One of the great things about open source platforms and applications is that skilled authors often put free books online as guides. We've written about excellent
ones for Ubuntu, one
for Linux hacks, and one
for the GIMP graphics application. ? Recently, I came across a great, free online book on the super powerful open source 3D graphics and animation application
Blender. The book is called
Blender Basics, Second Edition, and while it has the slight shortcoming of showing examples from Blender version 2.4 (
Blender is now on version 2.48) it's still an excellent, very thorough way to learn the application. If you're unfamiliar with Blender, it's so flexible that impressive,
full-length animated movies have been created with it. Here's more on what's in the book.
