Blender 3D: Noob to Pro

This book is a series of tutorials to help new users learn Blender. The tutorials increase in difficulty, and later tutorials build on the lessons in previous ones. Therefore, Blender beginners should follow the tutorials in sequence. Intermediate users can skip to a tutorial of suitable difficulty. You will be learning how to use Blender, a powerful and complicated 3D modeling program. You will learn how to understand 3D, how to cheat the 3D, and most importantly, how to think in 3D. You will learn all the ins and outs of 3D modeling, using Blender and using your brain. Unfortunately for you eager types, there are quite a few steps before you start modeling. Keep in mind that you need to learn how to use Blender! Don't jump into modeling straight away!

Following are the few topics covered in this Blender 3d book.

• Knowing Blender
• Thinking in 3D
• Learning the Graphical User Interface
• Learn to Model
• Modeling a Simple Person
• Modeling Beyond Basics
• Creating Models With Photo Assistance
• Curve and Path Modeling
• Creating Models With Photo Assistance
• Curve and Path Modeling
• Materials and Textures
• Using Materials and Textures
• UV Maps
• Broadening Horizons
• Lighting
• Rendering
• Basic Animation
• Particle Systems
• Soft Body Animation
• Blender Game Engine Basics
• Python Scripting
• Advanced Modeling
• Advanced Materials and Textures
• Advanced Animation
• Advanced Game Engine

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Blender Basics- 3rd Edition

Blender is a rendering\animation\game development open-sourced freeware program maintained by the Blender Foundation and can be downloaded, free of charge, from www.blender.org.

This is the complete book for you to learn blender 3d animation software.

Rendering and Animation Basics
RENDERING:
A rendering is a pictorial output of a 3D scene or object. Features like materials, lighting, oversampling and shadows control the effects and quality of the rendering. The more of these features you add, the more realistic your scene become, but also lengthens rendering times.

Materials and Textures:
You can control the way an object appears by applying color and textures. Materials provide realism with added effects. You an control glossiness (specularity), self-emitting lighting characteristics, transparency and pattern repetition. Raytracing can provide reflection (mirror) and refraction( transparency) effects. Textures can be made from any scanned photograph or drawn object in an image-editing or painting-type program. Images in almost any format (jpeg, bitmap, png) can be used. Blender also has many built-in texture generators that can simulate a variety of surface characteristics such as wood, marble, clouds, waves and surface roughness.

Lighting:
Lighting provides the realism to your scene through reflections and shadows. You can control the type of light, intensity and color. Some lights can give a “fog” or “dusty” look with a halo or volume lighting effect. Illumination distances can also be set.

Cameras:
Your camera is your point-of-view for the scene. Just like a real camera, you can control lens length to achieve close-ups or wide angles. Clipping distance can also be set to control how far and near the camera sees. Depth-of-field can now be controlled using nodes.

ANIMATION:
An animation is a series of rendered images that form a movie. The quality of your movie is controlled by all of the above mentioned features including frames per second (fps), output size, file type and compression. The most common method of animation is called keyframing. Key frames are created at various points in the animation while the computer generates all of the transition frames between the two keys. Basic animation options include changing size, rotation and location of objects.

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Digital Foundations: CSS and Web Design with Adobe Dreamweaver and WordPress

Digital Foundations: CSS and Web Design with Adobe Dreamweaver and WordPress is the third book in the Digital Foundations series. The collection of Digital Foundations books aims to rewrite media arts curriculum by fusing experiments from the Bauhaus Basic Course, formal design principles, movements in art history, and software training into one cohesive set of books. CSS and Web Design with Adobe Dreamweaver and WordPress teaches new students to web design how to approach code using Dreamweaver and through interfaces available online, such as WordPress. Each chapter is informed by significant works of art on the web from artists such as Cary Peppermint and the Yes Men to commercial successes such as Dave Shea's CSS Zen Garden. Whether a student is part of a formal classroom setting or learns informally from a book, all students of web design and production must learn the basic principles of design and how to implement them using current software. Far too often design is left out of books that teach software for the trade and academic markets. The visual examples presented in most software books are unrelated to design principles or contemporary practices. Consequently, the software training exercise is a lost opportunity where, instead, visual principles could be taught by practice. Digital Foundations: CSS and Web Design with Adobe Dreamweaver and WordPress reinvigorates the software demo by integrating formal exercises common to the web design classroom and contemporary art examples into exercises that focus on core code and software methodologies.

