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Blender For Dummies 2nd Edition Book Review

14

Terry Wallwork reviews Javon van Gumster's 'Blender for Dummies'

Terry Wallwork writes:

Jason Van Gumster - Blender For Dummies 2nd Edition - Book Review

Jason Van Gumster recently released a new version of his Blender For Dummies series of books. This time covering the 2.5x series of Blender.

Mr Gumster is a very well known and respected Blender user, he is part of Hand Turkey Studios which uses Blender extensively for its productions and training materials (Hand Turkey Studios) as well as various other open source applications. He goes by the twitter name monsterjavaguns, and frequents www.blenderartists.org. It is safe to say Mr Gumster knows his way around the nooks and crannies of Blender.

Product Specifications:

  • Name: Blender For Dummies - 2nd Edition
  • Author: Jason Van Gumster
  • Price: €28.00 (8 June 2011)
  • Type: Reference Book
  • Page Count: 406 (Roughly)

Topics Covered:

Part I: Wrapping Your Brain Around Blender.
 	Chapter 1: Discovering Blender.
 	Chapter 2: Understanding How Blender Thinks.
 	Chapter 3: Getting Your Hands Dirty Working in Blender.
 	Chapter 4: Working in Edit Mode and Object Mode.

 Part II: Creating Detailed 3D Scenes.
 	Chapter 5: Creating Anything You Can Imagine with Meshes.
 	Chapter 6: Using Blender’s Nonmesh Primitives.
 	Chapter 7: Changing That Boring Gray Default Material.
 	Chapter 8: Giving Models Texture.
 	Chapter 9: Lighting and Environment.

 Part III: Get Animated!
 	Chapter 10: Animating Objects.
 	Chapter 11: Rigging: The Art of Building an Animatable Puppet.
 	Chapter 12: Animating Object Deformations.
 	Chapter 13: Letting Blender Do the Work for You.

 Part IV: Sharing Your Work with the World.
 	Chapter 14: Exporting and Rendering Scenes.
 	Chapter 15: Compositing and Editing.

 Part V: The Part of Tens.
 	Chapter 16: Ten Problems for New Users in Blender (And Ways Around Them).
 	Chapter 17: Ten Tips for Working More Effectively in Blender.
 	Chapter 18: Ten Excellent Community Resources.

 Appendix: About the DVD.

I previously reviewed Mr Gumster's earlier Blender For Dummies book and was very, very impressed with it (Blender For Dummies), for the 2.4x series of Blender it was/still is the gold standard for people wanting a general Blender book that can act as a reference. It covered things other books tended to skip. If you wanted a book that covered all the shortcuts and the stranger, as well as more basic and popular features, it was the book.

So with the release of this 2nd edition of Blender For Dummies for the Blender 2.56 series of Blender, I was interested to see if it was upto the same standard, and unsurprisingly it was. If you found the first book useful you will find this second book very useful, if you are wanting to transition to the Blender 2.56 series of Blender.

As mentioned above this book is a combination of a both a reference book and a quick steps tutorial guide. Each of the different chapters is divided into sections covering the major topics of Blender. The sections tend to be split between being reference sections and then at the end of a section an example is gone over that brings together the previous reference sections.

Overall the separate chapters and sections are well written and very clear. I would normally review the ebook version of a product but as yet it is not available. As a result I had to contend with most of the pictures in the book being in black and white and slightly cloudy. Though thankfully the pictures often do not matter as the text of the book is very clear, so even if the pictures are sometimes a little difficult to decipher, the written text comes to the rescue. There is an inset color pullout contained within the book showing some examples of work created with Blender and that is very impressive. It also comes with a DVD which has all the files from the book on it and various pieces of software that a Blender user would find useful.

All of the major topics that a Blender user of Beginner to Intermediate level would expect to use are covered, at a quick pace, but clearly and in such a way as not to be confusing to newer Blender users. The one exception to this is scripting, no Python and its uses within Blender are covered. The various simulation topics are briefly covered, in enough detail for you to be able to get further information from the Blender community at large.

Another excellent feature of this book is that it makes absolutely certain to explain the terminology used within Blender with regards to its interface. This is the first time I have seen a book with uses the correct terminology for Blender's features. I know this may seem like a small feature, but having proper terminology to refer to parts of the Blender interface is really useful and helps speed up explaining how to use Blender. Also Mr Gumster goes out of his way to properly indicate the various different ways in which features of Blender can be accessed, from the keyboard hotkeys, to the various menu items. I learned a few hotkeys myself.

So this is an excellent book, very clearly written and giving a beginner or intermediate Blender user a good grounding in the features available to them. I really do hope that one day Mr Gumster writes a Blender Bible/Ultimate reference, because if this book is anything to go by, it would be a sure fire winner.

Good book, go buy it!

Review Score 85%

14 Comments

  1. I already have it.

    It is a very useful book.

    It does not matter if you are expert, intermediate or beginner, this is a very useful book.

    I recommend it not only for beginners but also for other users of Blender.

    This book combined with Beginning Blender will help anyone get started in Blender.

  2. I have the first one and it was very useful as a reference guide whenever you want to do "X".
    I love the way Dummy books are done, and this one is specially very clear!

    Certainly worth the buy!

  3. As a newbie, I found this book extremely valuable. In particular, Chapter 11 on rigging helped a lot, although I realize there is a lot more to learn about the art of rigging. I wish others could write as clearly as Jason van Gumster.

  4. Just bought the book, gone through the 1st Edition as well, great and excellent books both editions! Highly recommended for anyone getting started in Blender or as a reference!

  5. Bart, why do you link to amazon (where I can't buy because i don't have a creditcard) when it's also available at the Blender e-shop?

  6. Wow, I did not know Blender had "for dummies" I gotta pick this up soon. A great price for a book.

    But I frown to see on the reviews that rate it 2 stars only see up to the first chapter, it truely is sad.

  7. My eyes are no 100 % anymore. This book has a well chosen font. It is a better font than in the book "Introducing character animation with Blender".

  8. not me--i will no longer buy Blender books without clear and preferably color graphics--keeping the costs down by on-demand printing ( read uncoated paper) is semi ok but to have poor graphics is just not worth it--you are evaluating the book from a experienced Blender Artist--i as a amateur struggling with Blender ( I find Blender fantastic)-- i have purchased recent blender how to 2.5 books and they suffer from the same problem--the last book i purchased used Helvetic font--almost impossible to read--what font was used in thus book?

  9. Peter:

    I couldn't find the exact text font in my books or on my comp but if they used the same type face as in the first edition it's a Times/Garamond/Baskerville kind of type face, i.o.w. a serif, Vox classification Transitionals. The titles of the chapters are in some "wood-inspired" 'fun' typeface.

  10. Received my copy of this book today. I've read the till the end of first chapter, and enjoyed very much. Very well written for noobs like me, writer has the way with words. Recommended!

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