Introducing Character Animation with Blender

Introduction.

PART I: CREATING A CHARACTER WITH BLENDER.

Chapter 1: Blender Basics: Interface and Objects.

Work Areas and Window Types.

Navigating the 3D Space.

Objects and Datablocks.

User Preferences.

Chapter 2:  Working with Meshes.

Polygons and Subsurfacing.

Extrusion Modeling and Box Modeling.

Chapter 3: Completing the Model with Materials, Textures, and Particles.

Material Datablock.

Material Properties.

Textures and UV Mapping.

Using Static Particles.

Chapter 4:  Armatures and Rigging.

Blender Armature System.

Building a Simple Armature.

Rigging Captain Blender.

Chapter 5:  Shape Keys and Facial Rigging.

Shape Key Basics.

Building a Shape Key Set for Captain Blender.

Facial Bones and Controls.

Improved Mesh Deformations Using Driven Shape Keys.

PART II:  BRINGING IT TO LIFE: ANIMATION.

Chapter 6:  Basics of Animation.

Keyframes and Ipos.

Using the Ipo Editor: Bouncing a Ball.

Interpolation and Extend Types.

Chapter 7:  Armature Animation.

Posing and Keyframing with the Action Editor.

Walk and Run Cycles.

Pose-to-Pose Animation.

Chapter 8:  Facial Animation and Lip Sync.

Facial Posing.

Lip Sync.

Playback.

Chapter 9:  Nonlinear Animation.

Using the NLA Editor.

NLA in Action.

Mixing Actions: Walking and Talking.

Chapter 10:  Further Issues in Character Animation.

Interacting with Props.

Deformation with Lattices.

Softbodies and Metaballs.

Chapter 11: Lighting, Rendering, and Editing Your Animation.

Lighting Basics.

Rendering Your Animation.

Editing in the Sequence Editor.

Chapter 12:  Using Python Scripts.

Installing and Executing Python Scripts.

Standard Scripts.

Extended Functionality with Scripts.

PART III:  BLENDER IN PRODUCTION.

Chapter 13: Full-Scale Productions: Elephants Dream and Plumiferos.

GPL, Creative Commons, and the Blender Artistic License.

Elephants Dream, the World’s First "Open Movie."

A Preview of Plumiferos.

Chapter 14:  A Look Into Elephants Dream.

Proog and Emo Rigs.

Texturing Proog.

Ways of Walking: Following a Path vs. a Manually Keyed Walk.

Tips on Studying the Elephants Dream Files.

Chapter 15:  Feifi the Canary: Plumiferos Takes Wing.

Introducing Feifi.

Rigging a Cartoon Bird.

Chapter 16:  Blender in the Pipeline.

Production Pipeline.

Using Libraries.

Collaboration with Subversion and Verse.

…and Back Into Blender.

PART IV:  BLENDER AND BEYOND.

Chapter 17:  Other Software and Formats.

Importing and Exporting Other File Formats.

Useful Open-Source Software for Blender Artists.

Blending into the (Near) Future.

Chapter 18:  Resources for Further Learning.

Selected Online Resources.

Recommended Books.

On Becoming a Blender Master.

Index.