Not to be outdone by chapter 2, the third chapter of ICAWB squeezes a huge amount of instruction and knowledge into just 37 pages. According to the outline, chapter 3 begins with the Material Datablock, and progresses through Textures and UV Mapping, and Static Particles. Don’t let the brief outline fool you. There’s a whole lot of material in those three segments…

Although the subjects are not covered, there are sections mentioning Toon Shading and Material Nodes, the last of which is a seemingly daunting subject but worth spending some time with if you’re the adventurous type. After introductory discussion of the Material Datablock, the focus turns to applying multiple materials to Captain Blender.

I’ll give the same advice for this chapter that I gave for the previous two: take your time. Of course, if you’re not into hanging around and fiddling with modeling and materials, you can always use the included .blend files to skip to chapter 4, which begins instruction in Armatures and Rigging.

The Applying Materials segment deals with applying multiple materials to different parts of the Captain Blender mesh. Although not a lot of time is spent discussing various shaders and their options, Tony Mullen walks you through creating specific materials with differing shaders and properties to produce varying effects for Captain Blender’s superhero outfit, including instruction on applying a decal to the chest.

Once the suit is completed, the focus changes to the head. It is here that UV Mapping is introduced. The user is walked through creating seams on the head mesh, then unwrapping and positioning the UVs to take advantage of texture space. Although the beginning user might desire that more time is spent explaining these difficult topics, this is a book on character animation; and beginning with chapter 4, the focus changes to the subjects revolving around it. This continues for another 230+ pages until the focus of the book changes again to discuss Lighting and Rendering.

The UV Mapping instruction transitions into finishing aspects of Captain Blender which still need attention: eyelashes, which employs techniques combining mesh modeling, UV mapping, and alpha textures; after that it’s on to CB’s eyes and hair.

Creating the material for CB’s eyes involves using procedural textures. There are several important concepts introduced here, but not a lot of time spent explaining them. If you pay attention through this section, you’ll be introduced to the use of the Stencil feature, as well as the use of color bands.

Finally the chapter ends with using the particle system to create Captain Blender’s hair. This is a welcome addition to this chapter and provides a nice tutorial on the subject. This includes instruction on not just the particles themselves, but setting up the proper mapping and material.

Although I appreciated the content of chapters 1 through 3, I’m excited about moving on to the remaining chapters — which deal with rigging, animation, IK, and the works.

<< Chapter 2 — Chapter 4 >>

LINKS:

Purchase Book at Blender.org

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.