mm
mm hmm.
Yeah.
At this point you should be able to add very basic objects such as cubes or
spheres or monkey heads and move them around and change their size and rotate them.
Doing very basic things.
This is what you can do in what we call object mode.
You always change the entire object in its entirety.
You cannot change a cube into a monkey or into something that you want like
a tree or a guy or a football or whatever you want to model.
Um if you want to edit the shape of your models,
you want to go into what we call edit mode.
And in edit mode you can actually see what the cube is made of.
So make sure you select a mesh object, not the camera. This is a camera.
You can't select that and go into edit mode and change it into something else.
But all meshes can
now this is the cube and everything is selected just like an object mode.
You can go back and forth with tab by the way.
What is orange is selected if I am an edit mode. I can select for instance a point
and the point is highlighted.
So the cube is made of points at the corners with edges
between them and between four edges is a polygon or face.
Now they used to be called faces. Um nowadays they're called polygons in blender.
I will probably use both names.
Um
you can select one of these points and just like before in the in the object tools.
Now there are mesh tools I can translate a point and change the shape of my model,
I can't however
rotate a point.
Well it says it's rotating at the left bottom corner
but because it's one point it doesn't really matter if I select multiple points.
However
I can rotate them around each other
in this case. In edit mode, rotating and scaling
actually moves the point. So all we are doing is translating points.
But because we take multiple we can
translate them in certain ways relative to each other. So I can
scale this pulley gone up which just moves the four point.
It's the same as if you're moving
the four points away from each other.
This is ultra basic editing except of course a cube is but a cube.
There are only six sides to it and only eight points.
So it's pretty much impossible to make that into a nicely more complicated
shape to do that we need to add points to our cube.
The functions that let you add points to A model
can be found on the left. In the mesh tools menu.
You can see there is extra region extra individuals subdivide all
of these add points to your mesh in different ways.
Um In this case I would like to try to use the shortcut keys on my keyboard
and I want to select a face to show you what extra does
I will hit e on my keyboard.
I just remember what it is and I can extrude,
you can see it drags a shape out of my selection
and here's a little tip, I can drag it smoothly, but if I hold down control,
I can do it
in increments so I can eat for extrude and drag it out in increments.
That works quite nicely. I'll do it again.
So you select a face, you can do multiple phases as well
and extrude.
Now you don't have to keep them in the shape of a block. I can still go
select individual points
and move them around.
But if you have enough you can extrude. What you don't want to do
is extrude a single point
that will give you a floating point somewhere in mid air, that's not principle.
It is not what we call manifold, it doesn't make a neat shape.
So I will delete that point.
Deleting is something you try not to do too much where you're editing in this way.
By the way,
this technique I'm using is called books modeling because we're starting
from a box and adding more and more points to it.
So what we can do now is move points around
with the same methods we used to move entire objects
and extrude shapes
out of it
that works quite nicely. We go from the side and will make this a little more narrow
that way we can extrude a shape.
Um
This is a nice way to add models but you always make your shape bigger
if you want to add more detail inside what you already have.
For instance, if I want to cut this in half adding points in the middle of this edge,
what you use is loop cut and slide.
Um
I'll click on it and then you hover over the edge you want
to cut and it will cut all the way around the model.
So I will cut and then say where I cut wherever I want. In this case
I'd like the exact middle, so I'll type zero and hit enter
that always cuts in the middle of it.
Um the one just above that I skipped, I skipped on purpose, I will select
everything and hit subdivide and you will see what it does.
It add point adds points everywhere, completely sort of, you know,
it's not random but it just adds them everywhere,
which makes your model more and more detailed, which can be nice.
But it gives you detail also in places where you maybe don't need it,
so it lacks control. And if you do it to a single edge, I can
subdivide,
it adds a point in the middle of that edge. That seems very nice
but it means that the shape next to the edge is no longer a quad. It isn't
a square. This is a square, right?
This is something with five points attached to at this point is also part of that face
and you really don't want that.
