This book is about creating realistic models of building exteriors and interiors, and surrounding environment and scenery. This book is for architects, game designers, artists, or movie makers who want to create realistic buildings, interiors, and scenery using Blender 3D, a free, open-source graphics tool. This book is not a general introduction to Blender, but focuses on developing expertise on the architectural aspects of the tool. Readers need not have prior knowledge of Blender.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 14 Ratings

poor quality images - 2009-05-11
Reviewer Rating:
Blender is a neat graphics program that has met with considerable usage, due to its free nature. There have already been several well done books devoted to Blender. Now this current book specialises to using Blender for architectural design. It may well be the first book to do so.

Sadly, it is marred by poor quality screen captures. The diagrams are screen captures of Blender windows. Almost all of these are hard to read. The book suffers in comparison to other Blender texts that have colour images. Here, the images are all grey scale. But even accounting for this, you might well compare this to other, non-Blender books that use grey scale images. Little care has been done to produce legible images. The big problem of course is that Blender is inherently a graphics program. Plus, it's not just about the GUI. The images are meant to be from 3d objects inside a Blender world. It's one thing to have a book on GUI widgets. But when the real emphasis is on actual images, we need good instances.

Long awaited but, worth the wait! - 2009-02-17
Reviewer Rating:
This is a concise but thorough explanation of how to use Blender
for architectural and interior modeling. It is well written although, there
are some spelling mistakes. Unfortunately all of the images of the user
interface are in gray tones. This does not however, detract from it's
beautifully organized structure. You don't need to be a pro, either, it is
possible to use as an intro to Blender but, it is definitely of salient
value to the professional architect or engineer, as well.

A wonderful book, highly recommended by this reader!

Probably not worth the price - 2009-11-01
Reviewer Rating:
Pros: As others have noted, this book is a good introduction to using blender and does emphasize architectural modeling. It's well organized, readable, and generally easy to follow. There is an interesting chapter on radiosity, a subject ignored in most other books. Scattered throughout the book are some valuable tips on such topics as best techniques for modeling, level of detail, organization, finding resources on-line and more.

Cons: This book is a little too basic to be of great value to anyone but a total newbie. It provides only a little advanced material and most of that is not provided in useful detail. Unlike every other blender book, this one does not include a CD-ROM nor is there a website for downloadable exercise files. It particularly hit me that the model used to demonstrate radiosity is not available anywhere and the graphics in the book are not presented in such a way that you can easily recreate the model yourself. The chapter on Yafray is totally outdated now. There is nothing at all in this book on creating 3D landscapes.

Other: If you just want to learn the basics of using blender as it relates to simple architectural and interior modeling this might be the right book for you. More advanced users may still be able to pick up a few valuable tips. If you want to get a taste of Brito's style before buying, his website is blender3darchitect.

Not worth it - 2009-09-03
Reviewer Rating:
It seems like the guy learned blender just enough to make the scene on the cover, and then wrote a book about only those tools and techniques he learned in the effort. It's incredibly lacking in coverage. I'm glad I read this on safari books online instead of paying money for it. "The Essential Blender" is better in absolutely every way, including the price, even if you are only trying to do architecture, buildings, and scenery.

Good - 2009-06-21
Reviewer Rating:
Allan Brito set directly and quickly the basis of his book which targets to the architectural modeling.
So, the full book, in each chapters, the examples are architectural models.
This is not a bad thing because of modeling a building, targeted to property industry or to video games, this is the same modeling processes and the same tools.
Here, the shown tool is Blender, the 3D modeling free software often off-putting by its different interface.
So, the author of this book must convice us to the efficiant of this tool and learn us all the tips.

Like the other books, the author choose to present us the basis of the 3D modeling which he success perfectly.
It is very easy to loose oneself among all the keyboard shortcuts of Blender, but here, the features are explained slowly and clearly, which allows to understand the main objectives of Blender.
Always based on architectural examples, each chaper can let everyone adapt them very easyly in the other fields because of the simple given examples.

In addition, a big part of basic and usefull features are touched like the modeling, the materials, the textures, the lighting and the animations.
This is very remarkable with a "light" size of the book, that give it a good advantage.
It would be able to integrate your own library like a reference work to remind oneself the working of each feature of Blender.
Each example is increase by illustrations which explain step by step the working of the shown tool.

Blender 3D Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery is a simple and very good purchase to launch oneself in the free modeling with Blender.
This book will give you the basics keys to produce virtually all what you want.

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