Friday, September 28, 2012

Book Review: Blender 3D Basics



A few weeks back, Packt Publishing gave me the opportunity to review one of their latest Blender books titled 'Blender 3D Basics' by Gordon C. Fisher, and I'm very thankful that I've had to experience this and be able to immerse myself in Gordon's well-thought elaborations and teachings.

To begin with, I honestly didn't think I'd be able to keep up with the book at first, but that changed as I progressed towards the chapters.

The cover art, with respect to the artist, needs in my opinion, more work, since as far as I'm concerned, this book should stretch out and attract new users into grabbing a copy of the book and be enticed by it, not solely by reviews and recommendations, but by the temptation you visually get from the artwork it is presented with.

However, as I delved deeper and started taking the book seriously, I was amazed by the plethora of styles it has. The in-depth exploration and discussion of Blender's interface, theories, and the like is such a very admirable aspect of this book. The book also extends further the range of information by providing you with very useful links, majority of which I really found helpful and most of which I personally bookmarked for future reference. Additionally, the post-chapter reviews are very helpful in case you wound up lost and uncertain on some of the chapters (which I highly doubt you would).

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to dive into Blender, especially to beginners. But it extends even to those who are already experienced by refreshing concepts and introducing new and (hopefully) better methods of doing things the Blender way, which are, in fact, not very obvious even to this date.

With all that said, I wish I could've read this book a couple of years ago when I was on the verge of dilemma in learning Blender and in trying to comprehend all the tutorials that were only available back then.

Have a go, hero!


BOOK DETAILS:

PacktPub link: http://www.packtpub.com/blender-3D-basics-complete-novices-guide/book
Language : English
Paperback : 468 pages [ 235mm x 191mm ]
Release Date : June 2012
ISBN : 1849516901
ISBN 13 : 9781849516907
Author(s) : Gordon C. Fisher



SAMPLE CHAPTERS:

http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/9781849516907-Chapter-9.pdf?utm_source=packtpub&utm_medium=free&utm_campaign=pdf


LEVEL: Beginner to Intermediate


CONTENT: 9/10
GRAPHICS: 6/10
EASE OF LEARNING: 9/10
OVERALL: 8/10


CONCLUSION/FINAL THOUGHTS:

If I were you, I'd definitely add this book to my collection of Blender guides and library, it is a very valuable and important guide you should never really miss!

Thanks for taking your time on reading my ramblings. ;)

-Reyn

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Tears of Steel

I have been totally mind-blown! I felt like my entire being had been dissipated. I was floating in thin air and was lost in an unknown abyss.

And then I come back to my senses and realize I had just watched 'Tears of Steel', the Blender Foundation's latest Open Movie.

This probably sums up my feelings towards the film. I'm still unable to digest what I have just seen. It's just too !@#$ awesome!

Blender's history was etched yet again, this time on a harder stone!

To the Mango team, to the Blender developers, and to the rest of the Blender community: congratulations!

I salute you all!

-Reyn

Watch it now:


BlenderNation link:

http://www.blendernation.com/2012/09/26/tears-of-steel/

Monday, September 24, 2012

Stability Under Pressure

"If you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it'll spread over into the rest of your life.  It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being.  There are no limits.  There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.  If it kills you, it kills you." -Bruce Lee

Inspired by one of the phrases my girlfriend shared with me when I was almost at my mental limit, by my fear of drowning, and my fondness of going deep under water.

Made with: Blender 2.63 and GIMP
Rendered with: Cycles

Texture references:
CGTextures (http://cgtextures.com)
Flickr (Alex Benett)

(click to enlarge)


Thanks so much for viewing! ^_^

-Reyn

Thursday, September 20, 2012

A Year Older and 7th Anniversary

A few hours from now, once the clock ticks 12:00 AM on 2012-Sep-21, I'm a year older! And our 7th anniversary with my girlfriend! Yay!

To everyone who have been part of my earlier years in life and to those I came across with, thank you so much for the wonderful experience and for the time!

Let's keep rocking! :D

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Lost in Stereo: Production Files



Hi, everyone!

Last week Friday, 2012-Sep-15, as part of my talk in Software Freedom Day 2012, I asked the audience a few easy and difficult pop quiz questions and I'm very happy and surprised that some of them were able to give the correct answer.  And as a prize, I'll give away for free (with CC license) the full production file of one of my pieces titled 'Lost in Stereo' (http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2012/08/lost-in-stereo.html).

To my avid followers, as a sign of my gratitude for your continued support and for the unlimited inspiration you all are giving me, I'm giving away the files as well.

I hope though, that despite the simplicity of the project itself, that you find use of it.  Please let me know where and how you used them, I'd love to see what you come up with.

Without further ado, here's the direct download link:


https://www.dropbox.com/s/3omrub2me1zk9ll/lost_in_stereo.zip

Creative Commons License
Lost in Stereo by Reynante M. Martinez is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2012/08/lost-in-stereo.html.


-Reyn

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Procrastination

Update:
- added forum links

"Do not do today what you can do better tomorrow."

Hello, everyone!

Here's another piece I've been working on for quite sometime now and I definitely have to put an end to it and share it with you.

This is primarily inspired by the fact that some things just has to be done, seldom, we don't want to, but we have to.

Happy viewing!

Thanks.


Created with: Blender 2.63 and GIMP
Rendered with: Cycles

Texture references: CGTextures (http://cgtextures.com), flickr users (Drew Avery, Patrick Hawks)

P.S.

I'd love to know what you think about this.

^_^

(click to enlarge)


To those of you interested and curious to discuss, you can follow these links:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?266148-Procrastination
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7414837



- Reyn

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

BlenderArt Magazine Issue #38 Available



Issue #38 ('Power of Compositing') of the BlenderArt Mag is now available for everyone to feast on!

http://blenderart.org/2012/08/31/blenderart-mag-issue-38-now-available/

Read on and happy blending! ^_^

-Reyn