This is the first time we have accessed the Modifier buttons. If the resolution of your computer if not set so that you are able to see the Modifiers button, hold down your mouse wheel to scroll over the buttons to gain access to it. You will see a variety of modifiers that can be added and many will be discussed later.
For now, select the Boolean modifier. In the Boolean panel, you will see a block where you can select the object you wish to use to modify the cube. Clicking in the box will give you a drop down of all objects in the scene. Selecting the sphere will display the changes to the cube. We are going to use Boolean operations to cut some simple windows in your lighthouse. Using your principle views of 1, 3, and 7, place the cube in a good location for a window.
With the cube still selected, make note of the cube's name, displayed in the lower left corner of the viewport. We will need to know that name later. The name can also be changed in the Transform window. Go to the Modifiers Panel and add a Boolean Modifier. Select the Cube from the list under Object. You can even use different mesh shapes to cut other window and door shapes. Remember to add the Boolean Modifier to the lighthouse and not the cube!
They need the logo to be 3D and useful for their promotional needs. For this exercise, you will be creating a 3D logo for a favorite team, company, product, or school while using many of the techniques discussed in this chapter.
Your first step is to do an internet search for an image you wish to model from. I will be using a Blender Logo for my example. Check the box and open the panel. Load your image and it should show up in the background of the 3D window. The image will only display in a principal ortho view 7,1, or 3- 5 key switches between ortho and perspective.
You will notice that you can control which views the image displays in, if you want to display a movie or image as a background, the transparency of the image, the size and X,Y offset. Delete 1 vertex so all you have are 3 vertices. Your next step is to move the 3 existing vertices to the edge of the shape where you wish to start. The more care you take in shaping, the better the logo will look. Continue around the shape until you get back to the beginning.
This will connect the 2 ends and close the shape. You will now have the basic shape. From there, continue to extrude and close the inner edge as you did with the outer edge. Notice that the Blender logo also has a blue inner circle.
We will also copy and extrude a circle for that ring. If you have other details to add, do that at this time. Always stay in the Top View! Before we face the mesh, we will need to separate the vertices into different meshes that will receive different materials. For my example, I will select the inner ring that will get a blue material.
After separating all the vertices, go back to Object Mode. It's now time to face the mesh. If the shape is complex, not closed, or has double vertices somewhere, this option may not work and forces you to find the problem or face it manually. Do this for all meshes, then switch to the Front View and Extrude the meshes to a desired thickness, like you did with the lighthouse. You logo is finished for now.
We will not be addressing this as an actual exercise, but after reading the chapter on Materials and Textures, you can come back and add color to your logo. There are still a lot of commands and techniques to learn to improve your 3D modeling skills and many of these will be addressed in future chapters, however, practice is the key to become a skilled artist.
Answer the following questions in as much detail as possible. Your first task in this chapter had you working with basic meshes, trying to create a sculpture, much like you would have used building blocks as a child. What was your biggest challenge then and how would that challenge be different now that you have completed the chapter and have a little more experience?
How did your lighthouse and landscape turn out? Are you pleased with your results? What was the most difficult aspect of that project and how did you overcome that challenge? The logo challenge activity is designed to have you create a 3D logo much like ones you would see at sporting events, in movies, and on T. Find a 3D animated logo on the internet that interests you. Do you have a better understanding now of how a logo like that is made? How has this chapter shaped your understanding of 3D modeling?
Have these activities inspired you to create any projects of your own? What would you like to create? As you make your 3D models in Blender, your goal will probably be to generate render an image or a movie as a final result.
The software that determines how your scene will look is the render engine. The render engine will need to know how to handle materials on your objects, how the lighting in your scene should react with reflections, refraction, bounced ambient lighting, shadows, etc.
While there are several 3 rd party engines out there that can work with Blender, there are actually two engines built into the program: the classic internal renderer and the newer cycles renderer. Every render engine will generate different results depending on how it calculates the scene.
Some render engines will take a lot longer to generate an image than others. Cycles handles lighting much better than the internal renderer, providing more realistic results. That will depend on what you want for results. The classic internal engine will give you faster results, but with less realism. The cycles engine will give you more realistic results, but requires more set up time and much longer render times, depending on your computer and graphics card possibly minutes as opposed to hours.
