The Blender Secrets E-book

What's in each book?

There are 5 PDF's, each covering several areas of Blender. Below you can read a short summary of each book.

Book 1 - Modeling Basics, more Modeling tips, Booleans, Low Poly, Cables and Pipes

526 pages of written modeling tips with accompanying videos. You want to see the video? Simply click on the topic title and you’ll be taken to the video. 

There are 182 modeling topics in this first 526 page PDF, ranging from beginner tips to fairly advanced topics and everything in between. Want to know exactly how to use Grid Fill? How to convert geometry to Quads? Why that bevel doesn’t work and how to fix it? How to use Blender’s limited NURBS functionality? How to get the most out of booleans and much, much more? You'll find those topics and more in this book.

Book 2 - Sculpting, Retopology, UV Unwrapping, Materials, Textures and Baking

With 147 topics spread over 573 pages, this book is even bigger than book 1 and dives deeper into its topics. Sculpting has become a powerful tool in Blender, and we explore the sculpt tools and the interesting workflows they make possible. From quickly concepting a robot helmet, easily adding intricate details to a sword and much more.

It also covers sculpting clothing for 3D characters. Important in any 3D artists’ toolset is being able to effectively do Retopology. So we look at the entire Retopology workflow. Of course, UV Unwrapping is not far behind once you’ve retopo’d your model. And we also explore materials, textures and how to bake them. You can see why this is the biggest of the 5 books! 

Book 3 - Architecture modeling, Environments, Characters and Clothing.

We’re still not done with the modeling topics! In 58 topics spread over 288 pages, we look at modeling tips that are useful if you’re making architectural visualisations. Like how to make custom Bevel profiles, use Arrays, create a pillow and much more. Related to the architecture topic, we then dive into Environment-related tips. In this section there are different workflows for making trees and plants, how to scatter things, and more.

This book is essential if you want to make any kind of architectural or environment art, in other words. In the second part of the book, we look at creating characters and modeling clothing. For example, easy cloth sewing, modeling a dress, and how to do a cloth simulation with highly detailed clothing.

Book 4 - Grease Pencil, Modifiers, Rigging, Animation, Simulations and Particles

In 138 topics spread out over 458 pages, we explore the various Grease Pencil tools (Grease Pencil basics, custom textured brushes, how to turn 3D animation into 2D animation, and more). We then look at the various Blender modifiers. Rigging is next, from a very easy trick to rig clothing in just a few clicks, easy rigging basics, adding props and extra bones to your characters, and much more.

We also look at a lot of animation tips, from motion graphics animation to character animation. You’ll learn how to manually animate a simple walk cycle, import and mix Mixamo animation, retarget motion capture animation, and more. Then we look at nature animation (flowing water, swaying grass and more) and simulations and particles. Last but not least, this section will teach you how to blow stuff up in Blender! Kabloom!

Book 5 - Rendering, Lighting, NPR renders, Compositing, Workflow and Interface tips

It would be a shame to make beautiful models and animate them, only to not render the result. So over the next 259 pages and 112 topics, we dive into rendering techniques and tricks, as well as how to set up lighting for your scenes. Besides photorealistic rendering, we also look at non-photoreal rendering (NPR).

Then once everything’s rendered, the way to make it really shine is with compositing. This is where you combine and polish your renders so they look really professional and cinematic. Finally, we go over some workflow and interface tips that will speed up your Blender work.