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[edit] Beginner Tutorials

So you've come to learn the Blender, eh? You've made a great choice. This is one of the most powerful 3D animation and 3D creation tools out there, especially if you're short on cash. Learning how to use Blender can be a daunting task, so don't give up! But with the help of this wikibook, you can someday become a power user and put those Maya folks to shame.

If you ever get stuck for some reason in a tutorial, there are a number of places you can turn for help. The best way to get help is with an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client such as X-Chat. Connect to irc.freenode.net and talk to blender users in the following channels.

• #blenderwiki
• #blender
• #blenderchat
• #blenderqa
• #gameblender

If you can't get help there, click the "discussion" tab at the top of the page that you're having trouble with, and explain your problem on that page. Wait at least 24 hours for some help.

If you're still not getting help, try asking for help in the BlenderArtists.org forums.

[edit] Tutorial Syntax

As you go through these tutorials, you will find yourself running into cryptic codes quite often. These codes refer to keys you need to press on the keyboard and buttons on the mouse you need to press. They are pretty standard throughout the Blender community at this point. You may wish to print this page for quick reference throughout this book.

[edit] Keyboard

Most keyboards have number keys in two different places: in a row above the letters and in the numeric keypad on the right of the keyboard. While many computer applications use these two sets of keys interchangeably, Blender does not: It assigns a different set of functions to each set. If you don't have a numeric keypad ("numpad") see Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Non-standard equipment for information on emulating the keypad's functionality.

(If you don't understand the manual, please e-mail your request to: Blender-easy@live.co.za)

[edit] Mouse

Blender uses all three mouse buttons. If you don't have a three-button mouse (a one-button Apple mouse, for example), see Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Non-standard equipment for information on emulating a three-button mouse.

[edit] Path menu

SPACE → Add → Mesh → UVsphere

means:

hit SPACE, and, in the menu that comes up, choose Add, then Mesh, then UVsphere.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^  On an Apple keyboard, the key with the Apple logo, and on a Windows keyboard, the key with the Windows logo on it. These are also called the "Super" key in other manuals.
2. ^  FN is generally found only on laptops, and often in the lower left corner of the keyboard. (Some "ergonomic" keyboards use the laptop-style pseudo-numpad to reduce the distance between the normal keys and the mouse. On these, the FN key is often in the top row.)

[edit] Become Familiar with the Blender Interface

[edit] Learn the Blender Windowing System

[edit] Before You Begin

Most readers will run Blender while reading this book, and the book is intended to be used this way. You may be surprised to learn that the first time you run Blender, it runs in full-screen by default. It's not strange that most experienced users prefer this mode, as having a large working area is a must. However, while becoming pros, we need an easy way to switch between Blender and browser windows. You can use OS keyboard shortcuts to switch between applications: ALT+TAB (Linux&Windows) CMD+TAB (Mac); or to bring up your desktop: CTRL+ALT+D (Linux), WIN+D (Windows), F3/F11 (Mac), but keep reading if you find them non-productive. In Linux, running Blender in a separate workspace provides access using a single click of the mouse. Similarly, in Mac OS X you can switch on "spaces" and either use the mouse key to switch between them, or cmd and the directional arrows.

Fortunately, Blender is provided with some command line arguments/parameters that will be helpful at this.

• -w results in Blender window opening non maximized, but this is not enough because the window is still at full size.
• -p <sx> <sy> <w> <h> where sx and sy are the values for the position the lower left corner will start at, w is width and h is height (all in pixels).

For Example: blender -p 0 68 1255 956 results in Blender opening in a 1255x956 window aligned to the top left corner of the screen and leaving a 25 pixels margin at right and 68 pixels at bottom. This is ideal for a 1280x1024 screen resolution setup. Put your browser aligned to the right side of the screen, and switching between the two applications is as easy as clicking the lower right corner of the window that you want to bring to the front. Tweak the values until you find a comfortable working setup and be aware that the -w switch could be required or not depending on the OS you are using. Now working with Blender and reading the book are both a single click away.

[edit] An Interface Divided Will Surely Stand

The Blender interface can be a bit intimidating at first, but don't despair. We will explore the power and flexibility of the Blender windowing system, and how to adapt it to suit your needs, one step at a time. First, we're going to talk about manipulating the 3D Viewport and the Buttons Window.

The 3D Viewport's grid represents Blender Units (BU). A BU can be as large as you would like it to be: an inch, a centimeter, a mile, or a cubit. Blender lets you decide the scale.

[edit] Window Headers

Every window has a window header. The window header can be at the top of a window, at the bottom of a window, or hidden. Let's take a look at the window headers for our 3D Viewport and our Buttons Window.

The active window is the window that will respond to what you type on the keyboard when you're using keyboard shortcuts. One, and only one, of the windows in Blender will be active at all times.

Making another window active is simple: simply move the mouse over one of the windows to make it active! Try changing the active window by moving your mouse rapidly between the 3D Viewport and the Buttons Window now. You'll notice that the window's header lights up when it becomes active.

[edit] Changing the Window Type

There are many window types other than the 3D View and the Buttons Window, and you can easily switch any window to any other window type at any time.

[edit] Resizing Windows

Resizing windows is easy^[1].

You'll notice that as you increase the size of one window, you decrease the size of the other. Blender does not allow the windows to overlap, as they may in other programs. This is why Blender's interface is known as a non-overlapping window interface....

1. See related FAQ at bottom.

[edit] Splitting Windows

Splitting windows is just as simple as resizing them, and will give you two windows of the same type.

Splitting a window on a vertical division will give you two windows side-by-side vertically. Splitting on a horizontal division, as we have done, will give you two windows stacked horizontally. While in step 3, to switch between vertical and horizontal division, just use the TAB key. To exit without splitting a window, press the ESC key.

[edit] Joining Windows

Rejoining two split windows is just as easy as splitting them. We'll rejoin the window we just split.

Joining to the left means that the window on the left will be erased, while joining to the right means that the window on the right will be erased. Keep this in mind when joining different window types.

Note: If you right-click on a border and it doesn't give you the option to join, it is because that border touches more than 1 other window. You'll have to cover the window you want removed using a different handle.

[edit] FAQ

Splitting and Joining Windows Youtube Video

[edit] The Buttons Window

[edit] What's with all the buttons?!

[edit] Mini-Windows

[edit] Button Types

[edit] Logic Buttons

[edit] Script Buttons

[edit] Shading Buttons

The Shading button set allows you to apply and manipulate colors and textures on your objects, and control lights and world settings. When you press this button (or the F5 key) you will see five additional buttons appear. These are for lights, general material settings, textures, radiosity, and world settings (handy for giving your renders a quick background). Pressing the F5 key will cycle through these buttons.

[edit] Object Buttons

You can press F7 to cause the Object Buttons to appear. It should be noted that these are not the same buttons that appear when you choose Object Mode in the 3D Window. Some tutorials may refer to pressing the F7 key to change to Object Mode, and some will say you should press the Tab key to change to Object mode.

The Tab key changes from Edit Mode to Object Mode in the 3D Window, and F7 changes the Buttons Window to show the Object Buttons.

[edit] Edit Buttons

These are buttons used to edit objects in edit mode. You can press F9 to get the edit buttons. To get to edit mode (in the 3D View window) press TAB.

[edit] Scene Buttons

Basically these are for rendering (taking pictures) and animating (making movies). You can press F10 to get the scene buttons. We'll get back to these later.

[edit] The 3D Viewport Window

Blender's 3D Viewport Window (3d Viewport) gives you total control of how you visualize your world. You'll spend most of your time in this window, so here are a few things to know about the 3d Viewport.

[edit] Rotating

Here you'll be able to fly around your 3D scene, rotating the planes as you see fit. You'll see that the default object is actually a cube, and half of it lies above the X-Y plane, and half below it.

Make the 3D Viewport active by placing the mouse pointer anywhere inside it.

• To free-form rotate (any way), while holding down the MMB, move the mouse
• To rotate around a vertical axis (sideways), leaving objects' vertical orientation unaltered, use CTRL+ALT+SCROLL, or using the keyboard, NUM4 and NUM6
• To rotate around a horizontal axis (upward), leaving objects' horizontal orientation unaltered, use SHIFT+ALT+SCROLL, or using the keyboard, NUM8 and NUM2

If you have your own setting for the MMB in mouse configuration, you must reset this to use the MMB as a real Middle Mouse Button (no Doubleclick or something else). Otherwise you must use the alternate ALT+LMB for the same effect.

It's a cube! Holding down the MMB is the quickest and easiest way to rotate your view and get a new perspective on things. Right now you're looking at the cube in what's known as Solid Mode. Pressing ZKEY (yes, on your keyboard, the 'Z' key) will toggle back and forth between Solid Mode and Wireframe Mode. Pressing NUM5 while NUM LOCK is on will toggle between Orthographic and Perspective (perspective looks more natural). This does not affect how your final product will appear, only the way you see your scene while you're creating it.

As you move the view around, you will see the following three objects:
Camera, Lamp, and Cube.
We'll get into more in depth details about these later.

Object Icon	Name	Description
File:Blender 3D Camera.jpg	Camera	The camera location and rotation will determine what you will see at render time. To see in your 3D viewport what the camera will see, activate that window by pressing the NUM0 key. (Remember the 0KEY is different.) You may need to make sure NUM LOCK is on on your keyboard. To switch out of the camera view, drag the MMB. Or press NUM0 and then SHIFT+F to enter "camera fly mode" to position the camera interactively from the viewport using the mouse. Press LMB to finish positioning the camera.
File:Blender 3D Lamp.jpg	Lamp	A lamp is simply a light source. It will not be rendered, but the light it provides to the scene will be rendered.
File:Blender 3D Cube.jpg	Cube	This object will be rendered. The camera should be pointing at the cube so that you will see it at render time, if the camera is not pointing at the cube, or if it is somehow partially out of frame, the picture will reflect this.

