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Author: Bart VeldhuizenSubjects: user interfaceLevel: beginner

Introduction

If you are reading this chapter, youare probably feeling like I did exactlyone year ago. I had found this extre-mely interesting looking 3D applica-tion (which other users were ravingabout), but the user interface com-pletely baffled me. I couldn't findthe quit function (I had to kill theapplication instead of exiting it), Isaw buttons that seemed to reactdifferently each time I clicked onthem and every time somethinginteresting happened, I could notreproduce it.

In the weeks after that, I slowlyfound out the basic principles behindthe Blender user interface. Andthough it is non-standard, it becameclear that it was a very consistentsystem - it would let me use thesame functions in a number of com-pletely different situations.

This chapter will save you weeks offrustration by explaining the basics

of Blender's user interface. It will notexplain every button or even everywindow in detail (that is where theBlender manual comes in), but inste-ad let you see the basic idea behindit.

After finishing this chapter you areready to work with the rest of thebook. Like me, you will find out thatBlender's user interface really growson you; it is one of the most efficientand well-thought out interfaces Ihave worked with.

Here is what I found to be theGolden Rule of Blender:

"Keep one hand on your keyboardand one on your mouse."

Even while Blender's user interfacemay be a bit daunting at first, I hopethat working with this book willteach you that it is actually a veryintuitive one. It was written entirelyfor working efficiently and quicklyand this means that a lot of functionsare accessible both by using the key-board and by using the mouse.Working with hotkeys instead ofmenus is harder to learn, but therewards are great.

After a while working with Blenderbecomes a second nature. Often, mygirlfriend watches in amazement atthe speed with which I can handleobjects, change views, navigate myway around my scene in Blender.Blender has really turned my keybo-ard and mouse into a glove whichreaches into 3D space.

But it all starts with the Golden Rule- remember it while you are workingyour way through this book!

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What am I looking at?

When you first start Blender, yourscreen will look like this. The screenis divided into three parts; at the topyou see the Info Window. Amongother things, you will see Blender'sversion number and some statisticsabout your current scene.

Next is the 3D Window. This windowtype is used for all the editing inyour 3D world. The pink square in themiddle is the standard plane. It ispink because it is currently selected.The black triangle on the bottom isthe camera. The gray lines are thegrid lines of the 3D world - you canuse them to align your objects. Thecross hairs with the white and redcolored circle is the 3D cursor. Youcan place it anywhere in 3D space. Itis used to determine where newobjects are placed, but it can alsoact as a center for rotation or sca-ling.

The window on the bottom is calledthe Buttons Window. In this window,you can edit a variety of informationabout your scene: materials, lights,animation settings, rendering settings- it is all in here.

Each window has a Header. For the3D window the header is located atthe bottom. You can switch the posi-tion of the header by RightClickingon it and confirming the requesterthat pops up ('Switch header').

Pay special attention to the buttonon the far left - each window has thisicon. This is also the one that com-pletely eluded me in the beginning.

In Blender terms, it is called an IconSlider button. If you LeftClick on itand drag left or right it will change,revealing a number of differenticons. Each icon corresponds to adifferent window type. I will explainthe different types later.

You can also click on the left andright half of the Icon Slider to changethe window type.

The contents of the Buttons Windowcan be changed by clicking on one ofthese buttons. In fact, it is a lot likethe Icon Slider button that I discuss-sed, but now all the options are visi-ble. The meaning of the differentbuttons is explained later in theparagraph 'the Buttons Window'

Configuring the screen your way

Blender's screen can be reconfiguredin any way that you like. To startwith, you can change the size of the

BLENDER STARTUP SCREEN

THE WINDOW HEADER

CHANGING THE SIZE OF THE WINDOW

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different windows by placing themouse pointer over one of the linesseparating the different windows.The cursor changes shape to indicateyou can now change the windowsize. LeftClick and drag to changethe window size.

Adding a new window is similar:move the mouse pointer over a win-dow border and MiddleClick. A smallrequester will pop up now. You canconfirm splitting the screen byLeftClicking on the text 'Split', or bypressing [ENTER]. The window whichhas the focus and has a yellow hea-der (in this case, the top window) isthe one that will be split - approa-ching the window border from belowwill split the bottom window.

A line indicating the position of thesplit is now shown. You can move itto the desired position and LeftClickto confirm the location.

Cancel the action by moving yourmouse pointer away from the reques-ter, or by pressing [ESC].

Of course, splitting windows workson vertical window borders, too. Inthis example, I have created threeadditional 3D Windows by splittingthe default 3D Window three times.Each window is now independentfrom the others. This way, you cancreate the traditional 4-view window(top, front, right and camera) inBlender. More about this in the para-graph 'the 3D Window'.

If you own a mouse with 2 buttonsinstead of 3, hold down the [ALT]Key and LeftClick to mimic theMiddleButton.

Removing windows is very much likesplitting them; with the mousepoin-ter over a window border,RightClick. Confirm the requester.Like splitting, the direction fromwhich you approached the border (orrather, which window has the focusbefore joining) determines whichwindow 'survives' the joining.

The toolbox - adding a sphere

Almost every Blender function can beaccessed by using the keyboard orthe mouse. The Toolbox containsmost of Blender's functions. You cancall up the toolbox either by clickingits icon in the top-right of theBlender screen, or by pressing[SPACE].

This is how the toolbox works: Thedark gray buttons on the left arefunction categories; moving yourmouse pointer over them will changethe button list on the right. Move

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JOINING TWOSCREENS INTO

ONE

SPLITTING THE WINDOW UP THE BLENDER SCREEN AFTER 3 SPLITS

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your mouse pointer to the right andclick on a function button to activatethat function. Each button also showsthe corresponding keyboard shortcut.In the shortcut notation, cl<button>means holding down [CTRL] andpressing the listed button. Similarly,al<button> uses the [ALT] key as amodifier.

Clicking some buttons will reveal athird layer of functions. For exam-ple, if you wish to add a sphere toyour scene, first select 'Add' from thecategories list in the Toolbox. Next,LeftClick on the button labeled'Mesh'.

The button list on the right nowchanges to offer you a choice bet-ween the different primitives thatBlender knows. LeftClick on'UVsphere' to add a sphere to yourscene.

When adding objects like a sphere,Blender wants to know which resolu-tion you require. A sphere with ahigh resolution looks smoother than alow-resolution sphere, but it alsorequires more memory and is slowerto manipulate and render.

These buttons work like the Icon sli-der you saw earlier: LeftClick on the'Segments' button and drag left orright to increase or decrease thevalue. Also, you can click on eitherside of the button to change thevalue step by step.

Yet another way to change the valueis to hold down [SHIFT] andLeftClick the 'Segments' button. Thiswill change the button into a textinput. You can now type a value intothe field directly. Press [ENTER]when you have entered the correctvalue.Finally, click on the OK button

to set the value of the 'Segments'variable.

In the case of the sphere, you willneed to set a second parameter,'Rings'. After doing this, a sphere willshow up at the location of your 3DCursor. Instead of showing up in pinkor black, the sphere is drawn withsmall yellow dots. This mode is des-cribed in the paragraph 'Edit Mode'.

About Editmode

When you are working in 3D space,you can basically perform two typesof operations: operations that affectan object as a whole and operationsthat affect the geometry of anobject, but do not affect the object'sglobal properties. An example of theformer is moving an object to anot-her location. An example of the latt-ter is shaping a nose on a face.

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THE TOOLBOX

ADDING A MESH...

RESOLUTION QUERY

EDITING THE VALUES

... SELECTING ITS TYPE

THE SPHERE ADDED

THIS OBJECT IS NOTIN EDIT MODE

In Blender, you have to indicatewhich of the two you want to use.This is where editmode comes in.

This is an example of an object thatis not in editmode. Operations liketranslating [G], rotating [R] or sca-ling [S] affect the object as a whole.For example, translating moves theentire object somewhere else.

In contrast, when you select [TAB]you enter editmode. The object isredrawn and the separate points ofwhich is consists are drawn. (Thesepoints are known as vertices, by theway). If you select a vertex byRightClicking on it, you can thentranslate only this point, while lea-ving the others unaffected. In thisway, you change an object's shape.

If you select more than one vertex,you can also rotate or scale them. Inthis case, the vertices are rotated orscaled around their median point.

Loading and saving your work

By now you have probably created aBlender scene which you might wantto save to disk, or you would like totake a look at the .blend files thatwe have included on the CD-Romthat comes with this book. Blenderhas a lot of file loading and savingoptions - even to the point that youcan use Blender as a filemanager.

In this part I will briefly describe thebasic file loading and saving mecha-nisms. As always, these functions canbe accessed either from the Toolboxor by using a hotkey.

Loading a blender file

Call up the File Window by pressing[F1]. In this window, files are shown

in black and directories in whitetext. The .blend files are also indica-ted with a small yellow square infront of them.

The first method to load a file is byLeftClicking on a filename. This willcopy the name to the filename boxat the top of the window (the secondtextbox from the top). Pressing[ENTER] will then actually load thefile. Alternatively, you can alsoMiddleClick on a file which willcause it to be loaded immediately.

Navigating to the parent directory is

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done by clicking on the '..' directoryin the list or by clicking on the 'P'button at the top of the window.Sometimes you may want to refreshthe filelist; for example when anot-her program has been writing orchanging files in the current directo-ry. In that case, click on the '.' direc-tory.

Saving a blender file

Open the File Window by pressing[F2]. This window works in the sameway as above. Additionally, you can

now enter a new filename in the file-name box. To do this, LeftClick inthe filename box and enter a newname.

Use the keys NumPad [+] andNumPad [-] to automatically increaseor decrease the versionnumber of afile before loading or saving

If you try to save over an existingfile, Blender will show you this war-ning. To confirm this request, either

press [ENTER] or LeftClick on thefilename. To cancel it, you can press[ESC] or move the mouse away fromthe requester.

Returning to a directory where youhave already been (and saved or loa-ded a file), or changing the currentdrive that you are working on iseasy; just click/hold on the '-' buttonat the top of the File window. Selectan entry to directly jump to thisdirectory.

Saving an image

To save an image that you have ren-dered, just press [F3]. From now onsaving the file is the same as saving aregular .blend file. The only differen-ce is that you can select the file for-mat in the Display Buttons window.This window is discussed in detailbelow.

