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!