Here is a table of some simple key combinations that will result in a perfect view.

Perfect View key combinations

Key Combo	View	Key Combo	View
NUM7	top	CTRL+NUM7	bottom
NUM1	front	CTRL+NUM1	back
NUM3	right side	CTRL+NUM3	left side

The object the viewport orbits around (the object you see) can be changed to a new object by first selecting it with the RMB and then pressing NUM. (the period key on the numpad) or NUM, (the comma key on the numpad) on some keyboard layouts.

[NOTE: selecting an object with the RMB will only work if your viewport is set to 'Object Mode.' Press the TAB key to toggle between 'Edit Mode' and 'Object Mode.']

In Blender there is a big difference between the number keys on your numberpad (numpad) and the number keys along the top of the keyboard. For example, NUM7 refers to the number 7 on the numberpad, while 7KEY refers to the number 7 that's above the YKEY and UKEY on the standard US keyboard.

If you accidentally pressed 1KEY, 3KEY, or 7KEY during this step and it appears that everything disappeared, you have been changing the layer that you are viewing instead, press the ~key (tilde key) to return to viewing all the layers, or press the 1KEY to get back to viewing layer 1 which should have been originally active. The 1KEY through 0KEY and ALT+1KEY through ALT+0KEY switch layers.

[edit] Panning

To pan is to move the camera on its X axis or Y axis. This results in the user being able to view more, or more aptly, to view something else. Think of a side-scrolling video game, such as any classic Mario or Sonic, the effect that your character's avatar always stays on the viewable screen while giving you the illusion it's running off the screen is because the character runs at the same pace the camera pans. This is evident in the background's continuous motion relative to the static avatar and camera which remain relatively synchronised.

To pan in Blender press SHIFT+MMB. Make sure to press and hold shift before the MMB, or your view will rotate instead. If you have a scroll wheel you can use SHIFT+Scroll to pan up and down, and CTRL+Scroll to pan left and right. If you do not have a scroll wheel or trackpad or a middle mouse button, press SHIFT+ALT+LMB to pan.

You also have a choice of keyboard alternatives:

          CTRL+NUM8                NUM:      Up
CTRL+NUM4           CTRL+NUM6          Left      Right
          CTRL+NUM2                         Down

Panning is an important skill to master; try it now.

[edit] Zooming

Blender offers you several ways to zoom in and out:

• If your mouse has a scroll wheel, scroll it.
• CTRL+ALT+LMB and move up and down (not left or right)
• CTRL+MMB and move the mouse up and down (not left or right)
• NUM+ and NUM- zoom in and out.

[edit] Placing the 3D cursor

As with an ordinary text cursor (the vertical line that indicates where the text you type will appear), the 3D cursor is the insertion point for new objects. It is represented by a red and white circle which indicates the location of your editing point in the 3D environment.

Try clicking the LMB in empty space to the right of the cube. The red and white circle (the 3D cursor) moves to where you clicked. Orbit the view by clicking the MMB and moving the mouse. Notice that the 3D cursor marks a point in 3D space. "So I can move the 3D cursor, but what if I want to put it back in its original spot?" you may be asking. To do that, just press SHIFT+C and the cursor will jump back in place.

In any given view of the 3D environment, the set of possible 3D points where you can place the cursor is determined through and limited by what is viewable through your screen. If you were to move the 3D cursor again while looking at your screen straight-on, the cursor would be placed at an unspecified distance beyond (or "behind") the screen, regardless of the view or where you clicked. This brings us to a problem common to all 3D design programs: "How do we work in a virtual 3D environment through a 2D screen?"

To illustrate, try to put the 3D cursor inside the camera (the pyramid-shaped object), then try to put the cursor back in the cube. Be sure to view the scene from different angles to make sure you have succeeded in placing the cursor inside each. If you try and put the cursor back in the cube, you select the cube instead unintentionally. So, while the cube is still selected, try going to the 3D view header and clicking on the menu options Object > Snap > Cursor to selection; this will snap the cursor to the cube you just accidentally selected. But try your best just to move it in the cube only using the mouse to place it, just for experience's sake.

Are you finding this difficult? That is because we need to clearly specify the 3 coordinates for the desired cursor location in the 3D environment. Try this: Make sure the 3D View is in "Orthographic" mode by clicking View > Orthographic (or pressing NUM5). Press NUM7 to get to the front view and click again on the desired location to position the cursor. With these two clicks, Blender will have all 3 coordinates of the cursor position and you will have placed the cursor exactly.

[edit] Layers

In the 3d viewport window, both in edit and object modes, everything you create is assigned to a visibility layer. This system has several uses:

1. Divides up different elements of a scene, so you can put scenery, characters, particles and lights all in different layers. They can then be viewed separately or in various combinations to simplify your screen.
2. When rendering, only the currently visible layers will be included. You can use this to render your scene in separate bits to review how they look.
3. Lights can be set to only illuminate objects that are in the same layer as they are, giving you more control over them. (This can also be done with grouping, but layers are faster to use at this stage).

To control layer visibility, the number keys on a standard keyboard will switch you to viewing the layers numbered 1-9 and 0 (0 being the rightmost layer). Holding ALT while using the keyboard numbers will give you access to the second row of layers.

Alternatively, there is a grid of buttons in the 3d View header that does the same thing.

Note to azerty users : standard number keys are &é"'(-è_çà keys (do not use SHIFT unless you want to toggle visibility as explained below).

Holding SHIFT while selecting a layer (by keyboard or mouse) will, instead of making only that layer visible, toggle the visibility. You can use this to select combinations, or to disable individual layers from your current view.

To select all layers at once, press the [' for UK keyboards, ` for US, ö for Swedish and German, æ for Danish, ù for AZERTY, ø for Norwegian, ò for Italian`] key on your keyboard. Holding SHIFT and pressing the key will return you to the last set-up you had before making them all visible.

An object you create will automatically be assigned to the layer you are currently viewing, if only one is selected, or the last layer you added to your selection. To move a selected object to a different layer, press the MKEY and select the new layer from the pop-up box.

[edit] Exercise (3D space in 2D output)

Follow these simple steps to get a feel for a 3D representation of space in a 2D output device (your monitor):

1. Change to "Object mode" using the pull down option in the 3D viewport's window header bar. Or, hit TAB to toggle between "Object mode" and "Edit mode".
2. Disable the "Use 3D transform manipulator" option by using the icon located on the 3D viewport's window header (shaped like a pointing hand). Or, hit CTRL+SPACE to toggle.
3. Hit NUM7 to change to top view. This can also be accomplished through the view menu.
4. Click a point somewhere between the cube and camera using the LMB.
5. Choose a different view by hitting NUM1 (front view), or NUM3 (side view). ^[3]
6. Click between the cube and camera with LMB again.
7. Rotate the view around to see how it turned out.

For the part where you are to get your cursor into the middle of the cube, just follow steps 3 through 6 again. Except this time, you'll of course be LMB clicking inside the cube, instead of between camera and cube, during step 4 and step 6.

Notes

^  Because we are working in a 3D space you'll need to have two different views that intersect each other. For instance, viewing from top and then from bottom wouldn't be of much help in specifying the height or depth of the 3D cursor. These views can also be selected through the view menu.

[edit] Adding and Deleting Objects

Make sure you are in Object Mode. If not, press TAB. (When an object is selected in edit mode, the TAB key switches between the edit and object modes. If you are in another mode, TAB toggles between that mode and the edit mode.) A status bar at the top-right of the user preferences window will indicate the current mode by displaying 'Ob' or 'Ed' depending on the currently toggled mode. Another way to check which view you are in is to check the bottom of the 3D view.

Also, remember to reactivate the '3D Transform Manipulator' if it's still toggled off from the previous step.

Make sure you have your cursor in the center of the cube. See the previous section (in the reader's notes) if you don't know how to do this.

Click RMB (Cmd+LMB on Mac) on the cube to be sure it's selected. Press the XKEY or DELKEY to delete it. A window will prompt you to erase object. Click "Erase Selected" (or "Erase All").

The reason for having your cursor in the center of the cube is that any object you add to the scene will be located where your cursor is.

To add an object, use the Add menu located in the menubar above your 3D View window, or press the Spacebar to access the same menu. Why not add a monkey? Choose Add > Mesh > Monkey. [If you prefer the monkey to be facing frontwards, make sure to be in FRONT view (NUM1) before adding the mesh - note: in Blender 2.48a, it's complicated. If Blender is in Object Mode, the monkey is always facing up. If it's in edit mode then the direction the monkey faces depends on the view (top, side or front)]

A new object will be added, and you will be in what's known as Edit Mode. Press TAB to get out of Edit Mode, then CKEY to center the screen on the cursor (where the monkey appeared). Press the ZKEY to toggle the 3D Viewport between solid and wireframe modes. Zoom in and out for a closer look (SCROLL, NUM+, CTRL+MMB, or ALT+CTRL+LMB).

[edit] Non-standard equipment

Further information: Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Non-standard equipment

[edit] Mice lacking MMB

For simply rotating around the object, enable the "Emulate 3 Button Mouse" option in the View & Control Preferences, and press Alt+LMB and drag.

[edit] Tablet PCs

In the Viewport, holding the ALT key while dragging your pen around will achieve the same effect as MMB.

[edit] Other Windows

Just when you thought that you were getting the hang of the Buttons window and the 3D Viewport window, there are several more windows to learn about. Have no fear; we will gently guide you through this book and teach you about these windows as the need arises. For now, you only need to know one of them to be aware of your many options.

In the 3D viewport window, you'll see a button on the header all the way to the left that has a grid on it (if not, click on a window separator with the RMB or MMB and choose "Add Header"). That button allows you to switch window types. Click on it with the LMB and you will see a number of different window types to which you can change. Try some of the different window types; you will learn about their relevance in time.

