Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite that is a real alternative to commercially available 3D design software. A cross-platform software package with millions of downloads annually, Blender is now one of the world's most popular 3D design tools. Although Blender is free, it's intended for design professionals and others motivated to become 3D artists. The Essential Blender will provide you with the knowledge you need to help integrate Blender into your work and begin to master its powerful creation tools.

If you've never tried 3D design before, an introductory chapter will familiarize you with relevant terminology and concepts. If you're already experienced with commercial 3D software, The Essential Blender will get you up to speed with Blender quickly.

After a tour of Blender's 3D modeling, animation, and rendering capabilities, you'll learn how best to use Blender for these tasks:
Object manipulation and animation
Mesh and sculpt modeling and shape animation
Materials and texturing (including UV unwrapping)
Lighting and rendering
Particle animation
Character rigging and animation
Node-based composition

This is a totally hands-on course, so you will be learning and doing 3d tasks throughout and will receive THE ESSENTIAL BLENDER course book

Course Outline: Blender Essentials Bootcamp | Cost $1995.00/per person

1. What is Blender & 3D?

• Installation, startup, Python, the API
• BBB

• Window Types
• Screens
• Scenes
• Familiar Windows: Outliner, Text, File Browser, Image Editor
• Familiar objects: Lights, Camera, Cube. Your first Render

• 3D View. Grab, Rotate, Scale. Local Mode
• What is an object? Vertices, Edges, and Faces
• Edit Mode. Grab, Rotate, Scale
• Extrusion, Facing, Normals. Mesh tools.
• Groups and Layers

4. Sculpting

• Subsurf, Smooth, Solid, Sculpting tools

5. Object Animation

• Keyframes, Actions, and IPOs under the covers

6. Character Animation

• Armatures: Creating and Posing

7. Rigging and Skinning

• Applying Armatures, Vertex Groups

8. Morphing

• Shape Keys, Lattices, ShrinkWrap, Cast
• Animation

9. Materials

• Shadeless and Shading
• Shaders and Textures
• Transparency: Z and Ray
• Node materials

10. Texture

• Mapping
• Procedural Textures
• Image Textures
• Node Textures

11. Lighting

• Types and Controls: Sun, Lamp, Spot, Hemi, Area
• Shadows
• Animation

12. UV and Painting

• Unwrapping
• Texture Painting

13. Particle Systems

• Halo Particles
• Shape Particles
• Boids
• Force Fields

14. Softbodies
15. Fluids
16. Cloth
17. Compositing

• Input/Output
• Color/Vector
• Filter/Converter
• Matte/Distort

18. Sequencing

• Movies and Image Sequencers
• Strip Properties and native effects
• Effect Strips
• Audio & FFMPEG output

19. Scripting

• a. Hello World
• b. Python Overview
• c. The Blender API

20. Wrap-up

Suggested Course Timeline