Welcome to the first chapter of Blender 3D—Incredible Machines! This chapter will introduce you to a few concepts and relevant information about this book, and of course, talk a bit about this incredible software called Blender 3D and how we can take advantage of all of the tools of Blender.
Before we start talking about more technical stuff, such as modeling surfaces and polygons for our machines, let's just answer this simple question: What is Blender 3D? Blender 3D is a very powerful 3D graphics suite, which is open source and available for almost all of the operating systems in the market. One of its most impressive features is that it's light weight and can run on computers that don't have updated hardware.
Blender is an open source software available for anyone to use and create 3D content, but it wasn't always like this. When Blender was created, the software was a proprietary platform developed by a Dutch studio called NeoGeo (not related to the NeoGeo game console) and a company called Not a Number (NaN). The primary creator and developer of Blender is Ton Roosendaal. He was involved in the technical development of Blender at NeoGeo and the marketing of NaN.
By 2002, the investors behind NaN decided to end all operations of the company, including the development of Blender 3D. In the same year, Ton Roosendaal created the Blender Foundation to promote the use and development of Blender as an open source project, using the GNU Public License (GPL). With the Free Blender worldwide campaign, the foundation was able to raise 100,000 EUR necessary to buy the source code from NaN and release Blender to the world.
Today, Ton Roosendaal runs the Blender Foundation and the newly established Blender Institute that organizes the development and promotion of Blender.
Blender is an open source software available for anyone to use and create 3D content, but it wasn't always like this. When Blender was created, the software was a proprietary platform developed by a Dutch studio called NeoGeo (not related to the NeoGeo game console) and a company called Not a Number (NaN). The primary creator and developer of Blender is Ton Roosendaal. He was involved in the technical development of Blender at NeoGeo and the marketing of NaN.
By 2002, the investors behind NaN decided to end all operations of the company, including the development of Blender 3D. In the same year, Ton Roosendaal created the Blender Foundation to promote the use and development of Blender as an open source project, using the GNU Public License (GPL). With the Free Blender worldwide campaign, the foundation was able to raise 100,000 EUR necessary to buy the source code from NaN and release Blender to the world.
Today, Ton Roosendaal runs the Blender Foundation and the newly established Blender Institute that organizes the development and promotion of Blender.
Well, if you are planning to work on high-definition videos or complex models, you will need updated hardware. It's all a matter of scale; when we work on big projects with complex models and high-definition renderings, more will be required from both Blender 3D and the hardware. The good news is that, for most of the projects, these full resolution tools and complex models won't be required.
With Blender, we can work on projects that involve polygonal modeling, 3D animation, and setup textures. We can work on materials with nodes and even create interactive animations. This book won't deal with interactive animation features of Blender, but the rest of the tools will be used to work on our projects.
As Blender is an open source and free software, if you don't have it yet, visit the Blender Foundation website to download it (http://www.blender.org). You will be amazed by the size of the software, which is only about 20 MB. It's quite impressive for a software that can produce images and animations just like the tools such as 3Ds Max, Maya, and Softimage XSI can.
This book was written when Blender 2.49a was the most updated version of the software, so throughout the book, the same version has been used for the images and examples. The previous versions of Blender brought forward a few important updates for any artist interested in working with mechanical modeling, such as snapping improvements that will make modeling with precision easier. The snapping tools are one of the examples of the tools that we will be using to improve our work, and this will probably be the first book dealing with those tools.
As you may already know, Blender development never stops, and right now, the Blender Foundation is working hard on the next version of Blender, which will be Blender 2.50. They are planning complete re-formulations of the Blender interface and tools. This book is organized and planned in a way that will allow you to follow the workflow of the projects, regardless of the Blender version you are using.
For all our projects, we will not only be using Blender 3D, but also a set of tools that will enable us to create some great images. Along with Blender 3D, we will use YafaRay and GIMP. The first one is the most-used external renderer that can add advanced global illumination options to the renders created in Blender 3D. What's the reason most-used using YafaRay? Blender is a powerful software for modeling and animation, but so far, it can only add more realism to images and renders by using a technique called Ambient Occlusion.
The YafRay render engine is well know by previous Blender users because it was the best and the only tool to render with global illumination for a long time. However, in the past few months, the YafRay core has been completely rewritten and has given birth to YafaRay, which is the most recent and updated version of the software. The name was changed from YafRay to YafaRay to reflect the changes in the render engine core. In this book, we will cover the tools and options to use YafaRay to render our images. The setup and workflow of the images will have to follow a few rules to work on YafaRay, but the final result will show the reward for our efforts. Just for the record, YafaRay is an open source project like Blender 3D, and you can find more information about it from its official website: http://www.yafaray.org.
Finally, GIMP is the best solution in the open source world to edit and create texture maps for 3D software. In all of our projects, we will have to create and edit images called texture maps. These texture maps have to be created or edited in some software (that even have the ability to edit and paint them)—Blender can't do everything alone. That's why we will use GIMP as a part of the workflow for our projects. The GIMP software can be downloaded from its official website: http://www.gimp.org.
