Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook
Colin Litster is the author of a new Blender book called ‘Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook’.
PACT Publishing has just released Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook by Colin Litster.
The Cookbook contains over 80 recipes that can immediately be applied to your own models to synthesize materials from rocks to nuclear explosions. Each recipe is fully described as well as the correct approach to use with your own materials creation. The book covers all of the Blender 2.5 material and texture approaches from Node Textures to Sub Surface Scattering, through UV mapping to simplified procedural textures to hide repeats and enhance your Blender 2.5 materials capabilities. There is even a brand new approach to creating oceans using entirely new techniques that renders super fast.
The book will be officially published in January 2011 but is available now under the PACKT RAW scheme where they allow early on-line access to the chapters, and code files, for those who sign up to the scheme. You can actually save 40% from the full purchase price and get the completed book when it is fully published in January 2011.
Further details from the PACKT website.
https://www.packtpub.com/blender-2-5-materials-and-textures-cookbook/book
or by reading Colin’s own blog at:-
Sounds verry Cool!!
Great. I have been waiting for a good book about textures and material in Blender!
Unfortunately there is a lack of high quality online tutorials on this topic.
Very big book, about 250 pages at the moment, I’ve bought it and it looks complete and well explicated and illustrated.
I will read it later, it’s a good deal for sure !
Colin is a material wizard. I have no idea if his books are good, but I don’t think I’ll be disappointed. Ordered both the ebook and the regular book. Wouldn’t have bought them without the 40% discount though…. These things are expensive.
… I rarely buy on impulse, but this is a book I just had to have. Reading the ebook[raw] it looks like it’s worth it, can’t wait to read the paper version in the train to work…. although there’s a big likelyhood I’ll already have read the ebook by then, maybe twice.
oh i get it, its a cookbook cuz you bake the textures lol
I haven’t heard from Colin for ages. :O
I met him at the conference once. He’s an awesome lad.
Looks valuable
This looks really good. I bought the combo deal because I didn’t want to wait for it to be finished. I’ve been struggling lately with material and texture nodes. I’ve only read through a few different pages so far, but it’s already paying off for me.
Nice job, Colin!
the packt books I bought – including the blender books about architecture and “incredible machines” were alltogether quite disappointing for me. especially the graphics are of poor quality. I cannot understand why the publish books about CGI themes in black&white.
“I cannot understand why the publish books about CGI themes in black&white.” << no kidding. Bought a "Blender Lighting and Texturing" book from PACKT. All images in b&w. Had to laff. Really?!? Your trying to expound color theory using b&w images? That's like teaching intro to Music Theory using a typewriter. wt….. And that book wasn't cheap either.
Not to say this one will (probably) be different.
@bojo
Man did I laugh my ass off xD
Can someone confirm that the book and RAW e-book are in full color? Ther is no such mention on Packt publishing website…
The e book is in black and white.
I haven’t found the sample blend files.
Hi all,
First thanks for your comments and I hope the book lives up to the expectations.
Bernard and filipc, the book is indeed black and white but all relevant color alternatives will be available from the packt site when published.
filipc the blendfiles are currently being organized and should be available before publication date which is 30th January 2011.
Colin (Cogfilms)
Hi Colin. :)
Bought the book today, in RAW format. It is just as solid as I ever expected from you. May it have the success that it deserves.
J.
Colin Litster…
Tony Mullen mentioned your name in one of his book and he said that All Blender user have directly or indirectly influence by your work and your tutorial.
Thank you very much for sharing your invaluable knowledge in this cookbook.
Your book will be part of my Blender’s collection.
But there is particular topic that I am really interested in and that is what I want to lear from your book:
-> Employ simple repeating textures that can be applied with infinite variety without appearing to repeat
Can wait to learn how to do that!
Thanks again.
Interesting.
But when I see the examples no material is quiet good!
So I wouldn’t buy this book.
Ya, I bought the book hoping to get some more experience with textures. The RAW version is pretty raw, lots of images missing and the “recipes” don’t seem to work the way the book suggests. I got it and started to work with the first exercise and result were no where near the suport images. I know what your thinking, user error, and normally I would concur. Except I checked and rechecked the settings and numbers multiple times.
I know the book is RAW, but man. I was expecting it to be a little more finished…
Hi Brando,
I can say definitely not user issues. Another RAW reader pointed out the issue and on investigation 3 blender bugs were discovered. The first allowed 2.49 textures to be loaded and render but could not be generated directly in Blender 2.5. That chapter was originally written last March.
The second bug was caused by a coder inadvertently turning off one of the most critical controls in the Musgrave texture, which is heavily used in Chapter 1.
