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.
If you want to edit
the shape of your models,
you want to go into what we call edit mode. In edit mode,
you can actually see what the cube is made of.
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 in Object mode, you can go back and forth
with Tab by the way.
What is orange is selected. If I am in Edit Mode, I can select a point,
and the point is highlighted.
The cube is made of points
at the corners
with edges between them.
And between
four edges,
is a polygon or a face. They used to be called Faces.
Nowadays there are called Polygons in Blender.
I will probably use both names.
You can select one of these points and just like before, 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.
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 points. 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 polygon up, which just moves
the four points 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 6 sides to it
and only
8 points.
It’s pretty much impossible to make that into a nicely more complicated shape. To do that, we need to add
point 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
Extrude Region, Extra Individual, Subdivide, all of these add points to your mesh
in different ways.
In this case, I would like to try to use the shortcut keys on my keyboard.
I want to select a face to
show you what Extruder does.
I’ll hit E on my keyboard.
I just remember what it is. I can Exclude. You can see it drags a shape out of my selection.
Here's a little tip.
I can drag it smoothly.
But if I hold down ctrl,
I can do it
in increments.
So I can
E for extrude
and drag it out in increments.
That works quite nicely.
I’ll do it again.
You select a Face. You can do multiple face as well.
And extrude.
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 mid there.
That's not printable. It is not what we call manifold. It doesn't make a neat shape.
I will delete that point.
Deleting is something you try not to do too much,
when editing in this way. By the way, this technique I'm using is called Box Modelling. Because we're starting from a box,
and adding more and more points to it.
What we can do now is
move points around
with the same methods we used to move entire object,
and extrude shapes
out of it.
That works quite nicely.
The side,
I’ll make this a little more narrow.
That way we can extrude a shape.
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.
I’ll click on it, and then, you'll have over the edge you want to cut.
They’ll cut all the way around the model.
So I will cut.
And then say, where I cut?
Wherever I want. In this case,
I like the exact middle. So type 0 and hit "enter",
that always cuts in the middle bit.
The one just above that, I skip.
I skips on purpose.
I will select
everything and hit Subdivide.
You will see what it does.
It adds points
everywhere
completely.
It’s not random. But it just add 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.
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 5 points
attached to it.
This point is also part of that face.
And you really don't want that.
The reason you don't want that is that, Lloop Cut and Slide
no longer works here.
You see it goes all the way around until here.
And it doesn't want
to cut the 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 a head, which is to the left,
and which is to the right.
I'll lock Loop Cut and I’ll undo
with Ctrl 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 neat.
Extrude out.
Maybe where I'm going with this,
select the front face,
and extrude that as well.
Almost turning into a little character.
That brings me to the next bit.
Because what I do not want to do is
I've made his left arm and left leg, I don't want to make his right arm and right leg
by hand as well.
We can auto made
that’s sort of thing.
You don't always have to add all points by hand. Somethings we can do automated in Blender.
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 two 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 shape.
I will add a modifier here. For instance, I can add a Subdivision Surface.
This is the one that a lot of people use
a lot of the time. I will put one there. You can see,
it adds point
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 grey model.
But the actual point I can edit
are still just the few I already had.
So I can still go here
and extrude.
It adds extra points. But all these rounding is done for me.
I can even make it
a little more rounded.
This character is coming along really nicely.
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 like
what I had in mind. Here we go.
That could be an elbow there.
What I mentioned before was
I don't really want to edit all these 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.
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.
Click B on your keyboard and then draw a box
around what you want to select.
Delete those verts.
I just made a hole in my model, which is something I shouldn't be doing.
I did it anyway. Now I'll add a Mirror Modifier.
You'll 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 skinny hips.
Oops, if I cancel it.
There we go.
That works.
Something that I'm thinking about when I do things
for 3D printing is,
I don't really want arms
sticking out at the side of my character.
For lot of 3D printing technique,
like for instance, this is a Doris,
he has wings
sticking out of his side.
That can be printed fine
in this full color technique. You see his arms are sticking out of his body as well.
This is fine because he is printed in a powder basin that can support
the weight of the arms as they're made.
If ever you want to print on an extrusion type printer,
like the Makeball I have, like Automaker, or there is many different ones,
they can't do that. They can't make arms
sticking out of the side
because they need support underneath it.
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 sides.
And I'll do that
by making a hole here on his hip,
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 Add menu.
Instead,
if you know it's called, I know there is a function called Inset,
I don't know where to find it,
you can hit the spacebar. I'll hit the spacebar that give you a Search menu.
In here,
you can find
every function in Blender.
I will type Inset,
and it tells me the function is called Inset Faces.
And the letter I does it for me automatically.
Click on I on my keyboard or I can click on it here.
I'll click over here and move my mouse in a bit.
Inset. I can then
select the points around the 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.
Select all four.
Delete the face.
Now I've got two holes
which I like to connect.
I’ll go look from the bottom,
so I can align them a bit.
I could do this automatically, but I'll do it by hand. These ones,
I select 4 points
which 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 Edge/Face
is letter F.
So I can select 4, and hit F.
And I will do that all the way around here.
Make my character a little bit strange.
I think.
But it's a good start.
Now if this is steep enough,
this horizontal, if it starts printing it, this will drop down on my printer.
But if I select all of these and make it steep enough,
I should be able to print it. This maybe not.
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.
We've got a Subsurf that we can make more and less detail.
And the left is automatically mirrored on the right.
To finish this part, I want to show you
a few little things about these modifiers we've added.
One is that you can disable them temporarily really easily.
I can click on the "eye", and you see the model as it would be
without the modifier attached.
Very neat way to see if you have anything too weird happening.
You can just
modify it
in here.
This look pretty OK.
So I go back.
Another thing you can do with modifiers is changed their order.
You will see here in the crotch, for instance,
the way that this is
subsurface
changes if I mirror it first.
I can click on the little arrow,
and it's gone lower. It's a lot smoother
by mirroring and then subsurfing. 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 modifier.
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 clicked G move it to the right. You can see
there's a big gap between, the two halves arn't actually connected.
If, however,
I have Clipping switched on,
I can't 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 Alt,
and then click on an edge,
and select the entire Loop.
I’ll go to the front view
and extrude this out
towards the centre.
And I cannot move this beyond the center.
Once it is connected, I cannot move it away from the center, either.
Clipping is also very nice
if I want to
extrude all of these.
It will assume or
simulated
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 a bit.
There we go.
I have now made the shape.
That is pretty nice.
If I want to select the edge around it,
can Shft and Alt,
select like this.
A little trick
for the Subsurf Modifier. You can see, Subsurf Modifier makes everything smooth.
Sometimes you want a hard edge.
To do that,
you want to crease it.
Creasing is like folding a piece of paper
or creasing a piece of cloth,
you make a hard edge.
You can find
all sorts of things to do with edges under Ctrl E,
that gives you the Edges Menu.
In here, I want to, in this case
Edge Crease
or Shft E.
I do Edge Crease,
drag it away,
you see,
we've created a hard edge around the shape here.
And if I want to make
the entire character little thinner,
that is fine too.
Just have to make sure
I 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.
Clipping
stays on.
Just drag him to the middle a bit.
Let’s give something to look through.
I will just do
these two,
for this case, or just this one,
Extrude it in.
Here we go.
He’s got a little bit of an eye slids thing hole,
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.
This guy doesn't have any colour. He is very simple.
We would pick STL. That's the most common format for none colored 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 1 cm tall.