In this chapter of the book, Tony Mullen temporarily puts aside the ongoing project, and focuses on the basics of Ipo Curves, beginning with the perfunctory bouncing ball animation. This introductory project is simple, and not uncommon in texts that teach animation basics; however there’s a reason for this – it works very well, and makes for a more than adequate foray into Ipo curve animation…

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A whole new world opens up with chapter 5 of Tony Mullen’s book. It begins with Shape Keys. For those not familiar with these, they are basically vertex animation key frames. The main difference between vertex animation and skeletal animation is, with vertex animation the positional data for each vertex is recorded for each key frame. With skeletal animation, only the bones are key framed, and “vertex weighting” tells an algorithm which vertices to move, corresponding to bones in the armature…

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If you spent time with the first three chapters of Introducing Character Animation with Blender, then chapter 4 is what you’ve been waiting for. Tony Mullen takes the reader through building a complete character rig for Captain Blender, from building the armature to applying IK solvers and constraints. The most intriguing of these constraints is the Action constraint…

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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…

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Blender Underground is hosting a friendly little challenge on our forums. There are at least two purposes for this: 1) to generate an owl model for Agent Darth to use as part of a business logo; 2) to assist those interested to build their modeling skills and their knowledge of Blender. You can read about it here on the forums. There are no prizes, but if you want to have a little fun, we’d love to have you.

If you would like to participate, you’ll need to register for the forums. This should be fun and will assist any interested parties in building their Blender skills! We anticipate lots of questions, and forum users helping each other to increase know-how. So if you want to take a shot at it, increase your skills along the way, and interact with others working on similar projects, come on in and join the fun.

ell I’m not sure who added us, but we’re there at Wired Magazine’s Geekipedia entry on free web sites. A big thanks to whoever you are; it was a tremendous gesture on your part. If you want to vote for Blender Underground or for Blender itself, head on over to the Wired Geekipedia and cast your vote.

UPDATE: (at 17:15 on 2007-09-24)
Blender Underground was removed from the Geekipedia, along with at least a dozen other Blender related sites. Please continue to vote for Blender itself, to keep it at the top position.

There are some useful and often enigmatic tools in Blender, and The Big Dave C has managed to demystify two of them: Spin Dup and the Screw tool; and he does it quite well. The video is called Build a Rope with the Screw Tool and you can find it on his website in the Blender 3D section…

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I put up a donations link today, and I wanted to say a few words about it. First and foremost, I want to stress that the Blender video tutorials posted on this site are provided free of charge, and you are under no obligation to pay for them. In addition, there are numerous ways to support the site that don’t involve your wallet, which I iterate below.

I started doing Blender tutorials as a way of giving something back to the community that gave me Blender. When I first started with the application, I was amazed at how full-featured and capable it was. I started by watching the video tutorials on blender.org and progressed from there to sites like blendernewbies.com and geneome.net, among others. It was these tutorials that helped get me up and running. For this reason I wanted to produce a few of my own…

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For those interested, there is a poll on the forums regarding Part 4. I’m interested in any and all feedback regarding your experiences with this latest installment. You’ll need to register on the forum in order to vote, so come on in and let us know what your thoughts are.