The third is to do with the changes to bump mapping that have developed over the period. These have produced totally inconsistent results between the Alpha to Beta phases of Blender 2.5 development.
However, the good news is that the coders have rectified these annoying issues and Chapter one has had some additional text added to ensure the results match the illustrations.
I’m surprised that the latest chapter one has not been loaded onto the RAW site but all chapters are about to go to printers on the 19th January I believe. So the net result should be annoying bugs have been corrected by those naughty Blender programmers. This naughty author has updated the book to remove inconsistency and the RAW program really works to help iron out such problems.
If anyone else is having problems with chapter 1 use the latest Blender 2.56a which is that recommended in the preface.
Colin
PS I need a holiday after trying to explain that. Wish Blender 2.5/6 development could move on faster. Lol
@Bernard
I have bought the RAW book and was disappointed. Almost all images are only in black & white, even screenshots with nodes regarding color correction. The few (very few!!) color images are much too small. I still hope, the rest of the book will become better, but because of earlier experiences with Blender books published by Packt, chances are quite small.
Hi carlinhos,
Producing a full color book is an incredibly expensive proposition that’s why Packt will be mounting all images in full color and at HD resolution when the book is finally published in a couple of weeks time.
Indeed, every blend step file and image texture used in the exercises will also be available from the Packt website. That amounts to over 2Gb of data.
I personally would have loved to have the book printed in full color but simple economics don’t make that possible.
Colin Litster (Cog)
Sorry to say that, but I feel somehow ripped off: The announcement on the PACKT website says that the book contains 367 pages but my download (of 22th January 2011) contains only 265 pages.
Besides that the bundle price on the PACKT website is 37,79 Euros, but they charged me 41,15 by PayPal.
Compare that to Roland Hess’ “Blender Foundations” (The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6) with 404 pages in full color for under 26 Euros – even with the electronic version added – even the already heavily discounted PACKT offers no “bang for the buck”.
Sorry, but this is already the 2nd time PACKT disappoints me after having bought a book from them :( ….
Update info:
Yesterday I received my printed copy of the book which contains only 310 pages (even if I include front- and backmatter i.e. advertising stuff for other PACKT books)
Download of the .blend files & textures is now available, but the promised colour versions of the b&w illustrations of the book are still not to be seen (or did I search for them in the wrong place? – Neither the .pdf download nor the .zip file with the aforementioned program files show a trace of them :( …)
Sorry, but my bad impression of PACKT publishing keeps still uncorrected …
Hi Wolfram could you please let me know from where to download the .blend files and the images that they use?
@Aman:
To quote the download instructions from p.4 of the book:
“You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.PacktPub.com. Ifyou have purchaed this book elsewhere,you can visit http://www.PacktPub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you”
Apparently they do NOT want any downloads outside their customer base.
Besides that there are still NO COLOUR illustrations available, though Colin Litster promised them in this thread; neither did he answer my personal E-Mail asking for them.
Sorry, but my bad impression of PACKT publishing stands still uncorrected.
@Wolfram The color images has available to download on the product page. Look below overview description.
https://www.packtpub.com/blender-2-5-materials-and-textures-cookbook/book
I’ve downloaded .blend zip file, but it’s size was 353MB and unziped size was 455MB (not 2GB).
And ‘foam-mask-bump2.png’ file in chaper6 is not included.
Is this file broken?
Hi xzr,
Since writing the reply earlier the 2Gb file had to be reduced as Packt found it difficult to serve such a large file. I therefore took the decision that I would have to leave out the smoke cache files from Chapter 9. This was a sensible decision as users who can attempt this chapter can easily generate the cache files probably faster than having to download nearly 1.2Gb of data.
I will check on the foam-mask-bump2.png file that appears to be missing. If you need it in a hurry email me your email address and I will send you a copy.
Colin
cog(at)cogfilms(dot)com
@cogfilms
Tahnk you for your response!
I want to use foam-mask-bump2.png, so where do I send email?
Hi xzr,
Use the address given after my name but substitute the (at) with @ and the (dot) with .
Colin
cog(at)cogfilms(dot)com
@cogfilms
Thanks. I send email for you.
“the book is indeed black and white but all relevant color alternatives will be available from the packt site when published.”
THAT makes a difference!! You only have to be near a computer w/ an interwebs connex when utilizing(?) the book. That makes for simple and easy learning. dorks. =[
Sorry, but my bad impression of PACKT publishing keeps still uncorrected … << amen.
“PACKT publishing” << your new printers of Domino's coupons……but in b&w.