Where to find Blender 3d Documentation and Educational Resources

Blender Documentation 

Free Blender Documentation and Tutorials

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.

You can download a free pdf version

The pdf version (on an external host).

You can still purchase a printed hard copy at:
Blender E-shop
Amazon

Blender Courses 

Blenducation

Blenducation seeks to provide a live, high quality learning experience for anyone interested 3D design and animation.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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 

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

Blender Summer of Documentation 

Blender Summer of Documentation

Introduction to Python Scripting
Introduction to the Game Engine
Introduction to Character Animation
Introduction to Rigging
Introduction to Physical Simulation
Introduction to Modeling
Introduction to Lighting
Introduction to the Principles of Animation
Introduction to Materials and Procedural Texturing
Introduction to the Blender Database

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.