Because this book is written for use in the classroom, all of the activities here use the classic render engine. Time is a valuable commodity in school and we need to render as quickly as possible to meet deadlines. Like most schools, we do not have the best video cards on the market, making cycles a tough choice for us. Cycles is a work in progress and getting improvements with every new release.
Some students do choose to use cycles. In this chapter and the next, we will discuss the basics of the cycles renderer and how to set up basic materials. With that knowledge, you can decide which render engine you would like to use for the activities.
Both render engine will give you great results! The Blender Game engine rendering will be discussed in a later chapter. We will only discuss some basic material settings in this chapter so you can experiment with the render engines. Materials will be detailed in the next chapter. Remember, we are focusing on the classic internal renderer right now.
Basic Material Settings To add a material, first select the object you want to work with, then go to the Materials panel in the Properties window.
You will see more options open up. Right now, we are only interested in changing color and glossiness. Diffuse: Diffuse is actually the color that is given off by the object- the color you see. If you want the object to be red, set it here. You will also see settings for the way the material is calculated default-Lambert and the intensity slider.
The Ramp button will allow diversity of color. By clicking on the color sample in diffuse or in any other block dealing with a color , the color wheel will pop up. You'll also see an eyedropper for picking a color elsewhere. The Preview panel can be used to see the results of your setting changes. You can also change the default sphere preview shape to something else.
Specular: Specular settings control the glossiness of the object is it flat or shiny? You will see a color sample, calculation model and ramp as in Diffuse. The color sample indicates the color reflected back usually kept white.
Intensity controls the amount of glossiness while the hardness slider controls the hardness and softness of the glow. Check the sample as you change these settings to see how it changes appearance. RoboDude Asks: How can I see all the panels on the screen? While the classic render engine is still the default in Blender, Cycles continues to receive most of the recent development and will likely become the default renderer in the near future.
Since cycles can produce more accurate results with reflected light and other effects, it is more memory and is processor intensive. This is where your computer hardware makes a big difference and a place where many high school labs can fall short. In our lab, we have fast dual-core computers, loaded with RAM, but with integrated video cards. Due to school district budgets, I think many schools are in the same boat. Because of this factor, we can render simple scenes in Cycles, but as scenes become more complex, we experience problems and need to rely on the classic renderer.
Render farms, or Network Rendering, discussed in Chapter 8 can help you get through larger projects as well.
Expect detailed project in either render engine to take minutes to hours to render a single image as you add more detail. Because the CPU is doing everything to run your computer, the amount of memory and the processor speed of your computer will determine how fast your projects render. If your computer supports GPU, you can experiment to see which one works best for you. If not, you are limited to CPU rendering. You can try to update drivers, update your video card, or live with CPU rendering.
Render settings for Cycles in the Render settings for Cycles in Properties window. Nodes can be confusing to work with, but you can set up your basic materials and textures in the Properties window, similar to the way we construct them with the classic renderer to make life easier. You can then adjust your results by adding and adjusting nodes in the Nodes window. As you work with Cycles, this will become easier. With a little research on the internet, you will find a lot of tutorials for creating specific effects with nodes.
In-Viewport Rendering: A nice feature of Cycles is that you can view your render results in the viewport without the need for pressing F While this feature also works to some degree in the classic rendered, you can control the results better in Cycles.
While the complete explanation is complex, what is essentially happening in Cycles is that the image quality will continue to improve over time with each sample and you can control the number of samples found in the Render Properties menu in the viewport and in the final render F Depending on your computer speed and the complexity of the scene, the higher the better, but you need to find a balance of quality and time. Professionals may render samples in the thousands.
Try a lower sample rate. This is because traditional Blender lamps project from a pin-point location where real lamps project from larger areas, like a light bulb would project more from a spherical object.
Planes work great to light Cycles scenes. Basic Material Settings in Cycles: As mentioned before, Cycles is a node-based render engine, but we can use the Materials properties panel to do some basic setup, similar to the classic render engine. After switching to the Cycles renderer, adjusting your processor CPU or GPU , and setting the Samples, you are now ready to apply some basic materials. With the object selected, go to the Materials property panel.
You will notice settings are presented differently than in the classic renderer. An elaborate term that basically means what happens to the light when it hits an object. Is it reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through the material for transparency or refraction.
