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New Physical Simulation Book Announcement and Call for Submissions!

24

splash1.jpgStarting this summer another Blender book will be in progress by the talented Tony Mullen. And this one looks to be an exciting one. The one thing that really makes me smile about this book is that it will be in full color. And it will cover some of the deep mysteries involving simulations (hair, particles, etc.) in Blender.

Rather then rambling on I'll let Tony speak:

Hello Blenderers,

As many of you know, my book Introducing Character Animation with
Blender was released earlier this year by Sybex/Wiley, one of the
world's foremost publishers on 3D and graphics books, and has proven
quite successful, both in terms of sales and in terms of reader reviews and
feedback, which has all been very encouraging.

As it turns out, I am not the only person who has been encouraged by
this response. The success of this book has piqued Sybex's interest
to publish more books on Blender, and the result of this is that I
have signed on to write a new book for them starting this summer. The
new book is to be titled Bounce, Tumble, and Splash! Simulating the
Physical World with Blender 3D and will cover all aspects of physical
simulation in Blender: particles, soft bodies, fluids, rigid bodies
with Bullet, and much more. I hope to touch on a lot of general
purpose techniques that have not been covered in print so far,
including some more advanced uses of modifiers, node-based materials,
subsurface scattering, and maybe even a PyDriver or two. I also hope
to have the book fully up to date with features to appear in 2.5, to
the extent that it's possible. I'm definitely interested in hearing
what people think would be interesting topics and issues in these
areas for me to cover.

The second part of this announcement is a call for graphical
submissions. Unlike the last book, Bounce, Tumble, and Splash! will
be printed in full color, so there will be lots of opportunities to
get some great Blender eye candy out there. I am looking for high
quality renders focusing on all aspects of physical simulation:
particles (inlcuding hair), fluids, soft bodies (including cloth),
rigid bodies, Bullet scenes, metaballs, interesting uses of modifiers
for physical phenomena, and renders that focus on interesting,
naturalistic materials are all welcome. As with the previous book,
it's not possible to offer monetary payment, but all artists whose
work is featured will of course receive a free copy of the book. In
addition, I did manage to talk Sybex into sweetening the deal a bit
for contributing artists: if your render is chosen as the cover art
for the book, you will receive your choice of Sybex books totalling up
to $100 dollars! You can see what's available at www.sybex.com.
There are a lot of books there to choose from, both on 3D topics and
others, so I hope that this offer provides some added incentive for
people to submit some great renders.

As I said, the new book will be full color, and will deal almost
entirely with topics that have not been covered in detail in other
books so far. I'm aiming for minimal overlap with both Introducing
Character Animation and Essential Blender, so the book should be a
worthy addition to anybody's Blender bookshelf.

I'm looking forward to seeing what people come up with! Please send
your submissions to me at [email protected].

Happy Blendering,

Tony

There is a thread at BlenderArtists.org if you'd like to be involved in discussing this new book. Tony has been excellent at taking on feedback and responding to questions.

24 Comments

  1. what do you think, the hair and particles, should that part wait for Jahkas rewrite on the system because everything will change drasticly. .. ?

    you said the magical word "naturalistic", i think that excludes me for contributing anything :)
    but good luck, again.

    .b

  2. I hope you cover features that are part of the next release
    - cloth-sim (not via softbodies)
    - jahka-particles (not the current release)
    - maybe a rigid-body-panel or something

    I would only consider to buy that book if it covers the mentioned new features!

    Maybe you should wait until they are released... just my 2cents!

  3. Hi,

    Thanks for the feedback. My plan is to have the book up to date with whatever pertinent features are available in 2.5, which means that I'll be keeping up with CVS builds and keeping an eye on how development is progressing with these things. Jahka's particles are a high priority for me, and I definitely will be keeping up with how that work progresses. The other features tom mentioned I will also be keeping an eye on. Sybex has agreed to be flexible on the date of releasing the book so that I can make sure to have things completely up to speed with 2.5.

    T

  4. Tony,

    I really loved your Animation Book. I learned quite a bit from it and it was nice not to have to dig around for different websites. The only annoyance was the b/w made it hard to see what you were selecting when I was trying to follow the "Blenderman" tutorials. However, overall, it's a book I intend to read over and over to keep gleaning new stuff out of it.

