Blender 2.6 Cycles, Materials and Textures Cookbook: Over 40 Recipes to Help You Create Stunning Materials and Textures Using the Cycles Rendering Engine With Blender

I have this book, and I can tell you that if the Author was to put out another one, I would instantly buy it. I think at its core, it is that good for people like me who really had no understanding at all about the Cycles Nodes.Having said that, I can confirm a few things other posters have mentioned.1. The book could have used a really good review and final editing before being published. So if you get it, be prepared for that.2. The book version is in black and white. I blame the publisher for this. Believe me when I tell you, you will want the color images, because many of the setups a VERY complicated, and having a picture you can actually see is very helpful. (I actually bought this book twice, so I could get the PDF version that had color images). Trust me, you NEED the color images.3. There have been MANY changes to the Cycles Render engine since this book came out. I am using 2.69 now. I have only 1 chapter remaining, and I can say that almost none of the materials end up looking like the ones in the book. some have only a sleight difference...some look almost nothing like the picture in the book.In summary, if you are looking for a good way to get your hands dirty actually using Cycles material nodes, like I was, then this is an excellent book...I would LOVE to get an updated version.But if you are looking for node setup that look exactly as advertised...then you may not be entirely happy.Man I hope the author puts out an updated version...I would get that thing so fast it would make your head spin.

I normally never give books put out by this publisher a passing grade because of the cheap paper, poor editing and horrible illustrations. However, I have recently gotten back into working with Blender and I decided it would be unfair to this author not to give his work a shout.I've owned this book for several years but put it aside for reasons I can't even remember now but have picked it up again and I'm actually enjoying it. If you follow the text very carefully you can learn a great deal from this book. There are many "wow" moments. Not only will you learn about Cycles rendering but also tricks that make it easier to get around Blender in general.In fact, I thinking about getting the 3rd edition although I will have to hold my nose because of the fact that the publisher is still Packt!

I like this after looking it over, but when I downed the sample files and tried to load in the underwater files it crashed my copy of blender. I have a decent system with 4 gigs of ram and a cuda processor pci express video card with 2 gigs of ram on it, but still some of the sample files crash blender when I try to open them.Edit: I tried to contact the publisher about the problems I have with a couple files but they never replied. Disappointed.Edit2: No sooner than I typed the above than the author himself replied to an email with a helpful suggestion.

Unfortunately it comes a bit late as there are enough changes that can effect the results of the materials that you want to create. That said, it is still worth the price of admission. Solid examples and are well planned out. The one observation I would say for most of the books in this category is that they can benefit from having a proof reader familiar with the product they are writing about. Some documentation refers back to steps that do not exist either in set up or procedural steps. These criticisms are not show stoppers though as the formulas are fairly rock solid.

Note that 2 of the chapters are downloadable from the Packt site{which is a bit cheeky they should have been in the book}Blender evolves quite quickly, but the ideas are still good for 2.69The illustrations are low res BW which does not help but again, better ones can be downloaded from the site.

The pics of small nodes are useless, because of lo-res print quality. For this price author should think more about brightness-contrast issues.

The downloadable example files are also very useful as starting points. This book explains the core concepts of cycles nodes and will get you going in the right direction for your own projects.

Not all that useful.

I wanted a fairly comprehensive guide to get me through the basics of Cycles and get me setup with creating materials and getting fairly good renders (having already used Blender Internal and wanting to improve my own texturising knowledge). I'm halfway through the book at this present time and I have very mixed feelings about it.On the upper-side, the tutorials themselves are very elaborate once you get past the author's style of language; it does get a little confusing from time to time but for the most part I've managed to get through most of it with a little bit of guess-work here and there. You do get reference Blend files as well for comparison reasons.On the negative side though, I've found myself blindly following the tutorials without truly understanding what or why I'm doing it. He usually gives a couple of paragraphs at the end of the 'task' but I don't think it's anywhere near elaborate enough to understand what I'm doing or what I've just completed. What this book urgently needs is a guide on exactly why he's using the node(s) in question, what each node does (preferably both in relation to where it is in the node-tree, and how it effects the end result). For example, he'll tell you to add a Fresnel node without telling you what the Fresnel node is for. Certain ones like the mix node, you learn to pick up very quickly because he uses them over and over again, but I've come across some in this book where I've been left scratching my head at exactly what it does. A particular favourite is when he tells you to add a 'mix node' but then changes to 'additive / mix / multiply / etc.' A chart at the start of the book explaining what the purpose of each setting and what it does would have helped here. Some reference photographs might have helped in some places as well, as if to say 'this is the texture I want to recreate in 3D.'The other negative is like others have mentioned, the black and white colour images. Usually, the tutorials by Packt are very good, but their printed material can really do with some colour images. This particular book could benefit from being printed in colour, and having more screenshots as well, it would minimise the guess-work involved.I found out after buying the book that there are two extra chapters that you download. I wasn't particularly happy with that. The reason I get the books is because I prefer to have (and keep) a physical copy and I find it much easier to flick through pages than fiddle with computer screens. The two chapters are comparatively short but it was a nuisance nevertheless.With all of the above said however, I do feel a lot more confident with nodes and Cycles. There's plenty of scope for experimentation, and I do think the book can be used for reference if struggling to create a particular texture. In that sense, it's done its job. I do wish he would've been a bit more elaborate with his explanations though because I don't feel like I've learned as much as I could have.

Fin dalle prime pagine tutto sembra finalmente semplice, accessibile e comprensibile; ciò che prime appariva incomprensibile e intricato si svela e finalmente ci si sente liberi di sperimentare senza avere l'impressione di muoversi casualmente tra i nodi.Il grande Enrico Valenza fá un ottimo lavoro nel porre solide basi dandoci gli strumenti per capire le dinamiche di questo versatile motore, fornendoci inoltre consigli su come impostare e organizzare il lavoro.Una guida di cui si sentiva la necessitá ideata e realizzata meglio di quanto avrei sperato.Esauriente, facile e completo, da avere.P.s. Peccato per le immagini in b/n in ogni caso si possono scaricare le versioni a colori dal sito dell'editore.

Although I have been using various 3d graphics packages over several years I was completely unable to work out how to set up materials and textures to work with the Blender Cycles Renderer. But this book changed all that. It takes you through the process in a very clear and concise way and I'm delighted with my purchase.

The text and learning a really okey, but when it comes to the blurry black and white pictures it gets really hard to follow.

Blender è in continua evoluzione, pertanto alcune cose descritte nel libro, sono già cambiate nella versione che sto utilizzando.Nonostante ciò il libro è veramente completo ed utile ed aiuta ad orientarsi con esempi pratici e completi nella scoperta e nell'utilizzo del node editor.Consigliato a tutti.