Change the window back to the 3-Dimensional Viewport before moving on to the next tutorial.

[edit] Learn to Model

The most fundamental part of 3D development is modeling, because this is where you create content, or 'models'. Creating 3D models is fun and sometimes challenging. To start with, we'll go over a concept called "mesh modeling".

[edit] Mesh Modeling

Mesh modeling is the most common type of modeling in all of Blender-dom. A mesh is simply a collection of three core components; vertices, edges, and faces, that define a three dimensional object. This exercise will further help explain these components, and how they relate to mesh modeling.

1. Get a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.
2. Draw three dots that are no more than 2.5 cm (about an inch) apart from each other
3. Each one of these dots is called a vertex. (The plural of vertex is "vertices")
4. Now connect two of the dots with a line segment. The line segment is called an edge.
5. Draw two more edges so that the three vertices are all connected. You should now have a triangle drawn on the paper. Fill the triangle in. This is called a face.
6. Now draw another vertex (dot) on the paper. Connect it to two of the vertices (dots) you previously drew. You have another triangle. Fill it in to create another face.

Could you imagine doing this same sort of activity in 3D space? Essentially, mesh modeling is just that. The details are on subsequent pages in this tutorial.

You can keep filling up the paper with more vertices, edges, and faces if you want. You may want to try and create something interesting with your triangles. Blender also supports faces with four vertices (called quads), but faces with five or more (so-called N-gons) cannot be created.

Look closely at a 3D video game character some time. Believe it or not, every part of the character is created from little triangles joined together (of course, the triangles are much harder to see in newer games using more detailed technology).

When you're creating your models, remember that the whole point of having edges and vertices is so that you can have control points in 3D space for your faces. When the scene is rendered, only the faces will be seen. Any edges or vertices not connected to a face will not appear.

On the next page, you will take the first step in learning how to model inside Blender. If you're excited, great! But if you're scared, don't worry; it starts out very easy. Give yourself time and patience; Pixar and Dreamworks will still be in business when you're ready for them!

[edit] Beginners Tips

These are some basic tips that are often asked for in one form or another. Sometimes it is in reference to something completely different, but the basic methodology will work.

[edit] Starting with a box

Tutorials will often start with the default cube you see right after opening Blender. Here are two ways to reset the scene without quitting the application:

• Ctrl-X (while holding the Ctrl key, press the X key);
• or select File -> New from the menu.

Then, you will see a prompt box asking OK? under your mouse pointer. You can confirm that you want to erase your current scene by clicking Erase All (or move the mouse around to dismiss it).

The cube is shown as a square in the 3D viewport. If you rotate the view while holding down MMB (middle mouse button), you'll see it is actually a cube. It is selected by default (pink outlines color). Also, you can hold down the Alt key and Left Click to simulate the Middle Mouse Button. Another way to do this for mice with only two buttons is by holding down both buttons at the same time. Navigating in 3D Space is assumed. Please see the excellent tutorials on Blender about User Interface Tutorial [4] , The Blender Windows[5], and Navigating in 3D Space[6] which are located on the Blender Quickstart page here: http://www.blender.org/education-help/quickstart/

You can change the default scene (and return to a personalized one when pressing Ctrl-X). Just modify the scene and arrange dialogs to suit your needs, then click File > Save Default Settings. Your current scene will now be used as the default when you click File > New. This is very handy indeed. To return to factory defaults, you can delete the file which contains those settings: .B.blend in your home directory. Starting from version 2.44, a new Load Factory Settings item is available from the File menu.

[edit] Subdivision Surfaces

Subdivision surfaces, or subsurfing, is a common technique in 3D modeling. It uses a mathematical process of simulating a curved plane in space according to the placement of control points, or vertices. What this means is that you can create an object with a smooth surface that is easily controlled by relatively few vertices.

[edit] Adding a Subsurf modifier

First, select the cube by clicking RMB (right mouse button) on the cube in the 3D window (pink outlines indicate the selected objects). In other versions of Linux you accomplish this by clicking LMB (left mouse button). Now choose the Editing panel set in the "Buttons" (bottom) window:

• click on the icon in the panel list:
• or press F9.

If you're not seeing a bunch of windows in the bottom view panel, such as Link and Materials, Mesh, Multires, Modifiers, Shapes, then there's a good chance you haven't got the cube itself selected or you are still in object mode.

In the Modifiers window, click on the Add Modifier button and select Subsurf. Click on the arrow to the right of Levels:1 to increase the subsurf level. With each increment the cube becomes more smooth, and more planes are added. Don't do the following, but if you were to hit apply, the original form of the cube becomes lost. If you don't apply the changes they remain on the cube as if it was a filter, of sorts.

In order to complete the rest of this tutorial successfully, it is vital that you do NOT click apply within the Subsurf modifier tab.

Noobie asks: I did this, and I cannot change the "Level". Why not? Noobie2 responds: Make sure you didn't hit multitires by mistake. Noobie3 responds: Maybe you accidentally clicked something else. Noobie4 responds: Maybe you overlooked the level "gauge"

[edit] But I want a box!

Often, you will want to render with your model having some sort of subsurf turned on. Face it, most things in real life just do not have super sharp edges. Unless the object is a knife edge, an object in the real world will have some sort of softer edge on it. It is just this fact that is often overlooked by people starting out in 3D: CG can sometimes look too perfect, resulting from impossibly sharp, clean, and well defined edges.

This effect can be fixed by telling Blender that we want our cube to retain more of its original shape. We'll do this using a tool called Edge Creasing. Each edge in a Blender model has a crease value associated with it, which is used to tell the Subsurf modifier how sharp we want that edge to be. By default, all edges have a crease of 0, which is why our cube has lost all its sharp edges.

[edit] Show subdivision surface's cage

Now, remember what we said about the Subsurf modifier remembering our original cube shape? Press TAB to go into edit mode and you'll see that the original cube has come back to haunt us as a wire frame around the smoothed cube. (unless you're using version 2.45 of Blender)

Before we fiddle with the creasing, set the Subsurf Levels up to "4" so you can see the effect more clearly.

[edit] Choose an edge to crease

Enter face mode by either:

• Placing the cursor in the 3D View → changing to Edit Mode ^[7] → CTRL+TAB → choosing Faces (or pressing 3KEY)
• Changing to Edit Mode → clicking (Face Mode Icon).

Select one of the sides of our wire cube with RMB by clicking near the dot in the centre of the face. You'll know when it's been selected because the other faces will change colour to grey, and the face you've selected will be highlighted.

Note that, although we are in Face mode, it is really the edges that we are creasing; selecting a face is just a quick way of selecting its four edges.

[edit] Crease selected edges

Now crease the edges of the selection by either:

• Press SHIFT+E and slowly move the mouse observing the result of Crease operation on the selected face.

• In the 3D Viewport's header select Mesh → Edges → Crease SubSurf. Your mouse will be tied to the cube with a dotted line. Move it gently left and right to see the effect it has on the mesh. Mesh will change when pulling the dotted line on the opposite side of the creased face.

In the style of Blender, click LMB to apply the changes, or RMB to cancel creasing.

[edit] Finally build a real box

Either cancel the above edge crease, press Ctrl-Z to undo the last change, or start from scratch to get back to our simple subsurfed cube. (To get the same result as the picture on the right, set the subsurf to 3 or 4.) Then press the A key twice to select all faces. Crease them with SHIFT+E like before, until your cube looks like the image on the right.

Note By a Nooby: If you are looking for a bevel effect that doesn't require so many polygons, try (in Edit Mode) pressing the W key then selecting Bevel.

Click LMB to apply the changes then press TAB to cancel out of edit mode. Behold: your smooth cube.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^  You can change to Edit Mode by selecting it from the drop down list on the 3D Viewport's header. Or, you can toggle between the current mode, and Edit Mode by using TAB.

[edit] Quickie Model

Your first model is easy.

[edit] Selecting objects

Start with the default scene. (CTRL+X or File -> New) It has three objects: a cube, a light source and a camera.

The cube is selected: pink outlines indicate the selected objects. With the mouse pointer in the viewport, you can select or deselect all objects by pressing the A KEY (the letter "A" on your keyboard). Select a single object by right-clicking on it (RMB or CMD+LMB on Mac).

A KEY - Toggles between selecting and deselecting all objects in a scene

RMB - Selects a single object

[edit] Edit Mode

Right now you're in what's known as Object Mode. In Object Mode you can move the cube around the 3D environment in relation to other objects. With the cube selected, hit TAB. This puts you in what's known as Edit Mode.

Note: If you've selected the lamp or the camera instead of the cube, you won't be able to go into Edit Mode (Cameras and Lamps are edited differently).

In Edit Mode, you can change the shape and size of the cube. You could turn the cube into a puppy… or at least soon you'll be able to.

TAB - toggles in and out of Edit Mode of the selected, active object.

[edit] Selecting vertices

Now that you're in Edit Mode, you have access to the individual vertices. Vertices are control points that you can connect to create edges and faces. Edges connect two vertices, and faces connect three or more vertices.

Vertices show up as pink dots when they're not selected, and yellow dots when they are selected. If you change the G.U.I. theme, these colors may change. For example, the Rounded theme uses orange and white for unselected and selected vertices respectively.

If all the vertices are yellow (selected), press A KEY to deselect all vertices (as seen above, this key toggles selection depending on the current mode). Go ahead and hit RMB over one of the vertices and you should see it change to yellow, which means that it is selected. (Mouse button actions can be changed under View & Controls in the User Preferences window.)

If all you see is a big blue dot:

• Make sure the 3D transform manipulator is off; if not: depress the hand button , (in newer versions File:Handicon blender 2.49a.png), on the header; alternatively use the menu that appears when you press CTRL+SPACE. You'll know it's off when the icon showing the 3D axes disappears.

