THERE IS A WHOLE LOT OF LEARNING TO BE HAD

With the dramatic changes coming to Blender 2.5, everything from the beautiful new interface to custom key maps, there is a lot of information to get your head around. Having treaded the waters of Blender training for the past year, we at CG Cookie strive to give you the very best. Instructor Jonathan Williamson will introduce you to blender 2.5 and walk you through how to use it through our 7 unique training series.

We decided to break up the training into their individual series to allow more focus on these individual sections, while giving the advance users the opportunity to pick and choose the sections you are interested in learning. Or if you are looking for the total blender 2.5 introduction, then pre-ordering the full subscription is recommended.

Our training is outlined below and is evolving as is blender 2.5. We are in a reactive mode with the development of blender 2.5, and the below will be updated accordingly. To see past examples of our work please visit our blender section on http://cgcookie.com.

Notice: All of the material within this training bundle is subject to change based on the development of blender 2.5

FEATURE HIGHLIGHT VIDEOS

Get a glimpse of some the new features in Blender 2.5. We will update these as more features are locked down.

DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING AMENDMENTS

Blender 2.5 is being developed at an unbelievable pace, new additions seem to be added every week. This development pace will most likely continue for some time, on through Project Durian.  Due to this development we struggled with when to release our training. If we released it earlier, you, the users, could play with it sooner, but if we waited until development was further along then you would recieve more up-to-date features. Neither of these options fulfilled our end goal: providing the best possible training on Blender 2.5.

In answer to this we have chosen to produce training amendments. What this means is the training will still be released following the first official 2.5 release. It also means we will be producing and delivering amendments to the training on any new, major features that are added post-release. We will continue producing these amendments through the duration of Project Durian.

These amendments will be available free of charge to anyone that has purchased the training. Think of this as training insurance. :)

SNUGGLE UP TO BLENDER 2.5

Below is an overview of our scheduled series training. Note: Exact subjects are subject to changed based on the blender 2.5 development.

Interface

Your first foray in Blender

The idea of getting into 3D can be very exciting, particularly when Blender offers so much for free. However, the reality of what’s in front of you can become quite daunting upon opening Blender. As with any 3D software package, there are an immense number of tools and settings and the interface reflects this; it’s easy to get lost. In order to get you up and running comfortably this series will take you through all of the basics of Blender. Including: getting around the interface, navigating in 3D space, the various object types, and moving your objects around.

• Getting around the interface
• Working with objects
• Customizing your workspace

Modeling

There’s a character and scene to make!

Nearly everything in 3D starts with a model. In order to take advantage of many aspects of Blender it is important to build a strong foundation in modeling. This series will begin by introducing the basic modeling tools and then moving on to more advanced tools like modifiers as we start to build our character and scene. By the end of the series you have completed an entire character, complete with accessories and an accompanying scene.

• Creating our character
• Making the accessories
• Striking the Scene

Materials/Texturing

Color makes anything interesting

Although you may have created a breath-taking model by this point, unless it is textured it will (for the most part) remain forever boring. Materials and textures give your model that touch of realism and polish. This series will look at creating and adjusting materials, UV mapping and texturing.

• Working with materials
• UV mapping
• Adding textures

Particles/Physics

Making things move on their own is just too much fun

In the real world there are many things that we take for granted (smoke, grass, cloth, etc) but that are remarkably hard to recreate in the 3D World. That is where Blender physics simulators come in. This series will take you through the process of simulating the character’s cloth, particle grass and more.

• Making grass with particles
• Playing with smoke
• Using the cloth system

Animation

Come on man, run!

One of the most common uses for 3D is to create animations. Blender’s animation system allows you to do everything from making your character run to animating dynamic camera movement. In this series we will take a look at how to create a series of animations with the character and scene we have built thus far from the modeling series.

• Creating a relaxed idle animation
• Animating a walk cycle
• Sprinting with a run cycle

Lighting/Rendering

Can you see anything?

Lighting and rendering are generally some of last steps in the 3D workflow. Just as in the real world, lighting allows you to illuminate your scene as you see fit. Various rendering options allow you to add global illumination, ray-tracing, etc to finish off your scene. This series will introduce you to the lighting world and the differences between indoor and outdoor lighting. Finally we all also discuss rendering, tips and setting up ambient occlusions.

• Setting up a standard, 3-point lighting rig
• Lighting a day scene
• Lighting a night scene
• Rendering with Ambient Occlusion/Global illumination

Post-Processing

I’m sorry but Premiere just isn’t as cool anymore

Although, we would all like to create that perfect render without any extra steps, it is usually necessary to go in and perform some post processing on our image. Blender provides all of tools necessary to accomplish this with the node-based compositor. Not only that, but when it comes time to put together our animation clips, Blender allows us to set aside other applications for video editing by doing it all in the Video Sequencer. Which, is exactly what we’ll be doing in this series.

• Using the node compositor for color and level adjustments
• Putting together our animation outputs with the Video Sequencer

Notice: All of the material within this training series is subject to change based on the development of blender 2.5

Just a few short weeks after Release Candidate 1 is published to the public. We will begin released our series training one by one. You can expect to see a release of a new series every 1-2 weeks, but we will be working hard to make this happen sooner.