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 16 Ratings

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 The chapter on Yafray is totally outdated now.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.

Decent Information, Poor Communication - 2010-02-07
Reviewer Rating:
I'm still new enough to Blender that the introductory concepts are useful to me. However, the way that these concepts are communicated is poor enough that I often find myself distracted and frustrated by trying to figure out what the author is talking about. Sometimes its a case of the examples not matching up to the surrounding text, as in the description of creating a loop cut (he says something about positioning it just to the left of the door, but the image shows the loop cut halfway down the wall. The following image has the new vertices just left of the door, not where the line for the loop cut had been indicated in the previous image. Little discrepancies like these are very problematic for me when I am trying to learn a new tool.) In addition, there is at least one place where it says there is an example, but no example is given.

Furthermore, it seems that the author is more interested in graphics than in writing. While I believe that it is important for authors to be passionate about their topic, when they are producing a book it is the writing that should be of paramount importance to them. This does not seem to be the case with this book. The level of the writing skill is at best something that I would expect in an online blog or tutorial, but it falls far short of what I expect from a published book. As some examples, it includes sentences like "When the faces are selected, simply press F and a new face will be created. It works the same way as with two vertices, but a new edge will be created instead." and "Now that we know how to work with meshes, let's take a look at how we can transform something simple, such as transforming plane into the walls of a building." Both of these sentences were transcribed verbatim; if it seems like something extra is present, or something is missing, it is that way in the book as well. If those sentences do not bother you, then you will probably be fine with the quality of the writing.

In summary, if you're still relatively new to Blender but have a little familiarity with it, and you don't mind the writing style and errors, this book does contain information that will be useful for getting started with architectural modeling.

Good for architects? mmm maybe - 2010-01-29
Reviewer Rating:
It maybe aimed for architectural visualization. But for me it worked as a good introduction to polygonal modeling with Blender. The basic Tools are all there and demonstrated including rendering. I'd say buy this book before buying "Essential Blender". Of note, he's using version what appears to be 2.42 or 2.43, which means for most people now using 2.49, they will have to do a little hunting for some features, and in the case of the bridge function, it's no longer there.

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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