Review: Blender for Visual Effects by Sam Vila
Felipe Esquivel reviews Sam Vila’s ‘Blender for Visual Effects‘.
Sam Vila is an artist with strong experience doing VFX for feature films. Now he brings an interesting book that without a doubt was needed to fill a void for intermedate level Blender users eager to learn professional technique in post-production.
Blender for Visual Effects is a brief book with only 149 pages, but full of information. Sam focuses in a specific example that covers several problems in projects covering live action and animation. From adding video into Blender, chroma keying and adding photorealistic CG elements.
The author presents a typical filmed scene: An actor in front of a green screen with some marks and minimal props. What you can do with that material? The sky is the limit!
It is expected that the reader feels comfortably enough with the Blender interface. Many tools from the compositing shelf are explained in the chapters, and the experience of the author is revealed whe he uses some techniques not obvious enough for principiants but that are in use in many professional productions.
The book is a tutorial, easy and interesting enough to do and no only a list of Blender functions and buttons. I really liked all the tips and tricks used to solve problems, and I’ll be more than happy to read a second edition with more examples. Please?
The project in this book starts with chroma keying and camera tracking, it includes some bits of plane tracking to explain with some detail node compositing. The last part is being dedicated to tweak the scene and add extra value to the final image. The famous final 10% work.
A few more words:
According to our modern times, the printed version includes a digital copy that can be downloaded from a secure website. I must confess that I felt a little disappointed because I couldn’t download my copy due to a problem with the sticker that contains the code, while trying to get it, the sticker ripped off that part of the book cover.
And the book has a Trailer!
You can buy this book at different places like Amazon.
I bought it derictly,
Cant wait to see it in my hands. My big dream is to enter the film-academy
I hope this book can bring me a step closer understanding visual effects
I bought the book when it first came out. I was expecting to get training on something like, oh, you know, visual effects. Instead, I got this sort of useful, but myopic focus on motion tracking. I downloaded the not so easy to get to accompanying files. The completed project video is so bad it made me laugh. There are some good ideas being presented, but you’d be better off joining the Blender Cloud and getting your training there.
I was reading your comment , to have opinions before buying the book .
I’ve seen your video , “spy girl” ? that’s to shit laughing !
if you have used the book in this video ( “Spy girl” ) , I see that you hasn’t done much.
What did you mean … When you said “there are better projects”…Which? yours ?
Are you kidding , Mr.? haha
you ‘re so funny! ;)
P.S. I’ll buy the book, Can’t wait for it, I don’t want to make video as stupid and pathetic as yours :)
Ay settle down there J.J.Abrams…
Could you please post some of your work or delete your comment ?
PS: you should probably buy a grammar book and a dictionary first :)
Hi, Timmy! This comment is for me, or Steve? Wait, if the comment is for me, buy me the grammar book and, also… you should buy a life for you haha
Isnt tracking the base of every vfrx scene you do?
So was it worth spending 30 box or not?
I’d study the tracking courses on Blender Cloud, if I were you. Sergey is brilliant. Besides, the tracker has been updated. By the way, I’m aware that “Spy Girl” isn’t a great movie. I made it for my grand daughter, and it was the first time I used Blender. She and her friends absolutely love it.
So you’re saying that i bought the book for nothing?
I want to learn how to composite green screen footage in a 3d environment.
I hoped the book can give me tips about that.
there are detailed lessons on youtube for greenscreen tracking and compositing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXuRWndDWR0&index=4&list=PLEwY4RnUceQgVmPrpLbGqeS7w35ZAkH75
Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLU1xr-Gyig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFAdTbu1Kcs
The book is useful. I have looked back at the green screen tips a time or two. There are some unique details regarding preparation and production. After this discussion, however, I’ll throw my copy away.
You had 5 minutes of fame… Congrats! ;)
Hi,
I’m the author of this book and I would like to clarify a few things here.
My book is a full description of a vfx pipeline and covers most of the aspects, I was limited by the original publisher to the amount
of pages so I couldn’t include everything I wanted but I can tell you it covers most of the aspects on a production.
About the accusations from Steve Cypert I really think he has a bad intention with his words or he sees things in a completely different way.
