Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Modeling a 3D Parachute in Blender

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[edit] The Making of a 3D Parachute

When you first open blender you will see the default Blender user interface (UI) layout and the default cube.

Delete the cube by selecting it with the Right-Mouse button and then clicking the X key. Next, add a Cylinder by clicking Space-bar> Add> Mesh> Cylinder. This will bring up a small window in which you can set several parameters including vertices, radius, Depth, and cap ends. We will leave the settings in their default state. Press OK to add the cylinder to the scene. Here Blender will automatically take you to edit-mode which is what we want. (You can switch between edit-mode and model-mode by pressing the tab key) Next you will want to delete the bottom row of vertices. To accomplish this go into side view by pressing “3” on the num-pad. Ensure that you are in vertex select mode by pressing Ctrl-Tab and selecting “vertices”. The screen should look like the following:

Press the B key, select the bottom row of vertices, and press the X key to delete and then confirm.

(Noob-Note: Instead of a cylinder you might want to add simply a circle, and jump directly to the next step, which is:)

Now press the A key till all the vertices are selected and switch to edge select mode by pressing Ctrl-Tab and then Edges. Press the E key to extrude the selection and the Z key to constrain to the Z axis. Drag the edges a small ways down then click the left mouse button to release. As this makes a right-angle at the sides and parachutes to don’t have straight edges, we need to scale the selection outward. Press the S key and move the mouse away from the model. You will see that the edges get smaller and bigger. Scale them out a small ways then left click to release. You will want to practice a little with the scale amounts till you can make a realistic parachute shape. The scene should now look like this:

Continue extruding and scaling till you have a shape like the following:

Now go into top-view by pressing the 7 key on the num-pad. Here you will select ~4 edges at opposite sides of each other as in the following picture:

Go back into side-view (num3) and extrude downward by pressing the E key and then the Z key, like in the following picture:

All that remains to finish your parachute is to press Alt-M then “At Center” which will merge all selected vertices. The final result should resemble this:

An alternative method to make a parachute. Start with a cylinder (basic settings), delete the center vertex on the bottom. Press B-KEY and select the bottom vertices, then press SKEY and scale to a value of 2. Extrude down to a value of 1. Subsurf the result and that will give you your basic shape. Next, select the four corner vertices and extrude down as stated in the tutorial. Select all of the edges created by the extrusion and press SHIFT + EKEY to edge crease using a value of 1. You now have a completed parachute (that happens to look identical to the tutorial).

Alternative Method