Saving an animation

Saving an entire animation is donedifferently; you first need to enter afilename for your animation in theDisplay Buttons window and thenpress the 'Anim' button. From thenon, all the animation frames aresaved using the filename that youjust entered as a base. Read moreabout this in the Display Buttons sec-tion below.

THE DISPLAY BUTTONS

THE SAVE FILE - WINDOW

CHANGINGDIRECTORIES

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SAVING CURRENTFILE WARNING

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The 3D Window

The 3D window is where you willspend most of your time in Blender.In this window, you can rearrangethe objects in your scene, edit theirindividual vertices (vertices are thepoints that make up an object),define animation, add lights andcameras, ...

if you own a mouse with two buttonsinstead of three, skip ahead and readabout the Info Window in'The Blender Windows: a summary'

The first thing to know about the 3Dview is how you can navigate throughit. I am not talking about movingobjects, but about moving your view-point - how can you examineobjects? How does an object lookfrom another side? Do the differentparts have the correct color? Did I

add a little detail correctly?

Blender uses a very simple yet intui-tive method for changing the view in3D. To get started, MiddleClick,hold and drag your mouse around.Do you see what happens? Withoutany modifiers, MiddleClick, hold anddrag rotates your 3D view.

Now try the same but hold down the[SHIFT] key before you click themouse button. The view is now trans-lated instead of rotated.

Finally, the [CTRL] key allows you tozoom in and out.

To toggle between perspective andorthogonal view, press NumPad [5].

In the 3D window,you can display yourscene in a number ofmodes. Especially ifyou don't have 3Dhardware this canmake a huge per-formance difference.To toggle betweenwireframe and solidview, press [Z]. Solidview can display ascene with some sha-ding even though youhave not yet defineda lamp.

Switch to (real) sha-ded view with[SHIFT] [Z]. If youhave not defined alamp yet, the scenewill be completelyblack.Aside from naviga-ting around 3D spaceto look at your

TRANSLATING THE VIEWROTATING THE VIEW

PERPECTIVE VIEW

WIREFRAMEVIEW

SOLID VIEW

SHADED VIEW

ORTHOGONALVIEW

ZOOMING THE VIEW

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objects, you can also use a few hot-keys to quickly switch to standardviews. Use NumPad [7], [1], [3] and[0] to switch to top view, front view,side view or camera view.

Sometimes you may get lost inside3D space a bit. To restore the view,either click on the Home icon at thebottom of the 3D window, or pressHOME. Blender will resize the viewto include every object in yourscene.

On some systems you may need topress the numlock key to get thenumpad to work.

If you want to get a specific objectinto view and not the entire scene,first select the object by RightClickon it (the object will turn pink toindicate it is selected). Next, pressNumPad [.].

A similar function like the previousone, you can also zoom in to theselected object and hide all otherobjects at the same time by pressingNumPad [/]. To unhide your objects,press NumPad [/] again.

The display buttons

Once you are ready to render yourimage or save it to disk, you needthe Display Buttons window. In thiswindow you can control all theparameters that have to do with

items as rendering quality, renderingsize, animation length and animationfilenames.

To define the image size you can eit-her select a preset value from therow of buttons on the far right or setan image size yourself by changingthe SizeX and SizeY values. For pre-view rendering, you can also render

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CAMERAVIEW

SIDE VIEW

FRONT VIEW

TOP VIEW

RESTORING THE VIEW OF THEWHOLE SCENE;

HOME

CENTERING THE SELECTEDOBJECT AND HIDING OTHERS;

NumPad [/]

CENTERING THE SELECTED OBJECT;NumPad [.]

THE HOME BUTTON

THE DISPLAY BUTTONS

SELECTING THE OUTPUT IMAGE SIZE

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the image at 25%, 50% or 75% of thefinal output size.

Turn anti-aliasing on or off with theOSA button. Control the image quali-ty with the oversampling buttons 5,8, 11 or 16. A higher value will resultin a better image quality at thepenalty of a longer rendering time.

Start rendering by selecting the'Render' button or by pressing the[F12] key. A separate window willpop up. [ESC] aborts rendering.[F11] will toggle the rendering resultwindow.

Press 'Anim' to render an entireanimation. When rendering ananimation, enter the basename ofthe animation frames in the 'Pics'field. Each file will be automaticallynamed <basename>+framenumber.For example: frame0001, frame0002etc. After rendering, press the 'Play'button to play back your animation.

Select a file format with the buttonslabeled 'Targa', 'TgaRaw', 'Iris', ... Foranimations, you can also choose 'AVIraw' and 'AVI jpg' and define thenumber of frames per second forthese files.

the Windows Mediaplayer has pro-blems playing back Blender's AVI-rawand jpg files, but the Quicktime4player plays them back correctly.

To set the animation start and endframe, change the 'Sta' and 'End'values. Pressing [SHIFT] [<-] and[SHIFT] [->] will automatically jumpto the start and end frame.

The Blender windows: a summary

This section gives a summary of themost important windows in Blender.It does not try to be complete nor toexplain each window in detail. Mostof the windows contain pointers toother chapters where it is discussedin more detail.

The file window

[F1] for loading,[F2] for saving.

LeftClick to select a file and press[ENTER] to load it, or MiddleClick

RENDERING ANIMATIONS AND STILLS

SETTING THE START/END FRAME OF THE ANIMATION

SELECTING THE OUTPUT FORMAT

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to both select and load it.

To save a file, enter a name in thefilename field (the second one fromthe top) and press [ENTER] to con-firm the filename. Press [ENTER]again to save the file. If you havealready entered a filename earlier,pressing [F2], [ENTER] will save,too.

Entering a new directory name in thedirectory box (the one on the top)will create the new directory for youafter asking confirmation.

The image select window

This window type works exactly likethe file load window, but all recog-nized image files are shown asthumbnails. An example of wherethis window is used is in the TextureButtons window, for loading imagetexture maps.

The 3D window [SHIFT] [F5]

This window allows you to manipula-te the objects in your scene directlyby dragging [G], rotating [R] or sca-ling them [S].

top view: NumPad [7]front view NumPad [1]right view: NumPad [3]perspective off/on NumPad [5]camera view: NumPad [0]solid mode off/on [Z]shaded mode: [CTRL] [Z]

You can navigate through 3D space bydragging with the MiddleButton; thiswill rotate your view. Dragging withMiddleButton button and holdingthe [SHIFT] key will translate theview, and holding down [CTRL] willallow you to zoom.

The IPO window [SHIFT] [F6]

In this window you can edit the time-lines that are associated to differentobject properties, like their position

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and rotation, but also their color orlayer. The different object propertiesor 'channels' that are available areshown on the right. You can selectchannels by LeftClicking on them -[SHIFT] will extend the selection.

Enter editmode by pressing [TAB].You can now edit the individual verti-ces of the curves or change their cur-vature.

You can read more about the IPOwindow in the chapter 14

Text edit window [SHIFT] [F11]

The Text Edit Window is mainly usedfor writing Python scripts, but also ifyou do not have a C key this windowcan be extremely valuable. It isoften a good idea to keep notes ofyour animation projects. Informationthat I always forget (especially aftera couple of weeks!) are the mapsthat I have used, the scenes that Ihave defined, important frame num-bers, well, you get the picture.

A big advantage of using the Text

Edit Window is that the notes are stored inside the .blend files - thisway you can never loose your notesagain!

When creating a new Text EditWindow, you have the choice of crea-ting a new text object, or to importan existing text file. In that case, aFile Window will be opened and youcan select a file as usual. Of course,you can have more than one textobject in your Blender file.

The info window

The Info Window does not have ahotkey. Instead, it is 'hidden' at thetop of your screen. To reveal it, dragdown the top window border on yourscreen as indicated in the picture.

The Info Window shows you the sett-tings of Blender. Among other things,you can tell Blender where to storeautosave files, when to save them

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IPO WINDOW

TEXT EDIT WINDOW

REVEALING THE INFO WINDOW

(use the 'Time' value) and how manyversions to keep on disk.

Here, you can also activate Blender'stooltips function. Tooltips will appearin the right corner of the header ofthe Info Window, right next to theBlender URL and version number.

You can make your settings perma-nent by pressing [CTRL] [U] and con-firming the requester that pops up.(Please note, that this entire bookassumes that you have not changedthe default Blender settings file!)

If you have purchased a C-key, youruser name will show up here.

Important note for owners of a two-button mouse: activating the 2-mouse option will cause Blender tosimulate a MiddleClick when youhold down [ALT] and LeftClick.

Lamp buttons [F4]

The Lamp Buttons will only showwhen a lamp has been selected. Withthese buttons, you can change all theparameters of lamps, like their color,energy, type (regular lamp, spotlightor sun). You can also control the qua-lity of shadows by manipulating theclipping values and shadow buffersizes.

Material buttons [F5]

Material Buttons are only shownwhen an object has been selected.This window allows control over pro-perties as object color, shininess,transparency, textures, texturetypes, texture projection methods.

Animation buttons [F7]

In the left part of the AnimationButtons window you can set proper-ties for things like curve following,automatic object duplication andobject tracking.

The middle part of the window con-tains the interface to object effectslike particle systems and the waveeffect. Pressing the 'New Effect' butt-ton and selecting an effect from theeffects list on the right will attach anew effect to the currently selectedobject and display the list of optionsfor this effect.

The standard effects are: particlesystem, wave and build.

World buttons

With the World Buttons window youcan set up horizon colors, ambientlighting, fog effects and starfields.

Edit buttons [F9]

The buttons that are shown in theEdit Buttons window depend on thekind of object that you have current-ly selected.

THE INFO WINDOW

LAMP BUTTONS

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Display buttons [F10]

Using the Display Buttons, you cancontrol the way Blender will renderyour images. Set the image size withthe SizeX and SizeY buttons and con-trol the image quality by setting anOSA (Over SAmpling) value. Highervalues result in better image quality,but a longer rendering time.

Select the 'Render' button to render astill image, or the 'Anim' button torender a range of images. (Foranimations, the 'Sta' and 'End' valuesdetermine the length of the anima-tion).

MATERIAL BUTTONS

TEXTURE BUTTONS

ANIMATION BUTTONS

WORLD BUTTONS

EDIT BUTTONS

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HAPPY HAPPY, JOY JOYHAPPY HAPPY, JOY JOY

CHAPTER 2

Author: Bart VeldhuizenTopics: NURBS editing Level: Beginner

Introduction

You have already seen quite a bit ofpolygon editing in this book.However, Blender also supports twoother important object types tomodel with: Curves and Surfaces.With Curve Objects you can drawtwo-dimensional spline graphics thatcan be filled and extruded automati-cally. With Surface Objects you canmodel smooth three-dimensional sur-faces.

