What this book covers

Chapter 1, An Introduction to Blender's 3D Modeling and Sculpture Tools, will introduce you to the basic concepts of 3D graphics, and you will explore Blender's 3D modeling and sculpting tools. 

Chapter 2, Modeling a Robot Drone Character, takes you through the complete process to create a 3D model of a Robot Drone character in Blender.

Chapter 3, Let's Sculpt an Alien Plant!, teaches you how to use Blender to create a 3D sculpture of an Alien Plant for your 3D movie set.

Chapter 4, UV Maps and Texture Baking, helps you understand how to UV-map your 3D models in Blender and then bake your textures in xNormal.

Chapter 5, Texturing Your Models Inside Quixel Mixer, takes you through the complete procedural texturing process in Quixel Mixer.

Chapter 6, Exploring Unreal Engine 5, introduces you to the basics of UE5's user interface.

Chapter 7, Setting up Materials in UE5, teaches you how to import your 3D models, set up their textures, and create materials in UE5.

Chapter 8, Use MetaHuman to Create a Photorealistic Human for UE5, takes you through the complete process of creating a custom MetaHuman character.

Chapter 9, Building a Virtual 3D Movie Set in UE5, teaches you how to build a virtual 3D movie set by using Nanite in combination with Quixel Megascans assets in UE5.

Chapter 10, Adding Lighting and Atmospheric Visual Effects in UE5, teaches you how to light your 3D movie set by using Lumen with custom lighting and add fog, light bloom, light shafts, and solar flares in UE5.

Chapter 11, Alien Plant Joint Setup in Blender, helps you to create a skeleton joint/bone chain for the Alien Plant to make it animated.

Chapter 12, Alien Plant Skinning in Blender, helps you understand how to skin the Alien Plant 3D model so that it can animate and move with the skeleton.

Chapter 13, Robot Joint Setup and Skinning in Blender, helps you to create a skeleton for the robot and teaches you how to skin it to the skeleton in a rigid way.

Chapter 14, Making a Custom Rig for Our Alien Plant with Control Rig, helps you understand how to create a simple custom Forward Kinematics (FK) animation rig with the new Control Rig tools in UE5.

Chapter 15, Creating a Control Rig with Basic IK Controls for the Robot in UE5, shows you how to create a simple custom Inverse Kinematics (IK) animation rig with the new Control Rig tools.

Chapter 16, Creating a Simple Swaying Animation Cycle in UE5 Sequencer, shows you how to animate your first simple animation with a custom Control Rig using Sequencer.

Chapter 17, Creating Three Simple Animations for the Robot in UE5 Sequencer, helps you to create some more simple animations using your custom robot Control Rig, Sequencer, IK, and additive animation layers.

Chapter 18, Importing Motion Capture onto the MetaHuman Control Rig, shows you how to find free motion capture animations and teaches you how to retarget them to the MetaHuman Control Rig.

Chapter 19, Motion Capture Editing and Cleanup Using Control Rig and Sequencer, helps you understand how to clean up, edit, and repurpose motion capture animation for your final movie.

Chapter 20, Using Sequencer to Construct Your Final Scene, will teach you how to construct your final movie scene with all the animated custom assets you created in this book, add cameras, and render your final movie.