If you cannot select a vertex:

• Hit the ZKEY and make sure you are in transparent (wireframe) mode.
• If you can't get the cursor over the vertex, adjust your mouse/trackpad's tracking speed to minimum.
• Make sure you're in vertex select mode: if you can only select faces or edges, either press CTRL+TAB to select Vertices or click on the Vertex select mode icon as shown below.

Now try rotating the view to see what's actually going on. You can hold ALT key and drag (while holding the left mouse button, move the mouse) to rotate your view. If instead, it moves the Blender window, drag with the MMB (without holding the ALT key).

ZKEY - Toggles between drawing the scene in wireframe and solid mode.

SHIFT+RMB - extend selection (add or remove vertices from selection).

CTRL+TAB - Opens the selection mode menu.

ALT+LMB or MMB - Rotates the view.

SHIFT+MMB - Pans the view.

CTRL+SPACE - Opens menu for toggling the 3D transform manipulator.

[edit] Moving vertices

With a vertex selected, use the grab tool:

• Mesh > Transform > Grab/Move,
• click and hold LMB on an empty space and draw a line,
• or just press GKEY.

Move your mouse around: you should see the selected vertex moving with the pointer! Click the LMB to drop the vertex at the current spot, or press ENTER or SPACE key. While moving, you can cancel the move and drop the vertex back where it came from by pressing RMB or ESC key.

You can also grab a selection using the mouse by holding RMB and dragging it around: release the button at the desired spot. Then, clicking on the same button cancels the move.

Now use the MMB to rotate the view around to see the incredible impact your small change has undoubtedly made.

GKEY - "Grabs" the current selection and allows you to move it around with the mouse. Use LMB, ENTER, or SPACE to drop it in place. Use RMB or ESC to cancel the move.

[edit] Creating Vertices

While in mesh edit mode, simply hold the CTRL key while left clicking where you wish to create a vertex. Subsequent left clicks while holding the CTRL key will create a series of vertices with connected edges.

To create an edge, select two unconnected vertices and press FKEY.

To create a face, select three or four unconnected vertices (no more than four) and press FKEY.

To delete vertices, select one or more and press DELETE. A menu will pop up asking you what you would like to delete.

[edit] Extra Practice

• A Video Tutorial on Edit Mode

[edit] Quickie Render

If you haven't completed the previous tutorial, (the Quickie Model tutorial), do so now. Keep the same file open from that tutorial because we will be using it here.

A render is the creation of a picture from the camera's point of view, taking the environment's effects on your scene into account, and generating a realistic picture based on your settings. This first render will finish very quickly, but you'll find that as your 3D scenes become more complex, the rendering can take a very long time.

[edit] Rendering the current scene

Now that you've created your first model, undoubtedly you'll want to render it. Make sure you're in object mode (press TAB if you're not), put the mouse pointer in the 3D view window and press F12! On Macintosh OS X 10.5 use ALT+Fn+F12. On Gnome you can use ALT-F12 to avoid the Gnome Search Dialog. On the new Apple keyboard, use Fn+F12 to avoid the Mac Dashboard.

If you have more than 1 processor, you can speed up rendering. (This is done automatically in Blender 2.46.) Hit F10 to go to the render settings tab and in the bottom left corner, there is a threads button. Adjust the number of threads according to the number of cores in your processor (e.g. a dual core processor would be two threads, one for each core). Now, try re-rendering and you should get much faster results.

You can also use the menu in the User Preferences header: Render > Render Current Frame.

You can interrupt the rendering at any time by pressing ESC while the rendering window has the focus.

If you've put the render window behind the main window, you can get it back several ways: you can use the Windows taskbar or, under Windows and most other operating systems, you can use ALT+TAB (CMD+TAB on Mac).

This is a relatively quick render. It can be cleaned up a bit but it will give you a good idea of what your model currently looks like.

Note: If your cube is completely black, you may not actually have a light source in the scene. Some versions of Blender don't create a lamp (source of light) by default, and you'll need to add one. To add a lamp, enter object mode (TAB) and then press the spacebar while your mouse is over the 3D window. Select Add > Lamp which will give you a choice to add several different types of lamps. Remember to place the lamp in position where it is not inside the cube. This can be achieved using the RMB and pressing G.

F12 - Starts the rendering from the active camera.

[edit] Saving a render

At some point you will probably want to save your renders. In the User Preferences header, select File > Save Rendered Image… or just hit F3. A menu with a directory list will appear; the upper text line denotes the directory and in the lower one you type the name of the image, like "myfirstrendering.jpg". Note that earlier versions of Blender (before 2.41?) will not add the ".jpg" extension automatically if you leave it out.

JPEG images, as opposed to PNG images, will contain unwanted artifacts (imperfections around edges)¹. You can change the format by going to Render -> Render Settings or F10. Then under the "Format" panel, change the Type from Jpeg to PNG and hit F3 again to update the file type in the file selector.

F3 - Opens the Save Image dialog (if an image has been rendered).

• 1 - alternatve route is to change the JPEG quality setting - just under the format selection list from the same "Render Settings" panel.

[edit] Extra Practice

Tutorial on Using Multiple Cameras <---- Pictures are missing from this tutorial

Basic Blender Camera Positioning (Rigging)

[edit] Mesh Modeling

Mesh modeling is the most common type of modeling in all of Blender-dom. If you did the Quickie Model tutorial, then you've already participated in mesh modeling. A mesh is simply a collection of vertices that define a three dimensional object. This exercise will further help explain mesh modeling.

1. Get a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.
2. Draw three dots that are no more than 2.5 cm (about an inch) apart from each other
3. Each one of these dots is called a vertex. (The plural of vertex is "vertices")
4. Now connect two of the dots with a line segment. The line segment is called an edge.
5. Draw two more edges so that the three vertices are all connected. You should now have a triangle drawn on the paper. Fill the triangle in. This is called a face.
6. Now draw another vertex (dot) on the paper. Connect it to two of the vertices (dots) you previously drew. You have another triangle. Fill it in to create another face.

Could you imagine doing this same sort of activity in 3D space? Essentially, mesh modeling is just that. The details are on subsequent pages in this tutorial.

You can keep filling up the paper with more vertices, edges, and faces if you want. You may want to try and create something interesting with your triangles. Blender also supports faces with four vertices (called quads), but faces with five or more (so-called N-gons) cannot be created.

Look closely at a 3D video game character some time. Believe it or not, every part of the character is created from little triangles joined together (of course, the triangles are much harder to see in newer games using more detailed technology).

When you're creating your models, remember that the whole point of having edges and vertices is so that you can have control points in 3D space for your faces. When the scene is rendered, only the faces will be seen. Any edges or vertices not connected to a face will not appear.

[edit] Modeling a Simple Person

Now, we will create a simple character, learning about selection and extrusion along the way. Extrusion is one of the most widely used modeling tools available.

[edit] Creating a New Project

Start with the default scene (as explained here). You should have your default beginning cube.

Reminder:

• Select the cube with RMB (CMD+LMB on one button Mac mouse).
• Drag with the MMB (ALT+LMB on one button Mac mouse) to have a look at the scene from different angles.
• Press NUM7 to go back to the top view.
• Toggle between Edit Mode and Object mode with TAB; the option button shown on the image below tells what mode you are in at any given time:
  

  Mode button/indicator

[edit] Selection Methods

This section proposes six methods for selecting the default cube's top four vertices. The image on the right shows the view rotated a bit with the correct vertices selected.

Before we start, make sure the Limit selection to visible button is on (in Blender 2.46 and above this button is called Occlude background geometry).

You'll only be able to find this button when you're in Edit Mode. Additionally, it is not available in Wireframe Mode: hit ZKEY if you cannot find it. It'll appear on the bottom of the 3D View window, far right, just left of the Render button.

Note: In Blender 2.42 for Mac OS X running on a MacBook, there is a display problem with the box and circle selections: the selection box and circle do not appear on screen (this is valid for both the Intel and the PowerPC versions).

The default is Object Mode. The cube should be selected; switch to Edit Mode then proceed.

[edit] 1. Box Selection

This tool draws a square that you resize to frame the top four vertices (or dots).

1. Deselect all vertices by pressing the AKEY;
2. Press the BKEY to activate what is known as the Box Border Select Tool (it starts as two dotted lines).

Now, when you click and hold LMB and move the mouse cursor, a selection border will appear. When you release the mouse button, the vertices that are inside it will be selected. Select the top four vertices. If you made a mistake, you can start again after hitting AKEY to unselect the selected vertices. Make sure all the vertices are deselected (pink, not yellow) before trying the next method.

BKEY - Activates box-select tool.

[edit] 2. Circle Selection

1. Deselect all vertices by pressing the AKEY;
2. Press the BKEY twice to activate the Circle Border Select tool.

A circle appears around the mouse cursor. You can resize the circle with SCROLL (the mouse wheel) or alternatively use the NUM+/NUM- or PgUp/PgDn keys.

• Select vertices either by dragging with LMB or clicking at several places.
• Deselect vertices by clicking or dragging with the MMB (or ALT+LMB).

To adjust your selection, note that SHIFT+RMB toggles a single vertex selection.

Note: If ALT + LMB moves the current window, then to unselect a vertex use CTRL+ALT+LMB or MMB instead.

The Circle Border Select tool will be active until you press RMB, ESC or SPACE.

BKEY+BKEY - Circle Select. If you press BKEY a second time after starting Border Select, Circle Select is invoked. Use NUM+ or NUM- or MW to adjust the circle size. Leave Circle Select with RMB or ESC.

[edit] 3. Lasso Selection

Like many graphics programs, Blender 3D has a lasso selection tool.

1. Deselect all vertices by pressing the AKEY;
2. Hold CTRL+LMB and draw a circle around the vertices you want to select. Release the LMB when you're done.

To deselect with the lasso, use CTRL+SHIFT+LMB.

