Modeling I - Creating a table (Part 2)

Author: Karl Kühberger

Selection-Tools

You can find all selection tools in the menu item "Select"- here are some of the most important ones mentioned with their shortcuts.

RMB ... Simple selection - with shift you can add something to or remove something from the existing selection.

A ......... Select all/ select nothing  (alternating)

B ......... Border-select: With LMB you can drag frames over the selected objects or vertices. If you use MMB additionally you remove the parts from the existing selection.

BB ....... circular boarder select. A circular selection seal is displayed. You can change its diameter via scroll wheel. With LMB you can select as long until you end with pressing ESC or RMB. with MMB  you deduct from the existing selection.

L .......... If you put the cursor close to a vertex and press L all vertices that are connected with this vertex are selected.

Ctrl-L .. You can also chose a vertex and press this combination alternatively

BB, L and Ctrl-L are only valid tools in the editing mode.

5. Adding the floor

- Now we continue our first model by choosing the object mode in the aerial view and adding there another object, type "plane". Therefore press the space bar and select Add - Mesh - Plane. Alternatively you can find the command in the menu bar in top. The object will be inserted where the 3D courser is placed. Mind that the cursor is in the visible area, otherwise you might not find the new object. It might be useful to reposition the cursor before inserting a new object by pressing LMB.

- Scale the plane with S to the required size.

- Now let the plane click into place on the bottom of the table legs by using the snapping tool.

6. Inserting textures and materials

- In the next step we are going to add a material and a tile texture to our floor.

- By adding a material you can define surface textures such as colors, reflection, blaze, mirroring etc. You can add textures only when you have already selected a material for the object. Textures can be either procedural textures like clouds, marble,... or image maps.

- If you press F5 or the icons in the 3D menu bar you can change to "shading" and the subcontext "Material Buttons". There press "Add new" and name the material by clicking "MA:Material" and changing "Material" to a more precise description. In this particular case "floor".Don't use any special characters for this notation.

- One of the most important aspects of material settings are the color settings which you can find in the field "Col" and the specific adjusters R G and B for the three primary colors red green and blue as well as "Ref" for reflexions and "Spec" for the size and "Hard" for hardness of highlightings. But we are not jet starting with these settings. First we are going to add the texture and lighting, because otherwise we can not estimate the results appropriately.

- By Pressing F6 we can change into the subcontext "Texture Buttons". There we are going to add a new texture with "Add New", change the Name in "TE:Text"  to "tile" and the texture type to "Image". Now you can upload a jpg-file, like the one below ("tile.jpg).

Before you can do this, the graphic below must be saved on your computer. Therefore click the graphic with the tiles below with the right mouse button. A menu will be displayed, where you can select "Save graphic as". Then you can save the graphic in any folder on your computer. We would highly recommend you to create a specific folder for the whole working process with Blender 3D.

- Blender offers two options for administrating external files. Either these files are already saved together with the Blender files or the link to the external files is saved. To pack pictures you have to choose the menu item File - External Data - Pack into .blend file. This settings have to be done just once. You can see the package-symbol in the menu bar. If the pictures are not packed, you have to take care that the files are not moved to other folders on your computer so that the links don't work anymore.

- Now we are going to do the same with the table by choosing the following texture. Before we can start we have to save the graphic file on the computer as we did with the tiles before.

- Without mentioning to much about rendering at the moment, let's try it to see if the texture fits. Therefore press F12.

- It might happen that the texture is twisted for 90 degrees. In this case, activate the button "Red 90" under F6.

- Another turn of rendering (F12) shows that the upside has a good looking texture but the edgewise planes don't due to the multiplication of pixels. To prevent this we have to map the picture on each plane of the object. Therefore press F5 and than in the panel "Map In put" the setting "Cube". Since this is already an advanced task within Blender I just briefly want to mention that if you want to create an undistorted picture in each plane of the table you have to use "UV Mapping".

7. Light and Rendering

• As Blender already offers a lamp and a camera when opening the programme, we can try a rendering right away. To do this, press the big „Render“ - Button in F10 (context: „Scene“, Subcontext „Render Buttons“) or start it directly, pressing F12. A new window will appear, in which the rendered picture is shown. This process can take a few seconds – as in our simple example – or even a few hours when the scene is very complex.

• To regulate the camera position exactly, we divide our 3D-window into two parts. Move to the upper border of the 3D-window (hand- symbol appears), press RMB and choose „split area“. The division line has to be moved into the middle and closed with the order „LMB“. Now we switch one of the two 3D-windows to camera view (NUM-0). We move and turn the camera within the other window until we see the right extract. Sometimes it will be necessary to change the view, to see the camera from top- down, and then, for example, from the side. The most important thing for the rendering is the outer slashed- line frame.

• When camera has been turned around all three axes, and right positioning is not working any longer, it might help to press „Alt-R“, to reposition the camera, getting back to „Position Zero“.

• Now we can work on optimizing the light/illumination. Lamps can be added, using the Menu „Add- Lamp“ or „Space- Add- Lamp“. Of course it's also possible to simply copy an already existing lamp, using „Shift-D“.

• In F% (context „shading“, subcontext „lamp“) we can adjust the lamps. The most important adjustments are about type of lamp („Lamp“, „Spot“, etc.) and the intensity of lamp („Energy“). For our table we use the lamp type „Sun“ and we let it illuminate the window transversally from the side. To enlighten the black shadows, we additionally use a lamp of type „Hemi“, which illuminates the scene from above.

• It is advisable to learn about the different possibilities of illumination, because the light determines the grade of the rendering's authenticity.

• Now we have another look at the material adjustments and adapt brightness and reflection.

• The essential render- adjustments in F10:

  • In the panel „Format“ you can fix image resolution, using „SizeX and SizeY“

  • standard settings can be found at the right- handed button

  • the settings for choosing the data type (jpeg, bmp, png, etc.) can also be found in the panel

  • Another important setting is „OSA“ in the panel „Render“. Pressing the „OSA“ button, anti-aliasing will be activated/deactivated. This task is used for smoothing the edges, and the numbers below determine the grade of smoothing.

  • The settings „Shadow“ and „Ray“ are also to be found in the Render Panel. If „Shadow“ is deactivated, no shadows will be calculated. If „Ray“ is deactivated, there will be no ray tracing: this means a very simplified and reduced version of rendering (without reflection, less realistic transparencies, etc.).

• Let's assume we have rendered our table in a good quality. Of course, now we want to save the picture. To do so, choose „File/ Save Rendered Image“ in the Menu. Choose a directory( destination folder, type in a name in the second row and confirm with the „Save“ button. The most recently rendered picture will be saved.