Where to find Blender 3d Documentation and Educational Resources

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So you want to learn how to use Blender 3d (free open source 3D content creation suite)

Okay, I won't sugar coat it, learning how to use Blender 3d is going to take some effort on your part. Don't expect to open it up and immediately create stunning artwork. There are a lot of buttons, options and menus to learn how to use. And if you are completely new to 3d software, you are also going to be trying to learn new concepts as well.

Often one of the hardest tasks is just finding the right tutorial or documentation to get you started. And if you are a completely new user, you might not even know exactly what you are looking for.

But don't run away in horror just yet. The blender community has produced an amazing amount of documentation. The greater majority of which is completely free to download, study and learn from.

I have compiled some of the communities' best documentation and tutorial resources to ease your initial learning curve.

Blender Documentation

Free Blender Documentation and Tutorials

Get the latest documentation for Blender.
Blender Quick Start Guide
The blender Quick Start guide provides you with a basic overview of blender functionality on a single A4 page, ready to print. It is designed for beginners who don't want to read the whole documentation, and for experienced 3D artists who want to quickly learn blender.
Blender User Manual
Blender's user manual is maintained by a dedicated group of Blender users who work hard to keep it up to date with the frequent new releases of Blender and it's features.
Download the Blender Wiki in PDF
Marco Ardito converted the blender wiki to pdf format for those who need/want offline access to the latest Blender documentation. He plans to update it monthly. At this point it is a single pdf file, over 1700 pages, about 52 MB.
Noob to Pro
This book is a series of tutorials arranged in a sequence to help the new user become a Blender expert. The tutorials become increasingly more difficult. As a result, intermediate users may quickly advance to whatever tutorial is most suitable for their knowledge and can continue along the sequence. Although there are many different learning paths a user could take, we've made a concerted effort to accommodate everyone.
Essential Blender pdf
Essential Blender will get you working with modeling, materials and texturing, lighting, particle systems, several kinds of animation, and rendering. In addition, there are chapters on the new mesh sculpting tools and the brilliant compositor.

Blender Video

Learn about the Blender interface

Super3boy's 26th Blender Tutorial(2.46 Hair, UV, and Grass)

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1 - Interface - Curso de Blender

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Toshiba Sucks (revisited) Part 1

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Blender_Interface_8_Create,Save and Load Themes

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Blender 3d Change apparence of Blender theme

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Blender Courses

All of the following courses are free.
CGCookie
Cg Cookie is an online education resource for cg artists working with various popular applications. Currently, we are offering education on 3D Studio Max, Blender, Maya, ZBrush, and Cheetah3D.

Our educational materials are presented either in a written text format, or streaming video. Our video format is quite large and it is recommended that you have a decent internet connection and local computer with enough RAM to view. Most of our videos are streamed at 500-700kbs with widths ranging from 640-960px depending on the content.
BlenderCookie
Our goals of this site.

* To offer blender education to artists around the world
* Participate in community events, contests and give back to the community
* Support the foundation and further development of blender
* Have a bit of fun.
Blender 3D: Product Rendering
Video tutorials: Product Rendering with Blender utilizing traditional 3 key light rigs, fake global illumination, and external GI render engines. Also covered: materials and lamp definitions.
Blender 3D: Digital Modeling of Organic Surfaces
Video tutorials: Digital Organic Product Modeling with Blender 3D using Polygon Subdivision Surface Modeling. Also covers steps to several modeling projects with tips and techniques.
Blender Basics- 3rd Edition
Classroom Tutorial Book:
The manual addresses skills in a sequential order so skipping around may leave out important skill descriptions addressed in earlier chapters.
Blender 3D Design Course
The Blender 3D Design course is intended to offer students an introduction to the world of computer generated 3-D modeling and animation. As an introductory course, it provides a basic understanding of the skills and techniques employed by 3-D designers in a wide range of applications. In this online course we will explore basic mesh modeling, applying textures and materials to 3-D objects, lighting, animation and rendering. This course should provide a good basis for further independent study in architectural, engineering and theatrical modeling and game design.
BlenderCourse.com
This projects goal is to develop free lessons and/or tutorials in PDF format for the 3D modeling tool Blender 3D. The idea is to write step-by-step courses which cover various Blender related topics in peoples native languages. All the BlenderCourses are written in the same style and layout in order to make consistent and recognisable ebooks.

Weekly Blender Animations

Features short animations of Blender features. A new animation is added weekly.
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Blender Training DVD's

Learn tips, tricks, techniques and secrets from the blender masters.

Creature Factory
This extensive tutorial set, created by the renowned Blender artist Andy Goralczyk, teaches artists how to craft a fully finished 3D animated scene. Tracking the evolution of an idea from creation to final render - and beyond. The result of the tutorials is an epic 90 second trailer.

The Creature Factory videos are also available on blip.tv
Learn Character Animation with Blender
Created by William Reynish, character animator Big Buck Bunny.