Diffuse is used exactly like it is in the classic render engine- the light reflected, with no glossiness. Below the surface setting you will see a color swatch, roughness smooth or rough and default normal mapping. Clicking on the Diffuse block, more options are displayed. While we we look at more details in the next chapter, we will examine 4 surface options here: Diffuse, Glossy, Emission, and the Mix Shader.
In real life, we see the light emitting from our lamps. In the classic render engine type lights, we never see the actual lamp. If you create a sphere or pane to represent your light source, you would place an Emission shader on the object and adjust the strength of the emission. Diffuse: The cube to the left is using a Diffuse surface material with some roughness applied. The roughness may not be very apparent depending on how many samples you are rending at. Try a higher sample rate for better quality discussed on page Glossy: A sphere has been added to the scene on the right with a Glossy surface material added with a blue color.
A glossy surface by itself will be a perfect mirror. This is where it is important to mix your surface shaders. Mix Shader: A Mix Shader was selected on the left. In this example, Diffuse and Glossy shaders were used on the cube, which gives the cube color and reflction. A Mix Shader could also be added to the 2nd slot to mix even more together. Here are some of the basic parts of the Node Editor window. More details will be discussed throughout the manual and activities. Tool Shelf- Displays the many nodes available.
Display of connected nodes. These represent the current material. Browse to display different materials Which nodes to display. Currently set to Check to tell Blender Add button- display object nodes. With experience, many people set all of their material properties in the Node Editor window. We will also examine times in future chapters where you can start in the material properties panel and then add additional features in the node editor window.
Working with nodes can be confusing and knowing how to connect them can be more of a challenge. While we will examine the basics of Cycles in this book, the internet is an excellent resource for additional learning. We already talked about adjusting the sample rates on page , but what else can you do to speed things up? Ken Murphy from Southwest Minnesota State University shared some setting options he uses with his class to speed up the rendering times while giving results similar to the Blender internal render engine.
If you need this, try a low number The default settings are 8 for both minimum and maximum. Bounces: Set the minimum and maximum settings to zero, unless you have transparent objects in your scene. The default settings are 3 minimum and 12 for maximum. Uncheck Shadows and both Caustic settings. The type of lamps you use will also contribute to your results.
While using meshes with an emission shader is ideal in Cycles, a traditional Hemi lamp may provide sharp shadows. Place the camera and lamp in good locations to get a render similar to the one shown below. Use only one lamp to light your scene.
You will be experimenting with color and glossiness in this activity. Adjust the strength for a good output. Add appropriate material shaders to your other objects in Cycles.
Set your render samples as high as your computer will allow for an appropriate render time. Compare your two render results and answer the following questions: 1. Look at the lighting effects in both images. You used one light in each, but have different results. Which one looks more realistic? In Cycles, graininess is determined by the number of samples. Why does the image improve with higher samples? Research and explain why. Which render engine do you like the best and why?
You have had a comparison of Blender's two render engines in this chapter, but how does Cycles compare to another program's render engine? Conduct an internet research of another render engine that can be used with other commercial animation programs. Explain your findings. You can add color, make things glow, become transparent like glass or make them look like brick, grass, stone, metal, fabric, wallpaper, etc.
Basic Material Settings You must always add a material before you can add a texture. To add a material, first select the object you want to work with. Then go to the Materials panel in the Properties window. The material block is used to change some of the physical properties of the object in how it looks. The panels can float around so they may not be in this order, but here is what you see with all panels collapsed: Add a new material or duplicate List of all materials the one currently selected linked to object Browse list of all Change the material name here materials in file How to display the material: Preview Sample Surface- Normal mode Wire- Render as a wireframe Diffuse- The actual color of Volume- useful for smoke the object settings simulations Halo- Gives verticies a glow Shading- Control self emitting light and ambient Different ways to display the lighting effects sample Subsurface Scattering- Specular- controls the objects effects for final rendering glossiness settings Strands- used for hair and Mirror-Transparency- Raytrace grass efects settings will be discussed in a Shadow- setting related to later chapter how the object casts and Options- a few setting related to receives shadows the world and rendering This is just an overview of the basic material panels.
On the next page, we will highlight some of the important panels we will be using at this time. Remember panels can be collapsed and opened as needed to streamline your view. You can also scroll with the mouse wheel!
Some of this will be a review from the past chapter: Diffuse: Diffuse is actually the color that is given off by the object. Shading: If you want something to glow, even in low light, adjust the Emit slider. Ambient light allows the object to also react as if indirect light were hitting it. There are also a few other shading settings here as well.