[edit] 4. One By One Selection

You can also select the four vertices one by one.

1. Deselect all vertices by pressing the AKEY;
2. Select a single vertex with RMB (CMD+LMB on one button Mac mouse);
3. Select additional vertices by holding SHIFT while pressing the RMB. Clicking again on a selected vertex deselects it.

[edit] 5. Edge Selection

In addition to those vertex selection methods, there are two other options: on the right of your viewport header you can see selection modes. Choose the Edge select mode (the middle mode showing two parallel lines) and select the left edge of the cube with the RMB (CMD+LMB on one button Mac mouse). Then SHIFT+RMB on the right edge to add it to the selection. Then switch back to Vertex select mode (the four dots in a diamond formation). As you will see, all four vertices forming the two top edges are selected (this is also called "selection transformation"). NOTE: -The picture on the right is wrong. Should be edge selection.

[edit] 6. Face Selection

The second alternate option to the vertex selection method is also available. On the right of your viewport header, choose the Face select mode (the right button with a triangle with a dot inside) and select the top face of the cube with the RMB (CMD+LMB on one button Mac mouse). Then switch back to Vertex select mode (the four dots in a diamond formation). As you will see, all four vertices forming the top face are selected (this is also called "selection transformation"). To select additional faces, hold SHIFT while pressing the RMB. Alternatively, with the mouse pointer in the 3D viewport, you can hit CTRL+TAB and select Vertices or Faces mode from the popup menu.

You can de-select a face by hitting AKEY

[edit] Learning Extrusion

Note -latest version of Blender does not act completely as below, clarification please!

The pictures below are in orthographic view. Depending on Blender's version, the default view is either perspective or orthographic. If you need to switch to the orthographic view, press NUM5 (or choose it from the VIEW menu, as shown in the picture).

Now press NUM1 to switch to front view.

[edit] Region extrusion

With the top four vertices selected (which will appear like the top two in your screen), hit the EKEY. Choose Region from the popup menu, then move the mouse upwards: four -new- vertices attached to the four that were previously selected are moving around with the mouse pointer. You can drop them in place with LMB, SPACE, or ENTER.

Notes:

• In Blender 2.42a and 2.43a, you may not have the Region option; so just ignore choosing region and continue.
• If the menu doesn't popup, you are probably in face selection mode. Move back to vertex selection mode by clicking the right icon.
• If the popup menu only presents the Only Edges and Only Vertices choices, you probably have not selected four vertices that make up a face. (It can also happen when some of the vertices are doubled: try selecting all vertices while in Edit Mode and hit the WKEY to display the Specials menu. Then choose Remove Doubles; it can also be accessed through the Rem Doubles under the Mesh Tools tab).
• In some versions of blender, you may find that, by default, the extrusion is performed along a different axis than the ones used here. You can set the axis along which the extrusion is performed. To do this, first press the EKEY, choose region, and then press MMB until the correct axis is selected.

EKEY - Extrude selection

[edit] Starting with a simple leg

If you attempt to extrude the vertices but they do not end up at the right spot for this tutorial, use your CTRL+ZKEY (CMD+ZKEY Mac) to undo your last edit. You should see just your original cube with the top four vertices selected and then try what's next

Press the EKEY again. Again, choose Region. Now this time, as you're moving the extruded vertices around, hold the CTRL key down and you'll see that the extrusion will only move to certain spots. This is called snapping. The vertices snap to predetermined positions that allow you to better work with the extrusion.

We'll talk more about snapping later. For now, set and release the vertices at the spot that makes it look like two cubes of equal size to the first one, stacked one on top of the other.

Then, repeat that same process until you have five boxes of equal size stacked one on top of each other. And that, my friend, is a very simple leg!

Hint: Don't stretch one box all the way to make the desired shape - You must create all stacked boxes in sequence, or you won't get the nodes (a more detailed mesh) that will be required to create the leg in this tutorial.

[edit] And now, the pelvis

Hit AKEY to unselect the current vertices. Select the four vertices on the right face of the top cube. You may want to rotate your view a little with the MMB or with ALT+LMB to see them all. Alternatively, with Limit Selection to Visible off, a simple box selection (BKEY) over the two visible vertices will also select the ones behind them. Extrude twice to the right.

[edit] Drawing the other body parts

The same trick is repeated over and over to build the rest of our simple body.

You may want to switch to Face select mode to select the four vertices of a face with a single click. This way the extrusion tools will automatically extrude a region, so you won't have to choose the Region option each time you extrude a face.

At this point your model might get too big to fit in your view. You can pan the view by:

• either holding CTRL and pressing NUM4, NUM8, NUM6, NUM2,
• or holding SHIFT and dragging with MMB.

Left/Right leg

Torso

Arms

Now, check that all is well: toggle on solid mode by hitting the ZKEY and examine every body side. If some faces are missing, it's easy to fix. To create a face from four vertices, select them and press the FKEY (or choose the Mesh → Make Edge/Face menu from the viewport header). You need to remove any doubles by hitting the WKEY and select Remove Doubles from the menu.

[edit] Adding the head

Important note: make sure you're still in Edit Mode (pictured) when adding the head. If you're not, the head and the body will not be part of the same object and changes on the body won't affect the head, which is required in the next section.

Select a point just above the top of the neck using the LMB: the red and white circle is the cursor. To adjust the cursor's position, switch between the top, front and side views (using the NUM7, NUM1, and NUM3 key respectively). You can also use the snap tool: press SHIFT+S to bring up the snap menu and select Cursor → Grid.

Once you're happy with the position, press the SPACE key to bring up the popup menu. Select Add → Icosphere. In some Blender versions you may have to choose the subdivision number. Just click OK. You should now have a small sphere at the top of the body. To make it more proportional to the body, resize it with the scale tool:

• select Mesh → Transform → Scale from the viewport menu,
• while holding LMB, draw a triangle on the screen,
• or just press the SKEY, then hold LMB and drag the mouse.

If you unselect the head and then decide that you want to move it or resize it again, select one vertex of the head, then click Select → Linked Vertices (or use CTRL+L). All the head's vertices will then be selected again, and none of the body's. Then press GKEY to grab and move the head, or SKEY to resize it. Hold down CTRL as you move it around if you would like it to snap to the grid.

Don't forget that you are in 3D; use the MMB to move your point of view around to make sure that the head really sticks in the neck.

[edit] Summary: Keys & Commands

These are the keys and commands used on this page:

Key	Mode	Description
RMB or CMD+LMB (Mac users with one mouse button)	Object	Select an object
NUM1		Go to front view
TAB		Toggle between Edit Mode and Object Mode
BKEY then LMB and drag (RMB to unselect)		Box selection
AKEY		Toggle between Select All and Select None
BKEY BKEY (pressed twice) then LMB and drag		Circle selection
CTRL+LMB and drag		Lasso selection
RMB then SHIFT+RMB		One-by-one selection
(click the vertex/edge/face selection buttons)		Change the selection mode
CMD+TAB (CTRL+TAB in Windows/UNIX)		Change the selection mode
select vertices then EKEY		Extrude
CTRL	while extruding	Enable snapping
	while moving	Enable snapping
	while rotating	Rotate in 5-degree intervals
MMB or ALT+LMB		Rotate the 3D view
ZKEY		Toggle wireframe/solid view
FKEY		Make Edge/Face from selected vertices
NUM3		Side view
SHIFT+SKEY		Snap cursor or selection to the grid
GKEY		Grab the current selection and move it
ZKEY (or XKEY or YKEY)	grab mode (GKEY)	Constrain motion to the Z (or X or Y) axis
SKEY		Change the scale (size) of selection
SPACE		Brings up the menu
WKEY		To choose Remove Doubles; it can also be accessed through the Rem Doubles under the Mesh Tools tab

[edit] Detailing Your Simple Person I

This tutorial uses the simple person model from the previous tutorial. If you didn't do it, go back and do it now---or find it pre-made just for you here.

If your model does not appear to be solid, it is currently being drawn in wireframe mode. For this tutorial, you need it to be drawn solid. Return to Object Mode (TAB) and press the ZKEY to see the model in solid mode.

[edit] Subsurfaces

You should already have the Editing Panel displayed in the Buttons Window. If not, click on the Editing button (shown pressed in the image on the right) or press F9 to have the Editing Panel displayed. On Macintosh OS X, use CMD+F9 to avoid engaging the Exposé window effects. Note that the Editing panel is a different thing from edit mode; don't confuse them. Depending on whether you're in edit mode or object mode the Editing Panel will display different tabs. With the object (your man) selected (RMB) press TAB to view how the available buttons in the panel change (but make sure you are in Object Mode before continuing).

First of all select the model. We're going to turn on subsurfaces, or Subsurf.

To enable Subsurf, you must go to the Buttons Window → Editing Panel(F9) → Modifiers subpanel → click Add Modifier → Subsurf from the list. You should immediately see your model change to look more round and less edgy. New options for Subsurf are now shown in the Modifiers subpanel. You may also perform this action by pressing SHIFT+O while in object mode.

Note that the Modifiers subpanel will be displayed in both edit mode and object mode.

What just happened? Each face was just divided into four smaller faces that are progressively angled, which has helped soften the sharp edges of the model where faces touch each other. Click the horizontal bar labeled Levels and change the value to '2'.

The model will change again because each of your original faces is now divided into 16. If you change the value to '3' each plane will be divided to sixty-four smaller planes, but don't do it unless you've got a computer that you're sure can handle it (newer computers should be able to handle it pretty easily). Blender v2.48a is able to do this with much greater ease than previous versions, so if you are running this version go ahead and set the level to 3. Note that subdivisions work with base 4, i.e., level 1 yields 4¹ = 4 divisions; level 2 yields 4² = 16 divisions; level n yields 4ⁿ divisions.

