Official Blender Gamekit: Interactive 3D for Artists

blender gamekitblender 2.3 guideIf you want to know how to use blender, these are the books. They might not be up to date on the latest version, (especially the gamekit) but I managed to use both and found blender3d much easier to use. The online tutorials helped too, however there's so much missing that you need this book (both if you want to use blender for games). Maybe someday there'll be a pdf or something.. I find the books themselves a bit awkward if I am reading and following along. All in all, if you're serious about 3d/blender/games here are your manuals.

The book is a gentle introduction to Blender programming. It intends to lure in game programmers who want to build up their own games, and not just rack high scores in a game written by others. The authors cleverly start with an example of personalisation that can immediately grip you. They show how to easily wrap a facial image of someone onto a character's face. Just the sort of piquant appeal to some people. Various chapters describe the features of Blender that you can quickly use. Some of you well versed in computer graphics will notice that the book goes lightly over the maths. Or the game physics, for that matter. The complexity of the rendering algorithms is not shown here. So you need only a minimal background in maths and physics, since tools have been developed within Blender that apply these and hide the details from you. The discussion in this book is at the level of using those tools, not developing them. Still tempted? There is a lot more behind Blender. And if you find this book appealing, there are other more advanced texts behind this. Plus an entire online community of developers and gamers. The book only hints at the extent of the community.