Okay, at this point we have created a nice eBook cover thus far, however, there is still work to be done. Again, this is great to do if you plan on selling your eBook on eBay.com, Createspace.com, Lulu.com, Amazon.com (Kindle), Clickbank.net, or your own website. Also, if you haven’t yet downloaded the free graphics software I am using to do this, make sure to check that out.
Okay, back to the tutorial. The next thing you need to do at this point is select the “move” tool from the sidebar & carefully move the sidebar until it is right up against the front cover. It should really start to look like a 3-D e-Book now as pictured below.
If you need to adjust your image, just reselect it & use the perspective tool until it looks the way you want it to look. You may have to work with it for a couple of minutes to get it to match up & look correct. This is what it should look like after you move the sidebar up to the front cover:
eBook Cover Tutorial 10
Now it is really starting to look like an e-Book. It is now time to put the finishing touches on your cover. Let’s start by drawing the top portion of the e-Book. First, select the yellow paint brush again & draw a line from the end of the yellow on the sidebar towards the front cover as shown below. Don’t forget about using the shift key to draw a line.
eBook Boxshot 11
Then, simply draw another line (slightly smaller) using either a light black or gray color from the end of the yellow line to the other yellow line. This will create the look of pages. You can then go back and draw a few very light lines going across the top to give the appearance of pages. You can finish the image by adding a small triangle of gray to give the illusion of a shadow. The picture below shows the small shadow I drew in & the finished e-Book.
eBook Cover 13
How to Make a Reflection Under Your eBook or Boxshot
If you would rather make a reflection under the e-Book instead of the gray shadow, you can do that as well. It will probably take you a few more minutes to do this. Here is how you make a reflection. First go to the top menu & select Layer–> Duplicate layer.
This will add a new layer over the old layer of the exact same image. Next, select the perspective tool & then click on the image. Then select the corners of the perspective tool & move them towards the center of the picture to make the image smaller. You should begin to see the other layer behind it as shown below.
eBook Cover 14
Keep working with the image until it is upside down, and just below the original image as shown below. Also, it helps to first outline the cover image with the select rectangle tool first, then use the perspective. That way, you can reduce the amount of white space around the image. When you have positioned the image, click the transform button.
eBook Shadow Illusion
Now, I don’t want the entire reflection to show up. Therefore I will use the eraser tool, and erase about half of the lower image. So now, the image is cut off around the vine image on the lower e-Book cover. Then I will make the image more transparent, so that it looks more like an actual reflection. To do this I will use the layer box as pictured below.
If the layer box is not already open, you can open it by going to the top menu & selecting Dialogs–> Layers. This will then open the layer box. After it is opened, I select the layer that says “background copy.” This represents the small image we manipulated under the real cover. Now, I will simply click on the “Opacity” bar and move it left until the image is barely visible. This makes it look just like a reflection as seen below:
eBook Cover 16
After you have created your e-Book image, you are ready to save it. I would make a few backup copies as well. Also, save it in a few different formats so you can see which format has the lowest file size without compromising the quality of the image. Simply go to File–> Save As.
Finished eBook Cover
Remember, if you have a lot of white space behind the e-Book, it will also save this space in the image. Therefore, you may want to open a new layer & copy only the image with no white space behind it. Or, you can simply open up Microsoft Paint & use the selector tool to drag it & remove the excess space behind it & re-save the image.
You’re finished! That wasn’t so bad was it? It only took about 30 minutes to complete the cover. If you are unfamiliar with the software, or you want to use more sophisticated features, it may take longer. This is really a great software package & you can create very professional looking e-Book covers with it.
There is no need to spend hundreds on other software packages or design services when this is available on the internet as a free download. Also, just remember that you do not necessarily need a cover image. I just feel it does add quality to your e-Book & sales page. You don’t have to make it as sophisticated as the one I made, and if you want to spend even more time you can make it even better than the one I made by adding your own images! Either way, now you know how to easily create you own e-Book cover images for free! Also, if you appreciate this tutorial, please let others know about it.
Free 3-D Modeling, Rendering, Design, Animation Software by Blender:
Are you ready to for an amazing software package that can be used to create 3-D animations, graphics, & much more? This software is a fully functional integrated, motion enabled, 3D creation software suite used by some of the top design professionals in the world to produce 3D modeling, high quality animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback, and read-time 3D/game creation.
It lets users create high quality 3D graphics, movies, and replay real-time interactive 3D content. Over the last decade, Blender has evolved as an in-house tool for a leading European animation studio. Blender is powerful technology used for creating broadcast quality 3D content.
Blender Can Read / Write TGA, JPG, PNG, Iris, SGI Movie, IFF, AVI and Quicktime GIF, TIFF, PSD, MOV (Windows and Mac OS X), create stand-alone executables containing interactive 3D content or play back with the 3d web browser plugin, and has Native import and export for DXF, Inventor and VRML files. It also extensibility through python scripts making available many other 3D formats.