I will first teach you how to create asmiley using 2D curves, and then howto create a heart by using 3D surfa-ces.

Creating a smiley in 10 steps

Step 1:Start with new scene. (You can cleareverything in Blender by pressing[CTRL][X] and selecting ‘Erase All’from the menu that pops up). Press [SPACE] to bring up toolbox.First, select add, then ‘curve’, andfinally ‘nurbs circle’.

Step 2:I will use the first circle to form theoutline of the smiley. While all verti-ces are still selected (they are yel-low, if not; press [A] twice), startscale mode with [S] and move yourmouse to make the outline bigger.LeftClick to finish scaling.

Step 3:Now, I will add the eyes. While stillin editmode, add another NURBS cir-cle. After adding, start grabmodewith [G] and translate the eye to thecorrect position. Add a duplicate ofthe eye with [SHIFT][D], enter grab-mode [G] and translate the eye tothe right position.

Step 4:I will now add a mouth. Add anotherNURBS circle (or just duplicate aneye), and select the two verticesindicated in the figure by right-clik-king on the first, holding down the[SHIFT] key and right clicking on thesecond vertex.

STEP 1STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4

Step 5:Move the two selected vertices furt-her apart by using the scalemode[S], and translate them upward byusing the grabber [G].

Step 6:The circle that I used for the mouthhas too many vertices to create anice mouth shape. Remove some byselecting the four indicated verticesand pressing [X]. Select ‘Selected’from the menu that pops up.

Step 7: Select the two vertices in the figureand using the grabber to translatethem downwards.

Step 8: Give the smiley a finishing touch byselecting the indicated vertices andusing a combination of the grabberand scale mode to move them out-wards and up a bit.

Step 9: Maybe you will need to tweak theshape of the mouth a bit more untilyou are satisfied. Don’t hesitate toexperiment!

Step 10: Now it is time to look at the result ofour work. Leave editmode by pressing [TAB] ,and switch to shaded view by press-sing [Z]. Turn on perspective modefor the 3D window with NumPad [5]and change your view by pressing theMiddleButton, and dragging. Do you see how Blender automati-cally determines which curves areholes and which curves should be fill-led? This even works with overlapp-ping curves! You can use this to crea-te very interesting effects.

Selecting curves:

The smiley is now composed of seve-ral curves and it can be awkward toselect a single one of them. Use theselect linked tool to select an indivi-dual curve.

For example, enter editmode with[TAB] and select a vertex of thecurve of the mouth by right-clickingon it. Next, press [L] to select allvertices that are linked to this one.

Adding more detail I have shown how to deletevertices from a curve, butof course you can also addthem.

To do this, select two neighbouringvertices (hold down [SHIFT] toextend your selection), and press[W]. Select ‘subdivide’ from themenu that pops up.

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STEP 5

STEP 6

STEP 7

STEP 8

STEP 9 STEP 10

Creating a heart in 10 steps

Step 1:In this tutorial I will create a love-heart by using a standard NURBSsphere, and tweaking its controlpoints. Start off with a clean blender[CTRL][X]. Delete the default planeand add a NURBS sphere to a newscene. NURBS spheres are located inthe toolbox ([SPACE] or [SHIFT][A]),under ADD and then SURFACES.

If you have a fast computer, you cando this tutorial in shaded view bypressing [Z]. If not, you can edit thesphere in wireframe mode.

Step 2:Go to frontview NumPad [1], andenter editmode by pressing [TAB].

Use border select [B] to select themiddle vertices in the top-row of thecontrolpoints. The figure showswhich area to select.

Step 3:If you switch to topview by pressingNumPad [/], you can see that youhave actually selected a couple ofvertices that were hidden from yourview in the frontview.

Using box-select in front-view selectsall vertices within the box, evenwhen they are hidden behind eachother Before going on, return tofrontview by pressing NumPad [1].

Step 4:The next step is to enter grabmode [G], and move the three selected vertices slightly downwards. This will create a nice, smooth bump in thesphere.

Step 5:Deselect all selected vertices with[A]. (This is a step that you have tomake each time in the remainingsteps of this tutorial).

Select the three vertices in the top-left and the three in the top-right,and scale them a bit by using thescaling mode [S] so that the topbecomes a bit wider.

When you are satisfied with it, usethe grabber [G] to move the verticesup a bit.

Step 6:Now I will to taper the bottom of theheart. Box-select all the vertices atthe bottom [B] and scale themdown:

Step 7: The heart is starting to look good,but the bottom is still a bit blunt.Make it more pointy by box-selecting[B] the middle vertices at the bott-tom and using the grabber [G] tomove them downward.

CHAPTER 2

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HAPPY HAPPY, JOY JOY

STEP 1

STEP 2

STEP 3

STEP 4

STEP 5 STEP 6 STEP 7

Step 8: Now, in the frontview our heart looksjust fine, but when you switch tosideview NumPad [3], you will seethat you have drawn a mighty fatheart!

Step 9: Select all vertices (press [A] twice),and scale everything in the x-dimen-sion. To do this, enter scaling mode,move your mouse horizontally andthen press the MiddleButton. Thiswill lock the scaling to only onedimension.

Step 10: Result after scaling

Step 10+: I have added some colour and lightand rendered a bunch of hearts here.

Also, in the Flock of Birds tutorial,you can learn how to automaticallycreate hundreds of duplicates! (Thatis the trick that I used here)

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CHAPTER 2

STEP 8

STEP 9

STEP 10

STEP 10+

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MODELLING A DOLPHINMODELLING A DOLPHIN

CHAPTER 3

Author: Bart VeldhuizenLevel: BeginnerSubjects: lattice modeling, curveextrusion, beveling

Introduction

In this chapter, I will explain how youcan easily model a dolphin using atool called lattice deformation.Lattices are grids that are linked toobjects. Deforming a latticecauses the linked object to followthe lattice's changed shape.

Not only can this be used as a tool tocreate interesting shapes (it is a bitlike working with clay, really), butalso as a very powerful animationtool.

The dolphin

The main part of the dolphin's bodywill consist of a sphere. To keep thesurface smooth, I choose to use asurface sphere and not a mesh sphe-re.

Start blender, and press [X], [ENTER]to delete the default plane in the middle of the screen. Next press[SPACE] or click on to bring up

the Toolbox and select 'add', then'surface' and finally 'sphere' (as inFig. 1). A small sphere appears in themiddle of the screen.

Scale the sphere in the X-direction toelongate it. Do this by starting scalemode [S], moving the mouse horizon-tally a bit and then clickingMiddleButton. This will constrain thescaling process to the X-axis only.

After you are done, your sphereshould look like Figure 2 (because itis not really a sphere anymore I willrefer to it from now on as a sphe-roid).

Switch to Front View NumPad [1]and leave edit mode [TAB]. Themodel will now turn pink (Fig. 3) toshow it is still selected, but you arenot in edit mode anymore.

It is now time to add the lattice tothe scene. Like other objects, it willappear at the position of the 3D cur-sor when you add it. Therefore, firstLeftClick in the middle of the sphereto bring the 3D cursor to the center.

Call up the toolbox with [SPACE] andselect 'add' and then 'lattice'. Thesphere is deselected and a pinksquare appears in the middle of thespheroid.

Go to the Edit Buttons window ([F9]or ) and enter the followingdata for the lattice (see Fig. 5):

Turn on the option called 'Outside'.This will remove the interior verticesfrom the lattice, making it easier toedit.

FIG. 5FIG. 4

FIG. 3

FIG. 2

FIG. 1

With the lattice still selected, press[S] to scale the lattice. Increase itssize so that it neatly fits around thespheroid (Fig. 6).

Before the lattice can actually affectthe spheroid, we need to attach thetwo together. More specifically, thelattice should become the parent ofthe spheroid. Blender can then usethe 'parent-child' relation to pass onthe deformation information fromthe lattice to the spheroid.

To do this, first select the spheroid,hold [SHIFT] and next select thelattice. Both should be pink now, butthe lattice is brighter to indicate it isthe active selection.

Now we'll make the lattice theparent of the spheroid. Select[CTRL][P], and a message comes up:OK? Make Parent (Fig. 7). Hit[ENTER], or LeftClick on the 'MakeParent' option. The active object hasnow become the parent of the inacti-ve but selected object.

Now it is playtime! Let's first get afeeling for the way the lattice looksand works.

To make sure you are not wastingyour work so far, save your (Fig. 8)work by pressing [F2], entering afilename and pressing [ENTER] twiceto save. (Once to confirm the filena-me and twice to actually save thefile).

Select the lattice (RightClick on it),press [TAB] and play around with thetrackball mode (press and holdMiddleButton and move your mousearound). Turn on perspective modewith NumPad [5]

As you can see (Fig. 9), the latticeconsists of several layers of controlvertices.Remember this when you make selec-tions in the next step of the tutorial.It is important to use the box tool toselect several vertices at once andthen move then. Turn on solid dra-wing with [Z] for the next step.

Now select a single vertex and press[G] to start the grabber and movethe vertex around. Do you see theeffect that it has on the dolphin'sbody? Editing the lattice verticessmoothly deforms the attached sphe-re (Fig 10). Turn off solid drawingwith [Z].

To restore the lattice's geometryfrom before you entered editmode,press[U] now. Confirm the requester'Reload Original Data?' (Fig. 11) eitherby LeftClick clicking on the text orby pressing [ENTER].

This is in fact the only form of undothat Blender currently offers. It mayseem a bit limited, but with a bit ofcareful planning and saving regularlyyou will be fine.

Saving a new version of a Blender filecan be done extremely quickly. If youhave already saved your file before,try this: press [F2] to call up the filewindow. Next, press NumPad [+] toincrease the version number of thefile and press [ENTER] to save. Dothis before you make an importantediting step, and you can reload theprevious scene with [F1], [ENTER].After a while, you will be doing thisso quickly that you really will neverthink about an undo function again!

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FIG. 6

FIG. 8

FIG. 9

FIG. 10

FIG. 11

FIG. 7

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MODELLING A DOLPHIN

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Restore the front view with NumPad[1] and turn perspective mode offwith NumPad [5].

