Review: Roland Hess – Tradigital Blender 2.5
Terry Wallwork reviews ‘Tradigital Blender 2.5‘ by Roland Hess.
In the Blender world of books and training video tutorials, there are very few training aides that are specifically targeted towards teaching the theory and practical sides of animation using Blender as the specific tool to teach with.
This situation has been remedied somewhat with the release of Roland Hess’s new book titled “Tradigital Blender” by publishers Focal Press. A book that covers the topics of animation and how to do it using the tools and features that Blender provides.
Blender user’s will recognize the name as Mr Hess has produced many different books and video training courses in the past relating to Blender.
It’s important to point out that this book is very specialized in what it teaches, it covers animation using Blender. No mesh modeling, rigging, or texturing subjects are covered. This book is for animators and animation.
Link:
I watched final video of the project discussed in a book and it looks really poor; I have no idea how much experience Roland Hess have beside writing books but he should definitely improve his animation skills.
@mookie do you (or does anyone) have a link to the final video? The book is so new there are no customer reviews on Amazon. The only book I’ve ever bought not depending on Amazon comments was Jonathan Williamson’s “Character Development”, but that’s because I’ve seen so many of his tutorials I was already confident of his work. It would be nice to have a book purely for animation.
Here is the link to the companion website with the final video:
http://booksite.focalpress.com/companion/9780240817576/additional_resources.php
Here is the link to the final video.
http://booksite.focalpress.com/companion/9780240817576/additional_resources.php
Mookie: sad but true I’m afraid.
However. the book is about using Blender for animation, not so much about animation itself. Sure, it talks about the 12 principles, but that’s mainly so that it can describe how to best apply them within Blender.
True animation books aren’t software specific any way, and we already have Preston Blair, Richard Williams and of course Frank and Ollie to teach us that stuff.
This book still has value to anyone wishing to make good character animations in Blender.