How to Cheat in Blender 2.7x

by Alan Thorn

Overview

Blender is a vast and customizable 3D-modeling application used by many artists across creative industries, from television to games. This newest book, in Alan Thorn’s How to Cheat series, offers insightful and bite-sized power-tips to help you develop Blender mastery. More than five hundred figures illustrate interesting shortcuts and clever ways to improve your Blender workflow. A companion website at http://www.alanthorn.net provides bonus content, including videos and resources to help sharpen your skills further. How to Cheat in Blender 2.7x is for Blender users of all levels, offering time-saving tips and powerful techniques to increase your productivity.

Key Features

Bite-sized tips and tricks that can be read in any order

Illustrated examples and step-by-step guides for improving your workflow

Explores practical applications and real-world contexts

Demonstrates "lesser-known" and unconventional tips

Improves your efficiency and workflow

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498764513
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/03/2017
Series:	How To Cheat
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	279
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alan Thorn is a multidisciplinary game developer, author and educator with 16 years’ industry experience. He makes games for PC desktop, Mobile and VR. He founded the indie studio Wax Lyrical Games, and created the award-winning game Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarok. He has written twenty-two technical books on game development and presented eighteen video training courses from Lynda.com and 3DMotive.com. He has worked in game development education as a Senior Lecturer at Teesside University and as a Lead Teacher for Uppingham School. He is currently a Visiting Lecturer for the National Film and Television School and an Associate Lecturer for London South Bank University. His website is: http://www.alanthorn.net

Table of Contents

Author

1 Interface Cheats

1.1 Factory Reset

1.2 Last-Session Recovery

1.3 Recovering

Overwritten Files

1.4 Start-Up Files

1.5 Multiple Scenes

1.6 Asset Sharing and Reusing

1.7 User Preferences

1.8 Multimonitor Setup

1.9 First-Person Controls

1.10 Align Camera to Viewport

1.11 MatCap

1.12 Text Editing

1.13 Scroll Editing

1.14 Hide the Splash Screen

1.15 Dual Outliners

1.16 Viewport Visibility

2 Selections

2.1 Edit Selection Modes

2.2 Layers and Selections

2.3 Layer Management

2.4 Groups

2.5 Vertex Groups

2.6 Selecting NGons

2.7 Edge Loops and

Shortest Path Selections

2.8 Selecting Perimeter

Edges

2.9 Selecting UV Seams

and Linked Selection

2.10 Selecting Objects from

Patterns

2.11 Random Selection

2.12 Selection and Visibility

2.13 Lasso Selection

2.14 Selective Texture

Painting

2.15 Vertex Weights and

Selection

3 Modeling3.1 Modeling from

References

3.2 Nondestructive

Deformations

3.3 One-Sided Polygons

3.4 Duplication and

“Multiple Modeling”

3.5 Water, Waves, and

Oceans

3.6 Quads and Triangles

3.7 Bending

3.8 Meshes from Edges

3.9 Spline Modeling

3.10 Rebuilding Meshes:

Retopology

3.11 Grease Pencil Modeling

4 UV Mapping Cheats

4.1 The UV Image Editor

4.2 Smart UV Project

4.3 Manual Mapping

4.4 Diagnosing and Fixing

Map Distortions

4.5 Camera Mapping

4.6 Atlas Texturing

4.7 Packing and Layout

4.8 Copying UVs

4.9 Overlapping UVs

4.10 Breaking Islands

4.11 Exporting UV Layouts

4.12 The 0–1 Space

4.13 Pinning and

Unwrapping

5 Texturing and

Materials

5.1 Blender Render versus

Cycles

5.2 Viewport Rendering

5.3 Layered Painting:

Blender Internal

5.4 Flattening Layer

Painting

5.5 Camera Project Painting

5.6 Flat Projection

5.7 UV Cloning

5.8 Configuring a

Stencil Brush

5.9 Node Wrangler

5.10 Stroke Methods

6 Rigging and

Animation Cheats

6.1 Keyframing, Auto-Key,

and Optimization

6.2 Motion Paths: Following

and Clamping

6.3 Curves and Colors

6.4 Animation Baking

6.5 Squash and Stretch

6.6 Hierarchical Rigging

6.7 Selection Controls

6.8 Hooks

6.9 Grease Pencil

Referencing and

Animation

6.10 Rigify

7 Rendering Cheats

7.1 Rendering Wireframes

7.2 Texture Baking

7.3 Progressive Refine

7.4 Tiles and Bounces

7.5 Render Selections

7.6 Manual Culling

7.7 Comparative Renders

7.8 Render Layers

7.9 Render Layers and

Image Files

7.10 Combining

Render Layers

7.11 Light Portals

8 Add-Ons

8.1 More Objects!

8.2 Image Planes

8.3 F2 Add-On

8.4 Landscape Tool

8.5 Trees and More Trees!

8.6 Pie Menus

8.7 Camera Navigation

8.8 Scene Information

8.9 Layer Management

8.10 Blend File Packaging

8.11 Dynamic Space Bar

8.12 OpenStreetMap

8.13 Easy FX—Special

Effects

8.14 Books

9 Game Development

Cheats

9.1 Standardize Units

9.2 Normals and Backface

Culling

9.3 Real-Time Rendering

9.4 Modeling for Games:

Information and

Auto-Merging

9.5 UV Seams: Visualization

9.6 UV Seams: Combining

Islands

9.7 Object Combining and

Modularity

9.8 Exporting: Native

versus Nonnative

9.9 Exporting Animations

9.10 Collision Meshes

9.11 Lightmap UVs

9.12 Empties and

Hierarchies

9.13 Blender Export

Limitations

10 Interoperability

10.1 SVG and Inkscape

10.2 Blend Swap

10.3 Free Images and

Textures

10.4 Blender Cloud and

Texture Library

10.5 Working with Colors

and Color Palettes

10.6 Maps and Terrain

Displacement

10.7 MakeHuman

10.8 Renderers: V-Ray and

RenderMan

Index