Book Review: Blender 3D 2.49 Architecture, Buildings, and Scenery by Allan Brito

Most examples of modeling with Blender make a number of assumptions that are a very bad fit for architecture: that you are viewing a convex model from the outside, for example, or that measurements can be rough or "organic." It's really very hard to find good information about drawing with precision constraints, keeping floors level, or making doors, windows, and walls work right. It's not just of use to architects -- anyone designing a large interior space whether for architecture or film production will find this book very useful.

#The contents

The book starts out with a bit of general introduction to Blender, which is obligatory, but I skimmed most of this since I know the basics of Blender fairly well by now. But then it moves on to an introduction to modeling with a specific focus on architectural models. You'll be tempted to skim this if you're familiar with Blender, but you shouldn't, because there are already subtle differences in approach at this point.

From there on, the book moves on to detailing models, adding textures, and finally to lighting and rendering. It'll be a little bit of a re-hash of familiar material for those already familiar with Blender, but each section deals with the unique challenges of architectural models.

The book has a very straightforward, matter-of-fact style -- what you might call "invisible style", and is very pleasant to simply sit back and read, as well as to follow along at the computer with Blender itself.

#Who’s this book for?

While the core audience is clearly architects trying to create visualizations in Blender to impress clients, there are a lot more people that need this kind of information. Any time you need a large interior space in Blender, you're going to find the approach in this book much more useful. For me, the attraction is designing sets and vehicle interiors for my project, "Lunatics". Almost everybody creating any sizable art or animation project in Blender is going to need to create artificial interiors at some point, and that's where this book is helpful.

#Relevance to free software

Obviously, as a book all about the free software package Blender, this book is very relevant.

#Pros

Excellent new perspective on modeling, texturing, lighting, and rendering. Great for anyone designing interior spaces and artificial objects.

#Cons

Most of the stuff in this book is already explained in other books. Of course, it's also not going to cover new Blender 2.5 features, since it is for the 2.4 series.