I've got recently from Packt Publishing an e-book copy of Blender 2.49 Scripting, by Michael Anders.

For those who don't already know, Blender uses Python as its scripting language. With Python, you can extend Blender capabilities and automate tasks that would be too tedious, difficult or impossible to do by hand.

I'm not an experienced Python coder, although I'm comfortable with some other coding languages (PHP, JavaScript and Bash, for example). I've made some simple things with Python before, and I liked very much the flow of this language, which is way simpler to code.

As my main interest with Blender relies on character rigging and animation, I've run for chapter 4: PyDrivers and Constraints as soon as I got my PDF file. ;)

I've seen other reviews of this book on the net and I have to agree with them: this book is a very useful way of learning the powers of Blender Python scripting. Although it is geared towards the currently stable version (2.49) and we (and also the author) know that Blender 2.5 is coming with a fully reworked and backwards incompatible Python API, this book is very important for everyone interested in learning how to extend Blender. Once you learn how to do it in the current version, it will be a matter of adaptation in order to make the same things in 2.5. The important thing is to understand what and how things can be made through scripting, and this book does it very well.

As I stated before, I've made some simple things in Python and tried some things with it in Blender (notably PyConstraints). One thing that this book served a lot is showing commented examples of how to do things, and I can't stress enough how this is important. When I was trying to get things working in my first attempts with the Blender Python API, the main information I could get was in the official API documentation, which basically explains what each module does. It is very important, but not that helpful for who is starting. The other source of information was searching for scripts on forums and trying to figure out its logic. Not that easy.

This book came to fill this huge gap in the Blender documentation. I was really surprised to know what can be done with Blender and Python: way more than I imagined, like creating a web server to produce CAPTCHA challenges within Blender, or making bar charts from a CSV file. Of course the more "mundane" tasks like 3D mesh manipulation and animation is there too in all its glory.

I must say that this book will fit best the user who already knows Blender and feel comfortable with some coding. It doesn't mean you have to be a hardcore user in order to enjoy it, but someone with very little knowledge in Blender might have a though journey.

It is available in e-book form and regular print, and comes with all the examples in a zipped file.

You can read more about this book and order it on this link, which also allows you to download a free (and important) chapter as sample.

I strongly recommend this book for everyone who feels the need for extending what Blender already offers you, and this book is a valuable addition to my library. :)