURE 17-4: The Add menu in the Video Sequencer.
FIGURE 17-5: You can swap the File Browser with a Graph Editor in the Video Edi...
FIGURE 17-6: Common FFmpeg settings for container, video, and audio.

Chapter 18

FIGURE 18-1: An assembly line approach, similar to layers in GIMP or Photoshop.
FIGURE 18-2: Turning a simple assembly line into a complex assembly network.
FIGURE 18-3: The Compositing workspace that ships with Blender is the preferred...
FIGURE 18-4: Controls for your view layers are all along the right side of the ...
FIGURE 18-5: View Layer properties with Eevee as your render engine (left) vers...
FIGURE 18-6: Enabling passes adds corresponding output sockets on your view lay...
FIGURE 18-7: Setting up the Cryptomatte node for picking your mattes.
FIGURE 18-8: Just some objects I picked for making a matte to use elsewhere in ...
FIGURE 18-9: Each node has icons at the top that control how you see it in the ...

Chapter 19

FIGURE 19-1: A camera captures light bouncing off the environment with a lens a...
FIGURE 19-2: An interlaced frame is assembled by interleaving neighboring frame...
FIGURE 19-3: Start your motion tracking session with the VFX workspace template...
FIGURE 19-4: With a video sequence loaded, the Movie Clip Editor has a lot more...
FIGURE 19-5: A single tracking marker in Blender’s Movie Clip Editor.
FIGURE 19-6: From the Track tab of the Movie Clip Editor’s Sidebar you can get ...
FIGURE 19-7: Have Blender automatically detect features in your footage, and yo...
FIGURE 19-8: With good tracking data on your video sequence, you may have all k...
FIGURE 19-9: The Solve tab of the Movie Clip Editor’s Toolbar is where your 2D ...
FIGURE 19-10: Use the Camera and Lens panels in the Track tab of the Movie Clip...
FIGURE 19-11: Solving camera motion puts a lot of information in the 3D scene, ...
FIGURE 19-12: A simple shot, tracked and solved, with Suzanne added for good me...

Chapter 20

FIGURE 20-1: A customized workspace to give yourself a more flexible Quad View ...

Introduction

Welcome to Blender For Dummies, 4th Edition, your introduction to one of the most well-known free programs for creating 3D computer graphics. With Blender, you can create characters, props, environments, and nearly anything else your imagination can generate. And it's not just about creating objects. You can set them in motion, too. Tell a story in an animation, walk people through a world of your own creation, or add a special effect to some video footage. It's all possible. They still haven’t quite designed a way for Blender to give you a foot massage if you’ve had a bad day, but in all seriousness, it’s difficult to imagine a task in computer animation that you can’t do with Blender. And just think: the developers of Blender have included all these features in a package you can download for free and run on nearly any computer. Crazy!

Blender sits at a very unique position in the world of 3D computer graphics. In the distant past, to get into 3D modeling and animation, you had only a few options, and most of them were too expensive, too limiting, or — ahem — too illegal for people just trying to see what this whole 3D thing was all about. Blender circumvents all those issues because it’s free. And not just zero-cost free, but freedom Free. Blender is open source. A world full of developers and users regularly contribute code and documentation, adding enhancements and improvements at a mind-boggling pace.

Of course, 3D computer graphics is a complex topic, and all software of this type is dense with buttons, options, settings, and unique ways of working. Perhaps more than any other program like it, Blender has carried a pretty heavy reputation for being difficult to understand. Blender wasn’t typically viewed as software for beginners. But, with the updates in the release of Blender 2.80 and if I’ve done my job right, this book will help get you started at a sprint. Blender For Dummies, 4th Edition is not just a book on using Blender. Sure, I explain why things in Blender work in their peculiar Blenderish ways, but I also make a point to explain core principles of 3D computer graphics as they are relevant. There’s no use in being able to find a button if you’re not really sure what it does or how it works. My hope is that with this combined knowledge, you can actually take advantage of Blender’s unique traits to create your own high-quality 3D art as quickly and efficiently as possible. Perhaps you can even become as addicted to it as I am!

About This Book

Blender is an extremely complex program used for the even more complex task of producing high-quality 3D models and animations. As such, I can’t cover every single feature and button in Blender. For a more comprehensive manual, refer to the excellent online documentation available through Blender’s website at https://docs.blender.org/manual.

Because I want to bring you up to speed on working in 3D space with Blender so that you can start bringing your ideas to life as soon as possible, I focus on introducing you to the fundamental “Blender way” of working. Not only do I show you how something is done in Blender, but I also often take the time to explain why things are done a certain way. This approach should hopefully put you on the fast track to making awesome work, and also allow you to figure out new parts of Blender on your own when you come across them.

Throughout the book, I refer to the Blender community. Blender’s user community is probably one of its most valuable assets. It really is a feature all its own, and I would be remiss to neglect to mention it. Not only do many members of the community create great work, but they also write new code for Blender, write and edit documentation, and help each other improve. And understand that when I make reference to the Blender community, I include you in that community as well. As of right now, you are a Blenderhead — a fellow Blender user and, therefore, a member of the Blender community.

Blender is a truly cross-platform program, running on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Fortunately, not much in Blender differs from one platform to another. However, for the few differences, I’ll be sure to point them out for you.