[Troubleshooting: If one or two of your sides don't subsurf, press AKEY to select all vertices while in edit mode. Then, click Rem Doubles under the Mesh Tools tab in the buttons window. You can also change the Limit of how far Blender should look for vertices that are close together. If you prefer keyboard shortcuts, press WKEY to display the specials menu, and select Remove Doubles. ]

Notice the other bar labeled "Render Levels" below the Levels bar? That controls how many subdivisions to do at rendertime, while the value we've been changing handles the number of subdivisions while working in Blender. Before moving on, set the first subdivisions ("Levels") value to 2 and the rendertime subdivisions ("Render Levels")to 3.

A Modifier is defined as the application of a "process or algorithm" upon Objects. They can be applied interactively and non-destructively in just about any order the user chooses. This kind of functionality is often referred to as a "modifier stack" and is found in several other 3D applications. The x in the upper right of the subsurf modifier will remove the modifier from the modifier stack. The arrows at the left of the x will move the modifier (and its effects) higher or lower in the modifier stack.

The Optimal Draw button removes the extra wireframe lines which display as a result of having additional geometry. This button is especially useful to clarify and speed up the display of densely subdivided meshes.

In Edit Mode, hit the AKEY once or twice so that all the vertices are selected (if you're not in Edit Mode, select the object and press TAB). Then press the blank roundish button towards the top of the Modifiers panel, just to the left of the up and down arrows. This button applies the modifier to the editing cage. Notice how it transforms the translucent, boxy cage to a more rounded one. Take note of this function for future reference, but for now press it again to return to the boxy version. You will need this boxy version for the next few lessons.

The Apply button applies the modifier to the mesh. While this is useful for some modifiers, for Subsurf this will add many extra vertices and is generally not needed.

Remember, you can undo any accidental modifications by pressing CTRL+Z to go back a step. If you need to, you can go back several steps and then repeat the process correctly.

For a complete modifiers documentation go to http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartII/Modifiers

For a complete subsurf modifier documentation go to http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartII/Modelling/Modifier/SubSurf

For a complete subsurfaces documentation go to http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Subsurf_Modifier

If your Blender crashes when you attempt to subsurf a large object, you need to look in to upgrading or possibly even downgrading your video card drivers. Blender doesn't work well with certain drivers of new videocards, but having the right one can save a lot of headache.

[edit] Smooth Surfaces

Subsurfaces do a good job of smoothing out objects and creating good curved surfaces. However, even with subsurfaces the model does not appear completely smooth; at this point it even appears scaly.

If your person is in wireframe view, hit ZKEY to change it to solid view. In Edit Mode, hit the AKEY once or twice so that all the vertices are selected (if you're not in Edit Mode, select the object and press TAB). Find the button that says "Set Smooth" and click it (the bottom-middle button inside the Links and Materials subpanel in the Editing [F9] panel). Note: If you can not find the button, try switching from edit mode to object mode.

You will see the Blender smooth out the rough edges where faces were touching before. Next to it is the button labeled "Set Solid." Click it as well. You will see the simple person go back to the solid rendering. The simple person looks better smooth, so click the Set Smooth button again. (more information about this at [8] and [9]).

You need to keep this file open for the next several tutorials. Move on to the next page.

[edit] Detailing Your Simple Person II

This tutorial uses the simple person model from the previous page. If you didn't do it, go back and do it now or find it pre-made just for you here.

[edit] Starting with the right modes

Up to this point, you've been selecting vertices and manipulating them. In the first chapter, we touched on selecting faces. In fact there are three selection modes: vertices, edges and faces.

Make sure you're in:

• Edit Mode (TAB),
• Solid Mode (ZKEY),
• and Edges select mode: press CTRL+TAB, a menu will come up where you can choose Vertices, Edges, or Faces, then choose Edges. The three selection modes can also be selected with the statusline buttons shown on the right.

Note for KDE users (not 3.5.6): CTRL+TAB changes the desktop so you will have to use the statusline buttons instead. But also you can configure KDE hotkeys for blender window. (Older versions of Blender do not have this feature. Instead, just select all vertices connected to the edge you want to select).

It is important to remember that depending on the selection mode you're in (vertices, edges, or faces), moving or otherwise manipulating your selection will cause connected vertices, edges, and faces to be moved as well. This is because you cannot separate faces from edges or edges from vertices.

[edit] Scaling with axis constraint

We want to position the 3D cursor between the hips of the simple person, then use that cursor for scaling.

First, make sure:

• everything is deselected (AKEY or Select → Select/Deselect All from the viewport's menu),
• you're in perspective mode (NUM5 or View → Perspective menu),
• the 3D transform manipulator is on (switch on the hand button ; this may appear as a hand with an index finger).

Our goal is to place the cursor as it is shown in the picture below, that is at the center of the two selected edges (instead of snapping it to the grid as we did when adding the head):

Troubleshooting: if you do not see the cubes around your person, make sure you are in Edit Mode as explained in the introduction. In case you played with the Subsurf modifier, you may have to uncheck the Apply modifier to editing cage during Editmode box, just on the left of the Move modifier up in stack button (^). If it still doesn't work, try deleting the Subsurf modifier (the X on the right, above the Apply button) and adding it again (Add Modifier -> Subsurf). Or you may have to redo it. (the entire model) or you can keep pressing Ctrl+Z until you undo the smooth command.

[edit] Selecting two hip edges

By default, when editing in solid mode, the vertices, edges and faces that are on the back side of the model are not visible or selectable. This can be toggled by clicking the Limit selection to visible button (pictured on the right). Toggle it on and off a few times and observe how the edges of the wire cage appear and disappear as you click. Disable it for now, to show the hidden edges. (Note that this button is called "Occlude background geometry" and behaves slightly differently in V2.46.)

Now, select an edge of one of the cubes to the left or right of the model's pelvis just above the hips, where the legs connect to the torso: (RMB). Notice that the 3D transform manipulator jumps to the edge you selected. Now select the edge on the other side of the pelvis (SHIFT+RMB). The 3D transform manipulator should jump halfway between the two edges.

Once you have both edges selected as in the image, press SHIFT+SKEY to bring up the Snap Menu and select Cursor->Selection.

Troubleshooting: If, instead, it jumps to the second selected edge, change your Rotation/Scaling Pivot to Median Point.

[edit] Scaling the hips

Choose the scaling manipulators: CTRL-SPACE and select Scale (or use CTRL-ALT-SKEY). Since the Transform Orientation is set to global, the manipulator's orientation is the same as the world's orientation shown in the lower left corner of the 3D View pane. Make sure Proportional Edit Falloff is set to Off. The axes are colored R-G-B for X-Y-Z, i.e. the X-axis is red, the Y-axis is green, the Z-axis is blue.

It's important to note that in addition to the global XYZ axes, each individual object has its own XYZ axes. We'll get into that in the next section.

Grab the red cube-shaped handle and drag it with LMB to symmetrically widen up the selection along the selected X-axis.(For some people who get mixed up you might have to grab the green cube-shaped handle to widen up the person, remember you dont want to make the persons pelvis longer you want it wider.) While scaling, press CTRL to snap to the grid or ESC to abort the current manipulation. When it comes to scaling in Blender, 1.0000 means 100%, 0.6000 means 60%, and so on. Scale up to 2.

Note: you cannot scale along the Z-axis, as the current selection's Z-dimension is zero — if you want to symmetrically lift the hips, switch back to Translate Manipulator Mode (CTRL+ALT+GKEY).

[edit] Drawing the armpits

We'll now use the 3D cursor instead of the selection's center: bring up the Mesh → Snap menu (SHIFT-SKEY) and select Cursor → Selection (KEY4). This will move the 3D cursor to the location of the manipulator.

Troubleshoot: If the joints seem to jump into the center, pulling the edges towards them, remember to select Cursor → Selection, not Selection → Cursor

Now, set the Rotation/Scaling Pivot to 3D Cursor. Since the 3D Cursor was positioned to the selection's center, the manipulator's behavior stays the same.

Select the two edges under the arms where they connect to the torso. This time, the manipulator does not jump to the selection but stays at the 3D cursor. Make sure you are in Scale Manipulator Mode (CTRL+ALT+SKEY) and form the armpits using the square handles on the manipulator: say 2.0 along X and 1.1 along Z.

Notes:

• It is easier to select the edges by rotating the view around the world's X-axis with View → View Navigation → Orbit Down (or NUM2).
• For better visual comparison to the width of the hips, switch to View → Orthographic (or NUM5) before scaling along the X-axis (the red one). You can now scale along the Z-axis (the blue one), as there is a distance along Z between the selection and the pivot.

[edit] The belly and the chest

Now, deselect all and select the belly cube (use one of the methods described here). This time, use the Scale Tool instead of the scaling manipulator:

• press the SKEY to choose the scale tool;
• and then SHIFT-ZKEY to lock the Z-axis. Now, the scale tool is constrained to the X and Y axes (i.e. the selection is not scaled along the Z-axis) and those axes are drawn through the pivot in a bright color;
• scale the belly using LMB.

Continue with selecting different sections of the torso and scaling them to your liking, exercising above scaling methods.

Note that just as you can constrain scaling to the X, Y, or Z axis by pressing XKEY, YKEY, or ZKEY, you can constrain movement to an axis as well. Press the GKEY and then press the appropriate axis key. As you work on the arms, be sure to use the different viewing angles so everything is correct (MMB to rotate, NUM1 for front view, NUM3 for side view, NUM7 for top view). Also, be sure to use CTRL+ZKEY to undo if you mess something up. If you undo too many steps press CTRL+YKEY to redo what you just undid.

[edit] Modeling the arms

When you've got the basic shape of the torso, move on to the arms. We'll start by making him holding his hands up.

First, make sure you're in Edit Mode; if not, select the figure and press TAB. Also, make sure you are in Vertex select mode (CTRL+TAB). Now, select the 8 vertices at the end of one arm (the hand cube).

