Blender is a powerful open source modeling and animation tool available for free on all major platforms, and while it is capable of producing work of quality close to that of 3D Studio Max and Maya, the amount sources available to teach you how to do so is nowhere close to those available for the commercial applications. Recently though, a free PDF book surfaced the Internet featuring an introduction to all the basics of Blender with chapters on the interface, viewports, creating and editing objects, lighting, cameras, materials, textures, rendering, raytracing, nurbs, modifers, particle systems, interactions, armatures, soft bodies, springs, and many other topics as well. You can download the book written by James Chronister for free from this page.

[via DownloadSquad]