The body of the dolphin will be for-med by changing the shape of thelattice. I will first create a good loo-king profile of a dolphin in the frontview. When I am satisfied with this, Iwill turn to top view and create agood profile there.

Each time you need to move a ver-tex, first make sure all vertices aredeselected. Press [A] to deselectthem all if necessary. Next, use thebox select tool to select a row oflattice vertices. To do this, press [B]and drag a box around the vertices ofinterest. Box select will not onlyselect the visible vertices (the onesat the front), but also the verticesthat are 'behind it' in other layers.After having selected vertices, press[G] to start the grabber, move yourvertices and LeftClick to confirmtheir new position.

You can also change a whole line ofvertices at once by box-selectingthem and moving, scaling or rotatingthe entire group.

In the front view, keep working untilyour lattice and sphere look likeFigure 12.

Now, switch to top view (NumPad[7]) and use the same technique tomove the vertices until they look likeFigure 13.

By now, we already have got thebasic shape of the dolphin! Let's takea sneak peek at how it looks in 3D.Press NumPad [5] to turn on per-spective view, [Z] to turn on shadingand play around with the trackballoption (remember? MiddleButton andmove your mouse). Is it alreadystarting to look good (Fig. 14 and15)? Hello, Willy!

Adding Fins

We are getting there, but Willy is notquite finished yet. First I have to addsome fins. Return to wireframe,orthogonal (non-perspective), frontview (that is [Z], NumPad [5] andNumPad [1]).

I am making the fins by drawing anoutline and beveling it. Press [TAB]to leave the edit mode of the latti-ce. Place the 3d cursor above thedolphin's back (LeftClick). Bring upthe toolbox and select add-curve-bezier curve (Fig. 16).

In curve edit mode, you can add ver-tices by first selecting an endpoint ofthe curve, then holding down[CTRL] and LeftButton clicking. Eachclick will add a new node to the endof your curve (Fig. 17-20).

When you are satisfied, close thecurve with [C].

Now try playing around with thebezier controls (the lines that 'touch'the curve) until your curve looks likethe one in Figure 21.

!

FIG. 12

FIG. 13

FIG. 14

FIG. 15

FIG. 17

FIG. 16

FIG. 18 FIG. 19 FIG. 20 FIG. 21

!

Press [TAB] to leave editmode and(or [F9]) to go to the Edit Buttonswindow. There, change the Ext. 2value to 0.15, and the BevResol valueto 4 (Fig. 22). This should give you anice, rounded fin. A small sneak in perspective andsolid drawing mode (Fig. 23) showsthe effect of the bevel settings.

I now duplicate this fin to create twoother, smaller, fins. First go to sideview with NumPad [3]. Duplicate theselected fin with [SHIFT][D].

Move it away from the top andLeftClick to place it. The positiondoes not really matter yet - I willattach it to the body later. Rotate itabout 220 degrees ([R] and movewith the mouse - [CTRL] constrainsthe angles), then scale it to a factorof about 6 ([S] and move the mouse,[CTRL] constrains here, too).

Duplicate this smaller fin and rotateit -80 degrees. too (Fig. 24).

Next, in the front and right view,move the three smaller fins arounduntil they are attached to the bodyin a proper way. This is how it shouldlook (I rotated the fin on Willy's backa little bit to make it match theangle of his back - Fig. 25 and 26).

Converting the surface to a mesh

You may want to convert the entiredolphin into a mesh once you are

ready. To do this, first select eachobject and press [ALT][C] (Fig. s1and s2). This will 'downgrade' eachsurface into a mesh. This actioncannot be undone!

After converting the dolphin's bodyyou will see that it is now strangelydeformed. Don't panic! This is onlybecause the lattice now works 'dou-ble' - its effect is calculated in themesh, and afterwards it stillworks on the (already deformed)mesh. Just select and delete thelattice to fix this ([X]).

Looking at your dolphin in shadedmode (Fig. s3) you will now see thatit the surface is no longer smooth.

To fix this, go to the Edit Buttonsscreen (do you notice it is now sho-wing other options than when thedolphin was still a surface instead ofa mesh?) and select the 'Set Smooth'Button (Fig. s4) to set smooth sha-ding for the mesh (Fig. s5).

Finally, to join all the body and thefins into one single object, selectthem all and press [CTRL][J] (Fig.s6). Now, everything has been joinedinto a single mesh.

Finishing touches

Willy is almost ready!. As a finishingtouch, I will add two eyes. Switch to

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MODELLING A DOLPHIN

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FIG. 22

FIG. 23

FIG. 24

FIG. 25

FIG. 25

FIG. s1

FIG. s2

FIG. s4

FIG. s5

FIG. s6

FIG. s3

!

top view, use the toolbox to add asphere. Scale it down and place it inthe head, so that a little less thanhalf of the sphere sticks out of thehead. The height of the eyes shouldbe equal to the top of the dolphin'sbeak and they are located a little bittowards the back of the head (as inFig. 27).

Even though the original sphere wasnot a mesh but a surface, it is possi-ble that you will see the sides ofyour dolphin become a bit jagged.This is because at rendering time,the sphere's surface is converted intoa mesh. The resolution for this meshcan be changed by selecting thesphere, entering editmode with[TAB] and going to the Edit Buttonsscreen ([F9] or ).

Change the value of 'ResolU' and'ResolV' to change the resolution ofthe dolphin (Fig. 28). Leave editmo-de for the change to take effect.

Result

After adding some lighting and anocean floor, this is what the finalresult looks like!

In case you are wondering how I didthe lighting in this scene, skip aheadand read chapter 6.

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FIG. 27

FIG. 28

Author: Geno RuffaloLevel: IntermediateSubjects: Materials, Textures, ImageMapping

Introduction

Second only to modeling, Materialsand Textures are probably the mostimportant aspect to creating believa-ble creations in 3D graphics software.This lesson will cover the 2 differenttypes of materials in Blender,Procedural or 3D textures, and 2Dimage Textures.

Procedural 3 dimensional textures

WoodA Procedural Texture is a true 3D tex-ture. This means that each 3D coordi-nate of the object can be directlytranslated into a color. This can beeasily demonstrated by creating awood texture an applying it to a rect-angular solid, or block of wood.When the block of wood is cut intohalves and even quarters the textureflows around the new planks of woodas it would in real life. Create aCUBE primitive and scale it larger onone axis. With the object still selec-ted, go to the Material Buttons win-dow by clicking on the icon, orpressing [F5]. Click on the ‘-’ buttonnext to the ‘MA:Wood’ label in theMaterial Buttons screenshot on theleft and select ‘ADD NEW’ from themenu that pops up. Now click on theicon or press [F6] to go to theTexture Buttons window and create anew texture by clicking on the ‘-’button just like you did to create thematerial. Adjust the parameters asseen in the example. It is a good ideawhen creating new materials andtextures to name them appropriately.

25

THE MATERIALS BUTTON WINDOW

THE PROCEDURAL TEXTURE APPLIED TO A BLOCK

CREATING THE MARBLE TEXTURE

materials + texturesmaterials + textures

CHAPTER 4

It will be much easier to use them inthe future when linking them toother Blender files using the Libraryfeature.

As you can see it is apparent thatwhen you 'cut' the wooden block intoplanks the wood grain appears justlike it would in real life. This is theconcept behind 3D procedural textu-res.

MarbleMarble is another very useful 3D tex-ture. Although the marble texturecan be used for a wide variety ofdifferent surface effects it can,when used properly, create very rea-listic marble as you would see insculpture and architecture. This partof the lesson will explain a 3-Partapproach. Start off with a new mate-rial and link a marble texture to it.The base color of the material andthe color of this first texture willserve as the foundation color of ourstone. Notice the SepT button that ispressed in. This allows you to pre-view the active texture pink1without any influence from the othertextures. This is very useful at thefinal stages when tweaking out theend result.

After you have the parameters set toyour desires create a second marbletexture with the exact same parame-ters. If you notice the only differen-ce is that the Sharp option is selec-ted and the Noise Depth and type(Soft noise) have been changed.

The third texture is the same as thesecond with the Sharper optionselected. Do you see the patternfrom Soft to Sharp to Sharper? Theidea is to layer one on top of theother and blend them together.

The final result is quite convincing.

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THE RESULT

The idea is to look at some real mar-ble and try to duplicate the base andvein colors. Here are the three diffe-rent layers for the classic Black andWhite marble. Try to create an ivorycolored background.

This layer will serve as the basicshape of the veining.

The final layer reinforces the veiningby duplicating the parameters thenmaking it Sharpe.

BlendThe 'Blend ' texture can be used tofade two objects together, put snowon a mountain top, or aid in the cre-ation of glass objects. Start off witha Sphere and add a material and tex-ture. Set the 'Blend ' option of thetexture to 'Sphere' and map the incoordinates to Nor and out coordina-tes to Alpha and Col as seen in theexample. Now with proper use of the'ZTransp' setting and the 'Alpha' sliderbutton value we achieve a transpa-rent material. Also notice the valueof 'SpTr' or the Spectral Transparency.That will add some spectral reflec-tion on the transparent parts of theobject adding to the look of realglass. The last setting to notice is there-mapping coordinates. The firstchannel has been set to Z and thelast two have been turned off. Thatwill make the color effect the outeredges of rounded objects show color.

The result is a hollow looking glassobject.

To achieve a solid glass object allthat is needed is another Blend tex-ture with some modifications. TheAlpha mapping button in the MaterialWindow has been reversed by clik-king it again and can be noted by theyellow color of the button's text. Thetype of Blend Texture has been chan-ged to ‘Halo’ in the Texture Window.

Now with the proper mixing of thetwo textures our hollow object nowlooks solid.

A third layer can be added for stunn-ning realism. In this example thescene was rendered without the glassobject ( in this example that consistsof just a ground plane and sky! ) withthe camera upside down. Save theresult of this rendering and assign itas an color imagemap to the material(you can read more about image

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materials + textures

DIFFERENT SETTINGS OF THE BLENDER TEXTURE...

...AND THE RESULTS OF EACH

maps in the paragraph ‘2 dimensionalimage textures’).

The in and out coordinates havebeen altered to give the proper look.The final result looks like a solidclear glass ball with a lot of reflec-tion and refraction. See the exampleon the companion CD for the techni-que used to create the light refrac-tion in the shadow because it isbeyond the scope of this lesson.