Press the XKEY, and choose Vertices in the popup menu. Suddenly the box disappears, and at the end of the arm, there's a hole! Don't panic. We'll fix that in a moment.

At this point, your person should look like the image below:

Select the top four vertices of the last "arm box" (by pressing BKEY and dragging the box around the 4 vertices of the cube) and extrude them up three times by pressing EKEY and CTRL to create three boxes the same shape.

If everytime you try to extrude it puts a weird angled section on the back right side of the extrusion then you
may be still in Perspective mode. Select Orthographic mode View → Orthographic (or NumPad5)

Rotate manipulator mode is the double circle to the right of the 3D Manipulator hand (or CTRL+ALT+R) Scale manipulator mode is the small blue square to the right of the 3D Manipulator hand (or CTRL+ALT+S)

We'll now fix the hollow elbow. Simply select the four vertices at the gaping hole (turn on Limit Selection to Visible mode to make it easier), and press:

SPACE → Edit → Faces → Make Edge/Face (or FKEY)

Notice that the hole was covered by a face. Now to make it a smooth face, choose the option:

SPACE → Edit → Faces → Set Smooth

Do the same with the other arm. Make sure to deselect all the selected vertices from the first arm (AKEY). It is important to follow the steps in the same order to end up with identical arms. If you're having troubles with the other arm, you can undo all the arm work and redo every step simultaneously on both arms.

Troubleshooting: if the surface of the model swells out where you added the face to cover a hole, use CTRL-Z to undo the face. Try selecting all the hole vertices (or even select the whole figure) and choose: Mesh → Vertices → Remove Doubles from the viewport menu, and try to add the face again. If it still looks strange, then without undoing it, select the whole figure with the AKEY and use CTRL-N to recalculate the normals.

[edit] Modeling the legs

First switch to the Face select mode (choose from the CTRL+TAB menu, or click the triangle icon).

Select the two bottom faces of the feet (the soles): use RMB and hold down SHIFT when selecting the second one. Each face comes with a small square denoting the face center that turns orange when selected, while the outline is highlighted in yellow.

Then, subdivide them: WKEY, Subdivide, or, SPACE → Edit → Edges → Subdivide (or, from the viewport menu: Mesh → Edges → Subdivide).

Now, switch to the Edge select mode (CTRL+TAB) and clear the selection (AKEY).

Select the bottom front edges making the toes (RMB, then SHIFT+RMB). You should end up with four edges selected.

Switch to the side view with NUM3 and press the GKEY. Now move the selected edges away from the legs as far as you like: drag with MMB for orthogonal movement and drop them with LMB.

Pressing the YKEY will also restrict movement along the Y-axis only, however orthogonal movement can be easier.

Congratulations! We now have feet!

[edit] Modeling the head

When you've got an acceptable shape for the legs, you should do something about that head. A little too spherical, isn't it?

• Press the AKEY to clear your selection.
• Place the mouse cursor over the head and press the LKEY: this selects the closest edge, face, or vertex, as well as all edges, faces, or vertices that are linked to it. The faces for the head and the faces for the body pass through each other; however, none of the vertices in the head are linked to any of the vertices of the body via an edge or a face.
• Place the 3D cursor in the middle of the head (SHIFT-S, Cursor → Selection) or just set Median Point as Pivot (CTRL-,). Then press CTRL+ALT+S and scale on the Z-axis (blue handle of the 3D manipulator) in order to get a better shape. I think 1.5 is enough. Without using the 3D manipulator, remember that you need to press the ZKEY to restrict the scaling to the Z-axis only (in both cases, CTRL snaps the values).
• After elongating the head, you may find that it is too low or too high. To fix this, press the GKEY (to move it) and the ZKEY (to restrict the movement to the Z-axis). Play around with it a little until you like the result.

Note: another course of action would be to put the cursor (and thus the 3D transform manipulator) at the underside of the head. That way the neck will keep the same length, while you can scale the head at will.

[edit] Creating a Simple Hat

This tutorial uses the simple person model from a previous tutorial. If you didn't do it, go back and do it now---or find it pre-made just for you here. Alternatively, if you just want to make the hat without putting it on a person at the end, you can go ahead and do that without having completed the other tutorial.

[edit] Adding an object

The first step to hat-making is editing a simple mesh circle.

[edit] Setup

• use the orthographic view (NUM5);
• get a sideways view of the model (NUM3);
• if you're starting with the simple person model, pan the view (SHIFT+MMB) to place the scene center a good distance above the simple person's head;
• make sure you're in Object Mode (TAB) to add the hat as a separate object. (Note: It will cause problems if you do not switch into Object Mode)

Now, place the 3D cursor on center of the view (LMB) and snap it to the nearest grid node (SHIFT+SKEY then Cursor → Grid).

[edit] Create a circle

Do SPACE → Add → Mesh → Circle, with 12 vertices. In the latest Blender version the default is 32 vertices but you may use the arrows to set it back to 12: click the arrows to change, or click and drag left or right, or click on the number and type a new one. Change the radius to 1.41. Click on OK. We now have a selected circle. In the bottom left corner of the viewport, you should see the name of the selected object: Circle.
If all you see is a line, then you are looking at the side of the circle. Rotate it around to see it from a different angle, or switch to Top view(NUM7)

[edit] Deleting a selection

Make sure you are in Edit mode, then switch to Edge select mode (CTRL+TAB) and have only the three edges selected as seen in the picture (AKEY to deselect all, then click RMB; hold down the SHIFT key when selecting the second and the third ones).

Delete these edges by pressing XKEY → Edges.

[edit] Creating the hat profile

Now make sure you're in edit mode and switch back to Vertex select mode (CTRL+TAB → Vertices), and try to make the line to look something like what's shown to the right:

• AKEY to select/deselect all vertices
• RMB to select/deselect a vertex
• SHIFT+RMB to select/deselect multiple vertices (or BKEY to use the Border select tool)
• GKEY to move a selection (hold down CTRL while moving to use snapping)
• EKEY to create another vertex attached to the one selected

Notice: Be sure that the Proportional Edit Falloff button is off (orange is on; gray is off). You can toggle this control with the OKEY. We'll learn more about proportional edit in a later tutorial, but for this step, it should be off, meaning that you have full control on each vertex separately.

[edit] Spinning the hat

To make a hat out of this curve, we'll use the Spin tool to create a surface of revolution.

Note: the Spin tool, like some other Blender operations, works differently based on the rotation of the 3D view you are on: it will rotate the polyline around the axis that is perpendicular to the plane of the active 3D view and that passes through the 3D cursor.

[edit] Setup

This will make sure the 3D cursor is placed exactly at the rightmost vertex:

• select the rightmost vertex (RMB),
• then choose SHIFT+SKEY and Cursor → Selection.

Then select the curve to spin and choose the rotation axis:

• select all the curve vertices using your favorite method (AKEY, BKEY, etc...),
• choose the top view (NUM7).

[edit] Spin the curve

Switch to the Editing panel (F9, or CMD+F9 for Mac users). In the Mesh Tools tab, locate the Spin, Spin Dup and Screw buttons and fill the fields as indicated below:

Degr: 360
Steps: 12
Turns: 1

Noob Note: There are 3 similarly named tabs [Mesh], [Mesh Tools] and [Mesh Tools 1] (in Blender 2.46, [Mesh Tools More]). Look under [Mesh Tools], which can be found in the editing tab.

Now hit Spin to create a surface of revolution around the Z-axis.

Troubleshooting: in case you have more than one 3D window open, your mouse cursor may change to a "?" sign: additionally click on the window in which you want to perform your rotation (the top view window).

Note: the rotation axis is parallel to the Z-axis because we chose the top view.

[edit] BIG UPDATE

After much struggling to follow many tutorials based on older versions of Blender, I have downloaded multiple versions to discover why the tutorials based on versions such as 2.43 don't work when attempted on updated versions such as Blender 2.48a and above.

Newer versions such as 2.48 have added a new option to /not/ have added objects rotated to the current viewpoint. With older versions, being in top, front or side view would cause any newly added objects to face different directions on creation. Newer versions of Blender introduced the ability to force all objects into the same global orientation; even worse, they set it up that way BY DEFAULT! This means that unless the user deliberately changes the settings in the new versions, many older tutorials will act as if they are broken.

Here is how newer versions of Blender can be set to act in the same way as the older versions: resolved by simply setting the (i): USER PREFERENCES menu in the right way. Newer versions of Blender (such as version 2.48) can be made compatible with older tutorials by changing some important settings:

1) Find the "(i): User Preferences" window 
2) Select the [EDIT METHODS] tab (find it by dragging down the user preferences window)
3) Under the header "Add new objects", click the "Aligned to View" button.
4) Optional: For some tutorials it may also be helpful to click on the "Switch to Edit Mode" button.

Making these simple changes will "unbreak" tutorials written under Blender version 2.43, by allowing new objects to be automatically oriented to whatever viewscreen orientation is selected in the active viewscreen. Any time object rotations, lattices or whatever else end up completely out of alignment with what older tutorials say should happen, these steps are your first best fix for almost every such situation.

[edit] Final touches

We'll now extrude the hat front to make an eyeshade:

• use the top view (NUM7),
• choose Edge select mode (CTRL+TAB),
• then select the four frontmost edges of the hat (RMB for the first one, and SHIFT+RMB for subsequent ones),
• finally extrude the selection (EKEY → Region): drag them down; you can press the YKEY to limit the extrusion to this very direction.

[edit] Now it's time to subsurf

In the Editing buttons, from the Modifiers panel choose: Add Modifier → Subsurf. Rotate the view around and you will notice that your hat has a "split at the seam". Because of the Spin tools options we chose, there are several pairs of vertices that share the exact same spot in 3D space which produce those subdivision seams. To solve this issue: in Edit Mode select all vertices (AKEY) then choose WKEY → Remove Doubles.

