It’s been a few years since I last used Blender - 2012 seems to be the last time I did any serious work, with a swiftly aborted attempt to restart in 2014. All of which means I’m horribly out of date. From what I recall there was this intriguing new thing called Cycles, and some strange node stuff that was mostly used for compositing but was starting to get some functionality for materials.
Now I’ve decided to come back to some 3D stuff, but obviously my mostly forgotten knowledge is way out of date. Can anyone recommend some good books to help me get back up to speed? Or should I just start from the beginning again?
From the little I’ve read, the upcoming 2.8 is a fairly major upgrade. Will that have any bearing on your recommendations?
Even though it is written for 2.7, a lot of the concepts are version agnostic (cycles and nodes as you mentioned) and the author plans to update it for 2.8x once its stable. I’ve been using it to learn 2.8 and although the UI has changed, it’s not too difficult to look for whatever the topic the book talks about in 2.8.
I know you only asked for book recommendations, but if you want to start learning 2.8 now, there are some great quality youtube tutorials that will get you up to speed. In case you’re interested, look up “Blender Guru” and “Yan Sculpts” on youtube.
