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

[PixelOz]

I must say that it is possible that the book will have a few typos cause I did the book all by myself and even though I read it carefully many, many times checking for errors and even with the help of computers it will have typos. I know by my experience with graphic arts that it will.

If anybody do find any typo or glaring error in the book you could post it here or send me a private message about it.

Notice that I named it Edition 1.0 sort of like software numbers. What I'll do is that when I have made quite a few corrections cause chances are that people will find a few cause it is humanly possible then I will post an update, sort of like Edition 1.1 and when you see that you will know that it has a few small corrections.

So I will thank the community for posting any errors that they find in the book or for contacting me about it so I can correct them. I wish I had anybody close to where I live that had much more expertise in English to help me proof read it more but I don't. My native language is Spanish so I had to try very hard to correct the mistakes but like I mention in the book I think that it is at least clear enough for people to understand what I wanted to explain or at least I hope so. We will see.

[doctormax]

i asked the writer and it sure is more complicated than just having the cover besides they insist on having a version for download as an Ebook I don't think people who would come across it on the site be to happy to be paying the nine or so dollars that seems to be their price for books to download if they hear they could have had the ebook for free.

[PixelOz]

Yeah, it's too bad, it is kind of ironic that it happens as consequence of giving the book as a free gift to the community.

[doctormax]

Originally Posted by PixelOz

Yeah, it's too bad, it is kind of ironic that it happens as consequence of giving the book as a free gift to the community.

well the way to look at it i suppose if it gets more of us doing the models that none of the big companies or doing then it is a great thing do you happen to have what is the best ram and stuff like that in the book for using the software. i do know that with the ram i got sure was no good for doing any of them softwares kept freezing and closing down the blender on me on this machine of mine.

[scyg]

Excellent book. Thank you very much.

[ggdancer]

excellent. I was just starting to look around and found this. Especially helpful as I was going to use Blender for designing models anyway.

[PixelOz]

There is now an updated: 1.1 Edition of the free e-book with the following changes:

(You will find two different submissions in Deviantart, one named Free Paper Model Design eBook2 for the high res version and another named Free Paper Model Design eBook1 for the low res version and the low and high res versions are both also available at my Mediafire folder)

• Creation of a high resolution version for printing or higher quality with redone rendered images. All of the rendered images have been re-rendered at higher resolution (2048 x 1536 pixels - 3 megapixels instead of 640 x 480 pixels for the low resolution version) and the same for many other bitmap illustrations or photos with the exception of screenshots. High resolution version also have less compression for even better image quality.

• Slight improvement of several images, photos or illustrations for more clarity.

• Correction of many typos and other errors.

• Several changes in different parts of the text, many of them reflecting changes or updates related to software but several other improvements too.

• Changes to software programs information to reflect software updates and prices for such. Update to corresponding updated software screenshots.

• I now indicate the software version number in the list of programs for all the commercial programs so you know what version the given prices correspond to. Even though I mentioned their versions sometimes in the text I didn't specify it in the list in some instances and now I did.

• Elimination of the All Rights Reserved Message. This message doesn't belong cause in modern copyright law it is not necessary to state such when it is desired to use it (when you desire to reserve all rights) in copyrighted material and the information of which rights are reserved is clearly explained in the copyright page of the book and the message was contradictory to it.

• Highlighting of menu items, commands, keyboard shortcuts, program functions, etc. Parts of the text that mention things like items from menus in software or labels of the functions of programs or commands in dialog boxes for example have been highlighted in bold letters for easier recognition.

• Several of the names for functions or commands in software (in menus or other parts of the interface) have been corrected to be exactly as they are in their respective programs for easier identification in them.

• Adding Homer Simpson like model picture and a few changes to corresponding text to explain better the concept of different orientations in the same model and/or part in page 84.

• There is now a description and basic information on the usage of the new Blender 2.5 paper model unfolding script called Export Paper Model From Blender in page 54.

• Corrected a few details of the Credits page and made some changes according to changes in some images.