StucciStucci is used for Bump Mapping.Bump mapping effects the way lightand color is shaded in respect to thevertex normals adding a sense ofdepth to the final render. The Stuccitexture Blender provides us with can

be used for pitting metal, wall

plaster, or as we will explore in thispart of the lesson a very realisticripple effect for water. The exampleuses a very large ground plane. Add anew material and texture to theplane. Notice that the 'Nor' button onthe texture mapping has replacedthe color mapping 'Col' button.Clicking the Nor button a secondtime would reverse the effect on thenormals and be recognized by yellowtext on the button itself.

With the proper lighting and theaddition of a 'World ' object was havecreate a nice ocean view.

2 dimensional image textures

ColorThe most common use of image tex-tures is for adding real color surfacesto objects. Two dimensional imagescan be mapped to three dimensionalobjects four different ways inBlender. Planar mapping is done withthe 'Flat' button and is as if theimage were projected on the object.Cylindrical mapping wraps the imagearound an object with the 'Tube'button. Cubic mapping is where acopy of the image is projectedequally on all six sides of a cube withthe 'Cube' button. This works extre-mely well with seamless images. Theway we will explore image mappingis with Spherical mapping.Rectangular images are wrappedaround a sphere and the most fre-quently applied use of this is for pla-netary objects. We will recreate themost well known planetary body ofall, the Earth. Start off with a high

28

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CHAPTER 4

SETTINGS FOR THE STUCCI TEXTURES...

IMAGE TEXTURES BUMP MAPS

...AND THE RESULTING OCEAN VIEW

resolution sphere. Add a new materi-al with three textures of type 'Image'linked to it. Loading an image is very simple. Click the 'Load Image' buttonwhich will call up the File DialogWindow. Navigate to the properlocation of the file and MiddleClickon the file name. If the image is inthe same directory as the .blend fileitself then the file name can beentered preceded by '//' .

BumpBump mapping works the same waythe stucci procedural texture does,except in image's light and darkareas are used to calculate the highand low sections. All that is neededis that the 'Col' button be turned offand the 'Nor' button turned on. Thiswill add depth to the mountains andother land formations of our home.

SpecularitySpecularity maps control the reflec-tion of the lights themselves in theobjects they are mapped to. Thebright glow from the sun can be seenin the earth's oceans but not so muchin the land masses. This specularity

map is just a two toned version ofthe original color map and is easy tocreate in any image manipulationprogram.

AlphaAlpha map images can mask offparts of an object from being affec-ted. In our example a second sphereslightly larger that our first is addedto the scene and an alpha map isused to create some unbelievablecloud formation circling our planet.Notice the 'CalcAlpha' and 'UseAlpha'buttons activated in the TextureButton Window.

When all put together with a starrybackground

Summary

We have seen the difference bet-ween 3D procedural textures and 2DImage textures, and just scratchedthe surface of what you can do withthem. The are no limitations as towhat can be achieved with thisknowledge. The best way to learn isto experiment with all the featuresprovided to you by Blender. Startout with some simple shapes and tryeach and every type of texture andmapping options, or tweak someoneelse's creation to see if you canimprove it. You can even use textu-res to enhance lamp and worldobjects. The fact is that if you canimagine it Blender can provide it aslong as you understand the tools youhave to work with.

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CHAPTER 4

SPECULARITY MAPS

ALPHA MAP IMAGES

Simulating planar reflection

Here is a simple way to simulateplanar reflections in yourscene. It actually mimics thephysics of reflections.

Start with a scene which is pla-ced above a plane (the planewill become the mirror). Selecteverything but the camera andthe plane itself.(include thelamps, too!), duplicate it ([ALT][D])– this creates an instanced copy;changes to the original are alsoapplied to the copy), and mirrorit in the Y axis ([S], [Y]).LeftClick to confirm mirroring,enter grab mode ([G]) and moveeverything downwards until it’sunder the plane, symmetrical tothe original.

Now the plane needs to be semi-transparent, so set the alpha valueof the plane’s material to 0.7, andturn Ztransp on.

In real life, a planar surface wouldn’thave the same amount of reflectioneverywhere; the amount of reflec-tions falls off with the viewing angle.To simulate this, you can use the‘Blend’ texture (a standard Blendertexture plugin), and apply it to thealpha channel.

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THE SCENE YOU START WITH...

... MIRRORED ON THE Y AXIS

THE SEMI-TRANSPARENT MATERIAL FOR THE PLANE

THE BLEND TEXTURE USED AS THE ALPHA MAP

Author: Bart VeldhuizenSubjects: editmode, extrusion, mate-rials, camera, light, rendering,saving imagesLevel: beginner

Introduction

Tired of only reading about buttons,window types and screens and readyto try it all with your own hands? Youhave come to the right place! In thischapter, I will show you how to builda simple model of a house. Whiledoing this, you will learn about usingthe edit mode, navigating in 3Dspace, duplicating objects and assig-ning colors.

Creating the roof

Start a new Blender or start with anew scene by selecting [CTRL][X]and confirming the requester thatpops up. Blender always starts with acamera (the triangle) and a plane(the square). The plane is alreadyselected. I do not need it, so I remo-ve it by pressing [X] and confirmingthe deletion (Fig. 1).

The main part of the house is builtout of a cube. Add it to your scene

by calling up the toolbox (press[SPACE]) and selecting 'add', 'mesh'and then 'cube' (Fig. 2). This puts acube at the position of the 3D cursor.Newly added objects are always ineditmode (do you see the yellow dotsat the corners?).

This is a good moment to reconfiguremy window a little bit. Move yourcursor to the bottom of the 3D win-dow and position if over the border(make sure the 3D window's header isyellow). Press MiddleButton and then'Split' to split the window into twoparts (Fig 3).This is all very exciting, but the win-dows still show the same picture. Tochange this, move your mouse intothe window on the left and press[CTRL] NumPad[1]. This changes theview on the left to front view. Next,move your mouse into the window onthe right and press [CTRL]NumPad[3] - this changes the viewto side view (see Fig. 4 on the nextpage).

If the views do not change, makesure your keyboard's NUMLOCK is on.

In each window, click onor press [HOME] to auto-matically rescale your scene.

!

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FIG. 3 SPLITTING UP THE SCREEN

FIG. 2 ADDING A CUBE

FIG. 1 CLEARING THE SCENE

If you want to move in a little closer,press and hold the [CTRL] key anddrag with the MiddleButton. Haveyou zoomed in or out too far?Pressing [HOME] will get the entirescene back on the screen again.

The first thing I will do now is copythe cube and turn it into a roof. Goto the front view screen (Fig. 5) andpress [TAB] to leave editmode. Thecube will now turn pink, indicatingthat it is selected. Make a copy ofthe cube by pressing [SHIFT][D](from 'duplicate'). The copy is nowselected and the grabber is activa-ted; try moving your mouse around -the copy will move around the scene.

I want to place the copy exactly ontop of the original cube. To do this,constrain the motion by holdingdown [CTRL] while moving yourmouse.

The cube can now only move alongthe grid lines that you see in thebackground. Give the cube its finalposition with LeftClick.

You can always move objects bystarting grab mode with [G].Selecting another object is done withthe RightClick . You can select multi-ple objects by holding [SHIFT] whileselecting.

The next step is to taper the top ofthe roof. With the top cube selected,enter editmode with [TAB]. The pinkcube now turns black and the pointsthat define the cube ('vertices') aredrawn in purple (Fig. 6). Just likewith objects, the color of a vertexindicates its status: purple meansunselected, yellow means selected.

You can work with vertices just likeobjects - the grabber works forthem, and selecting multiple verticesworks with [SHIFT] too.

Okay, enough talk - it is time to getstarted. I want to select all the verti-ces at the top of the cube. I could ofcourse do this by selecting them oneby one in both viewports.Fortunately, there is an easier way:box select.

Start box select in either 3D screenwith [B]. Next, drag a rectanglearound the vertices that you wish toselect. All vertices that fall withinthe rectangle are now selected,including vertices that are on a diffe-rent 'depth' in the picture. This way,all 4 vertices at the top are selected.

Taper the top of the cube by startingscale mode - [S]. Moving your mousetowards the center of the 4 vertices

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FIG. 7 SCALING THE VERTICES

FIG. 6 EDIT MODE

FIG. 5 THE FRONT VIEW

FIG. 4 CHANGING THE VIEWS

you have just selected will scalethem down; moving your mouse awayfrom the center will increase thesize.

Do you see what happens? In both 3Dwindows (Fig. 7), the vertices arescaled. This is not the kind of roofthat I want my little house to have.Instead, I only want the roof to bepointy in the front view and not inthe side view. Press [ESC] to cancelscaling mode.

This is easily achieved by telling thescale operation to only work in a spe-cific direction. Go to the front view(the one on the left) and start thescale mode [S]. Now, move your

mouse horizontally and click theMiddleButton. You will see that thescaling now only works in the frontview, and no longer in the side view.By moving your mouse in the X-direc-tion and clicking the MiddleButton,you have constrained the scaling pro-cess in the X-direction. Check thescaling numbers at the bottom of the3D view to see what I mean.

Scale the top of the roof all the waydown to zero.

Finally, I want the base of the roof tobe a bit wider than the walls.Deselect all vertices with [A] (pres-sing it twice will select all the verti-ces in the currently edited object).Use the box select, to select thebottom vertices and scale them up abit. Because the roof has to increasein size in each direction, I do notconstrain the scaling this time (Fig.9).

Of course scaling works on objectsoutside editmode too, and uses thesame keyboard command.

Now, to see the result of your actionin 3 dimensions, press NumPad[5] ineither of the views. This will toggleperspective mode. To change the 3Dview, press and hold theMiddleButton while moving yourmouse. For an even nicer view, togg-gle solid drawing with [Z] (Fig. 10).

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building a house

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FIG. 10 SOLID MODE VIEW

FIG. 9 SCALING IN ALL DIRECTIONS

FIG. 8 SCALING ALONG THE X AXIS

Rotation is not the only thing you cando with the 3D window; press andhold [SHIFT] and drag with theMiddleButton to translate your view.Use the [CTRL] modifier to zoom inor out. Pressing [HOME] will restoreyour view here, too.

When you have seen enough, restorethe view by pressing [Z] andNumPad[5] to switch off solid andperspective view, and pressNumPad[1] or NumPad[3] to restorethe correct viewing direction.

If you have a mouse with 2 buttonsinstead of three, switch on '2-Mouse'in the Info Window.

