Just Enough to be Dangerous
A Quick Tour of Cheetah 3D
User Interface Overview
Front Matter
Credits
Introduction
Why Learn 3D Graphics?
Why Cheetah 3D?
3D in a nutshell
What’s new in Cheetah 3D 7?
The Falcon Renderer
Falcon
Key Points
Primitives: Basic 3D Objects
The Properties Panel
Selecting and Moving Objects
Meshes
Editing Meshes: Core Polygon Tools
Selecting Parts of Meshes
Fine-Tuning Meshes
Mesh Smoothing
Creators
Materials Overview
Lights and Lighting
Image-Based Lighting
The Sky Light Object
Rendering
Camera Objects
Just Enough to be Dangerous
A Quick Tour of Cheetah 3D
User Interface Overview
Tutorials
Making a Mug
Modeling a Biplane
Mini-Tutorials
Mini-Tutorial: 3D Text
Package Mockup
Modeling
Model Sheets & Blueprints
Symmetry
Selection: You can’t always get what you want…
Modeling Tricks & Techniques
Subdivision Surfaces
What is a mesh?
Splines
Polygon/Box Modeling
Approaches to Modeling
Understanding How Creators, Tags, and Modifiers Interact
Creators
Creators, Modifiers, & Tags
Modifiers
Collapsing Creators & Modifiers
Tags
Materials
Simple Materials Without Nodes
Image-based Materials
Transparent Materials
Understanding Nodes
Building Procedural Materials
Reflective Materials
UV Mapping
How Materials Work
Node Descriptions
Faking It
The Math of Material Nodes
How Lights Work
Other Lighting Options
Shadows
Advanced Lighting
Caustics
Foolproof Shadow Catchers
Reflected Lights
Lighting
Rendering
The Camera Object
Projection Settings
The Render Tag
Dealing with Reality
Simple Render Setups
Rendering Panoramas
Rendering a Sky Box
How Raytracing Works
Environments
Rendering Reflected Lights
Cartoon Looks
Render Manager
Creating your own HDRIs for Image-Based Lighting
Rendering Tricks
Baking Materials
Path Animation
Tutorial: Animation Basics
Forward Kinematics: Robot Arm I
Animation Concepts
Inverse Kinematics: Robot Arm II
Animation
Animation Overview
Character Animation
Mini-Tutorial: Run Cycle
Character Animation Tutorials
Mini-Tutorial: Idle
Tutorial: Simple Character Rig
Tutorial: Walk Cycle
Tutorial: Walk Cycle
Mini-Tutorial: Jumping
Particles
Getting the most out of Cheetah 3D’s Particle System
Instances
Using a Particle System as a Source of Objects
Building Blocks
Dynamics
Introduction to Dynamics
Using Dynamics to Model
Mastering Cheetah 3D’s Interface
The Object Browser
Scene Graph Shortcuts
Parents
Children
Managing Complexity
Cheetah 3D Under the Hood
Workflow
Scripts
Appendices
Glossary
3D File Formats
Image Formats
Video Compression
Alpha Channels in Depth
Faking Motion Blur
3D Math
Rendering
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