Starting from laughing about someone else’s work when you have works like these:
https://www.youtube.com/user/stevecypert/videos
As some people already told you, I don’t think you are in the best position to criticize my work. The project used on this book is a sample for showing the different topics on a VFX production. Some other authors doesn’t even bother to create a full scene to show the entire pipeline and they just limit themselves to show the tools and that’s it.
You also said that my book is focus in motion tracking which is totally false, it has one small chapter because I consider this topic very important. There’s plenty of other chapters with other techniques, see the table of contents:
https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/blender-for-visual/9781498724500/
I don’t know why are you so obsessed with comparing my work with this or that. I’m not trying to compete with the Blender Foundation or any other author (in fact Ton Roosendaal has a copy of my book), this is actually one of the few blender books focus only on visual effects.
Finally I just want to let everybody know that as far as I know if you’re not happy with the book you can request a refund on Amazon or any other provider and that my book has a rating of 4.7 stars from 5.
Hi Sam. I have one quick question regarding the book. The way it was advertised to me is that the book was a tutorial, which it is but i was hoping to have access to the files you shot and made so the reader, me, could follow along. Have i missed where these files are or are they not included with the book? I personally find the book very informative and a great addition to my blender books but i was hoping it was more of a tutorial than a reference book, that said it is a very informative book regarding compositing techniques even with out the work files.
Hi Perseus,
Thanks for your feedback. The book was written in a generic way and using the example scene to try to cover most of the aspects in a VFX production. That way is not limited to an specific scenario but it would fit pretty much most of the problematic areas in a production.
About the example scene, the contract with my publisher only covered the written content and the illustration content, nothing about sharing scenes or other files, it would be tricky for me from a legal point to release this on my own and it will require permissions from my publisher and this could be a little bit tricky. Aside of this also in my book in some chapters (especially on chapter 8) there’s a bunch of compositing nodes explained there and showing different examples for these nodes, is not the main scene which is not available for download but a set of examples, that said and as I mention on my book I suggest to any reader to use the book as a reference to try themselves all these techniques. I think the book is a good starting point for someone that ones to achieve these techniques but ultimately it’s up to the reader to make this happen.
Mr Cypert’s SPY GIRL is not Hollywood class A or B work but its well done for children’s entertainment with relevant vfx for that, personally i think its quite good for the intent purposes.
That being said Mr Villa,
“Starting from laughing about someone elses work when you have works like these:
https://www.youtube.com/user/stevecypert/videos”
That comment was unnecessary, there was no need to even address or retort to Mr Cypert’s critics in such a regard, jsut address the intent and purpose or how to effectively use you book, nothing else.
Thank you for a fair review of my novice Blender movie Spy Girl. You also make an excellent point about my harsh critique of Mr. Villa. It does read as though I’m being overly critical to the author. It wasn’t his book I made fun of. It was his video of the completed project. If you have his book, you can use the information in it to locate and view the video and form your own opinion.
Truth is. his immature reply did turn me off. The book was in my cart. A true professional would have bypass your comments and focus on their material without much show of insecurity. That was a red flag for me. Mind you not saying his book is devalued as such, just he did not represent it well by his response to critic whether harsh or constructive.
I like books for the easy pull and reference of certain things, however …. Video tutorials are a better digest for some things. I looked at the contents of the book and it seems to be well laid out and full of great reference material with a practical example. That seems a gem for the beginner or for the intermediate user that needs a quick reference refresher. That is gold there.
Bart, buy the book and review for us please :P I will reconsider purchase after >:D
“Bart, buy the book and review for us please :P I will reconsider purchase after >:D”
Ehm, this *is* a review :)
lol, true. a brief review but alas a review none the less *squints*
I bought the book for a whopping $40 some USD, and found that it was a small book, and soft cover. Personally, I like thick hardcover books. I was hoping to learn how to do stuff like lightsabers, and screen replacements, the kind of stuff that Blender Guru and others teach online. I was rather disappointed in it as it did not teach all that much that I could use besides learning how to camera track, and it was much more expensive than a book its size should be. I would not buy this book.