SubSurface Scattering: Is used to improve rendering for materials where light enters the material and leaves through another point like skin. Strands: Strands are used to represent hair or grass when used with particle systems discussed in a later chapter. With strand settings, you can control the root and tip width of the strand. Shadow: There are time when you do not want an object to be able to cast a shadow and times when it doesn't receive shadows properly from objects with transparent materials or ray-tracing features.
Those options are controlled in this panel. In the Material panel, turn on Transparency and select Z-Transparency, then slide the Alpha control down. Press the F12 button to render an image.
If you need features like distortion refraction , then you will need to use Raytrace Transparent. Refraction is the effect you get like looking through a magnifying glass or a crystal. Avoid using Ray features at this time. They are discussed in a later chapter. Z-Transparent material Halo Settings By using Halos on objects, you are basically only making the vertices visible when rendered. Halo effects give you a star-like image on every vertex.
Sometimes, it adds a nice effect to take a plane and delete all vertices except for one. Tie it to a particle effect discussed in a later chapter and you can produce some interesting results. Animation basics are discussed in a later chapter. There are also other options with halos not discussed. Halos are also used to control the size Flare adds additional rings and appearance of particles in smoke and fire and effects effects.
These will also be discussed in a later chapter. Feel free to experiment! Blender is capable of using almost any image file type whether created in a paint program or is a photographic image.
JPEG images are most common. Blender can even place a movie on an object as a material! This is a good effect if you want to add animation within your animation. Here's what you see in the texture panel: Texture Channels: You can add multiple textures to an object. For example, lets say you want a marble texture on an object, but also want to add a roughness to the surface.
You would add a texture for both effects. Texture Name: Like materials, it's a good idea to name your textures. Texture Type: Choose between built-in texture generators for wood, marble, stucci, etc or select an image or movie.
Mapping: Setting that control how the texture is mapped onto the object. Also control the size and offset of the texture on the object. Influence: Settings that control appearance such as brightness, transparency, glossiness and roughness. S are also effected by the Material setting. Materials and textures work together.
Many textures use a secondary color in their generation. That is also controlled in this panel. Material and Texture properties work together! These can produce some interesting effects with a little practice.
When you select one, setting options will open for that effect. After you place the texture, you still need to go back to the Materials Buttons to fine tune the look on your object. The Stucci texture involves a little more work and will be discussed later in this chapter. Many textures have a Noise Basis for different texture effects. We'll start with a basic cube that has a material applied to it. Since wood is usually various shades of brown, we'll make the Diffuse color brown.
We'll also take Specular Intensity down a bit. We'll now go over to the texture buttons and add a new texture. In the wood texture panel you will see some different ways to represent the wood grain. If you look at your render, you should see your wood grain, but you have a secondary color that needs to be corrected! To fix this, scroll down through your texture panels to find the color swatch to change this to a better color.
I will choose a darker brown. Feel free to experiment with the various other settings. The Stucci Texture: The Stucci texture provides interesting effect on the surface of your object.
In the Texture Buttons, select it as you do for any of the other texture generators and adjust the settings. In the Stucci panel, I will adjust the size to 0. Play with the setting to get a bumpy effect.
Turning the size setting way down can also give you a grainy effect. Below are some samples of different Noise Basis patterns. Most of the time you need to place textures like grass, brick, metal, fabrics and such into your model. Without letting go of the MMB, move your mouse around.
You should now be able to orient your point of view, trackball style. With Shift held down, you will be able to pan the view. Make sure you press the Shift key before the MMB, and that you hold it down for the duration of the mouse movement. Keeping both down, move the mouse vertically. This performs a zoom that is smoother than rolling the MW by itself. Please note that the preceding actions are contextual in regard to where the mouse pointer is.
For example, if you want to zoom a certain window, you should roll the MW while the mouse pointer is over the target window. If the mouse pointer is positioned elsewhere e. The View Menu So far, you know how to zoom and rotate your point of view using the MW, along with a few other keys such as Ctrl and Shift.
If you are working on a model and want to look at it directly from the front or side, it can be very difficult to precisely reposition the view with your mouse. However, there is a special View menu in the header strip at the bottom of the 3D window that contains presets for top, front, side, and camera views I will discuss the camera in more depth later on.
