Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Modeling a Gingerbread Man

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In this tutorial you will learn how to make a simple gingerbread man. In a later tutorial you will be able to make an animation with this gingerbread man.

In this tutorial we will tie together everything we've talked about up to this point, including extruding, subdividing and rendering, and throw in basic lighting.

[edit] Modelling

First, start Blender. You should see a cube in the 3D View. (scroll with the MMB or press CTRL+MMB). Make sure you are in orthographic mode : press NUM5 to go into orthographic mode.

• Select the cube by clicking RMB on it. To review, when an object is a pinkish color, it is selected.
• Now press TAB. When you press TAB it will switch you between Object Mode and Edit Mode. If you pressed TAB you will see pinkish dots. The pink dots are called vertices. (You will know if you are in Edit Mode if you can see those dots.) When you select vertices with the RMB, they will turn yellow.
• Select all the vertices (AKEY once or twice) and then click on the editing tab in the header of the buttons window (or you can just press F9) to go to editing.

• Once you are there you will see a new menu at the bottom of the page, click on the subdivide button in the section called Mesh Tools (while all the vertices are selected). You will see that your cube now has more vertices. This tool is used for dividing an object so that you can do more complex models. [Note] In newer versions, you can also hit SPACE and, in the menu that comes up, Edit → Edges → Subdivide. [Note] You can also press the WKEY, and click subdivide

• Now press AKEY to unselect all the vertices, go to the front view (NUM1) and press BKEY and drag a square around the top left and middle left vertices or press BKEY twice and you will see a circle around your mouse - all the vertices in the circle will be selected by pushing LMB.

• Take a closer look on the selected vertices by viewing the model from a different angle (remember that you can use MMB to achieve this). If you find that you have only selected two vertices and not six, there are 2 ways of solving your problem.
  
  You could hit the ZKEY to toggle between wireframe mode and solid mode or you could hit (and deactivate) the "Occlude Background Geometry" button ("Limit selection to visible" in Blender 2.45 and earlier) in the selection mode buttons (note that this button is shown only if you're in solid mode). Repeat the previous step and see the difference.

• After selecting the 6 vertices press EKEY and select Region. This will extrude the selected vertices. Put the new vertices on the adjacent gray line of the grid one unit to the left (press CTRL to snap to grid). Do this two times so that it looks like below (the snapshot has been taken in a front view (NUM1)) :

• Clear your selection (AKEY).

• Now select the other two vertices (six in 3D again) on the opposite side and do the same there as explained above. Now the arms are complete, as you can see in the illustration below.

  

Now we will do the legs.

• First, unselect all the vertices : use AKEY.

• Select the bottom left two vertices, extrude it and put them in between the gray line (the gray lines in the grid representing the Blender units) and the second gray line below. If holding down CTRL you will notice that the two vertices snap to the grid in the background and you won't be able to select in between them, but jump between one and two of them. Press SHIFT as well and you'll be able to go in tenths of the units. (You can also just enter the number 1.5 to extrude it 1 1/2 units out. On Mac, enter the number 1, press fn with the key that is right under Lkey and Mkey on Azerty (the one with /:,), and press the number 5)

  

• Extrude it again and put it on the third gray line (or, once again, enter 1.5). It should now look like this:

• Use the BKEY to select the bottom 4 vertices (12 in 3D) of the leg, and use the GKEY to pull it out to the left by half a square so that it looks like this

  

• Do this again for the right leg.

• Use BKEY to select the vertices at the groin (where the two legs join)

• Press GKEY and pull it down by 1/2 a square (type GKEY, ZKEY and write -0.5 - in older version you have to type type GKEY, ZKEY but also NKEY and write -0.5 then)

(I had some problems here, trying to move the vertices. There were too many vertices in the same place, and that creates strange forms. To erase the duplicate vertices on top of each other, you can either select the entire model, or just the vertices you want to clean. Then press WKEY and choose Remove Doubles.)

  

• Return to Object mode

• Click RMB on the object to select it then press SHIFT + SKEY and select Cursor → Selection. This will make sure the cube you'll add next will be near where you want it.

• Press SPACE and put your mouse on the mesh option and select cube. In others versions, you can also hit SPACE and , in the menu that comes up, choose Add → Mesh → Cube.

• Press GKEY and put your new cube about 1/3 of the way down the neck (to achieve this, you can press GKEY and ZKEY : enter 1.33).

Now we will make it look more like a ginger bread man by making it thinner.

• Select all with AKEY.

• Go to side view with NUM3.

• Press SKEY for scale and press YKEY for Y-axis and then move your mouse to the middle until it is about 0.3 (use CTRL for fixed values).