Giving everything a bit ofcolor

Everything is painted in a dull graynow. To change this, first select theroof by clicking on it with theRightButton. Go to the MaterialButtons screen by selecting the iconwith the little red sphere on it (Fig.11).

To create a new material, LeftClickon the button labeled ' -' (Fig. 11).This will bring up a list of the availa-ble materials in your scene. BecauseI have not defined any yet, all I seeis the default material called'Material' and the option 'Add New'.Select ‘Add New’ (Fig. 12) to createa new material. (Later on, you canselect existing materials here andassign them to your objects).

The default material name is'Material'. Click in the box thatcotains the material name with theLeftButton and change it into a moresensible name (Fig. 13). Press[ENTER] to confirm the new name,or [ESC] to cancel. Change the colordefinition by selecting a slider forthe red, green or blue component ofthe color and dragging it to anothervalue (Fig. 14). You will immediatelysee the effect that this has on yourcolor.

When you are satis-fied, select the cubeand create anothermaterial (you cannow also select theroof material if youwish). PressNumPad[9] in the3D view or changethe view a bit toupdate the colors (Fig. 15).

Adding a chimney

To add a chimney, add another cubeto the scene. Start scale mode with[S] and scale it down to the indica-ted size. When you're satisfied, startthe grabber with [G] and move it tothe correct position (Fig. 16).

Elongate the chimney by using thescaling mode and constraining the itto the z-axis. Do this by startingscale mode [S], moving your mouseupward and then clicking theMiddleButton. When you have rea-ched the correct size, confirm it withLeftClick (Fig. 17).

Add a bit of color to the chimney likeI described earlier. I chose to use the

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!

FIG. 17FIG. 16

FIG. 15 THE UPDATED VIEW

FIG. 14 CHANGING THE COLOR

FIG. 13 CHANGING THEMATERIALS NAME

FIG. 12 ADDING A NEWMATERIAL

FIG. 11 OPENING THE MATERIALS BUTTONS

same material as the walls.

This is what your house should looklike right now (Fig. 18). Not bad, isit? Of course, the door and windowsare still missing, but I will be workingon that next.

The windows and doors

To model the windows and door, Iwill use a technique called extrusion.Extrusion is used when you want togive a flat object depth.

Start by adding a plane in the frontview. It is probably the same size asthe front of the house, so immedia-tely start scaling with [S] and scalethe plane to a good size for a win-dow. Use the grabber to position thewindow correctly (Fig. 19).

In the side view you can see that theplane is placed in the middle of thehouse. Use the grabber to translateit to a position slightly in front of thefront wall (Fig. 20).

I give the window some depth byusing the extrude tool. In the sideview, enter edit mode with [TAB]and select all the vertices with [A].Next, press [E] and confirm therequester (Fig. 21).

If you move your mouse now, you willsee that you can change the depth ofthe window (Fig. 22). Like with thescaling operation, you can constrainmovement of vertices or objects bymoving your mouse horizontally a bitand clicking MiddleButton Move theextruded part into the wall a bit,and confirm the extrusion with theLeftClick.

I now want to turn the extrudedplane into a `window-frame`. Tohide some unwanted clutter from myscreen, I first press NumPad [/]. Thiswill remove everything but the curr-rently selected object and rescalethe view in such a way that you caneasily edit the selected object. Next,go to top view with NumPad [7].Enter editmode and use box select[B] to select the front vertices of thewindow (Fig. 23).

Start extruding with [E], but do notmove your mouse just yet. Instead,start the scaling mode and move theselected vertices inward a bit.LeftClick to confirm (Fig. 24).

Extrude once more and move theselected vertices up (Fig. 25).

Now return to normal view by press-sing NumPad [/]. Because I want tocolor the window blue, I have addeda single plane at the position of theextruded window and placed it justin front of the wall.

Use the same technique to create adoor and give both the window andthe door some color.

Figure. 26 is the result so far. It isalready starting to look like a house,don't you think?

Building the fence

To start building the fence, go to thefront view and add a plane to yourscene. Extrude the top a bit andscale the top vertices down until itlooks like Figure 27. In the side view,

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building a house

CHAPTER 5

FIG. 27FIG. 26FIG. 25FIG. 24FIG. 23

FIG. 22

FIG. 21

FIG. 20

FIG. 19

FIG. 18

extrude the entire shape to give itsome depth.

Now all you have to do is createduplicates and place them all aroundyour house. This time, do not use[SHIFT][D] to copy your objects, but[ALT][D] instead. This created an'instanced' copy. The difference bet-ween normal and instanced copies isthat an instance does not copy theobject's geometry data, but onlyreferences it.

Changing one instanced copy willtherefore immediately change all theinstances along with it. In our case,if you would like to change some-thing about the fence afterward, youwould only have to change one ele-ment and everything would be auto-matically updated.The easiest way to build the fencearound the house is to first build oneside of the fence, then use boxselect [B] to select and duplicate it.With the duplicate still selected, usethe grabber and rotate tool [R] toplace the copies around the house.You can constrain rotation with[CTRL] too - in this case, rotationsare limited to multiples of 5 degrees.

In the picture (Fig. 28), I have alsoadded a path leading to the door.

Setting up the camera andlight

It is now time to finish my scene bysetting up the camera and addinglight.

Each Blender scene should contain acamera (Fig. 29). If you have some-

how accidentally deleted it, you canalways add a new one from the tool-box. To look through the camera inany 3D window, press NumPad [0].You can edit the camera (its positionand orientation) in another 3D win-dow, and the changes will be shownin the camera view immediately.Editing the camera is exactly thesame as editing objects - use [G] formoving it and [R] for changing theorientation.

You will probably have to switch bet-ween front- and side view a fewtimes to get the camera angle justright. A nice trick that can help youwith aiming cameras and lights isdescribed in the sidebox 'Follow thatObject!'

Blender supports different types oflight sources. When you add a lampto the scene using the toolbox, thestandard type 'lamp' is added. This isa source that transmits light intoevery direction. It can cast no sha-dows.

You can change lamp types with thebuttons indicated in Figure 30.If you wish to use shadows, you haveto change the lamp type into 'spot'. Aspotlight shines light into a specificdirection (Fig. 32). You can manipula-te this direction by rotating [R] the

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building a house

CHAPTER 5

FIG. 32FIG. 30

FIG. 29

FIG. 28

!

spot. When you do this, always make sure you check at least two differentviews - a lamp that is perfectly alig-ned in one view may be pointing in acompletely unwanted direction in theother!This (Fig. 33) is how I have set up myspotlight for this scene. In the LampButtons window ( ), I have alsoincreased the value of 'SpotSi' (SpotSize) to make the spotlight cover alarger area, and I have set the valueof 'Energy' to 2.0 to make sure thescene doesn't become too dark whenI render the image. Try experimen-ting with the lamp settings laterwhen you have finished the scene.

Follow that object!

Aiming a camera or a spotlight in theright direction can be a hassle, buthere is a nice trick that will make ita lot easier. You can add a dummyobject and make the camera track it.This way, you will only have to movethe dummy and the camera willautomatically look in its direction.

Dummy objects only exist in the 3Dwindow and function as 'helper'objects. They do not show up whenyou render an image.

From the Toolbox select ‘Add Empty’(Fig s1).

Select the camera, hold down the[SHIFT] key and select the empty(the order in which you select yourobjects is important). Press[CTRL][T].

Select ‘Make track’ (Fig. s2). Usuallythe camera will now have a strangerotation. To clear this rotation,select it and press [ALT][R].

Select ‘Clear rotation’ (Fig. s3). Thecamera is now properly setup. Selectthe empty and move it around – thecamera will automatically follow

(Fig. s4)! Move the camera around -it will keep 'looking' at the empty.Pretty neat eh?

Final result

To finish the house scene, add aplane and scale it large enough sothat the edges do not show in therendering. In the front view, positionit so that it coincides with the baseof the house.

Next, switch to the Display Buttonsscreen and turn on 'Shadows'. Pressthe button labeled 'Render' to seethe result of your hard work (Fig.34). If you wish to save the image, selecta file format from in the DisplayButtons screen (Fig. 35) and press[F3]. Enter a name in the secondtext field and press [ENTER] twice(the first time confirms the filenameand the second time actually savesthe file).Not bad for a first try, is it? I hopeyou have seen that building things ina 3D application is really not thatdifficult. Take the time to familiarizeyourself with Blender's interface andyou will see that you can do thingslike this faster and faster. Why nottry drawing your own house inBlender now?

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CHAPTER 5

FIG. 35

FIG. s4

FIG. s3

FIG. s2

FIG. s1

FIG. 33

FIG. 34

Author:Jason NairnTopic: mesh modeling Level: beginner

Introduction

In this tutorial we will create a verybasic character which will then beused for ika animation. To do this wewill use simple extrusions.

Step1:Delete the default plane and switchto frontview with NumPad [1] placea plane using [SPACE] then selectADD->Mesh->Plane. Constrain byusing [CTRL] while dragging all thepoints one grid space to the right.This step is important as we need tomodel in the correct view so ika setup will be easy later on.

Step2:

Select the two points on the leftusing RightClick and [SHIFT] toextend the selection then extrudethem two grid spaces using [E].Constrain the points to the grid using[CTRL] while dragging. We now havecreated the hips.

Step3: Deselect all points using [A] thenselect the top three points andextrude these up two grid spaces,repeat this again another two gridspaces. This creates the height of thetorso, it is segmented so the armsand legs can be created.

Step4: Deselect all again, and select the twobottom right points, This time tryusing box select as practice for atthe end of the tutorial. You canaccess box select by pressing [B].Extrude these two points down fourgrid spaces and across one. Repeatthis to create the lower leg downfour across one.

Step5: Keep the end points selected orselect them, and extrude them onegrid space down. We need to add theextra vertices at the knee and footso the mesh will bend when anima-ted. If we extruded straight from the hips tothe foot with no segments the kneecouldn't bend!

38

MR BASICMR BASIC

CHAPTER 6

STEP 5STEP 4STEP 3STEP 2

STEP 1

Step6:Select the two points in the top rightand extrude these three grid spacesto create the arm, repeat this, anot-her three grid spaces.

Step7: Repeat from step four on the otherside of the body.

Step8:Go to side view by pressing NumPad[3], select all the points using [A]then extrude them two gridspaces. This gives the body somedepth.