See Figure 2—4 to see what this menu looks like. Note that these views also have number pad shortcuts e. Holding the Ctrl key makes the shortcut keys work from the opposite angle e. The View menu, showing view shortcuts This View menu is especially useful for splitting the screen into different areas, which we will be looking at next. Press N to toggle the Properties panel. These panels are very useful and will be covered later on, but for now it may help simplify things by putting them away.
The next step is to manipulate the screen windows themselves to customize your screen layout. Not only can you split windows into different layout arrangements, you can customize them by dragging around individual window edges and create new areas as needed.
Custom Window Splitting In Blender 2. To split a screen, position your mouse over this corner when the mouse pointer changes to a cross, you are in the right position , hold down the LMB, and drag toward the center of the window e. Figure 2—5. Diagonal stripes at the top right of the window border So far, so good. You should now be able to split the screen into multiple windows and really clutter things up. But how do you separate them again?
Joining windows back together is very much the opposite of separating them. Place your mouse over the top-right or bottom-left stripes of the window next to the one you wish to remove. As with splitting windows, the mouse pointer will become a cross when you are on the right spot. This time, instead of dragging the corner into the window, drag it outward.
This movement will expand the window so that it takes over the next area. Make sure the mouse pointer is over the window you wish to expand. Hold the Shift key down and press the spacebar. This is very useful when your layout becomes full of tiny windows.
A spacious full-screen view of the window you want to work in is much better than a view the size of a postage stamp. Every window consists of a large area for now, you have been working with one that shows the 3D view , and includes diagonal lines at the top-right and bottom-left corners that you can use to split the window into more windows.
You can also LMB-drag the edges of windows to resize them. Each window also has a header strip running along the top or the bottom see Figure 2—6. You can change whether this header strip is at the top or bottom of a window by RMB-clicking it and choosing Flip to Top or Flip to Bottom on the menu that appears.
Figure 2—6. Header strip with the window type set to 3D View cube icon The menu options on the header strip may change depending on the context, but the most important button remains at the far left end of any header strip.
This button is the Window Type button as indicated in Figure 2—6. Clicking this button opens a menu of the different kinds of windows Blender can host, and selecting from this list changes the information that is shown in the larger window view. Also on this menu is a Properties option, which fills the window with buttons like the panel on the right of the default view. At this point, you will mainly be interested in the 3D View window type.
I am showing you the other options so that you know how to access them, as required in later chapters. The default layout for Blender has a vertical set of panels at the far right of the screen. These are in fact two windows, each containing a number of panels. The top one is the Outliner window Figure 2—7 , which displays a tree list of the items in your scene you usually start off with a camera, a cube, and a lamp.
Among other things, the Outliner is useful for efficiently LMB-selecting an object when you have lost it from the main 3D view. Figure 2—7. The Outliner 20 www.
These buttons may change depending on what is selected and the kind of task being performed. The thing to take note of is that the top presents a row of tabs that group the many available buttons into various types of tasks. Hovering your mouse over these tabs reveals headings for the kinds of settings each tab deals with; options include Render camera icon , Scene, World, and Object. We will explore some of these in more depth in later chapters. Figure 2—8.
The Properties panel Below these tabs are many buttons and slider controls. They are sorted into labeled rectangular areas that can be expanded or minimized by LMB-clicking the triangular arrow to the left of each respective label. The top-right of each area has handles the diagonal lines that allow you to LMB-drag the areas into a different order if there are some options you want to place at the top for easy access.
Take care not to confuse the Properties editor buttons, the Properties panel reached via the N key, and the Tool Shelf reached via the T key these last two toggle on and off when pressing N or T with the mouse pointer over a 3D view. Admittedly, having the 3D view Properties panel and also the editor type named Properties is confusing; however, as long as you are aware of the places to look for options, you should soon get the hang of finding the tools you are after. Multiple-View Setup Now that you can create or divide new window sections and have seen how Blender windows work, you should be able to split the screen into separate areas for different views of your work.
For example, you could divide the screen into four views and then use the View menu to show top, front, side, and camera angles in each section. As it turns out, the numpad 7, numpad 1, and numpad 3 shortcut keys for the View menu we looked at earlier are not randomly placed.
