Blender Quick Start Guide

3D Modeling, Animation, and Render with Eevee in Blender 2.8

Allan Brito

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789612936
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Software Development
• Index: Computer Science

Learn the new Blender 2.8 user interface and make 3D models

Key Features

• Find your way round the new user interface and tools of Blender 2.8
• Create materials, apply textures and render scenes
• Use the new cutting-edge real-time render EEVEE in your projects

Book Description

Blender is open source 3D creation software. With a long history and an enthusiastic community of users, it is the ideal choice for almost any kind of work with 3D modeling or animation. However, for new users, its power and flexibillity can sometimes be daunting, and that's when you need this book!

The book starts by showing you round the all-new Blender 2.8 user interface. You'll look at the most commonly-used options and tools, such as navigating in 3D and selecting objects. You will then use and manipulate one of the most important windows of the interface, the 3D View.

You'll learn how to use essential tools for working with 3D modeling. To give your models the feel of real-world objects, you'll learn how to create materials and set up surfaces. You'll see how to use Physically-Based Rendering (PBR), which allows you to craft realistic surfaces such as wood, stone, and metal. You will also work with Eevee, a new real-time render engine in Blender.

You will see how to add motion to objects, making use of Blender's impressive 3D animation features. Finally, you'll learn how to create scenes and organize them for rendering, and later add titles and effects using built-in Blender tools.

By the end of the book, you will be able to use Blender 2.8 new UI, Create 3D Models with textures, Animations, and Render them in real-time using Eevee.

What you will learn

• Manipulate and visualize your 3D objects in Blender
• Use polygon modeling tools such as extrude, loop cut, and more
• Apply precision modeling tools like snapping and the 3D Cursor
• Render a scene using the real-time engine Eevee
• Create materials for Eevee and Cycles
• Render a scene with the Eevee real-time engine
• Use PBR textures to craft realistic surfaces such as wood with the Shader Editor
• Add motion and animation using keyframes
• Create animation loops using curves and modifiers

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone interested in taking their steps with Blender. If you're an experienced 3D artists or hobbyist, this book will help you with its features.

Using Blender 2.8 UI, Shading and Navigator Widget

Finding your way around Blender is the first step to starting to create astonishing 3D models or animations with the software; knowing the interface is critical. In the following chapters, you will learn how to use and manipulate the new user interface of Blender 2.8, and some render options with the OpenGL options.

Blender 2.8 is a huge milestone for the software and you will get to know a lot of the new tools, like the new Eevee renderer. You will also learn how to create 3D models using polygons and even create a quick animation using 3D text.

This first chapter will focus on getting you around the interface! Here is a list of what you will learn:

• Managing the user interface
• 3D navigation
• Selecting objects
• Applying 3D transformations
• Using keyboard shortcuts in Blender

Technical requirements

You will be required to have Blender 2.80 installed to follow this procedure. Even if you have a later version of Blender, the described example should work with no significant problems.

The code files of this chapter can be found on GitHub:
https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Blender-Quick-Start-Guide.

Check out the following video to see the code in action:

bit.ly/2IocoFW.

The Blender user interface

When you open Blender for the first time, you will see what we call the default user interface. The interface in Blender is flexible to the point where you can stretch and reshape it in any way you want. The following screenshot shows the default user interface for Blender:

Figure 1.1: Default user interface

One of the core concepts about the interface is that it works with a window system. Each division of the interface is a window that you can resize and change based on context.

Resizing windows

To resize a window you have to place the mouse cursor between a division; once the cursor turns into a double arrow, you can left click and drag to resize the window, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 1.2: Resizing windows

Managing windows

The process of creating new windows in Blender is quite simple once you learn how to use the corners of the existing windows. Each of the four corners of a window will work as a reference for either splitting or merging windows.

If you move the mouse cursor to a corner, like the top right, you will see the cursor turning into a cross as shown in the next screenshot:

Figure 1.3: Cross at the corner

Once you have the cursor as a cross, you can left-click and drag the mouse towards the center of your actual window to create a division, shown as follows:

Figure 1.4: Splitting a window

You have two options to split windows:

• Moving up or down: Creates a horizontal division
• Moving left or right: Creates a vertical division

Merging windows

How do we merge windows? The process to join the two windows is the same we use to create a division. But, instead of dragging the cursor towards the center, you will move it to the window you want to merge.

There is a simple rule you have to follow to merge two windows successfully—both of them must share the same edge. The shared side must have the same size.

Here is an example of two windows that share the same edge:

Figure 1.5: Windows with the same edge

If you place the mouse cursor in one of the corners for the shared edge, you will be able to left click and drag the cursor over the window that you want to disappear. Blender will help you by showing a big arrow pointing to the direction of the expanding window, shown in the next screenshot:

Figure 1.6: Merging windows

Active window and shortcuts

At this point, you already know how to manipulate windows, and we can move to the next core concept of Blender, which is the active window. Why is that important? Bec...