Step9: To create the feet select the bottomleft points using box select [B]. It isimportant to use this tool as we wantto select the points we can not seeto extrude both sides at once, nowextrude these points two grid spaces.Take note of where I have placed the3d cursor, Leave edit mode [TAB],then you can add a simple sphere fora head using [SPACE] then add,mesh, icosphere, 2. You can makethis bigger by using scale [S].

Step10:And here we have our finished MrBasic! This tutorial should give you some insight into how you canquickly create a simple characterusing polygons. Remember to savehim, as he will be needed for theIKA tutorial later on.

Adding detail:Using this very simple model you cansubdivide [W], choose ‘SUBDIVIDE’ or‘SUBDIVIDE SMOOTH’ in edit mode[TAB] and further refine the pointsto create more complex human orcartoon characters.

Tip:When modeling more complex orga-nic characters try to vary the curvesthat are formed. In nature it is rarefor curves to be perfectly symmetri-cal as shown on the left. Rotatingand offsetting rings of vertices asshown on right will help makemodels more natural.

CHAPTER 6

39

MR BASIC

STEP 10

STEP 9

STEP 8

STEP 7

STEP 6

Author: Bart VeldhuizenSubjects: animation, keyframing,spinningLevel: Beginner

Introduction

You have already seen that you canuse Blender to create interestingimages. Adding objects, materials,lights and a camera allows you to setup a scene in exactly the way youlike. Blender will calculate the corr-rect lighting and shadows automati-cally for you.

But there is more! There is a comple-te animation system inside Blender.Making an object move is as easy asdefining its beginning and endingposition. Blender does the rest foryou - calculation of all the framesbetween beginning and end are doneautomatically.

In this chapter I will create a simplescene consisting of a chessboard anda pawn. The pawn will jump happily

across the board and it will deform abit when it hits the ground.

Creating the Pawn

To create the pawn I use a new tech-nique called 'Spinning'. Using this, Iwill only need to draw an outline ofthe pawn and then Blender will cal-culate how the object should lookbased on this outline.

Start with a new Blender scene, dele-te the default plane and switch tofront view. Add a new Bezier curvefrom the toolbox: press [SPACE],select 'Curve' from the right buttonbar and then select 'Bezier curve'from the list (Fig. 1).

The chapter 7 describes working withthese curves in much more detail.For now, it is enough to know thatyou can add extra points to the curveby selecting an endpoint, holdingdown[CTRL] and LeftClicking. Tryplaying with the curve a bit beforegoing on - also pay attention to theway the 'handles' affect the directionof the curve in a particular point.

Shape the curve as indicated inFigure 2, and pay special attentionthat the endpoints on the left arelocated on the blue axis (the Z-axis).I will be using the Z-axis as the axisof rotation later.

When you want to create a rotationobject, you must indicate the loca-tion of the rotation axis with the 3Dcursor (Fig. 3). I want to place thissomewhere on the Z-axis. While stillin front view, LeftClick on the blueZ-axis to place the 3D cursor there.

40

a pawn in a hurrya pawn in a hurry

CHAPTER 7

FIG. 1

FIG. 2

FIG. 3

A nice trick to align the 3D cursor orobjects is to use the snap function([SHIFT][5] - Fig. 4). With this, youcan do four things:

1 - Align a selection to the grid. Forexample, when in editmode you canplace vertices exactly on grid cornerswith this

2 - Align a selection to the cursor.This moves the currently selectedobject or vertex to the 3D cursorlocation

3 - Align the 3D cursor with the nea-rest grid corner. Useful in our currentcase to match up the cursor exactlywith the Z-axis (place the cursorsomewhere near a grid corner andactivate this option).

4 - Align the 3D cursor with the curr-rently selected object or vertex.

The rotation axis is always perpendi-cular to the screen. Switch to topview with NumPad [7]. You now seethe 3D cursor, indicating the positionof the rotation axis and our curvewhich will move in the direction ofthe arrow in the illustration (Fig. 5).

I am almost set to create the pawn.There is only one more thing to pre-pare: the spin function only works onmeshes, and not on curves. So firstconvert the outline curve into amesh by leaving editmode ([TAB]),selecting it and pressing [ALT][C].Select 'Mesh' (Fig. 6) or press[ENTER] to perform the conversion(this cannot be undone - converting amesh back to a curve is not possis-ble).

Now switch to the Edit Buttonsscreen. In the middle you see a butt-ton labeled 'Spin' (Fig. 8).Underneath it are inputs for 'Degrees'and 'Steps'. Set degrees to 360 andsteps to 21. (This value determinesthe resolution of the resulting object- higher values increase the smooth-ness).

If you wanted to create only half anobject, you would set the degreesvalue to 180.

All set? Press the 'Spin' button andwatch the result (Fig. 7). The curvehas been extruded and rotated, lea-ving behind a complete pawn.

If you have set up your screen towork with multiple 3D windows,Blender will need to know in whichwindow you wish to perform the spinoperation. The cursor changes into aquestion mark and you must click inthe top view window to proceed.

All is not ready yet, though. It maynot be obvious, but there is still aseam in the object where the 'begin-ning' meets the 'end' of our spin sur-face. I have found an easy trick toclose it: use the 'Rem Doubles'(Remove Doubles) option in the EditButtons screen (Fig. 9). With the'Limit' value you can determine themaximum distance between verticesthat Blender will weld together. Setthis value to 0.020 and press the'Rem Doubles' button.

After performing this operation,Blender reports on the amount ofvertices that have been deleted. Justconfirm this requester.

CHAPTER 7

41

a pawn in a hurry

!

!

FIG. 4

FIG. 5

FIG. 6

FIG. 7

FIG. 8

FIG. 9

If no vertices have been removed,try decreasing the limit value in theprevious step and trying again.

As a finishing touch, smooth thepawn by clicking on 'Set smooth' (Fig.10).

There is a good chance that the butt-ton on your screen will say 'etSmooth' because of the way the userinterface is scaled on your screen.Try holding down [CTRL] and drag-ging with the MiddleClick to modifythe size of the interface elements.(And, yes, [SHIFT] and MiddleClickwill translate the interface panels)

Show time! Switch to solid perspecti-ve mode by pressing [Z] and NumPad[5] and drag around with theMiddleButton to look around yourobject (Fig. 12).

Making it Move

The basic idea behind keyframeanimation is to define objects pro-perties like position and rotation forgiven moments in time. These defini-tions are called keyframes or keys. Ifyou have defined at least two keyfra-mes, Blender can interpolate theirvalues (calculate the transition bet-ween the keyframes) and create asmooth animation for you.

I will now define five keyframes forthe pawn in different positions, rota-tions and sizes. The end result will

be the pawn making a hop.The first thing you need to know ishow to navigate to other frames inyour animation. Take a look at thefigure 11. The current frame numberis always displayed here. There are anumber of ways to go to anotherframe number:

- LeftClick and drag in the framenumber indicator. This will changethe frame number.

- Hold [SHIFT] and LeftClick in theframe number indicator. You can nowenter a new value for the framenumber.

- Use the keyboard:

[->] - frame +1[<-] - frame -1

- frame + 10

- frame - 10

[SHIFT][->] - start of animation(default=1)[SHIFT][<-] - end of animation(default=250)

I will now set up the first keyframeof the pawn. Go to frame 11 (theeasiest way is to press once).Start the rotation mode [R], holddown [CTRL] to constrain the rota-tion to multiples of five degrees andgive the pawn a rotation of -30degrees.

CHAPTER 7

42

a pawn in a hurry

![->

]

[->]

[->]

FIG. 10

FIG. 11

FIG. 13

FIG. 12

FIG. 14

Next, move it [G] so that the bottomis on the height z=0 (Fig. 13 - thebrightly colored horizontal line). Thisheight will later be used for thefloor.

To set a keyframe, press [I]. This willbring up a requester with a lot ofoptions - these are the different keytypes that you can set. In this tutori-al, I will only use the types (orchannels) 'Loc' (Location), 'Rot'(Rotation) and 'Size'. You can selectone of the first three options to setonly a Loc, Rot or Size key. If youwish to define multiple keys at once,select LocRot or LocRotSize.

For this frame, I want to set thelocation (make sure Blender remem-bers that I want the pawn exactly atz=0) and the rotation (the -30degrees I just defined).

Later, I will also define a Size key onanother frame. Because of this, Ihave to make sure Blender keeps thepawn's size on my current frameintact. For this reason, insert a keyfor Size too.

Take a look at the icon row at thebottom of the 3D Window. There arefour buttons that define the behaviorof the scaling and rotation tools. Bydefault, the first button is selected.This will cause the scaling and rota-tion to use the pink dot in the midd-le of an object as the center.

Select the third button to rotate andscale around the 3D Cursor.

Go to frame number 16. Because thebase of the pawn is already restingon the 'floor', I want to rotate theentire object around this point, andnot around the object center.

Move the 3D cursor to the base ofpawn (Fig. 16), start the rotation

mode [R], and rotate the pawn +30degrees. It should be perfectly verti-cal now.

Insert a new locRotSize key to definethis position.For the next key, go to frame number21, move the 3d cursor to the rightbase point (Fig. 17). This is the newcenter of rotation. Rotate the pawn+30 degrees and insert a newLocRotSize key.

Go back to frame 1. Translate thepawn up and to the left a bit (Fig. 18). This will be the position inwhich in comes flying into the anima-tion. Insert a new LocRotSize key.

And for the final key, go to framenumber 31. Like in the previous step,translate the pawn upward and tothe right a bit (Fig. 19). Insert a newkey.

If you want to see all the keys thatyou have defined for your animation,select the pawn and press [K]. Youcan now select a different key with[PG UP] and [PG DN]. Selected keysare drawn in yellow (Fig. 20). The

selected key can be edited directlyand the new key values are stored inthe animation system immediately. Ifyou want to change the entire

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CHAPTER 7

FIG. 15

FIG. 16

FIG. 17

FIG. 18

FIG. 19

FIG. 20

animation at once, simply select allthe keys with [A] and move, rotateor scale them.Ifyou want to see all the keys that youhave defined for your animation,select the pawn and press [K].

(An alternative for editing key valuesis to go to a frame for which youhave defined a key, change theobject properties and then re-insertthe necessary keys).To hide of the keys, press [K] again.

If you want the object on frame 1and 31 to have the exact sameheight, press [N]. This brings up theobject properties screen in whichyou can enter numeric values forposition, rotation and size. LocZ con-trols the object's height (Fig. 21).