They form an L shape on the number pad of your keyboard, which corresponds to the onscreen positioning when making a classic four-planar view top-left for top view, bottom-left for front view, and bottom-right for side view. Figure 2—9 shows 21 www.
Figure 2—9. Blender split into traditional four-planar view The button at the far left of the header strip of any window allows you to change the window type, as shown in Figure 2— This means you can specify whether the window area is for viewing 3D space, whether it is a panel of buttons or a timeline, and so on.
For now, you will be working with the main 3D view, for which the Window Type button will display a cube. Figure 2— Cube icon indicating the 3D View window type You should now be able to lay out the Blender windows pretty much any way you like.
Blender is incredibly flexible in this area, and it is worth practicing the interface until adjusting windows becomes second nature. The given layouts are useful for common purposes; one is optimized for animation, and so forth. These are adjustable as well; make alterations to one of the layouts and it will remain even after switching back and forth between others on the list. Blender comes equipped with a certain number of primitives, which are basic shapes like cubes, tubes, and spheres.
These are useful for starting modeling covered in Chapter 3. You will notice that a target symbol appears wherever you LMB-click. This is known as the cursor, and is shown in Figure 2— It will becomes very useful later on, but for now, all you need to know is that it shows where the next object you are going to add to your scene will appear. The cursor 23 www. A cube, for example, has six faces, which are formed by a net of eight connected vertex points on the corners. For now, just adding mesh objects as they are is fine.
You can change these properties as you see fit. To choose a different object to manipulate, RMB-click the object. This new copy tends to follow your mouse around until you LMB-click to drop it. But first, you need to know how to move objects around. RMB-click the cube to select it. Once selected, the cube will show colored manipulator arrows, as in Figure 2— Use this button to turn the visual manipulator on or off.
If you need to change either setting, click the appropriate icon, and a drop-down list will appear, allowing you to choose other options. Object mode left and the median point setting of pivot mode right Moving the object is easy. Simply hold the LMB on one of the arrows and drag in the direction you wish the cube to move. Notice that you can only move the cube parallel to the arrow you are pulling. You can drag in all directions by LMB-dragging the circle where the manipulator arrows meet.
Notice that each arrow is a different color red, green, and blue. To help you remember this, Blender has a small diagram of the axis directions at the bottom left of any 3D window, as shown in Figure 2— Axis diagram LMB-dragging the arrows can be tedious after a while, and the manipulator arrows are sometimes easy to miss. At first this makes the object follow mouse movements all over the screen.
Place your mouse near the edge of the object. Press the R key once. Move the mouse around the object in circles to watch it rotate. LMB-click to release the object in place, or press Esc to cancel. If you press R twice, however, the rotation changes to trackball mode. This means that when you move the mouse pointer across the front of the object, it spins toward or away from the camera instead.
The differences between normal and trackball rotation are shown in Figure 2— Normal rotation left and trackball rotation right Changing the Manipulator Arrows As mentioned previously, you can use the manipulator arrows to drag objects around the screen. However, by changing the arrow type from movement to rotation, you can also use the manipulator arrows to rotate objects as well. Manipulator controls 27 www.
To rotate the selected object, select the Rotation icon the curved line. The manipulator arrows on the object will change to rings, as shown in Figure 2—20, which can be used to rotate the object in much the same way as the arrows are used to move it. Rotational manipulators The Difference Between Global and Local Now that you can rotate objects using either the R key shortcut or the manipulator tool in rotation mode , you should take special note of the difference between global and local coordinates.
The difference is that with global coordinates, the x, y, and z directions are given in terms of world space. This means that z is always up, no matter which way an object is rotated.
However, in local coordinates, z is up only in terms of the object itself. So if the object were rotated 90 degrees, then local z would be pointing out to the side. If the object were upside down, then the local z direction would be downward even though global z direction is upward , as demonstrated in Figure 2— Global up left and local up right Just to the right of the manipulator tool buttons is a drop-down list where you can change whether the manipulator arrows work on global or local coordinates there are a few other options on the list, but for now Global and Local are the ones that matter.
Notice that when you change from one to the other, the manipulator arrows change. However, if you press X, Y, or Z twice, it will toggle to local mode. Just to illustrate the point, try this: Start with the default cube, and rotate it so it is not straight up and down. Change the manipulator to local, so that the manipulators are diagonal the same angle at which the object has been tilted.