This DVD covers all aspects of computer-based character animation including workflow, acting, posing, keyframes, weight, walks & runs and overlapping action, through a series of video tutorials that are easy to follow and allow you to stop and start playback whenever you want.

Learn Character Animation with Blender videos are also available on blip.tv
The ManCandy FAQ
The ManCandy FAQ is a collection of animations and video tutorials for rigging and animating with ManCandy. The animations are in question and answer format (hence the title) and are intended to be a fun way of documenting the rig.

The ManCandy videos are also available on blip.tv
The BlenderNewbies Tutorial Compilation DVD-ROM
This special compilation disc is packed with BlenderNewbies Blender video tutorials that cover a wide range of subjects while maintaining a presentation style that allows even beginners to keep up when things get to be more advanced.

In addition to the BlenderNewbies tutorials, you'll get several important bonuses that will enhance your studies of Blender.
Training DVDs from Montage Studios

    Introduction to Character Creation, Part 1

      Meant as a crash course in modeling with Blender for newer users, this training DVD takes the viewer through the basics of the interface, navigation, modeling, etc. Then puts all of it to the test with a step-by-step modeling exercise in creating your first character!

    Modeling the Female Head

      One of the most challenging things in the realm of 3D is to create a realistic human head. Whether it's dealing with proportions, features or edge flow, the human head is a difficult undertaking to model. This DVD tries to ease that process by providing ample demonstrations and techniques from start to finish on modeling the female head.

    Modeling the Female Body

      The follow-up to modeling a human head is of course modeling the body. This second training DVD takes the viewer through all the processes, techniques, and explanations of creating the female body in Blender 3D. All of the companion files are included on the dvd, both model files and reference images.
Big Buck Bunny
Big Buck Bunny - Project Peach - was Blender Foundations second Open Movie project,
Just like project Orange, the movie itself and all of the production files have been published under the Creative Commons, free to be reused and for everyone to learn from. More importantly, the team has challenged Blender itself to the max, inspired the entire development community to prove Blender is ready for feature quality 3D cartoons. Special attention has been paid to fur editing and rendering, and animating cartoonish characters.
Apricot Open Game DVD
On the Apricot DVD you will find:
- The game itself, with installer, running in Linux, Windows and OS X.
- All .blend files, models, textures, sound clips, game sources, and so on... all the material used to create the game.
- Documentation and video tutorials by the team members about all technical aspects the game; like how to re-use assets, animate characters, or add new levels.
- The Peach movie in various formats

Cool Educational Sites

Over the years a variety of great sites have been created to educate the CG/Blender masses. Here are a few to get you started.
CG Cookie
Cg Cookie is an online education resource for cg artists working with various popular applications. Currently, we are offering education on 3D Studio Max, Blender, Maya, ZBrush, and Cheetah3D. Our educational materials are presented either in a written text format, or streaming video.
Blender 3D Architect
Allan Brito provides valuable tips and tutorials about using Blender 3D for Architectural Visualization.
blenderguru
He provides various tips and tutorials to get the most out of blender.
3d Synthesis
A wonderful collection of tutorials showing how to create rather unusual effects.
KatsBits
Making 3D content for games & interactive media
Low poly 3D models, meshes, level editing and textures making
Hints, tips, tutorials & resources for 3D modeling & content creation

Foundation Blender Compositing

Foundation Blender Compositing

This book provides concise yet step-by-step examples on using all of the power of Blender to provide a complete post-production workbench. Specifically, this book shows you how to:

* Create Masks and Rotoscope video
* Texture mattes and video planes
* Composite any image or render with other images
* Introduce special effects, such as blur, smoke, and light.
* Add titles and text, mixes, fades, wipes and splices
* Remove Green Screen and composite CG with live action shots
* Assemble all the shots and audio into a completed movie

Newest Blender Books

Blender Books

Harness the great power of Blender with these amazing books written by respected community members.
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Josh Beck Video Tutorial Series

An excellent set of Blender tutorials aimed at getting the user comfortable with blender and it's functions.

Blender Tutorial --Texturing and Bump Mapping

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UTB-Bleder Project (Bridge)

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Blender Sculpting Tutorial -- Sculpting Tools Part 1

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Blender Tutorial Lesson 7

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Blender Tutorial Bridge Building Lesson 1

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view all 25 videos

More Great Blender 3D Books

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Blenderart Magazine

The magazine was started for the blender community, having the aim of publishing a bi-monthly PDF magazine; free for download. The goal of the magazine is to provide quality learning content for the blender community, from the efforts of the community itself.