• Inclusion of a new cartoonish submarine 3D model in the IncludedModels.zip file and a rendering of this and a description of the model in the book in the A Submarine section in chapter 6 – Designing Some Simple Models.

• Changed page numbers to different sides on odd and even pages.

• Corrected pictures and text of the circles with high nodes on pages 117 & 118. (It said 64 nodes and showed illustrations of 128 nodes and now it says 80 nodes and shows illustrations of 80 nodes.

• Fix for the image on Surface Development on page 120. The bottom of the full oval had a center oval that didn't belong that was left there by mistake when I did the illustration (a leftover), also the color of that oval that was beneath that one is supposed to be gray not blue-green cause it is for the full oval cone and not the truncated one.

• The Open Source software improvements section on page 206 has the new modified Blender 2.5 roadmap and corresponding changes to its accompanying text. It also mentions now the improvements to K3D in the newly released version 0.8 and the recently released illustration program sK1.

• In page 120 in the second paragraph almost at the end in the sentence that says: "If you want your outline pattern to be cleaner with less lines you decrease the value of the slider to a lower angle number until you are happy with the result or you decrease it if you feel that some fold lines in particular should be included." The second decrease word (shown here in bold) should really had been increase instead and now it is fixed.

• In page 132 in the second paragraph where it talks about paths and Bezier curves, there are improvements in the explanations cause it was a bit confusing between the use of Paths and/or Bezier curves.

• In the first edition of the book the key combination given for the Loop Cut tool is incorrect. It says Ctrl+K when it should be Ctrl+R or K and then selecting Loop Cut and now this has been corrected. This same text is now on page 153, second paragraph.

• Those parts of the text that mentioned CorelDraw's Dynamic Guides tool or its Illustrator equivalent (Smart Guides) now also reflect the addition of this tool to the program Serif DrawPlus which has recently added the tool to the program in version X4.

• In chapter 7 – A Bare Bones Way Of Creating Paper Models With A Computer I said in the previous edition of the book that I couldn't find a way to open the Cone Layout program generated patterns in Solid Edge 2D. I couldn't manage to open any AutoCAD files before in Solid Edge 2D and that is because there is a step that you have to do in the program before you are able to do this and this is explained now in the book in the section titled: The Confusion Between UV Texture Unfolders and Paper Modeling/Others Unfolder in chapter 2 – Modern Paper Model Design (page 48 third paragraph).

• An few hyperlinks have been updated.

• Page 219 has a new paragraph (second paragraph) that talks about my new PDF tutorial called: Clearing The Confusion Between Total Image Resolution, Image Size And Dpi.

• The definitions of texture baking and dithering have been added to the glossary.

• A few more Blender keyboard commands or icons/menu functions are given in different parts of the text. This is still no substitute to learning Blender by standard means and it's intended as a courtesy to people that are learning it to make it a little easier for them.

• The included 3D Blender models were fixed a little bit in some areas, some small quirks or errors were corrected (a few small ones). The sharp edges were marked and the Edge Split modifier was applied to all of them to all corresponding parts.

• It is 238 pages long now but this is due mainly to the expansion of the text because of the bold highlighting.

[goodduck]

Thank you so very much for the book. Guess what I'll be doing the next couple of days?

[mbauer]

Thank you for your time and the effort to author this ebook. Just downloaded and read a couple of pages before deciding to download blender.

Just got the new blender release v2.5 beta.

Most of my designing has been using ACAD 2002lt. A friend is letting me use his ACAD 2006 to relearn 3d (school trained 2001 at an university).

Looking forward to using your tutorial and blender to create some new models. Will keep you posted if I find any problems, but so far your text looks good (or I wouldn't of downloaded blender so fast!).

Thank you for a very valuable contribution to paper modeling! I look forward to learning your methods!

Best regards,
Mike Bauer

[billy.leliveld]

Thanks David,
I have been looking for something like this, but this is the best I have seen sofar, and Bender runs on a Mac, thanks