Content in the image of the monster coverage

I'm not at all happy with my purchase, which gave me some more white hair. This is a very variable quality tutorial compilation. Worst: unusable even incomprehensible (if you know neither blender or 3D, and even if we know the 3D but no blender, then we must avoid at all costs to begin by reading the first!), Medium more: the result is difficult (or impossible) to obtain because it lacks information that seem obvious to the author but that unsuspecting user will never find himself even if he can learn a couple of odds and ends before reaching the point break in the demo.

The group of authors uses text length coded phrases that fall under a dark and cryptic language. In the article Mapping Camera, page 42, for example, one should select "View-Background Image", but what does that mean? Obviously, they do not address the common people but the group members already share a common system of signs. So in the same article, one must click on the "Pivot" icon, but which one is it? There are dozens everywhere!

Another example of a situation experienced: Section A Bright Idea. Page 172, step 45, it is question of a script made with LuxRender (it is advantageous to know what a script and a record otherwise it is bad). According to the text, it is sufficient to divide the screen into two 3D. If you are a non-experienced user that starts the book by this demonstration the only thing we can do is ask the question: how? If you do it, it will then start in the new window LuxRender using his script Render / luxblend. Again, how? What one has added it's only a new window for editing 3D. We can always try the sample file on the CD. It takes a long time to find it because there is a fiddled numbered folders and any indication of their contents. We always end up trying the number 17. Bingo, that's that! The file will load without difficulty in Blender old version. It has two windows, one window named Scripts. After clicking on the word Scripts, a menu appears with the Render option. Finally! Clicking again but it does not appear as expected luxblend the only choice Save Render Layer. What now?

In the chapter devoted to creating models from mathematical functions, Eva Mathematica, from the first step we have to find a text in the top left window. Alas, in the starting state of the software, there is none. For the author, it is clear that already knows to switch the screen so it does not explain the procedure! Yet it is the basics essential if we want to go further ... or even just begin.

If we compare the last two tutorials, one realizes that the book mixes two versions of the software that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. It begins with a double page of the Blender interface 2.49 and finished with a very brief summary, also in double page, shortcuts for that same version. Having bought the book for a professional demonstrations of sampling Blender 2.5, and, of course, having fallen early and by chance on articles based on this version, I found myself like an idiot trying to use these shortcuts Blender 2.5. Obviously any, of those I've tried before throwing the book worked.

The most surprising (disappointing?) Remains the 58 full pages of a total of 210, used to present images, some of them titled "inspiration". They were carried out by the drafters and presumably they are presented to prove their skills. They are relatively nice but they occupy a lot of space so that often in the body of the articles they precede and they frame the screenshots are so small and dark that one hardly sees them information contained therein. However indispensable to the progress information in the tutorials as you often copy the values ​​we supposed to see. For example, it is strictly impossible to read the texture settings page 154. There remains the possibility of finding and studying the example file. It is located in the folder of the CD 15 and can be opened with Blender 2.5. But as good as the information that is available at this location? When launching the calculation of the image, 3D jargon rendering, we get a mess of images on textures precisely when everything else seems fine.