Blender has become one of the most popular 3D and animation tools on the market, with over 2 million users, and it is free! Animating with Blender is the definitive resource for creating short animation projects from scratch, the ideal platform for experimenting with animation. Blender expert and author Roland Hess walks you through the entire process of creating a short animation, from writing to storyboarding and blocking, through character creation, animation and rendering.

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Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 15 Ratings

Great book on Blender's animation capabilities - 2009-07-09
Reviewer Rating:
I have found a new way to torture myself: read books about all the magnificent things you can do with Blender - and lack the artistic talent necessary to do them.

Blender is a wonder. It is an open source, free 3-D modeling program equivalent in many ways to commercial programs that sell for many thousands of dollars. For artists, architects, animators and many others, Blender is a dream come true. It delivers to them capabilities for free that they might never otherwise had access to.

There is an indirect price to be paid. Blender has a very high learning curve, which is to be expected with a program this powerful and capable.

Among Blender's many capabilities is animation, which is very demanding. Animation also requires some modicum of artistic skills, which - to my great regret - I lack.

But if I possessed the skill to draw something beyond a very crude stick figure, this is the book that would teach me how to animate in Blender.

The author, D. Roland Hess, has a marvelously clear writing style, which is very helpful for novices.

Hess takes it in a step-by-step manner, beginning with an overview of the "short animation process". Much to his credit, Hess doesn't engage in sugarcoating the process: it is time-consuming, difficult and complex. Success is anything but assured.

The core example of the book is "The Beast", a 4 minute animation that took the author to in somewhat more than 200 hours. That's 50 hours for each minute of finished animation!

And you'll understand why as the author leads you through the process, explaining how Blender is used at each stage. He also puts a lot of emphasis on things like the story - don't leave home without a finished story - and extras you may need, such as sound equipment.

The true beauty of the book is in the chapters on the mechanics of Blender: gems like creating rought drafts, rigging and skinning, facial motion and controls, lip sync and so on. All of the chapters are very well illustrated and Hess's descriptions are very easy to follow.

A word of warning: this is not a book for people first starting with Blender: you must have at least a basic understanding of Blender if most of the book is going to make sense to you.

Other than animating squares, circles and other geometric shapes - or developing a relationship with a very generous artist - I won't be doing any animations with Blender. But if I had the requisite artistic talent or partnered with someone who did have it, this is the book I would learn Blender animation from. Even though I can't put the lessons to work, it is also a fun read just to see how accessible such capabilities have become.

Jerry

Huge help from start to finish - 2009-07-04
Reviewer Rating:
At first I was skeptical of purchasing this book. I wasn't sure if it would have any new information for me, but I am incredibly glad that I did.

This book helped me vastly starting on the first page and going all the way to the end. I also learned about several of the new tools in blender as well as some of the older ones I hadn't seen before. D. Roland Hess is a great teacher with a writing style that doesn't chase you away. He actually throws in some jokes along the way as well.

If you even have the slightest doubt in buying this book, then I've got 3 words for you - Add To Cart.

valuable information, funny to read - 2009-05-30
Reviewer Rating:
the book contains very usefull information and provides a step by step guide to 3d animation. it gives a lot of useful tips and explains pitfalls of such a project. and it is written with just the right amount of humour.

many thanks roland for this book!

A very good presentation of how the entire production process works - 2009-03-29
Reviewer Rating:
"Film-making," as they say, "is much harder than it looks." Even if your objective is "just" to create a two- or three-minute animated film using your personal computer, you're actually looking at a production process that will go through many distinct stages over the next several months. (This will be true no matter what software tools you use.) It's difficult to know where to begin, much less to know where it will end. But this is precisely what the author methodically tells you, speaking to you directly in very practical terms and with the friendly voice of experience.

Blender, of course, is the tool that the author uses for this purpose. It's extremely full-featured tool, absolutely free, that runs equally well on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. The author shows you how to use this tool to accomplish all the steps he's talking about, although he assumes some prior familiarity with the tool (and very plainly says so). All of the technical principles discussed in this book will apply equally well to any other professional-grade 3D system, and the production workflow will be very much the same.

More than "a book about Blender," this book is an excellent treatment of the 3D film making process as it applies to a very-short subject. Thorough and complete, yet very approachable, this book will be one that you will read-through completely and carefully, page by page, several times ... and enjoy doing so. I recommend it very highly and without reservations.

Fabulous! I really like this book! - 2009-03-06
Reviewer Rating:
This is a great book.

First, the production quality is very high. The pages are heavy stock and all of the illustrations are in full color. This is extremely important for a book such as this, where color illustrations can make the difference from being able to tell what's going on, or not. (I also really like Tony Mullen's Introducing Character Animation with Blender, but most of the illustrations in that book were in black-and-white, and at times, I really struggled to see what was going on.)

Coverage of the material is excellent. Having used Blender enough now that I'm starting to get comfortable, I found that I didn't really know how to proceed to create an animated short. This book really covers the material, explaining how to develop your story and storyboards, then proceeding to cover topis on production and post-production.

This book is not in tutorial form, so there aren't lots of step-by-step instructions on doing something. Instead, it covers how to create your animated short, given that you have some familiarity with Blender.

That said, there's still quite a bit of information for relative beginners. It's a bit surprising sometimes that the book will cover some fairly basic information in some areas and then assume you already know the basics in other areas.

All-in-all, this is a great book. It's fun to read and it's also a great reference. It's filled with valuable and useful advice and techniques on accomplishing the goal of completing an animated short.

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