• Remember X-axis is the Red arrow/line, Y-axis is the Green one, and Z-axis is Blue (like RGB video mode).

• Use the MMB to spin the view around and examine your handiwork.

At this point, it doesn't look entirely like a gingerbread man, does it? It's a bit too ... chunky. For the last bit, we'll smooth it out.

• Make sure you've selected the body in object mode.

• Select the editing panel in the buttons window (or hit F9).

• In the Modifiers tab, Add a "Subsurf" modifier. You can also push SHIFT + O

• Set the level of the subdivisions to 2, and the number of render levels to 3.

'Noob question: When i add the cube for the head, it stops me from being able to edit the body - it will only select the head to apply subsurf to, even if the body looks like its selected!! Any ideas why???

'Answer: When you created the cube you made a second object. To select a different object, press tab to enter Object mode. Select the body. Then enter edit mode again if you want to edit the body.

• You can press the ZKEY to switch back and forth between wire-frame view and solid view.

• (Noob Note: Easiest way to really get a feel for what is going on in the 3d world is to split into four screens and setting each one to NUM7, NUM3, NUM1, and NUM0 to see all angles and what it will look like at render.)

Noob Question: How?

Answer: To split an area move the cursor to an area between two current areas (e.g. between the 3D view and the buttons), when you see the double ended arrow (used to move the divide) click RMB and select Split Area, you will then see a line appear dividing the area in two. Move this to where you want the divide and click LMB.

• In the 'Link and Materials' section, select 'Set Smooth'.

(Note that here I had the same problem as before, with superposed vertices. Select all vertices, then press WKEY and select Remove Doubles to clean your model. You will see that it will look much better after removing the extra vertices with Remove Doubles)

• Press the ZKEY to return to wire-frame view.

• Now repeat the process above to smooth the head.

Looks a lot more like a gingerbread man, now, doesn't it?

[edit] Camera Positioning and Rendering

This guide will show you how to intuitively get the best frame of your 3D scene with no effort!

• Press TAB for Object view mode.
• Press NUM0 to get the Camera View.
• Select the camera by clicking RMB on the outermost rectangle.
• Press GKEY and move your mouse to adjust the position of the camera (XKEY, YKEY, ZKEY and CTRL may be useful here).
• In addition, you can press NUM7 to get the Top View and press RKEY to rotate the camera to the best angle.
• After you are happy with the position, press F12 to render it.

If your render comes out a little dark, try moving the lamp closer to the gingerbread man.

[Note: Another way to move around the camera is pressing SHIFT + FKEY after pressing NUM0 to enter Fly mode. The keys for fly mode appear in the header of the 3D view pane.]

[n00b note: Ctrl+Alt+NUM0 "teleports" the camera to your 3d view]

[Noob Note: By pressing X, Y or Z twice you will use a local base of the space, with those it's much easier. For example if you are facing the Z axis from 45 degree, and you want to go left 1 unit, using the global base, you will have to go 1.72 (around sqrt(2)) along X and the same along Y, instead moving by 1 in the local frame of reference]

[edit] Applying Textures

This builds on the previous guide: Modeling a Volcano.

[Note: It seems that textures can only be applied to one object at a time, so this must be done twice (i.e. The head and body are two separate objects.) The settings that were chosen can successfully be applied to each object for a consistent result. Some settings can not be applied equally for consistent results.]

• In "Object Mode," select the body (or the head.)
• Press F5 to open the shading panel or use the shading panel button. [Note: This page will be updated with images shortly.]
• In the "Links and Pipeline" panel, under "Link to Object," click "Add New."
• Press F6 to open the "Texture Buttons" panel or use the textures button.
• In the "Texture" panel, click "Add New."
• Change the "Texture Type" to "Stucci."
• In the new "Stucci" panel, change "Noise Size" to something near 0.025 and leave the "Turbulence" at 5.00.

[Note: When finished with this section of the guide, come back to this panel and try different combinations of "Plastic," "Wall In," "Wall Out," and "Soft Noise" / "Hard Noise." Press F12 to render after each change to see the effect.]

• Press F5 again or use the use the "Material" button directly on the left of the "Texture" button. Then look for the "Map To" panel.
• In the "Map To" panel, deselect "Col[or]" and select "Nor[mal]." and change the "Nor" Value to approximately 1.30.
• In the "Map Input" panel, change the texture coordinates to "Object" by clicking the corresponding button.
• In the "Material" panel, change the "R[ed]" slider to approximately 0.400 and the "G[reen]" slider to approximately half that, about 0.200. Blue can be set at 0.00.

The steps in this section give a nicely textured, brown surface to the "Gingerbread." Now all you need to do is add eyes and gumdrop buttons! [Pictures will be added soon.]