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Book review: Blender 3D: Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery

You’ve heard of Blender, right? Maya or 3D-max for free? And, like me, you maybe downloaded it and installed it? Did you have that heady feeling of anticipation, your excitement barely contained as you dream of taking the 3D animation world by storm… only to have your dreams shattered with the un-useable interface? Yes, I think that’s happened to many of us. But wait… pick you shattered dreams back off the floor. You and I might just have misunderstood Blender. We just needed a helping hand.

Cue the book by Allan Brito. In 316 pages Alan attempts to demystify Blender for the uninitiated, and I must admit, he achieves it. Now, I’m not saying after I read the book I became a Blender pro (I still find Blender frustrating and counter-intuitive), but the book allowed me to give a second chance to an excellent piece of software which I had dismissed completely. As an architectural visualiser, Blender is not your ideal software choice, but it can fit into your workflow. If you find your usual modelling, rendering, or animation software lacks some functionality, Blender will no doubt provide it.

The book’s aim

The book is written with the Blender beginner in mind, and as such does not attempt to cover the whole subject of Arch-viz. Instead, Allan chooses to open the door far enough for you to have a look in. And this, as we know, is the problem with Blender:  we can’t have a look in because it’s so counter intuitive to use. Having described the interface and keyboard shortcuts which will make all the difference, the book goes on to cover the basics of modelling, lighting, texturing and rendering. What’s especially useful is Allans dogged determination not to stray from the subject in hand. With the size and depth of the software, this would be suicide.

What you won’t like

It would have been good to see some more about import and export. In my opinion Blender is best used for animation once models have been modelled and textured in CAD or SketchUp, but there was no mention of this. The book also concentrates more on interiors than buildings or scenery.

Summary

A capable introduction to Blender as a stand-alone Arch-Viz application. Check out the book here.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under Rendering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.