Blender 3D Cookbook

Book description

Build your very own stunning characters in Blender from scratch

In Detail

This book will take you on a journey to understand the workflow normally used to create characters, from the modeling to the rendering stages using the tools of the last official release of Blender exclusively.

This book helps you create a character mesh and sculpt features, using tools and techniques such as the Skin modifier and polygon merging. You will also get a detailed, step-by-step overview of how to rig and skin your character for animation, how to paint textures and create shaders, and how to perform rendering and compositing. With the help of this book, you will be making production-quality 3D models and characters quickly and efficiently, which will be ready to be added to your very own animated feature or game.

What You Will Learn

  • Create a basic mesh depicting the character's overall shape and mood in a few simple steps
  • Use your sculpting skills to carve the character features from the mesh
  • Find the best possible flow for your edge-loops to enhance the character features and for the best possible range of deformation
  • Paint your character to enhance the surface's details
  • Mix both the Blender Internal and Cycles rendering engines in order to render materials as quickly as possible

Table of contents

  1. Blender 3D Cookbook
    1. Table of Contents
    2. Blender 3D Cookbook
    3. Credits
    4. About the Author
    5. About the Reviewers
    6. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
        1. Why Subscribe?
        2. Free Access for Packt account holders
    7. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Sections
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      5. Conventions
      6. Reader feedback
      7. Customer support
        1. Downloading the example code
        2. Downloading the color images of this book
        3. Errata
        4. Piracy
        5. Questions
    8. 1. Modeling the Character's Base Mesh
      1. Introduction
      2. Setting templates with the Images as Planes add-on
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      3. Setting templates with the Image Empties method
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      4. Setting templates with the Background Images tool
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      5. Building the character's base mesh with the Skin modifier
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
    9. 2. Sculpting the Character's Base Mesh
      1. Introduction
      2. Using the Skin modifier's Armature option
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      3. Editing the mesh
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      4. Preparing the base mesh for sculpting
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      5. Using the Multiresolution modifier and the Dynamic topology feature
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      6. Sculpting the character's base mesh
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. There's more…
    10. 3. Polygonal Modeling of the Character's Accessories
      1. Introduction
      2. Preparing the scene for polygonal modeling
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      3. Modeling the eye
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      4. Modeling the armor plates
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
      5. Using the Mesh to Curve technique to add details
        1. How to do it…
        2. How it works…
    11. 4. Re-topology of the High Resolution Sculpted Character's Mesh
      1. Introduction
      2. Using the Grease Pencil tool to plan the edge-loops flow
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. There's more…
        4. See also
      3. Using the Snap tool to re-topologize the mesh
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      4. Using the Shrinkwrap modifier to re-topologize the mesh
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      5. Using the LoopTools add-on to re-topologize the mesh
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      6. Concluding the re-topologized mesh
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. There's more…
        4. How it works…
    12. 5. Unwrapping the Low Resolution Mesh
      1. Introduction
      2. Preparing the low resolution mesh for unwrapping
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      3. UV unwrapping the mesh
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      4. Editing the UV islands
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
      5. Using the Smart UV Project tool
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      6. Modifying the mesh and the UV islands
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      7. Setting up additional UV layers
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      8. Exporting the UV Map layout
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
    13. 6. Rigging the Low Resolution Mesh
      1. Introduction
      2. Building the character's Armature from scratch
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
          1. Building the rig for the secondary parts
          2. Completing the rig
        3. How it works…
      3. Perfecting the Armature to also function as a rig for the Armor
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      4. Building the character's Armature through the Human Meta-Rig
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      5. Building the animation controls and the Inverse Kinematic
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. See also
      6. Generating the character's Armature by using the Rigify add-on
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
    14. 7. Skinning the Low Resolution Mesh
      1. Introduction
      2. Parenting the Armature and Mesh using the Automatic Weights tool
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      3. Assigning Weight Groups by hand
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
      4. Editing Weight Groups using the Weight Paint tool
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. See also
      5. Using the Mesh Deform modifier to skin the character
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
      6. Using the Laplacian Deform modifier and Hooks
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
    15. 8. Finalizing the Model
      1. Introduction
      2. Creating shape keys
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      3. Assigning drivers to the shape keys
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      4. Setting movement limit constraints
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. See also
      5. Transferring the eyeball rotation to the eyelids
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      6. Detailing the Armor by using the Curve from Mesh tool
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. There's more…
        4. See also
    16. 9. Animating the Character
      1. Introduction
      2. Linking the character and making a proxy
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. See also
      3. Creating a simple walk cycle for the character by assigning keys to the bones
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      4. Tweaking the actions in Graph Editor
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. See also
      5. Using the Non Linear Action Editor to mix different actions
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. See also
    17. 10. Creating the Textures
      1. Introduction
      2. Making a tileable scales image in Blender Internal
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      3. Preparing the model to use the UDIM UV tiles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      4. Baking the tileable scales texture into the UV tiles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
      5. Painting to fix the seams and to modify the baked scales image maps
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      6. Painting the color maps in Blender Internal
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
      7. Painting the color maps in Cycles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
    18. 11. Refining the Textures
      1. Introduction
      2. Sculpting more details on the high resolution mesh
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      3. Baking the normals of the sculpted mesh on the low resolution one
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
      4. The Armor textures
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. There's more…
        4. See also
      5. Adding a dirty Vertex Colors layer and baking it to an image texture
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
      6. The Quick Edit tool
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
    19. 12. Creating the Materials in Cycles
      1. Introduction
      2. Building the reptile skin shaders in Cycles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      3. Making a node group of the skin shader to reuse it
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      4. Building the eyes' shaders in Cycles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      5. Building the armor shaders in Cycles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
    20. 13. Creating the Materials in Blender Internal
      1. Introduction
      2. Building the reptile skin shaders in Blender Internal
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      3. Building the eyes' shaders in Blender Internal
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
      4. Building the armor shaders in Blender Internal
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
    21. 14. Lighting, Rendering, and a Little Bit of Compositing
      1. Introduction
      2. Setting the library and the 3D scene layout
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
      3. Setting image based lighting (IBL)
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
          1. Image based lighting in Cycles
          2. Image based lighting in Blender Internal
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
      4. Setting a three-point lighting rig in Blender Internal
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
      5. Rendering an OpenGL playblast of the animation
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      6. Obtaining a noise-free and faster rendering in Cycles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. See also
      7. Compositing the render layers
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. See also
    22. Index

Product information

  • Title: Blender 3D Cookbook
  • Author(s): Enrico Valenza
  • Release date: July 2015
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781783984886