Modeling I - Creating a table (Part 1)
Author: Karl Kühberger
The first model which we are going to model in this tutorial, is a very simple figure which allows you to become familiar with the particular steps of modeling in Blender 3D. Since this is a quite long chapter it is splitted in two parts.
Educational objectives:
- Blender file browser
- Insert, move, rotate, scale and delete objects
- Handling of object and editing mode
- Revers and recover commands
- Cancel commands
- Handling of viewpoints
- Adapting the window layout
- Sampling technics
- Snapping Tool
- Duplicating
- Producing material and regulating shader
- Creating textures
- Lighting
- Camera adjustments
- Rendering adjustments
- Save a rendered picture
Final rendered table
Step by Step:
1. Opening Blender
2. Saving the file at the right place:
- Menu File - select the button Save As
- Chose a file (white font)
You can select volumes and places where you have saved documents at last with the double arrow. By pressing "P" you can turn back in the saving history of a file. You can also write the path of a file into the first row.
- in the second row you have to type in the name of the file (incl. the appendix .blend). Press enter.
- affirm with pressing "save as"
Tip: It is quite advisable to collect all files, blender files as well as textures in one folder. Although you can pack extern textures with the programme Blender but if you once use YafRay or another rendering engine instead of the intern rendering all files should be saved at the same place.
3. Modeling the table
- The cube that already exists can be used as a starting basis for the tabletop.
- Select it with the right mouse button and chance into the editing mode (shortcut: tabulator key)
- Chance into aerial view (Block of numbers on the very right side of your keyboard "7")
- Select all vertices (Pressing A once or twice - selected points are yellow, the others are pink.
- Select the scale manipulator in the menu board of the 3D window. ( if it is not already displayed enable it with the hand symbol). Now the red, green and blue lines should have a small cube at their endpoints. By dragging these cubes you can scale the size of the object. For scaling on the z-axis switch the view with the middle mouse button or by chancing to front or side view with NUM 1 and NUM 3.
- Commands can be reversed by pressing Ctrl-Z. and recovered with Ctrl-Shift-Z.
4. Modeling table legs
- Now we are going to duplicate the tabletop with Shift-D (or via menu board of the 3D window - selecting Mesh - then Duplicate). Before you do this, take care that all vertices are selected (yellow). After duplicating we are automatically in the translate mode. Not in this case -Generally to make sure that the duplicated vertices are not displaced you have to press enter right after you have pressed Shift-D. In this particular case we are dragging the copy a little away. Otherwise it might easily happen that you forget the copied vertices and have two congruent vertices instead (this can lead to bad looking artefacts when you finally render the object)
- Then we are going to scale the table leg with the scale manipulater as we have done before with the top.
- After this we can put the leg on the right place. Therefore we switch on the Snap-tool (horse shoe formed magnet icon) in the menu bar of the 3D window and switch the Snap-Target-Mode (right beside on the menu bar) to "close".
- Now we can move the leg - with G or with the inner ring of the Translate Manipulator - to one end of the tabletop. It is important that the cursor shows to the corner instead of the vertex of the table leg! Before ending this command press Ctrl to activate snapping. The leg should now move to the selected point ( a small circle is displayed for ratification. The command is ended by pressing the left mouse button.
- In the aerial view, that can be selected by pressing 7 on the number block on the right side of your keyboard, you can move the table leg a little in the direction to the table center.
- By copying we can create three more legs (Shift-D) and move them to each corner of the tabe top. If you want to get an exact result you can enter G and then name of the axis and distance. For Example GX2.5 means the object is moved for 2.5 unit points on the x axis. Mind using "." instead of "," for decimal digits. You can also insert negative numbers in order to move the object to the other direction.
- Now we change with the TAB key or in the menu bar of the 3D window to the object mode, where we switch the draw type to "solid" so we can see what we have done so far. If you rotate the viewpoint the result should be similar to the picture below.
- Changing back to the editing mode (TAB key) we will now add the boards between the table legs. Therefore we copy a leg or the table top, scale it to the matching size and put it into the right position by using the snap tools. If the selection causes difficulties you can find further information in the following tutorial (Nr.6). In this particular case it might happen that you cant find the right position where board will click into place because of a missing vertex (= a specific point on the corner of an object). You can switch "snap element" ( which you will find between the horseshoe icon and "closest") to "face". Now you can snap by pressing Ctrl also on a plane. If it is necessary to cut or extend the board you have to select the vertices and drag it with the arrow of the translate manipulator to the matching size and position and click them finally into place with the snapping tool.
- Now we can copy the board again for the opposing side
- Then we are going to copy the board again and rotate it via aerial view (Num 7) with R90 exactly for a right angle. Now we only have to drag the board to the right length and move it to the correct position. Finally copy it again for the opposing side.
- Congratulation! You have modeled your first object. It should look similar to the one on the screen shot below.
