Slow Progress...

I continue to progress into the Blender For Dummies book. I'm finding that it's hard for me to stay focused on the content. I feel like I want to get to something more concrete. Still, I feel like this is the path that I should probably be taking.

As expected the book is focused on basics, such as understanding the various windows and where tools/features can be found. Unfortunately, some of the features that are referred too are still foreign at this point.

I just completed an exercise that taught the 'extrusion' function. That's a function where you take an object and stretch it. The exercise also showed other functions like sub-divide, scale, and how to constrain movement to specific axis too. It was pretty cool. I started with a simple box and ended up with skyscraper.

At this point the comments I've read about keeping one hand on the mouse and the other hand on the keyboard are proving to be true. There are a lot of good shortcut key combinations in Blender.

It looks like the book is going to get into some more interesting things in Chapter 5. It just introduced what is referred to as a 'generic semi-complex primitive' which it says every 3-D modeling program appears to have. In this case, the generic primitive is the model of a monkey head. The monkey even has a name, Suzanne.

It turns out that there is an annual Blender conference where they give out awards across a variety of categories, similar to Emmy awards or Tony Awards, but in the case of Blender they call them the Suzanne awards.

I did a Google search on the Suzanne Awards and found a link to the nominations for the Suzanne awards over the past several years. The nominee videos are available for download so I checked a few of them out. Once again, I am truly amazed at what can be done with this tool.

At this point it's hard for me to fathom gaining enough skill to be able to use Blender well enough to be able to create anything like the videos that I've just viewed, but I suppose if I just stay at it and I can get through this book. It will then just become a matter of continuing to practice. I can say with confidence that while this tool is very capable, the magnitude of new terms and concepts makes it pretty difficult to learn. I think the word for this month is 'patience'. :)

Blender Basics...

So I bought a couple of books about Blender at Borders. 'Blender For Dummies', written by Jason van Gumster, because of course only a dummy would ever take on learning how to do 3-D modeling. Actually I looked through the book at the bookstore and felt like it had a pretty good explanation of all the things that seem like basic building blocks for using Blender. On the other hand, how would I know what basic building blocks those might be. After all, I'm just a dummy.

The other book I bought was named 'Introducing Character Animation With Blender', written by Tony Mullen. This book looks REALLY good and I REALLY want to stop using the Dummies book and move over to this one. Nevertheless, I'm exercising restraint and forcing myself to focus on the basics first.

This second book is very much like a tutorial style project. It walks you all the way through creating a super-hero type character using Blender. I can't wait to dig into it. It looks really well written and I think when I've finished going through the process of creating the character that the book teaches you to build, I'll be able to safely say that I know how to use Blender.

So being the well disciplined soul that I am, I've stuck to my commitment and have started reading and practicing from the 'Blender For Dummies' book. It's actually doing a good job of walking me through the things I need to know to get around the basic application. I've learned about the different panels, how to move, rotate, and scale objects. I've learned about the 3-D coordinate system at both a global level and an object level. The book is just now taking me into an area that teaches me how to modify what are referred to as primitives using a technique called extrusion. It is very cool. In order to extrude a portion of an object you need to know how to select a sub-portion of the object and when you go down that path you discover that these sub-areas are made up of vertices, edges, and faces. Cool stuff that I'm sure any dummy understands. LOL!!!

I've always had an artistic side to me and though my professional career has been spent in the technology sector, I've always wanted to send more time using technology to explore my creative side. I am completely amazed at the capability of the software that is now accessible to us for free. Oh... did I forget to mention that Blender is an 'open-source' tool? Well it is. That means it can be downloaded and used for free. Of course if you find that you really like and will really use the tool for anything meaningful, certainly you should make a financial contribution to the Blender foundation.

If you wonder if Blender is really as good as I think it is, visit the Blender website and download the 10 minute Big Buck Bunny animation. There is a version of it that can be viewed with the Microsoft Media Player that comes with Windows. The video was developed by a group of very talented individuals and it was contributed to the open-source community for free. It truly demonstrates that Blender is professional quality tool that can be acquired at no cost, learned based on your own ambition, and prospectively lead you down a professional path you may never have thought you could pursue because of the cost of the traditional tools of the trade.

Obviously I am very excited about Blender and I encourage you take a look for yourself. I don't get excited about too many things. Cheers!