Full book review: Blender 3D printing essentials

Last weekend I had the pleasure to read Blender 3D printing esentials by Gordon Fisher.

Gordon previously authored Blender 3D Basics and his experience and subject skill is clearly shown in this new short book 3D printing. The book is Blender specific of course but pretty much 3d-printer agnostic, so it's useful not only for printer owners but also for people who want to use online print shops.

Pros:

short
about 100 pages real content. Clear language as well, so you won't need much time to get up to speed

to the point
it won't tell you much about modelling as such but does show what elements of modelling need extra care when preparing a model for printing and how to fix problems

complete
all you need to know for most common printing materials and printing techniques but of course with new materials becoming available every day you'll have to check the material specifications for things like minimum wall thickness if you want to try a new material but that is not a critique on the book. On the contrary, it does an excellent job of describing things like what influences surface detail, why wall thickness is important and when and how to deal with overhang.

good description of essential tools
Blender's 3D printing toolkit and mesh analysis tools are covered well and the use of the protractor tool (to measure distance and angles in your model) is explained very clearly.

Cons:

uv-unwrapping and texture painting
(for printers that support multicolored models) would have benefited from more in depth attention as these subjects are generally considered difficult by beginners

the price
I personally feel that the €13,56 list price for a 100 page e-book is steep, not to mention the almost €26,- price tag for the print version, but of course online retailers may give you a better deal.

Conclusion

Good book, well written. Based on the content alone I would give it 4.5 out of 5 stars but the unrealistic price tags lowers that to 4.

If you would like to know more about programming OSL you might be interested in my book "Open Shading Language for Blender". More on the availability of this book and a sample can be found on this page.