The reason you don't want that is that loop cut and slide for instance,
no longer works here.
You see it goes all the way around until here
and it doesn't want to cut this front face anymore.
The features like loop cut and slide only work if your model is made out of squares,
squares are really really nice.
The reason being that if you come to an intersection,
you know which way is ahead which is to the left and which is to the right,
I'll not loop cut and I'll undo
with control Z
until it is done.
We are back to squares.
This is really neat. So
I can
add detail in this way. I can loop cut wherever I want
and I can extrude regions as well. Be careful. Don't just extrude anything.
Always make sure
you have faces selected
in their entirety.
So I will
do that really needs
extrude out.
And
you see
maybe where I'm going with this, I'll select the front face and extrude that as well.
It's almost turning into a little character.
Um
That brings me to the next bit because what I do not want to do
is I've made his left arm and his left leg,
I don't want to make his right arm and right leg by hand as well.
We can automate
that sort of thing.
Yeah.
Mhm.
You know,
you don't always have to add all points by hand.
Some things we can do automated in blender.
Um If you look on the right this is our properties panel,
this is the object I'm in it is still called cube
and if I go to the right to more spaces there is a little wrench symbol.
The little wrench is for object modifiers.
The modifiers are automated functions that do things to your shapes.
I will add a modifier here. For instance I can add a subdivision surface.
This is one that a lot of people use
a lot of the time. I will put one there and you can see
it adds points to my entire model by the way.
It doesn't matter whether I'm in edit mode
or object mode. If you go into edit mode, you can see
it doesn't actually add points that I can edit.
There are more points here in the gray model but the actual points
I can edit are still just the few I already had so I can
still go here and extrude
and it adds extra points. But all this rounding is done for me.
I can even make it a little more around it. You see
this character is coming along really nicely and we can
extrude and still edit but we don't have to edit
as many points as you might expect.
You can edit.
I'll change the shape of it in the meantime we don't have to finish straight away.
That's starting to look
kind of like what I had in mind.
There we go. That could be an elbow there.
So what I mentioned before was I don't really want to
edit all this stuff on the other side as well.
I've already made his left arm.
I would actually like his right arm
to look exactly the same as his left arm
and we can also use a modifier for that first.
What I will do is remove everything on this side.
What I just did for selecting was drawing a box.
So you click on be on your keyboard and then draw a box around what you want to select.
Delete those words.
And yes, I just made a hole in my model which is something I shouldn't be doing.
I did it anyway and now I'll add a mirror modifier and you see
it
mirrors my character on the other side straight away that works really,
really well.
And if I edit the points on this side for instance, select all of this stuff.
The other side is edited with it automatically. We can give him some skinnier hips.
If I can select.
There we go.
And that works.
Something that I'm thinking about when I do things for three D.
Printing is I don't really want arms sticking out of the sides of my character.
For a lot of three D. Printing techniques
like for instance, this is Doris, he has wings sticking out of his side
that can be printed fine in this full color technique.
You can see his arms are sticking out of his body as well.
This is fine because he's printed in a powder basin that
can support the weight of the arms as they are made.
Um If however you want to print on a extrusion type printer
like the maker, but I have or like an ultra maker or there's many different ones.
They can't do that.
They can't make arms sticking out of the
side because they need support underneath them.
If I want to print this guy on my own printer,
I can't do this. I can't have his arms like this. So what I will do
is I want to connect the arm as if he's standing with his hands in his side
and I'll do that by
making a hole here on his hip.
I'll actually inset in here.
Inset is a very nice function as well along with extrude and loop cut,
but you can't find it in the ad menu
instead,
if you know what it's called. I know there's a function called inset.
I don't know where to find it.
You can hit the space bar,
I'll hit the space bar that gives you a search menu and in here you can find
every function in blender. I will type in set
and it tells me the function is called inset faces
and
the letter. I does it for me automatically.
I can click on I on my keyboard or I can click on it here.
I'll click on it here and move my mouse in a bit
to inset.
