New Free E-Book About Paper Model Design With Blender 3D

[PixelOz]

Hi I'm David Guzmán - PixelOz and I have just finished writing a new completely free e-book about how to design paper models with computer software. It shows a lot of the software programs that can be used to do the job but it is based mainly on Blender 3D and an illustration program.

It is 227 pages long and includes hundreds of color illustrations and images to help people understand the concepts of the e-book better.

All the 3D images of the book were created with the open source program Blender and it was written entirely in another open source program which is Open Office Writer with some illustrations made with CorelDraw X3.

I found while researching the subject and with my own experience that were many new paper model designers were having a we bit of trouble was not in some complex thing but in the basics of the subject and I decided to write something to shed some light on the subject and this e-book was the result of that.

The zip file contains the e-book in PDF format, a few 3D Blender files that can help a bit with practice and an additional unfolding script to the one that Blender already includes that has other special capabilities written by a talented programmer named Čestmír Houška (Czestmyr).

You can download the e-book from here together with other free stuff that I make like wallpapers, icons, etc.:

PixelOz on deviantART

Here in Deviantart hit the Browse Gallery button to see all my things.

You can also download it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=b...eada0a1ae8665a

Maybe some of you remember that I was the guy that designed the yellow cartoonish Ford Hot Rod 32 - 33 paper model a while ago. If you were wondering what I was doing in the meantime it was this (apart from other personal or work related projects that I was doing). Writing the e-book took me a while but I decided to do it because I though that it was more important than just designing another paper model. It is the first time I write a book but I think that it can explain the concepts that I wanted to explain good enough to help new or even not so new designers a little. I really hope it does help. Best wishes to the paper model design community. I hope you paper model designers enjoy it. Last edited by DavidOne_1; 25-Mar-10 at 21:12.

[mchale]

cool thanks for letting us know

[cgutzmer]

Super! can never have too many help books!

[Zathros]

Hay que bueno! Y gratis!! Muchisimo gracias!!

I wish I were in Puerto Rico now. My family comes from Caguas, a long time ago. I have about 8 Pasteles waiting for me in the freezer, and when I get a little better, I will eat them while reading your book!! Thanks a lot.

P.S. Thanks for mentioning the Hot Rod Ford, that one got by me.

[spgifford]

A very nice gift to the community, a lot of work went in to this book. Thank You.

[cMags]

Awesome work! Thank you so much! This will be a great addition to the community and a big help to those of us who want to try their hand out at this but don't know where to start. I love that Hot Rod model too, I've had it in my build pile for a while now, just hadn't gotten to it. Thanks again!

[PixelOz]

This is the first time I wrote a book but I put a lot of effort into it and I really hope that it helps to clarify some things that are sometimes a bit confusing to new designers.

Browsing around many paper modeling forums I noticed a lot many of the troubles that some new designers were having with it and that's why I decided to put model design aside for a while cause it seemed to me that this could be better for the community overall.

That is also the reason of why it is mainly based around the Blender 3D program because it's a 3D program that is capable enough and it can be accessed by anybody without having to worry about the budget cause it is completely free. Despite that it shows a lot of the programs that can be used to do paper model design and it teaches very important principles about paper model design that can be translated to many other 3D programs out there.

In addition as I state in the book the Blender 3D software is in a crucial moment of its life cause it's in the middle of a mayor overhaul toward version 2.6 (it will be ready around summer) that is making the software much more powerful and it has a complete interface redesign that promises also to make the software easier to learn and use.

At the moment until the new version is finished the book is based in the latest production version of Blender which is version 2.49b which is still very capable.

I want to clarify here as I also stated in the book that the book is not intended to teach you how to model in 3D Blender, it presumes that either you already know or that you are going to learn first and that's because there is plenty of tutorial material out there on how to learn Blender and also there are several books in the subject already and I wanted more particularly to concentrate in teaching how to use it to create paper models and to teach the important basics about it cause there wasn't as much quality material specifically written for the subject that we paper modelers love that was free.

If you do find any serious error in the book you can post the message here or write me a private message so I can attempt to correct it and publish an updated version.

[Wyvern]

Thank you for sharing this! I will be studying it closely.

Wyvern

[josef mayer]

Thank you,

Sepp

[2Kamser]

just what i needed
have been looking at Blender but not getting to grips with it
congrats to a magnificent tool
/Håkan