I have been recently invited by Packt Publishing to review the new book by Brazilian architect and author Allan Brito, called Blender 3D 2.49: Architecture, Buildings and Scenery.

Although I'm not an architect - my main focus is character animation - I've seen some very interesting information for various different uses, like for modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering assets for animation films or even games. Of course, if your are an architect looking for a book with the nuts and bolts of creating archiviz with Blender and Yafaray, this book have everything you would look for.

Although the book is mainly geared towards the current stable version 2.49, there is a chapter dedicated to the new development branch - 2.5 - which describes the main differences between those versions. Even if you don't know anything about Blender, you'll be able to start easily with the chapters, which cover from the basics of the interface to the hands on activities related to build your 3D scene. You'll be guided to the processes of modeling, texturing, lighting and animating virtual walkthroughs with Blender tools, along with the powerful Yafaray rendering engine and The Gimp for post-production work.

I believe it's a great addition to your library, specially if your work with architectural visualization with proprietary tools.

The book is available for sale at Amazon, and you can read a f ree sample chapter at Packt's website.

DISCLAIMER: I'm currently writing a book for Packt Publishing.