Press G and then X, and you can see the movement is global. Press X another time and watch the movement change to local. Press X a third time to reset the axis movement. To get an idea of how to scale objects, perform the following exercise: Select the cube RMB-click it. Place the mouse pointer near the edge of the cube. Press S. Draw the mouse pointer away from the cube do not hold any mouse buttons to enlarge it.
LMB-click to finalize the scale operation or press Esc to cancel. Experiment with the same principles that you did with rotation. Look at what happens when you press the X key while scaling it expands in global X direction.
With a rotated object, examine what happens when you press X twice if Local is selected from the drop-down list, then the scale will change to local. Note that when using the manipulator tool with scaling, the manipulators look like they did with movement, except the arrowheads are squares, as shown in Figure 2— LMB-dragging each manipulator arrow will stretch the object along the respective axis, whereas dragging from the middle area where the manipulator arrows are connected will scale the object in all directions.
This actually turns the object inside out, creating a situation known as inverted normals. Early in this chapter, we got rid of a couple of panels to make the screen less cluttered. One of them, the Properties panel, is now going to prove useful. Press the N key to bring up the Properties panel, which is shown in Figure 2— This panel contains rotation, location, and scale information about any selected object.
When you move the object around, the information in the Properties panel updates. You can also type numbers directly into the properties boxes, and when you press Enter, the object will adjust accordingly. The Properties panel 30 www. Using Numbers As mentioned previously, you can specify the direction to which a transform applies by pressing X, Y, or Z while the transform is being made.
You can also type in numbers to achieve a similar effect on an object that is being moved, scaled, or rotated. A Blender unit is the size of one of the squares in the floor grid of the 3D view, and the default cube is normally 2 Blender units wide. Use the Properties panel to study the result. Later on though, when dealing with many objects, layers will become very useful. The idea with layers is that you can set various objects to belong to different layers layer01, layer02, layer03, etc.
Along the header strip of a 3D view is a section made of small squares representing the different layers see Figure 2— By default, the top-left square layer01 is activated. You can activate other layers by LMB-clicking the squares. Using Shift-LMB hold down the Shift key while clicking different squares , you can turn on several layers at the same time. Note that the default cube is on layer01 only, and therefore seems to disappear when the view is switched to other layers.
Layers in the header strip The ordinary number keys along the top of the keyboard perform as shortcuts to layers. Pressing 1 sends you to layer01, pressing 2 to layer02, and so on; pressing 0 sends you to layer Holding down the Alt key while pressing layers allows shortcut access for layer11 through layer In most cases, you can fix this by holding down a special key e.
However, this has more to do with your individual desktop settings than with Blender itself, as Blender is designed to respond to the Alt key. To move an object to a different layer, RMB-select the object and then press the M key. The Move to Layer dialog will appear see Figure 2—25 , allowing you to select the layer s on which you wish the selected object to appear. Again, you can use the Shift key to specify multiple layers. Needless to say, if you undo a few times and then make a change, you lose any redo from there.
Every object in Blender knows its rested state; that is, where it would be had it never been moved, resized, or scaled. Using the Alt key, we can tell any selected object to reset itself in terms of location, rotation, or scale. You can verify this by examining the data shown in the Properties panel.
For example, you might want the rested position to be 45 degrees diagonal, or the default shape to be taller. From then on, your object will reset to the new position. The first time you save, and each time you perform a save-as, you will see a file manager allowing you to navigate to where you would like to store your file. The file manager works like it does in many other programs. Pressing these automatically adds a number to the name of a file so that successive saves are easy.
For example, if your file is called superdog It is a good idea to keep copies of previous saves in the event that you make mistakes. Be sure to click the Save As Blender File button when you are ready to save. It is important that the functions of this chapter become second nature, so please take some time to complete at least one of the following exercises.
I suggest you try one task, sleep on it, and then try the other. Exercise 1: Making a Robot Using primitive shapes cubes, tubes, spheres, etc. You can combine primitives together to make interesting shapes as needed the smaller robot shown has a dome top, which was made by positioning a UV sphere over a tube. Make your robot as simple or as detailed as you like. When done, save it as myrobot.
Robots formed from cubes, spheres, tubes, and a few cones Exercise 2: The Ten-Cube Challenge Another interesting exercise is to see what you can make from ten cubes, examples of which can be seen in Figure 2— This idea was used as a creative challenge on the BlenderArtists.
