A brief introduction to the projects in this book

This book offers a wide variety of projects, so there's something for everyone: you'll start by adding horns to a Viking helmet. Then, you'll kick it up a notch by building a time machine. After that, you'll try your hand at architecture by modeling and rendering a modern kitchen in the EEVEE physically-based rendering (PBR) engine. Next, you'll explore 2D character design techniques with Blender's brand-new Grease Pencil tool. You'll practice 2D animation by creating a free-form surreal transformation animation, learn advanced Grease Pencil animation techniques by creating a fun 2D animated short, and finally jump back into the world of fantasy by creating a baby dragon. It is recommended that you go through these chapters in order, but you can try skipping ahead to some of the later projects if they sound more interesting to you. Here are the projects, in order:

• Viking Helmet: In this project, you'll dive right into Blender 2.8 and get a feel for the 3D workflow. You'll start with a scene of Viking-themed items, including a helmet that's been partially created. You'll add a nose guard, rivets, and horns to the helmet, and then place the helmet on the head of a training dummy to make a completed scene.
• Time Machine: Starting from scratch this time, you'll build a time machine. You'll learn about modeling tools, creating new objects, the modifier stack, and fixing shading issues in a 3D mesh.
• Modern Kitchen: With this project, you'll learn how to assemble a scene from premade parts to create custom materials and lighting to turn a boring grey scene into a fully rendered gorgeous final shot in the new EEVEE rendering engine.
• Illustrating an Alien Hero with Grease Pencil: You will design a character with the powerful new Grease Pencil tool and learn how to draw 2D images inside of a 3D scene.
• 2D Surreal Transformation Animation: This will be your first introduction to animation, you don't have to have fantastic drawing skills for this one. You'll learn about frames and materials in Blender's Grease Pencil tool.
• Animating a Stylish Short: Taking your 2D skills to the next level, you'll learn how to animate a short film from start to finish.
• Baby Dragon: This is one of the biggest projects in this book, but don't let that scare you – you'll start off with one of the most artistic and fun parts of the 3D process: sculpting! By the end you'll have a finished character that can be used for animations and video games.

Now that we know what projects will be covered in this book, let's have a look at how to get the starter files for the projects.