Each issue contains a wide selection of tutorials and articles based on a single theme.
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Blender Videos

Modeling Videos

Super3boy's Tenth Blender Tutorial(UV Mapping)

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Super3boy's Second Blender Tutorial(part 1)

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Super3boy's Third Blender Tutorial(Subsurf)

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Blender 3D Modeling Tutorial Multiresolution Face

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how i model 3d heads

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Blender 3D Modeling

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Blender Summer of Documentation

The Blender Summer of Documentation was a community project launched during the summer of 2006 to produce in depth documentation of various areas of Blender usage. The following documents were produced and have become a valuable learning resource for the Blender community.
Blender Summer of Documentation

Blender Videos

Blender Materials

Node material test

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Blender Transluscency

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blender ZTransp to get alpha on a model

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Blender Fireball test

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Susanne Carpaint

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College: Weather Report

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Blender Game Engine

Game Engine Documentation
Blender has a fully integrated realtime/3d game creation engine. You can find the latest documentation and information on it's use here.
Blender Gamekit 2
This fully revised and updated second edition has been written with Blender 2.48, and covers all improvements for game creation thanks to the Open Game Yo Frankie! project.

The Blender GameKit starts with an extensive section for people who are new to 3D - explaining all basic concepts - or new to Blender; with a full introduction to the interface. Then it shows in step-by-step tutorials the fun of creating models, adding motion to them, and how to turn them into simple games. Experienced 3D artists will appreciate the more complex game demos, the character animation tutorials, the introduction to Python, a tutorial with the Frankie character, and the advanced reference section.

The CDROM contains several playable and editable Blender game demos, created by renowned artists from the Blender community. It also contains all the files needed for the tutorials and Blender V2.48, for all platforms.

# Full Color printed, 320 pages
# Edited and updated by Carsten Wartmann
# Design and DTP by Samo Korosec
# Produced by Ton Roosendaal, Blender Foundation
# Book revenues will be fully used to support Blender projects.
Original Blender Gamekit + CDROM
With the newly announced Gamekit 2nd edition coming, the Blender Foundation has released the Original Blender Game kit for free download along with all the files that were supplied on the accompanying CDROM. (includes Blender 2.25)

Please note that the book and .blend files were written for Blender 2.25.

The Blender GameKit starts with an extensive section for people who are new to 3D - explaining all basic concepts - or new to Blender; with a full introduction to the interface. Then it shows in step-by-step tutorials the fun of creating models, adding motion to them, and how to turn them into simple games. Experienced 3D artists will appreciate the more complex game demos, the character animation tutorials, the introduction to Python and the advanced reference section.

The CDROM contents is part of this downloadable product too, and contains 10 playable and editable Blender game demos, all created by the renowned artist department of Not a Number. It also contains all the files needed for the tutorials and Blender V2.24, for all platforms.
Blender Game Engine Tutorials
Tutorials for the Blender Game Engine.

Blender Videos

Blender Animation Videos

Blender 3D walk cycle test

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Human female dummy walk cycle and pose - Blender 2.46

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My walk animation

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Cat Walk Cycle (Blender 3D Animation)

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Blender Walk Cycke

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Walk cycle

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What others are saying about Blender 3d

Dell XPS One 27 (2710) all-in-one PC review
A time of 17sec was recorded in the Blender 3D rendering test, 37sec in the iTunes MP3 encoding test and 34min in the AutoGordianKnot DVD-to-Xvid conversion test. We also ran the ArcSoft MediaConverter 7 test to convert a DVD file to an MKV file, ...
Kanzi: ZTE's 3D UX for ICS handsets
Kanzi Studio works seamlessly with leading 3D content creation tools, such as Autodesk 3DS Max, Maya and XSI and Blender. Once built, modifying and deploying UI designs to various different devices and platforms can be done seamlessly and without ...
Where can I find free 3D models and other game assets?
I'm starting to make a 3D game in WebGL (using the Three.js engine), and I'd really like to find a place where I can download 3D models for free. I need to basic stuff like human characters, houses (maybe) and other things that a fantasy-themed game ...

Explore more Blender Related Lenses

Here is a list of my Blender related lenses, all nicely organized and contained in one spot.

You can find lenses on the following Blender topics:
Blender Resources
Blender Artist Spotlight
Misc Blender Related Lenses
Blender How-to's and Tutorial Lenses
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Thanks for stopping by!

I hope these resources have eased your entry into the world of Blender 3d.

Blender 3d is a constantly evolving program and as such, blender documentation constantly changes to keep pace.

If you know of a great learning resource that should be listed here, just leave a link and short description below and I will get right on it.

  • lravidlearner Jan 15, 2011 @ 9:39 am | delete
    This is a wonderful collection of Blender tutorials. I'm always looking for free resources for students, and these are top-notch. Blessed by a SquidAngel ~
  • GreenScreen Jan 3, 2011 @ 3:01 pm | delete
    We've fooled around with Maya, but not yet Blender 3d. Looks very cool, we gotta check it out. Thanks.
  • utilizingproject Mar 14, 2010 @ 7:21 am | delete
    Nice lens. Good information supplied. Your submitted picture are looks very nice. Thanks for sharing such like useful lens.
  • Mar 7, 2010 @ 8:32 pm | delete
    I like that you think. Thank you for share very much.
  • kradical23 Jan 7, 2010 @ 5:57 am | delete
    Just wanted to give you some props for the hard work you put into the lens, I would know - I specialise in supplying books for schools :)
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dreamsgate

I am the Managing Editor of Blenderart Magazine and a long time user of Blender.
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