Following are the few topics covered in this web design with adobe dreamweaver and wordpress book.

• Introduction to the Web
• Metaphors for a Page
• Hello Dreamweaver
• Hello Wordpress
• Fair Use, Appropriation & Advertising Online
• Adding Action With Scripting Languages
• Images and the Web
• CSS 1
• CSS 2
• Layout
• Frameworks for making things easier
• Installing WordPress
• Basic Theming in WordPress
• Web 2.0, APIs and Platforms

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Digital Foundations: Digital Imaging and Collage

Digital Foundations: Digital Imaging and Collage is the second book in the Digital Foundations series. The collection of Digital Foundations books aims to rewrite media arts curriculum by fusing experiments from the Bauhaus Basic Course, formal design principles, movements in art history, and software training into one cohesive set of books. Digital Imaging and Collage teaches digital image manipulation and collage with Photoshop through historical examples. Whether a student is part of a formal classroom setting or learns informally from a book, all students of digital imaging and production must learn the basic principles of design and how to implement them using current software. Far too often design is left out of books that teach software for the trade and academic markets. The visual examples presented in most software books are unrelated to design principles or contemporary practices. Consequently, the software training exercise is a lost opportunity where, instead, visual principles could be taught by practice. Digital Foundations: Digital Imaging and Collage reinvigorates the software demo by integrating formal exercises common to photography and design classrooms and contemporary art examples, from Martha Rossler's collages to Jamie Reid's album covers, into exercises that focus on core software methodologies.

Following are the few topics covered in this Digital Imaging book.

• Metaphor in Digital Imaging
• Know Your (Image) Rights
• Input Resolution
• Composition
• Sorting Files
• Tonal Adjustments
• Optimizing Images for the Web
• Fluxus, Mail Art and Collage
• Layering Digital Images
• Masking
• Inventing Pixels
• Words and Images
• Effective Work Habits
• Creating a Master Image with Camera Raw

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Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Suite

Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Suite integrates the formal principles of the Bauhaus Basic Course into an introduction to digital media production with the Adobe Creative Suite, or the FLOSS graphics applications. Digital Foundations began with one book, and is now extending into a series.

This book was written by two artist educators who teach digital art and design studio foundation classes. While teaching classes that take place in software laboratories, we noticed that many of our students expected to learn to use software, but gave little consideration to aesthetics or art and design history. A typical first day question is, "Are we going to learn Photoshop in this class?"

At first we were tempted to oblige our students' thirst for so-called practical knowledge, but we recognize that in the absence of the visual, theoretical, and historical frameworks, practical knowledge is practically useless. To teach our classes, we used the very best of the software training manuals, and supplemented them with all the visual and historical material that was missing. After settling for years on books that don’t really encapsulate a class, we finally decided to write the book that we think all introductory media design students should be using. For us, a student is anyone actively engaged in learning. A student can be working towards a degree in art, communication, graphic design, illustration, and so on in a traditional classroom setting, or a self-taught found-it-on-the-bookstore-shelf learner.

In the twenty chapters that follow, we have shared small bites of history, followed by visual references, and then digital exercises that explore Adobe’s Creative Suite in a manner that brings design principles into the software demo.

Following are the topics covered in this adobe creative suite book.

• Metaphor
• Searching and Sampling
• Symmetry and Gestalt
• Type on the Grid
• Color Theory and Basic Shapes
• Line Art and Flat Graphics
• Image Acquisition and Resolution
• Tonal Range
• Layering and Collage
• Repetition and Cloning
• Graphics on the Web
• Non-Destructive Editing
• Multiples: Creating Unity
• Multiples: Creating Tension
• Files and Servers
• Stylesheets: Separating Form and Content
• Flash Elements of Motion
• Pacing
• ActionScript 3.0

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Learning Through Computer-Generated Visualization

Learning Through Computer-Generated Visualization is edited by ACM SIGGRAPH. This is a really useful computer graphic guide contains various articles or topics such as visualization techniques, graphics in game technology, Web-Based Learning Fills a Need, Designing Augmented Reality Interfaces and more. Following are the few topics covered in this computer graphic guide.

• Data and image models
• Perception and cognition
• Interaction
• Space
• Color
• Conveying shape with lines
• Conveying shape with shading and texturing
• Conveying interior structure with volumetric techniques
• Conveying process and narrative with animation
• Designing Augmented Reality Interfaces

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