[...]... when its developer, NotANumber, went bankrupt and the Blender community raised €100,000 to pay creditors to release the Blender source code Since then, Blender has undergone continued development by the Blender community, overseen by the Blender Foundation (headed by Ton Roosendaal, one of the original developers of Blender) The current version (Blender 2.6x, as this book goes to press) boasts a wide... into Blender s 3D Viewport to use while modeling In Chapters 4 and 5 we move on to blocking in the most important aspects of a scene with simple geometry and then fleshing out these basic forms with more detailed models We look in-depth at Blender s 3D modeling tools and how to create models with simple, efficient geometry Chapter 6 covers Blender s sculpting tools and how to combine them with Blender s... getting acquainted with Blender and GIMP, before diving into the projects If you’re already comfortable with the basics of Blender and GIMP, you can skip to Chapter 3 Otherwise, the next two chapters should provide a basic introduction to the workings of the software we will be using in this book 1 Introduction to Blender In this chapter, we will look at the basics of using Blender in order to build... 13 Lighting Blender Internal vs Cycles Lighting Lighting in Blender Internal Shadows in Blender Internal Ray Tracing Shadow Buffers Lighting in Cycles Lamp Objects in Cycles Mesh-Emitter Objects in Cycles World Settings and Ambient Light and Occlusion World Settings in Blender. .. focused on adding advanced visual effects tools to Blender It brought major improvements to the new Cycles render engine and has introduced camera tracking tools, new features for Blender s compositor, improved simulation tools, and better color management Current, stable Blender builds for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X are available from http:// www .blender. org/ In addition, you can find development... and in Chapter 14 when we create node trees for compositing Blender has several other types of editors We’ll cover some in this book, but we’ll leave out ones like the Graph editor, which is tailored to animation, and the Logic editor, which is tailored to Blender s game engine For more on these editors, see the Blender wiki (http://wiki .blender. org/) The UV Image Editor The UV Image editor is the... While rendering, Blender displays the current render in a UV Image editor Use the drop-down menu to view the most recent render or to view the viewer outputs of compositing node trees We’ll discuss the UV Image editor in more detail in Chapters 3, 8, 10, 11, and 14 Material Nodes Texture Nodes Using Blender Now that we have some knowledge of Blender s UI, we can learn how to actually use Blender We’ll... operator (L).) Introduction to Blender   11 In Review This chapter has offered a basic introduction to Blender You’ve learned the basics of how to work with Blender s user interface and essential tools We looked at its UI terminology and its different editor types, explored the basics of adding and manipulating objects, and discussed how objects and datablocks work in Blender We also looked at how to... Brushes and Brush Dynamics Filters Layers Selections Saving and Exporting In Review 1  Introduction to Blender About Blender The Blender User Interface Layout and UI Terminology Switching Editors and Customizing the UI Multiple Layouts Editor Types ... Throughout this chapter, I’ll point to later parts of the book, where various topics will be covered in greater detail If you are already comfortable with Blender, feel free to skip to Chapter 2, on GIMP, or Chapter 3, on preparing your projects About Blender Blender is a free open source 3D design and animation package, available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X Originally created as an inhouse animation .