    All this week and last week I've been playing with the exact systems you plan to write about in your book, so I'm pretty excited. You can see short videos of some of the demos I've created as I play with the system at http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/blog . Nothing amazing, just me trying to follow tutorials and then extend upon what I learn in them.

    Although you intend for the two books not to overlap, please include some info on getting animated characters to interact with this simulations. For example, how could I combine a physical simulation of a crash with animation so that I could get a realistic sense of inertia while also animating the character's face as he crashes. Or something like that.

    thank for the great work,
    ERM

    BTW - I saw Intro to Character Animation at a local Barnes and Noble in Baltimore, MD, USA and I was so happy - I'm used to only seeing Maya and I though Intro was only released to Amazon.

  5. jahka's particle patch will be in the next release? Wow, can't wait. I also remember that the buttons were changed a little in the build for jahka's patch so i hope this won't launch a whole new wave of questions about particle usage.

    can't wait to see what's happening.

  6. Sergeant Oreo on

    Since I am already getting Essential Blender,
    I'll ask my library about getting a copy
    of Introducing Character Animation With Blender.

    The simulation book sounds great! I hope that I will
    be able to get it when it comes out.

  7. It would be really cool if they made a whole book on different special/visual effects in BLENDER!!!

    I'm excited about the upcoming BOOK!!!

  8. Really enjoyed learning from ICA with Blender, but admit the greyscale pics were sometimes a bit like 'spot the difference'. Having the files on DVD of-course can solve the mystery, but that's not essentially why I choose to buy printed paper. Looking forward to a colour addition, and sure the topic will fill a gap in our market. Great stuff!

  9. Þiðrekr on

    Sounds like an excellent subject to write a book on. I'm certainly looking forward to it.

    Thinking far ahead, if you're asked to write a third book on Blender, how about doing one on materials, texturing, and rendering? It would be all the more useful, considering that 2.5 will have a new render API.

    Just a suggestion!

  10. Guardian 452 on

    I absolutely love Introducing Character Animation With Blender. It helped me go from simply playing around with the program to actually using it in a constructive manner. I'm not through the book yet (thanks to Vista I'm having Blender issues which have put that on hold) but I know from reading (and rereading!) the book that it will make me better at using Blender.

    That said, can't wait for this book!

  11. ToastBusters on

    Wow, this book is exactly what I need- and since you're covering the new particle system, it's EXACTLY what I need. Will definitely be buying this.

    I have a project going on right now that actually requires features that are coming in 2.5, including the cloth sim and Jakha's particles. (lots of furry characters) If not for that release, I could not do this project in blender, and this book will be a really good jump start on learning the new stuff.

    Put me down for a copy, plz. I would love to send you artwork from my project, but... err... not ready yet. Perhaps when you publish the next version of the book :)

    Oh, and make sure you cover fire. I wonder if there is a way to have the fire interact with a fur system, not necessarily burning it but reacting to the presence of the fur... with the character as the emitter. I know that request is a bit specific to my project, but if I can somehow get that information out of this then I will be one happy, satisfied customer.

    Lets see, cloth, fur, cloth interacting with fur, fire, fire interacting with fur...

    I understand that blender 2.5 is set for around October if all goes well, any idea when this book will be published?

  12. Awesome announcement Tony! I've enjoyed learning from your first book and will certainly be looking forward to your next!

  13. Hi,

    Thanks for the encouraging comments.

    @KritikAll
    Maybe a little. I'm not really very involved in pricing, so I don't know too much about that.

    @Renato Perini
    I don't think so. I think that would make it much more expensive... but again, I don't really know the details. This one is planned as a soft cover book, though.

    @Þiðrekr
    Thanks for the suggestion. I'll keep it in mind. I've got a couple ideas on the boil that are kind of similar, so you might see something along these lines in the future!

    @ToastBusters
    Interesting ideas. I have a few ideas of what you might want to try, mainly involving animated textures. I'll definitely try to give some hints about using those in the book.

    Be aware, that there are no hard and fast guarantees about what functionality winds up in 2.5. It will definitely be an awesome release, but predicting feature by feature is always a bit dicey. But I'll definitely try to do my part to keep up with what does get in.

    T

  14. Tony,
    I look forward to your upcoming book. I really have learned a lot from your "Introducing Character Animation in Blender," book. Thanks for all the work.
    Byron

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