Product Description
Blender has become one of the most popular 3D and animation tools on the market, with over 2 million users, and it is free! Animating with Blender is the definitive resource for creating short animation projects from scratch, the ideal platform for experimenting with animation.

Blender expert and author Roland Hess walks you through the entire process of creating a short animation, from writing to storyboarding and blocking, through character creation, animation and rendering.

* Learn the ropes from Roland Hess, one of Blender's developers and a community guru for this FREE animation program, which was used in the previz for Spiderman 2

* Create a single short animation project from start to finish, take an in-depth look into how all of the Blender tools work together

* Study, pick apart and reuse all of the files from the animation referenced throughout the book, with the Blender software and sample animation files included on the companion DVD

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 2 reviews)

Great book

Some days ago I got a copy of Animating With Blender - How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish on my mailbox, and I have just finished reading it.

It was written by Roland Hess (also known as harkyman) while he produced his recently released and Suzanne Awards nominated short The Beast. I've never written a book, but I believe it is at least as hard as making a short animation, and this guy managed to make them both at the same time. This alone already made him deserve my kudos even before I started reading.

Now that I've finished this reading, I'm very happy to say that this book is a clear sign of evolution of the Blender Community. Until its release we already had some great books, but all of them had the same purpose: teach how to use Blender or how to achieve an specific task. That is great - and still necessary - but this new book goes a step further: now that you already know how to use Blender, how about being productive and making something cool with it?

As I said, the biggest source from where he gathered the information to write this book was his own short production. The author stated that he knows about some shortcomings in the movie, and I really recommend you to read his book without being too picky on the movie itself, since he put on those pages the result of what he learned during that production.

Believe me, there are lots of things we learn when producing a short and having that information written, on your hands to make you avoid some common mistakes is great for you, aspiring to be the next Brad Bird. :)

One of the first ideas you'll find on the book is that it will help you avoid your movies' "death" by natural causes. This kind of death for short movies is actually very common, and it happens for a number of reasons he points out while suggesting some possible solutions.

This book aims to cover most production aspects of your new award winning short, with a very easy language and bits of humor on it. From your first idea to the final release, there are some great tips on common mistakes and ways to avoid those "natural causes".

The book comes with a DVD with the movie, all the production files and examples, HD versions of Big Buck Bunny and Elephants Dream, and some softwares like Blender (O RLY? heh), Audacity, a renderfarm manager and the VLC video player for anyone who may face trouble playing the movies.

It was also a nice idea to add at the end of each chapter the Peach Perspective on the subject. There are some questions answered by the Peach team, talking about their experience in all aspects of their production.

I wrote down some topics I found interesting while reading the book:

* Tips for story creation, maintaining it interesting and not over complicating things;
* Some clever ways to organize and naming your files and assets (believe me, that's important);
* Important and often overlooked tips like setting up the correct aspect ratio for your renders;
* An interesting way to test your maximum working polygon count, to avoid future headaches;
* How to prepare your meshes and let'em ready for animation;
* How to work with libraries and linked assets - an often overlooked feature that is extremely important to animation workflows;
* Good habits when working with Blender;
* Tips for audio recording;
* Rigging and skinning even with info on the recently added Mesh Deform modifier;
* Creating facial controls and eyes rigging;
* Useful tips on working within the Action Editor, like grouping and some overlooked and rather obscure features;
* Tips on specific tasks, like making your character hold something or making a simple walk;
* Very cool tips for decreasing render times while still maintaining good quality renders;
* Ways to light your scene in a good way, from exterior to interior scenes;
* The good use of simulations (fluid, cloth, hair...), their drawbacks and workarounds;
* How you can handle the final composition, rendering your frames and even setting up a renderfarm;
* Good info on putting it all together in your masterpiece, making sure it will work on all kinds of media: from the web to DVDs;
* There are tips even on asking help in the forums. :)

I really think this is a great book, with some valuable information that will sure help you taking your idea to the final production in a sane way. Aimed for who is already somewhat comfortable with Blender, this book is a must have during all of your production stages as a good reference on how to (and - important - how NOT to) do things.

It is good to see that our Community is getting this kind of publication, going a bit further than just using the tool to how to make some interesting with it. It is a great addition to our Blender bookshelf. :)

What else can I say? Well... go for it! ;)
November 05, 2008

Well written explanation of going from start to finish for a short animation

Roland has a clear and entertaining writing style. In "Animating with Blender" he seems to have answered many of the questions I've had on how to go about doing my own short animations. I'm an experienced Blender user (and developer), but have only dabbled with the animating and rendering capabilities of Blender, and this book has greatly increased my confidence of being able to tackle those topics in my own potential animations.

It also great to have simple production files to try and use, they should be quite useful for roughing out my own animation ideas even if I ultimately use self created assets.

A quick disclaimer, I'm the author of the original story idea of 'The Beast', and even though Rolands final script and resulting animation are significantly different than my original idea - I might have a bit of bias :)

Also for those interested I thought I'd include the original story email that I sent to Roland...

********

I thought you might like to see my script attempt[.]

This one could be done extremely quickly with a small team (probably even
fairly quick for a single decent animator) - unfortunately not much in the way of technical challenges.

Characters:

Mom - typical mom of a 2 year old
Beast - 2 year old - a typical terrible 2 based on my nephew, nicknamed 'the beast' by my mom.
cat - imagined character - the typical feline that is suspicious of children, but generally intent on ignoring them

Set - living room - has tv in southwest corner at 45 angle to room. Has a couch with two endtables facing the TV, a houseplant is sitting on one, a large planter with plant is elsewhere in the room. The cat is lying on the couch back. Beast is sitting closely in front of tv watching a cartoon.

FADE IN: mom is spraying house plants, the phone rings, she walks out of the room setting the spray bottle down on an end table near the couch.

1) Bored toddler (the beast) is watching TV (cartoon) sittin 'indian style', elbows on knees

2) He rolls onto his back sprawling out his arms and legs - exhaling a sigh of boredom

3) starts blowing his lips - making a pbbbtt sound with his lips - sighs again

4) he rolls over and climbs onto the couch

5) as he climbs on he notices the squeak of the leather, starts bouncing and squirming trying to make it squeak again.

6) as he is getting bored with this he notices the cat - which gives him a warning stare, then snuggles its nose more firmly tucked into its tail.

7) toddler sighs again and looks around - this time spotting the spray bottle

8) he grabs the bottle and starts spraying things, the plants, the end table, the couch, and then accidentally sprays the cat..

9) the cat jumps up, shocked - then the beast suddenly gets an evil grin on his face

10) he starts squirting the cat deliberately

11) the cat takes off knocking over various items (plants, and pictures off shelves, assorted nicknacks) as the toddler pursues squirting the cat and all sorts of other things

cat runs through a doorway, and through moms legs - the beast runs into mom and falls over backwards.

Not quite sure on the exact ending after that
October 20, 2008

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