You are now set to play back the firstframes of your animation with[ALT][A]. Press [ESC] to stop play-ing.

(In figure 22 I have composed severalframes of the animation together.)

Squasing the pawn

To give the pawn a comic-like cha-racter, it should appear to be soft.When it hits the ground, it must besquashed a little bit. This can beachieved by changing the size of thepawn on frame number 16.

On frame 16, Place the 3D cursor atthe base of the object. Enter scalemode and start decreasing the objec-t's size by moving your mouse verti-cally. Next, click the MiddleButtonto indicate that you only want tochange the objects Z size (Fig. 23).

Change the size to about 0.7 (thisvalue is printed at the bottom of the3D Window while you are sizing).

To make the squashed pawn look abit more realistic, it should not onlyget shorter, but also a bit wider.After all, its volume should remainthe same.

Repeat the previous step, but nowmove the mouse horizontally (as inFig. 24) before you constrain thesizing process. Increase the object'swidth to 1.3.

Switch to top view and repeat thescaling to increase the object's Y sizeto 1.3, too.

To finish this part of the tutorial,insert a new LocRotSize key forframe 16 (Fig. 25). Take a look atyour animation now - did you expectit would be this easy to createelastic-looking objects?

Creating the Chessboard

Snap cursor to gridOf course, this scene would not becomplete without adding a chessbo-ard. I will use the extrusion techni-

44

a pawn in a hurry

CHAPTER 7

!

FIG. 21

FIG. 22

FIG. 23

FIG. 26 FIG. 27

FIG. 28 FIG. 29

FIG. 24

FIG. 25

que which I described in chapter 2here once again.

I start by adding a new plane to myscene. In front view, enter editmode([TAB]), select all vertices ([A]) andextrude the vertices upward a bit([E]). With the vertices still selected,scale them down somewhat to createbeveled edges (Fig. 26).

Still in editmode, I now duplicate thesquare, hold down [CTRL] and movethe copy 2 grid units sideways andupward. Press [A] to select every-thing and repeat this step (Fig. 27).This time you can copy two fields atthe same time. This way, you cancreate an entire chessboard (Fig. 28)in 5 steps!

In the previous step you have actuall-ly created half of the fields of thechessboard. Now leave editmode andcopy the entire board. Rotate it 180degrees (hold down [CTRL] again)and move it so that the copy 'fills theholes' that were remained in the ori-ginal. You now have a chessboardthat consists out of two objects: onefor the white fields, and one for theblack fields.

Add some material colors (I choseblue instead of black to make theboard look more interesting) andtake a peek at your new object insolid perspective mode (Fig. 29).

The Result

To finish your animation, set up somelights (read chapter 6 for more infor-mation on that) and set up yourcamera. Since your camera is justanother object like the pawn, youcan animate it, too. Try making it

rotate slightly from left to right(insert rotation keyframes only). Afew degrees is already enough tomake your final animation (Fig. 30) alot more dynamic.

To render a single frame of youranimation, go to the desired frameand press [F12] or click the 'Render'button.

Usually you will want to render anentire animation to disk, either as a series of images or as an AVI file. Toset this up, first enter a filename inthe filename box (Fig. 31). For aseries of images (not for AVI files),this name will become the base pre-fix of the filesnames. For example,entering '/render/pawn' will result ina series of images called 'pawn0001,pawn0002, ...' stored in the directory/render.

Set the correct file format (Fig. 32).Selecting 'AVI raw' or 'AVI jpg' herewill cause Blender to store youranimations not as single images, butas an AVI file. AVI jpg is the mostcompact way of storing your anima-tions, but it comes with a slight qua-lity loss. Change the 'Sta' (Start) and'End' values (Fig. 33) to match youranimation. For the current anima-

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CHAPTER 7

FIG. 30

tion, values of 0 and 31 should beentered.Press the 'Anim' button to render theentire animation.

Play it back from within blender bypressing 'PLAY'. This opens a newwindow - press [ESC] to stop playing.

A Little Extra

There is an extra rendering optioncalled 'Motion Blur'. Motion Blursimulates the effect of a shuttertime - fast moving objects will beco-me a bit blurred. Motion blur takes alot of time to calculate, but in somecases it really adds to the realism ofyour scene.Before rendering, select the button'MBLUR' (Fig. 34). Leave the 'Bf' (BlurFactor) on 1.0; this value represents

the shutter time. A higher value corr-responds to a longer shutter time.

Here is the result of the same imageas before, but now motion blurred(Fig. 35).

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FIG. 31

FIG. 32

FIG. 33

FIG. 34

FIG. 35

47

selection setsselection sets

CHAPTER 8

Author: Bart VeldhuizenLevel: BeginnerTopics Mesh Editing, Selections

Introduction

Sometimes when you are working onmesh objects, it would be convenientto be able to store selection groupsof vertices. Suppose that you areworking on the Blender Girl - would-n't it be convenient if you could firstwork on her torso, then on her face,press a button and have the old torsoselection back?Since Blender does not support thisfeature yet, we have to find anotherway to achieve this (Blender is reallygood at allowing crazy usage of fea-tures!)

Title

To create selection groups, we willbe using material indices. As youknow, you can assign different mate-rials to faces in the same meshobject by creating up to 16 materialindices. To start, select your meshobject and enter edit mode. Switchto the EditButtons window with [F9].

Notice the button labeled '1 Mat: 1'(see figure 1). This means that thisobject has 1 (the first number) mate-rials assigned to it, of which number1 (the second number) is selected.After we have assigned a new index,these numbers will change. You canthen browse through the indices byclicking on the left and right side ofthis button.

Make a selection and press the 'New'button. This adds a new materialindex to you mesh (The materialindex button now reads '2 Mat: 2').Next, press the 'Assign' button tostore your current selection in thematerial index. Please note that the

pink dot in the middle of figure 2 isthe object center and not an unse-lected vertex.

Make another selection and repeatthe last two steps. You have now sto-red two selection sets in the materialindices.

Retrieving your selection

To retrieve your select, browse thecorrect material index and press the'Select' button, indicated in figure 4.

Please note that material index 1 istreated specially within Blender - itcontains all the faces that haven'tbeen assigned a material index yet.In our case, selecting the faces ofindex one results in the selection asshown in figure 5.

Miscellaneous tips

Please remember that each face canonly be assigned to one materialindex (two materials for one facewould not make sense!)

Create different materials for yourselection sets if you want to be ableto see them in a solid view ([Z]) or arendered image.

Create different materials with diffe-rent names if you want to display ameaningful selection set name abovethe material index selector button(see figure 6)

A limitation of this method is thatyou can only store selections of thefaces and not of individual vertices.If you have problems with selectiongroups, it can help to turn on theDraw faces option in the EditButtonswindow (figure 7). N edit mode youcan see the selected faces as shownin figure 8.

48

welding verticeswelding vertices

CHAPTER 9

Author: Geno RuffaloLevel: BeginnerTopics: Remove Doubles, MeshMirroring, Welding

Introduction

When modelling symmetrical meshestime can be saved by modelling onehalf of the mesh then 'mirroring' orduplicating the 2nd half. After this,the two halves are joined by weldingthe vertices that run along the seam.In Blender this can be by using amesh function known as RemoveDoubles.

Figure 1 is half of the skate boardwheel from the "Proportional MeshEditing" chapter. In front view selectall the vertices of your object andplace the 3D cursor along the edge ofthe object that you will duplicatingand press [.] (This will cause scaleand rotate actions to be centeredaround the 3D cursor instead of theobject's center)

The object is easily mirrored (dupli-cated) with the use of the hot keycombination of [SHIFT][D] then [S]and [ENTER]. Try not to move themesh at all between keystrokes andthe result should resemble figure 2.Move the new half of the mesh ifneeded to line up the 2 seams asclose as possible.

Select the center row of verticeswith the border select tool ([B]) asseen in figure 3.

In the Edit Buttons Window [F9] lookfor the 'Rem Doubles' button. Belowis a button labeled 'Limit'. The valuethat you enter is the distance in gridunits that two vertices must be fromeach other to be welded into one. Infigure 4 the value has been set to0.070. Press the Rem Doubles button.

An easy way to make sure that thevertices in the seam overlap is toselect them with the border selecttool and scaling them down in the X-direction only. Press [S], move themouse horizontally and press theMiddleButton to lock the scale actionalong the X-axis. Holding down[CTRL] will make it easier to set thescale value (in the bottom left cornerof your 3D window) to zero.

The result should be a single meshwith both halves joined together. Totest this place the mouse over anyvertex of the mesh and press [L] toselect linked vertices. In figure 5 yousee that all the vertices will becomeselected as long as all the verticesalong the seam were successfullywelded together. If any vertices didnot get joined simply increase thelimit value and repeat the removedoubles process.

FIG. 2

FIG. 1

FIG. 3

FIG. 4

FIG. 5

!

Height Maps

Height Maps, also known asDisplacement Maps, are a fast andeasy way to model landscapes andother special meshes in most 3Dapplications. Fortunately Blender alsooffers this feature. It's a breeze todo, and can give you some quicklandscapes. Start off with a GridMesh and add a Material and ImageTexture to it. I chose this skull (Fig.1).

Enter edit mode and click the 'Noise'button a few times (Fig. 2).

You may want to click the 'Smooth'button after every few Noise clicks,but that is up to you. Here is theresult after a few clicks (Fig. 3).

And here is what you can do withthem(Fig.4).

The skull was joined to an existingmesh of a mountainous landscapescene and the result is this abstractimage. Create Grid, add Image, addNoise, not bad for Three Steps!

Aligning Vertices

Did you ever wonder how to align agroup of vertices the same valuealong one axis. Well in Blender thiscan be done by, believe it or not, thesize translation. The first step is toplacethe 3D Cursor in the location thatyou wants to align the vertices on.Select the vertices and press the 5.MOve the mouse towards the 3DCursor and press the 8MiddleButtonto restrict the movement to one axis(Fig. 5).

The result is a group of vertices linedup nicely (Fig. 6).

We might as well try it one moretimejust for practice. Place the 3Dcursor at the center of the sphere(Fig. 7).

Scale along one axis using the 5 and 8MiddleClick combination. This littletrick works just as well for curvehandles and surface knots too! (Fig.8)

49

FIG. 1

FIG. 2

FIG. 5 FIG. 6

FIG. 7 FIG. 8

FIG. 3 FIG. 4

MICRO TUTORIALSMICRO TUTORIALS

CHAPTER 10