Foolish Assumptions

I’ve written this book for two sorts of beginners: people who are completely new to the world of 3D, and people who know a thing or two about 3D, but are completely new to Blender.

Because of the various types of beginners this book addresses, I tend to err on the side of explaining too much rather than too little. If you’re someone who is already familiar with another 3D computer graphics program, such as Maya, 3DS Max, Modo, or even an earlier version of Blender, you can probably skip a number of these explanations. Likewise, if you’re a complete newbie, you may notice that I occasionally compare a feature in Blender to one in another package. However, that comparison is mostly for the benefit of these other users. I write so that you can understand a concept without having to know any of these other programs.

I do, however, make the assumption that you have at least a basic understanding of your computer. I assume that you know how to use a mouse, and I highly recommend that you use a mouse with at least two buttons and a scroll wheel. You can use Blender with a one- or two-button mouse or even a laptop trackpad, and I provide workarounds for the unfortunate souls in that grim state (cough … Mac users … cough), but it’s certainly not ideal.

An exception is if you’re using Blender with a drawing tablet like the ones produced by Wacom. Recent updates introduced in Blender 2.80 have tried to make the program more accessible to tablet users, and although tablets are much less expensive these days than they have been in the past, not everyone has one. For that reason, I focus primarily on using Blender with a mouse, although I will occasionally point out where having a tablet is helpful. Because Blender makes use of all your mouse buttons, I stipulate whether you need to left-click, right-click, or middle-click. And in case you didn’t already know, pressing down on your mouse’s scroll wheel typically accesses the middle mouse button. I also make use of this cool little arrow ( ⇒ ) for indicating a sequence of steps. It could be a series of hotkeys to press or menu items to select or places to look in the Blender interface, but the consistent thing is that all these items are used for steps that you need to perform sequentially.

I also assume that you’re working with Blender’s default settings and theme. They have changed substantially with the release of version 2.80. You can customize the settings for yourself (in fact, I still use the presets from previous releases of Blender; 20 years of muscle memory doesn’t go away easily), but if you do, Blender may not behave exactly like I describe in the book. For that reason, and contrary to previous editions of this book, I focus mostly on accessing features through the menu system rather than using hotkeys. Hotkeys are meant to be customized, but the menus in Blender remain a consistent way of accessing features. Bearing in mind the point about Blender's themes, you may notice that the screenshots of Blender’s interface are lighter in this book than you see onscreen because I created a custom Blender theme that would show up better in print. If I used Blender’s default theme colors, all the figures in the book would appear overly dark. I include this custom theme at blenderbasics.com if you want your copy of Blender to match what’s shown on these pages.

Icons Used in This Book

As you flip through this book, icons periodically appear next to some paragraphs. These icons notify you of unique or valuable information on the topic at hand. Sometimes that information is a tip, sometimes it’s more detail about how something works, sometimes it’s a warning to help you avoid losing data, and sometimes they’re images that match icons in Blender’s interface (there’s a lot of them). For the icons that aren’t in Blender’s interface, the following are descriptions of each icon in this book.

This icon calls out suggestions that help you work more effectively and save time.

This icon marks something that I think you should try to keep in mind while working in Blender. Sometimes it’s a random tidbit of information, but more often than not, it’s something that you’ll run into repeatedly and is, therefore, worth remembering.

Working in 3D can involve some pretty heavy technical information. You can usually work just fine without ever having to know these things, but if you do take the time to understand it, I bet you dollars to donuts that you’ll be able to use Blender more effectively.

This icon doesn’t show up often, but when it does, I definitely recommend that you pay attention. You won’t blow up your computer if you overlook it, but you could lose work.

Blender is a fast-moving target. Quite a bit has changed since the previous edition of this book. These icons point out things that are new or different in Blender so that you can get to be at least as effective (and hopefully more effective) with the current version as you were with past versions.

Beyond the Book

Blender For Dummies, 4th Edition, includes the following online goodies only for easy download:

Cheat Sheet: You can find the Cheat Sheet for this book here: www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/blender
Extras: I keep and maintain a website at blenderbasics.com with additional resources. I have a whole bunch of tutorials, both in written and in video format, specifically for readers of this book. Also, Blender’s a big, fast-moving program. I do my best on that site to chronicle changes in Blender that affect the content of this book (and perhaps share a new tip or two as well).

Where to Go from Here

Wondering where to start? The easy answer here would be to say “Just dive on in!” but that’s probably a bit too vague. This book is primarily intended as a reference, so if you already know what you’re looking for, flip over to the table of contents or index and start soaking in the Blendery goodness.

If you’re just starting out, I suggest that you merely turn a couple of pages, start at Chapter 1, and enjoy the ride. And even if you’re the sort of person who knows exactly what you’re looking for, take the time to read through other sections of the book. You can find a bunch of valuable little bits of information that may help you work more effectively.

Regardless of how you read this book, though, my one hope is that you find it to be a valuable resource that allows you to flex your creative muscles and, more importantly, have fun doing it.

Part 1

Wrapping Your Brain Around Blender

IN THIS PART …

Getting comfortable with Blender

Customizing the interface

Working in 3D

Starting to create in Blender