Now that we know a bit more about Blender and the other tools that we will be using, let's talk about the main subject of the book, which is Incredible Machines! What is an Incredible Machine? Well, it's a kind of machine that doesn't exist in our world, has amazing capabilities, and has a great sci-fi look. One of its main characteristics is its element of fantasy related with its nature. Several books and movies, such as steampunk stories or sci-fi movies, often use machines that don't exist in our world.
When we start our projects in the next chapters, you'll notice that the best part about working on projects like this is that we don't have any boundaries that will hold down our imagination. In fact, after reading this book, you should design and create your own Incredible Machines! Just pick a machine that exists today, and turn it into something better, with stronger sources of energy and new tools.
Knowing the potential of these machines, we will work on three main projects that will deal with very different types of machines. Let's see how the book is organized.
We now know that the book is about incredible mechanical models and vehicles with extreme designs, all modeled and created with Blender 3D. But, how will we be working on those models along the book? The entire book is organized into three big modeling projects, which will require skills in textures, effects, and animation.
For each project, an Incredible Machine has been chosen. The order in which those projects are placed creates a continuous learning curve, ranging from a simple project to a more complex and difficult one to finish. Here are the three projects that we will cover in the book:
1. Part I: Creating a handgun.
2. Part II: Modeling and rendering a steampunk spacecraft.
3. Part III: Modeling and animating a transforming robot.
As we can see, the first project is a smaller object on scale and will be the easiest of the three to accomplish. The last project will be the most complex one.
All of the projects have been designed with a PBL (Project Based Learning) approach, where you will follow the orientations of each project and learn a few tricks and workarounds with Blender tools to solve common modeling problems. The workflow for each project is based on real projects and follows the same structure that you would find in major studios, or with more experienced freelance artists.
Here is the basic workflow for all of the chapters:
1. Project concept and design.
2. Analysis of reference images and photos.
3. Plan and study the modeling.
4. Work with textures and materials.
5. Create and edit texture maps.
6. Export to YafaRay.
7. Render final images.
8. Post production of the images when needed.
We will follow this workflow for each project and add steps when necessary.
Here is an important aspect to consider! The answer for that question is, yes! This book won't cover basic Blender features, such as the interface or keyboard shortcut lists. The book has been planned for artists who already have a minimum knowledge of how Blender works, how to create simple models, and how to add materials, lights, and basic animations.
This doesn't mean that some tools or concepts won't be explained, but we will certainly skip the basics. However, some topics require a few extra explanations, even for more experienced users, such as the new tools added to Blender in the last updates, and of course, the integration between Blender 3D and YafaRay. This will be explained in the initial chapters about rendering, followed by some extra details in each project along the book.
The main goal of the book is to give tips and insights about modeling and rendering techniques in Blender, where you can take examples and projects in the book and apply different ideas to create a new incredible or standard machine. Knowing Blender 3D, or at least the basics, will be extremely important to start out quickly with the book. As stated before, the book won't cover the basics.
Before you begin your Incredible Machine projects, you should be familiar with the following:
How the Blender interface works
Opening and managing windows
Managing and changing working modes
Setting up basic materials
Adding basic lights to a scene
Managing and adding cameras to scenes
Working with mesh objects is not difficult, but with these basic aspects of Blender in mind, we will be able to start working with the Incredible Machine projects in a really fast manner.
If you want to follow the rest of the book, let's discuss a few resources to learn a bit more about Blender before we go any further. If you are an experienced Blender user, you may want to skip these tips because you probably already know them.
First thing to do is check out the Blender Wiki (http://wiki.blender.org), which is organized by the community of users. There you will find a lot of useful information about Blender, along with some links to great tutorials. However, if it's a book that you want, I can recommend my previous Blender book, Blender 3D: Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery about architectural visualization, with chapters detailing Blender basics. Another interesting reference would be the book, Essential Blender, published and organized by the Blender Foundation to introduce the software in general with no focus on any specific area.
Besides these resources, Blender has some great options to learn more about it with the open content projects, such as Big Buck Bunny and Yo Frankie! These are the open content projects from the Blender Foundation, which are a full-featured short animation and a professional-level game, respectively.
Both of them can be downloaded for free, and you can get the production files as well to learn more about the software and to see how the top-level artists work with Blender. To download the DVDs of the projects, visit the following links:
If you really like these projects, I strongly recommend that you consider buying the DVDs to help finance the future projects of Blender.
I believe this is enough for an introduction. Let's get started with our first Incredible Machine project!
This chapter was a brief introduction to the main theme of the book, which is the creation of Incredible Machines with Blender 3D. We have learned the following:
What Blender 3D is
A bit about the Blender 3D history
What an Incredible Machine is
The workflow used in the book
Previous knowledge that is required to follow the book
How to learn more about Blender 3D
In the next chapter, we will begin working on the first project of the book and get ready to start using Blender to create Incredible Machines!
