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New Book: Introducing Character Animation with Blender

30
By on Books

tony.jpgTony Mullen is finishing his upcoming book 'Introducing Character Animation with Blender'. From what I can see so far it is going to be a fantastic addition to the Blender library. I also think that it is a sign of the maturity of Blender that people are now writing books about specific Blender aspects (as opposed to books that try to cover Blender in its entirety).

Tony writes:

Hello Blenderers,

I wanted to let people know that Introducing Character Animation with Blender is progressing very well. I have been working hard on it and the manuscript is pretty much done, pending revisions. It's very much light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel time...

I'm really excited about how it's been going. I think the book covers a lot of ground and I'm eager to see what people think. I managed to get a fascinating inside look at a rig from the Plumiferos production, which I think will be a real treat for people to learn about, since it uses several rigging techniques that I've rarely seen discussed elsewhere. There's also an excellent gallery of renders contributed by Blender users and some great animations on the accompanying DVD.

However, the real occasion for this post is to let people know that the book is now available for pre-order (or just to admire the cover) at Amazon! Check it out here: Introducing Character Animation with Blender

I'd also like to congratulate the artists whose work made the cover, Sago, Hollykaz, The Orange Team, and BullX! I had nothing to do with the design or art selection, myself, but I'm very pleased with what the folks at Sybex have come up with.

I'll be presenting an overview of the content of the book at the Blender Conference next month, which I'm really looking forward to. Hope to see many of you there!

Tony (bugman_2000)

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

30 Comments

  3. MagicMyshu on

    awesome, maybe you could make a book/dvd one day on modeling characters in blender - that is something i would buy in a second - because i'll have nothing to animate without models.

    congrats

    Reply
  8. Michael_R on

    So Great, that news :)
    Finally someone is writing application specific books about Blender.
    Bus I just can repeat what MagicMyshu already said, if one cannot madel charecters, then he/she would not have anything to animate ;).

    Anyway, I´ll buy this book, as a must for me, and it is not even expensive compared to other CG books!

    Reply
  9. Vassilios Boucer on

    Great News about this New Book!
    (the Cover looks Cool)!!
    ofcourse i also buy this Book!
    i would buy everything about Blender!Yeah!!!
    Thanks!

    Reply
  11. elcazze on

    I have also preordered a copy of the book,

    but I have a very urgent question:
    when does tony plan to release the book?
    (I need it for a work for my exams)

    Reply
  14. Tony on

    Hi everybody,

    A few quick answers. As for modeling, I've included character modeling in the book. Since there are so few published resources available, I decided to take a very broad view of the field of "character animation", and really this book is more on character creation and animation. So mesh modeling is included, materials and texturing, etc. I especially tried to focus on difficult to understand but basic things (like material indices, for example) and to highlight common problems.

    I think this book complements the BSoD Character Animation tutorial. There's a little overlap, and the book doesn't assume much knowledge, but having worked through the BSoD tuts in advance certainly wouldn't hurt. The BSoD rigging tutorial also looks terrific and I recommend them both in the book.

    As for when the book is to be released, it's not up to me at this point. The Amazon page says March, but I'm not sure if that's set in stone. I *think* that would be kind of the latest-case scenario, and I'd like to think that it could be available before that.

    Thanks very much for all the encouragement!

    Tony

    Reply
  15. charly brown on

    Just pre-ordered the book at amazon.co.uk

    Still have to wait a while though, since the release is scheuduled for march/april 2007.

    Well, this at least gives me the time to learn the basics of blender.

    Reply
  17. Early Ehlinger on

    Tony is a great guy and his book promises to be a big boost for the Blender community. Documentation and similar learning tools are sorely needed to help newbies and pros migrate to Blender's unique interface more quickly. Kudos!

    The BSOD is also incredibly helpful on this front, even though the Blender Summer Of Documentation acronym is unfortunately similar to the Windows' infamous "Blue Screen Of Death."

    Hopefully more authors, or Tony if he's so inclined, will take the time to write additional full books about Blender so that everybody with the slightest interest in Blender will be able to climb its learning curve more quickly.

    Reply
  23. Tony on

    Hi,

    There's a chapter on Elephants Dream production files, which describes some of what I thought were especially interesting points, and should also hopefully give people an idea of where to start and how to go about studying those files themselves (there's a huge, huge amount of material in the ED files, so what I describe is just scratching the surface).

    As for sliding feet, there's not one but two ways described to avoid sliding feet. So, sliding feet: check.

    Tony

    Reply
  24. elcazze on

    @ IanR:
    I think sliding feet are already covered by some internet tutorials.
    I am not sure but I think they use the stride bone function to avoid "ice-skating" walkcycles

    Reply
  28. Michael Crawford on

    This is very good news. If Sybex is taking notice of blender, it will help studios to take it seriously. Thank god for the GPL or blender would be snatched out of our hands just as it's ripening.

    Reply

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