Just see for yourself in the videos & pictures below the amazing capabilities of this powerful software application.
Interface:
Revolutionary non-overlapping and non-blocking UI delivers unsurpassed workflow
Flexible and fully configurable window layout with as many screen setups as you prefer
Undo support on all levels
Anti-aliased fonts with international translation support
Windows for animation curves/keys, outliner, schematic scene diagram, generic node editing system, non-linear video sequence editing, character animation action editor, non-linear animation mixer, image/UV editing, file/image selection and file management
Built-in text editor for annotations and editing Python scripts
Graphical user interface for Python scripts
Custom themes
Consistent interface across all platforms
Rigging:
Fast skeleton creation mode
Interactive 3D paint for vertex weighting
Fast envelope based skinning
Mirror editing (bone creation and weight painting)
Bone layers for better rig organization
B-splines interpolated bones
Constraint stack for IK solver setup and other constraints
Animation:
Armature (skeleton) deformation with forward/inverse kinematics
Auto IK allows posing FK chains easily
Non-linear animation editor for mixing individual actions created in Action editor
Automated walkcycles along paths
Animated constraint system
Vertex key framing for morphing, with controlling sliders
Edit and create new blendshapes from existing targets
Character animation pose editor
Animated deformers (Lattice, Curve)
‘Ipo’ system integrates both motion curve and traditional key-frame editing
Audio playback, mixing and editing support for sound synchronisation
Timeline offers fast acces to many playback functions, autokey, help markers
Python scripting access for custom and procedural animation effects
UV Unwrapping:
Conformal and Angle Based unwrapping methods
Interactive transform of UV maps by vertex pinning
Proportional falloff editing of UV maps for smooth transformations
Seam based unwrapping
Cube, Cylinder, Sphere, View projections
Catmull-Clark subdivition of UVs for less distortion
Minimize stretch tool allows to reduce area distortion
Multiple UV layers
Physics & Particles:
Particle system can be atached to any mesh object. Control methods include weight painting, textures, curve guides, wind and vortex effects. Particles can be deflected by moving geometry
Hair strands can be created by a static particle system, supporting all particle control methods
Fluid simulator with fully animated inflow, outflow, obstacle and fluid objects. Gravity and viscosity settings can also be animated. Supports vector blur and is integrated with the particle system
Realtime soft body solver integrated in mesh, lattice, curve and text objects. Supports collision detection and particle field effects like Wind or Vortex, soft bodys can also be baked for faster playback/rendering
Game engine rigid body physics can be easily baked into animation curves
Real-time 3-D Game Creation:
Graphical logic editor for defining interactive behavior without programming
Collision detection and dynamics simulation now support Bullet Physics Library. Bullet is an open source collision detection and rigid body dynamics library developed for Play Station 3
Shape types: Convex polyhedron, box, sphere, cone, cylinder, capsule, compound, and static triangle mesh with auto deactivation mode
Discrete collision detection for RigidBody simulation
Support for in-game activation of dynamic constraints
Full support for vehicle dynamics, including spring reactions, stiffness, damping, tyre friction etc
Python scripting API for sophisticated control and AI, fully defined advanced game logic
Support all OpenGLTM lighting modes, including transparencies, Animated and reflection-mapped textures
Support for multimaterials, multitexture and texture blending modes, per-pixel lighting, dynamic lighting, mapping modes, GLSL vertexPaint texture blending, toon shading, animated materials, support for Normal Maping and Parallax Mapping
Playback of games and interactive 3D content without compiling or preprocessing
Audio, using the SDL toolkit
Multi-layering of Scenes for overlay interfaces
Modeling:
A range of 3D object types including polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves, metaballs, vector fonts (TrueType, PostScript, OpenType)
Very fast Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces with optimal iso-lines display and sharpness editing
Full multiresolution sculpting capabilities with 2D bitmap/3D procedural brushes (Paint, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Grab) supporting symmetry
Modifier stack deformers such as Lattice, Curve, Armature or Displace
Mirror modifier with middle vertices clipping and automatic deletion of inner faces
Non destructive real time Boolean and Array modifiers
Mesh modeling based on vertex, edge and/or face selection
Smooth soft selection editing tools for organic modeling
Interactive preview rendering panel in any 3d view
Ambient Occlusion
Radiosity solver
Integral support for the Yafray render engine
Export scripts available for external renderers such as Renderman (RIB), Mental Ray, Povray, Virtualight, Indigo
Shading:
Diffuse shaders such as Lambert, Minnaert, Toon, Oren-Nayar, Lambert
Specular shaders such as WardIso, Toon, Blinn, Phong, CookTorr
Node editor for creating and mixing complex materials
Material previews rendered by main render engine
Tangent shading to give any shader an anisotropic effect
Versatile procedural textures system
Reflection maps
Normal, displacement and bump maps
Imaging & Compositing:
Compositor tightly integrated and aligned with the rendering pipeline
MultiLayer OpenEXR files allow to store and reuse raw renderlayer and passes data
Complete list of composite node filters, convertors, color and vector operators and mixers including Chroma Key, Blur, RGB Curves, Z Combine, Color Ramp
Preview panel to define the portion of interest. A composite then only happens on this part
Threaded and memory efficient (up to 8 processors)
Near realtime sequencer can edit hours of video
Waveform and U/V scatter plots
Open and write many audio & video file formats using ffmpeg(linux only at the moment, FFMPEG for Windows/OS X is scheduled for next release)
Can render using frameserver-support directly into foreign applications
Supports float images as well as regular 32 bits images
Curves tool allows you to create a mapping from the float range to a displayable result (for HDR images)
Files:
Save all scene data in a single .blend file, even images, sounds or fonts can be packed for easy transportation
Powerful built-in database system allowing instances, scene management, and dynamic linking multiple project files
blend format supports compression, digital signatures, encryption, forwards/backwards compatibility and can be used as a library to link to from other .blend files
Read and write support for many other 2D and 3D formats
2D
TGA, JPG, PNG, OpenEXR, DPX, Cineon, Radiance HDR, Iris, SGI Movie, IFF, AVI and Quicktime GIF, TIFF, PSD, MOV (Windows and Mac OS X)
3D
3D Studio, AC3D, COLLADA, DEC Object File Format, DirectX, Lightwave, MD2, Motion Capture, Nendo, OpenFlight, PLY, Pro Engineer, Radiosity, Raw Triangle, Softimage, STL, TrueSpace, VideoScape, VRML, VRML97, Wavefront, X3D Extensible 3D, xfig export
This Software is Used by Many of the Worlds Professionals for:
Architectural/Industrial applications: It lets users create AND deliver superb photo-realistic animation – in convenient, compact files. It’s ideal for walkthroughs. Worried that real-time 3D presentations will strain your budget? Make models, design, and present interactively in your own product environment, and without straining budgets.
Web Design: Say you’ve got great 3D graphics on your site – but are they interactive? This technology makes 3D web publishing state-of-the-art: easy, affordable, fast – interactive.
Branded Advertainment: It delivers the marketing message to customers with exciting interactivity. Engage the site viewer – hold their attention by developing advertainment games or combining your market message innovative branded animations.
Character Animation: It gives branded characters new, added depth, and great interactivity. Characters can look stunning – stunningly REAL – enabling companies to boost the profile of their brand above the clutter.
e-commerce: It helps recreate the in-store experience in real-time. Combine animated rich environments with 3D product modeling, to create a unique retail experience.
Product Modeling: Viewers see more than a rotating object – they pick it up, interact with it, explore its features, customize it – and more. It’s the bridge between object and viewer. Powerful, fast and intuitive to use, it helps make 3D objects astounding.
e-learning applications: It enhances the learning experience. Support course material with interactive models, use it to make educational games and 3D modules.
e-marketing: To help realize potential in e-marketing, It gives 3D presence. Businesses use it for opt-in email, beyond-the-banner advertising, viral marketing, creative sponsorships and much more.
Presentations: We know presentations need competitive edge. Use it to enliven PowerPoint, Director and Word. Make compelling interactive 3D websites.
Blender Software
Testamonials:
“Since in many design decisions, Blender has proven to be years ahead compared to other 3D apps (excelent example is the UI with the non-overlaping windows, the widgetless transforms, etc. resulting in a nearlyunsurpassed workflow), I see the flexible and elegant solution of a non-linear undo system (which is, in a large part, already implemented) as a possibility once again to show the 3D world the farsightedness of Blender’s design.”
Goran Kocov, developer
“As an animatic artist working in the storyboard department of Spider-Man 2, I used Blender’s 3d modeling and character animation tools to enhance the storyboards, re-creating sets and props, and putting into motion action and camera moves in 3d space to help make Sam’s vision as clear to other departments as possible.Blender has helped me personally to transition from 2d to 3d animation; and the skills I acquired using Blender have transferred well into other 3d packages. The fact that Blender is a free program is utterly amazing to me.”
Anthony Zierhut, Animatic Artist, Los Angeles
Blender is the first and only fully integrated 3D graphics creation suite allowing modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, realtime interactive 3D and game creation and playback with cross-platform compatibility – all in one tidy, easily and free downloadable package! “Blender is quickly being transformed from an impressive 3D creativity tool to a full-blown games and new media design application.”
Garrick Webster, Editor, Computer Arts Magazine
System Requirements for 3D Animation Software Modeling:
Works on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7.
File size is approximately 286 MB. High Speed connection recommended for download.
If you do not have Windows you must have an unzip program such as Winzip.
Recommended Ram is 128 MB or greater.
Performance may vary depending on your system’s specifications.