If a cube has been rotated, be sure to scale it in the local direction. Models formed from ten cubes 34 www.
Table 2—1 describes some useful keyboard shortcuts for manipulating objects. Table 2—1. This chapter also demonstrated how to use the manipulator tools to perform the equivalent actions to the G, R, and S shortcuts.
There are other useful keyboard shortcuts as well, such as those shown in Table 2—2. Table 2—2. Additionally, this chapter covered adding objects and moving them around. In the next chapter, we are going to look more in depth at modeling. You will learn how to make your own shapes from scratch, including how to model based on blueprints. This is fine if you want to make boxlike characters, but Blender can make much more realistic models.
In this chapter, we are going to go to the next level and edit the mesh objects themselves. We will be advancing from moving premade primitives around to making our own models. By the end of this chapter you will have learned the techniques to make full 3D versions of your imaginary characters and designs. What Is a Mesh? While the better models in Blender may look convincingly real, we know that the 3D objects in Blender are not real, but a 3D illusion.
When Blender creates a 3D object, it has to think of the object in terms of a mesh. To make any polygon object, you need the elements described in the following subsections. Origin Point First you need an origin point. You may have already noticed an orange dot that appears in the middle of selected objects. This dot is the origin point see Figure 3—1. The shape of the model is built around this origin point, and when it is moved, scaled, or rotated, the object follows along likewise.
The origin represents the very heart of the object itself. Figure 3—1. The origin point 37 www. By themselves, the vertices merely form a cloud of floating points, and need something more in order to define a solid-looking object see Figure 3—2. Figure 3—2. Vertices Edges The vertices are connected point to point by lines known simply as edges.
This makes the form much easier to see, creating what is commonly known as a wireframe of the object see Figure 3—3. Figure 3—3. Edges Faces Three edges can form a triangle, and four can make a square; a face is made when those edges are filled in as a solid surface. When the mesh is made of faces, it finally looks solid see Figure 3—4. Faces can be colored to make realistic textures on an object this will be covered Chapter 4 and 5.
Faces Edit Mode In Chapter 2 we looked at the interface of Blender, how to split windows, how to move objects around, and so on. Obviously, editing our own objects is going to increase the complexity. The good news is that many of the skills involving moving objects around are reusable in the editing stage. Blender can seem very hard to learn at first, especially with the number of shortcut keys it employs, but is it very consistent with them, making new skills less difficult to pick up.
We are about to practice using some common mesh-editing functions. On starting Blender, you are in object mode.
Click the list and change to edit mode Figure 3—5. Alternatively, you can press the Tab key to switch between object and edit modes. Figure 3—5.
The truth is that Tab switches between edit mode and whichever mode you were otherwise in. So, if you are in sculpt mode, pressing Tab will toggle back and forth between sculpt and edit modes, for example. Check that you are in vertex select mode. Figure 3—6. Vertex select mode Now select one of the corner vertices of the cube by RMB-clicking it.
Then you can move the selected corner vertex using the G key or by LMB-dragging the manipulator arrows, just as when moving objects in Chapter 2 see Figure 3—7. You cannot scale or rotate a single vertex point. However, if you select several vertices e. Figure 3—7. Moving a single vertex Look at the other selection buttons near vertex select mode, as shown in Figure 3—8. Figure 3—8.
Selection modes 40 www. Likewise, with face select mode, the actual faces can be selected via RMB-clicking.
Experiment with these modes and get used to moving parts of the cube around. It is useful to have this button enabled so that you can only see the frontmost faces, as this prevents accidentally selecting areas through the wrong side of a mesh. Figure 3—9. On the right, the option is on, hiding the vertices from the other side.
However, you still need to learn a few commands to really get to grips with modeling. Selecting a row of vertices one by one can be very slow—is there a faster way to do it? How can we join two mesh objects together? Certainly, Blender has many functions to do all these things and more.
Play with them and see whether you can use them to make a small model from the cube Blender starts with. For the most part, these work best with face select mode. Extrude This is one of the most powerful editing features. RMB-select a face of your cube. Download the manual in an e-book format EPUB. About Blender. Installing Blender. Configuring Blender. Help System. The Motion Paths tool allows you to visualize the motion of points as paths over a series of frames.
These points can be object origins and bone joints. Transforming a model into a posable character has never been easier!
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