I can then
select the points around this face and click on X. Or delete to delete only the face
that cuts a neat hole in my model
and I'll do the same here. Uh Select all four.
Delete the face.
Now I've got two holes which I'd like to connect.
I'll go look from the bottom so we can align them of it.
I could do this automatically but I'll do it by hand this once
I select four points that I know I want to connect with a square. And then you can hit F.
On your keyboard or you can find it here as well.
You can under face make an edge or a face is letter F. So I can select four
and hit F.
And I will do that all the way around here.
Makes my character a little bit strange I think.
But it's a good start
now if this is steep enough this horizontal it will still if
it starts printing it this will drop down on my printer.
But if I select all of this and make it steep enough. Here we go.
I should be able to print it this maybe not.
And we have some really nice new tools in blender that help you check
whether it is steep enough right now.
I'm guesstimating the checking is for a later tutorial.
This is starting to look pretty nice.
So we've got a subsurface that we can make more and
less detailed and the left is automatically mirrored on the right.
Yeah.
To finish this part,
I want to show you just a few little things about these modifiers, we've added
one is that you can disable them temporarily really easily so I can click on
the eye and you see the model as it would be without the modifier attached.
It's a very neat way to see if you have anything too weird happening,
you can just modify it in here. This looks pretty okay. So I go back
um
Hey,
another thing you can do with modifiers is change their order.
You will see here in the crutch for instance
the way that this is subsurface changes.
If I mirror at first I can click on the little arrow and it's gone lower.
It's a lot smoother by mirroring and then sub serving, I'll do it again.
You see it changes so you can change the order of these. You can click on the little X.
If you want to remove
the mortar fire.
Another really helpful function in the mirror modifier is clipping.
That's one that I wanted to show you.
It is now disabled. That is the way it is by default. If I select everything and I
move it to the right, just click G move it to the right, you can see
there is a big gap between the two halves aren't actually connected.
If however I
have clipping switched on I can connect them.
I will go to the front.
I have this selected if you want to select an entire loop by the way. Hold down bolt
and then click on an edge and it select an entire loop.
I'll go to front view and extrude this out towards the center
and I cannot move this beyond the center now and once
it is connected I cannot move it away from the center.
Either clipping is also very nice if I want to for instance
extrude all of this
it will assume or simulate it as if I've also selected on
the other side as if it's all connected so I can extrude
and move all this up of it.
There we go.
I have now made this shape.
That is pretty nice.
If I want to select the edge around it I just use shift and adult select like this.
A little trick for the sub served modifier.
You can see sub served modifier, makes everything
smooth. Sometimes you want a hard edge to do that.
You want to increase it
increasing is like folding a piece of paper or increasing a piece of cloth.
You make a hard edge.
You can find all sorts of things to do with edges under control. E.
That gives you the edges menu and in here I want to in this case edge crease or shift E.
So I do edge crease,
drag it away. And you see, we've created a hard edge around this shape here.
And if I want to
make the entire character a little thinner,
that is fine to
just have to make sure,
don't drag it beyond the middle because they all disappear.
This is what the clipping does.
If I switch it off, I can drag him beyond the middle just fine. So clipping stays on.
Just drag him to the middle of it.
Let's give him something to look through.
I will just do these two in this case or just this one
and extruded in.
There we go. So he's got a little bit of an eye slit thing whole or a helmet.
This is a weird little character.
If I wanted to print him, I can go file export and then choose your file format.
Um This guy doesn't have any color. He is very simple.
And we would pick STL that's the most common format for non colored uh
objects. You can export and get a print.
Which is what I've done with a guy I made in exactly the same way though.
I spent a little bit more time on giving him a more refined shape.
And I even made a little friend for him.
I will include these models on the DVD. So you can have a quick look.
It just took about twice as much time as this tutorial took before you export.
However,
have a look at the scaling tutorial because this guy
right now would print I think at one centimeter tall.
Yeah.
Mhm.
Yeah.