Preface

Welcome to Blender 3D Incredible Machines. In this book, we're going to explore the world of hard-surface modeling in Blender. This is distinct from organic modeling (creating humans/animals, and more), and there are different methods that we can employ to get the best results. We'll focus on ways to create complex machinery, vehicles, and other similar models in Blender.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Sci-Fi Pistol – Creating the Basic Shapes, covers the basic modeling tools as we start our first project. It should be a good refresher for more experienced users, and will set the groundwork for more advanced modeling projects.

Chapter 2, Sci-Fi Pistol – Adding Details, looks at specific modeling techniques for adding detail to hard surface models. These techniques will be used to finish building our gun model, but will be applicable to many other projects as well.

Chapter 3, Texturing and Rendering Your Sci-Fi Pistol, takes a look at the Cycles rendering engine and how to create basic materials for it. We'll also set up a basic render scene that we can use in the future.

Chapter 4, Spacecraft – Creating the Basic Shapes, begins a more complex modeling project—a Sci-Fi spacecraft. We'll focus more on general technique and workflow here, since we covered a lot of the basic tools already in the first two chapters.

Chapter 5, Spacecraft – Adding Details, focuses heavily on detail-oriented modeling techniques. We'll look at important considerations when adding detail to a model as well as a number of tools and procedures for doing so.

Chapter 6, Spacecraft – Materials, Textures, and Rendering, builds on the techniques from our last project. We'll create a number of different materials for our spacecraft. We'll also briefly cover UV mapping and managing materials slots.

Chapter 7, Modeling Your Freestyle Robot, looks at modeling for a specific type of rendering—FreeStyle. There are a number of special modeling techniques we'll want to use to get the best possible results.

Chapter 8, Robot – Freestyle Rendering, looks at the specifics of FreeStyle rendering. We'll also cover the creation on non-photorealistic (NPR) rendering in the Blender Internal render engine.

Chapter 9, Low-Poly Racer – Building the Mesh, takes a look at one of the more common uses of Blender—building game models. We'll explore how these models are different from the ones we've already done and what specific techniques we should use (and avoid) when we do it.

Chapter 10, Low-Poly Racer – Materials and Textures, covers the creation of materials and textures for our low-poly game model. We'll cover UV maps more extensively, and see how we can use them to create a more universal form of textures.  This will allow our game assets to be used in a variety of external applications.

What you need for this book

A desktop or laptop computer (recommend at least 4 GB of RAM).

Windows 7, Mac OS X, or Linux.

The Blender 3D software package, free to download at https://www.blender.org/.

Who this book is for

This book is aimed at intermediate Blender users looking to increase their hard surface modeling skills. Although we do review some basic tools in the first chapter, this isn't meant to be an introduction to the Blender software package. Users should be reasonably familiar with the interface and fundamental concepts of 3D modeling (moving, rotating, scaling, and others).

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "This will allow us to add the Mirror modifier."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book-what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at http://www.packtpub.com/authors.

Customer support

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

Downloading the color images of this book 

We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/blender3dincrediblemachines_ColorImages.pdf.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text or the code-we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.

To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.

Piracy

Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.

Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.

We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.

Questions

If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <[email protected]>, and we will do our best to address the problem.