Now all our seams will display correctly, since you've removed the unnecessary overlapping vertices in the mesh. Whew! You now have a lovely new hat! Pat yourself on the back, good work! You can neaten it up a little more by hitting WKEY → Set Smooth to give it a nice smooth finish.

If you do not remove doubles, your hat will look like this:

Keep this simple person/simple hat file open because you'll need it in the next tutorial.

[edit] Putting Hat on Person

This tutorial uses the simple person model and hat from a previous tutorial. If you didn't do it, go back and do it now---or find it pre-made just for you here.

Once you have created the hat, and are satisfied with the 'form' of it, now it's time to change the rotation, location, and size of the whole object in 3D space. Switch to Object mode and select the hat.

[edit] Rotation

First, change the rotation of the object. To change the rotation of the hat, press RKEY. Now you can move your mouse around to change its rotation. It will rotate on a different axis depending on what viewpoint you are rotating it from. The rotation axis will always be perpendicular to your viewpoint, so it looks like you're rotating a 2 dimensional image. Press the RMB, or ESC, to bring you back to the original rotation.

When you press the RKEY, you are actually entering a rotation mode that can be altered by further key strokes. For instance, pressing the YKEY after the RKEY will rotate the hat about the Y-axis. Pressing the ZKEY will rotate it about the Z-axis, and the same goes for the XKEY.

If you press the ZKEY, YKEY, or XKEY just once, you will rotate the object around the global X, Y, or Z axis of the scene. If you press the same key a second time, it will rotate around its local axis instead. This will only make a difference if the object has been rotated before, because initially its local axis will be the same as the global one. So rotate an object a few times to see the difference between local and global rotation. This effect is most dramatic if you select multiple rotated objects and try to rotate them around their individual local axis together.

User contributed edit:
With Blender 2.49b (and possibly other versions?) repeatedly pressing an axis constraint key as described above will in fact toggle through 3 modes of constraint. RKEY will start rotate mode around the view axis. The first press of a constraint key places rotation in global mode and the second press places rotation in local mode. A third press returns you back to view axis rotation.

Also keep in mind that you can select which pivot point to rotate around. If you did the previous exercises it is probably set to the 3D cursor. If so, set it back to Median Point.

Important to note is that the shape will rotate around its origin, or center point, indicated by a small, pink dot that was created when you created the shape. It should be in the center of your vertices, but if it isn't, there are a couple of ways to get it back. One is to go into edit mode, select all vertices, and move them around the center point. Another is use the LMB to put the cursor where you would like the center point, go into object mode and press the "center cursor" button in editing panel (F9). Or you could hit SHIFT+SKEY, select Selection → Center. The final method is to click on the Editing button (F9) and click either the Center or Center New button in the Mesh panel. The Center button will automatically move the object's vertices to the dot, and the Center New button will move the dot to the center of your vertices.

Hit the NUM1 on the numberpad to get the front view. Hit the RKEY, followed by the ZKEY and move your mouse. This will rotate the hat perfectly around the Z-axis. Hold down the CTRL button so it only rotates in 5 degree increments and click the LMB when you come to the correct position. (Do this with the X- and Y-axis if needed).

Alternatively, you can click and drag the LMB in a circular motion around the object, to "draw" an arc. This is called a mouse gesture and has the same effect as pressing the RKEY.

[edit] Location

After you have the hat in proper rotation, you will want to move it to the proper position. You do this the same way you move an individual point. Press the GKEY (for "grab") and move the mouse. Pressing the X, Y, or Z key will have a similar effect as it did with rotation, restricting the movement to the X, Y, or Z axis. Pressing the MMB while moving will also restrict the movement. Pressing the RMB will reset the object to its original position, without making any changes.

Alternatively, you can click and drag the LMB in a straight line to activate moving the object. This is another mouse gesture and the same as pressing the GKEY.

[edit] Size

You may notice that the hat is a little big for the person we created. No problem, we'll just change the size. You do this by pressing the SKEY, for "scale". You can scale the object just along its X, Y, or Z axis, making it thinner, shorter, fatter, or wider.

Alternatively, you can click and drag the LMB back and forth from the object to scale it. Start at the object, move your mouse a little away from it, then drag back to the object to draw a line and go back over it. This is, you've guessed it, a mouse gesture as well and the same as pressing the SKEY.

So, just remember:

• SKEY is for Scale
• RKEY is for Rotation
• GKEY is for Grab (Move)

[edit] Putting it on

Once you have the hat in position, you will want to "put it on". To do this, we make the man the 'parent' of the hat. What this means is that, when we move the hat, we just move the hat. However, when we move the man, we move the man AND the hat.

Save your work before continuing with this exercise! The program may crash and be unusable if you accidentally press PKEY instead of CTRL + PKEY. (Note: PKEY starts the Blender game engine. If you do accidentally press PKEY, ESC should stop it and bring you back.)

Make sure that you are in object mode and the hat is selected. Hold down shift and select the man by pressing the RMB. Both the man and the hat should now be selected. Hold down CTRL and press PKEY and select "make parent" in the confirmation box to make the man a parent to the hat. Now when you move the hat you will see a line from the hat to the man, indicating that the man is the hat's parent. If you move the man, the hat will move along with him. Otherwise, if you only move the hat, the man will stay at its place. Don't forget to pay attention to the order of your selection. The first selected object becomes the child of the second one.

[edit] Mountains Out Of Molehills

Now that we've created our simple person, it's time to give him somewhere to go. In this tutorial we'll create a mountain range using a few simple, and handy tools. First we need a clean area to work with. Either:

• Start off with a new project, using File → New, or hit CTRL+XKEY. If you have a default cube or plane just delete them now (select them with RMB and press XKEY).
• or you may change to a new layer by pressing a number from 2 to 0 on your keyboard or by selecting one of the twenty little gray boxes grouped together in the header of the 3D window.
• Pro tips for layers: 1-0 selects layers 1-10. ALT1-ALT0 selects layers 11-20. Hold shift to de/select multiple layers.

[edit] Creating a simple plane

Our first step is to create a large plane that we'll use for the ground and grow our mountains out of.

• Press on NUM7 to enter top view. This way our plane will be lying flat when we create it.
• Click LMB where the axes cross. This will be the center of the plane we will add.
• Now add the plane with SPACE → Add → Mesh → Plane. This will be our canvas.
• Scale the plane up by about 15. First put the mouse close to the center of the plane and press SKEY and drag the cursor away and watch the numbers in the bottom left of the 3D Window. Hold CTRL to increment by 0.1 for a more precise measurement. Alternatively, to enter the exact amount yourself press SKEY, then simply type 15 and hit ENTER.
• Now we need to add some vertices to work with. In the buttons window, make sure we have the Editing buttons open (or hit F9 in the buttons windows to switch there).

[Noob Note: You also seem to need to go into edit mode before 'Mesh Tools' shows up as a tab under Edit - at least in 2.4.6 and later]

• Under Mesh Tools hit the Subdivide button 4 times. Alternatively, in the 3D View window you can press WKEY and select Subdivide

(Or just hit ENTER, because Subdivide is the first option under WKEY).

Note: As in many of the next tutorials, you may choose to add a grid instead of adding a plane and then subdividing it to have vertices throughout the plane. Adding a grid has the added advantage of allowing you to select the number of vertices along the x and y axes (the two edges) of the grid at the instant of creating the grid, so there is no need to make further subdivisions.

[edit] First mountain

Now that we have the ground, it's time to start growing our mountains.

• Make sure you have nothing selected (AKEY).
• Select a random vertex with RMB. I usually start at the one that is 4 down from the top, 4 in from the left (the 4th vertex if you count the edges).
• Change to the side view with NUM3.

• Press OKEY to change to proportional edit mode or use the button which shows a grey ring on the header of the 3D View. The button will change its color to orange. You can also use SPACE → Transform→Proportional Edit
• Once you've turned proportional edit mode on, another button appears to its right, the falloff button. Select Smooth Falloff here. Alternatively you can use the menu on the header of the 3D View (Mesh → Proportional Falloff → Smooth) or, using SHIFT + OKEY will switch between Sharp and Smooth Falloff (in versions prior to 2.37) or cycle through all 6 falloff types (in versions 2.37 and up) while using the Proportional editing tool.
• Press GKEY to grab the vertex. We should now have a circle surrounding the vertex, this is our radius of influence. Basically any vertices inside this circle will be affected by any changes to the vertex itself.

Noob Note: If you're having trouble seeing or changing the radius of influence, try saving your scene and restarting Blender.

• Use the Mouse Wheel or PAGE_UPKEY and PAGE_DOWNKEY to adjust the radius of influence to include just over 2 vertices on each side of our selected vertex. (Depending on your version of Blender, you may need to use ALT + NUM+/ PAGE_UPKEY and ALT + NUM-/ PAGE_DOWNKEY and may need to hold down the LMB while using the Mouse Wheel to adjust the radius of the influence.On Mac, hold the "fnKey" down and hit "page-up" or "page-down"). In 2.41 you must 'grab' the vertex first - only then can you alter the sphere of influence (in my version, 2.42a, the 3D cursor had to be snapped to the selection before the wheel appeared).

Noob Note: To change the radius on a Macbook press "fn"+ up/down. OSX uses function + arrow keys as replacements for windows "home", "end", "page up" and "page down" keys.

• Move the vertex up about 8 units on the Z-Axis. Do this by dragging the cursor up a little, and press the MMB; this should restrain the movements along the Z-axis. Now use CTRL to move it precisely. Alternatively you can use ZKEY to restrain movements to the Z-Axis and type 8 and hit ENTER. In older versions of Blender you may need to hit the NKEY before typing the number 8.

Congratulations, we just created our first mountain. Now it's time to see what other things we can accomplish with the proportional editing tool.

[edit] Peaks vs. hills

The 2.37 and onward releases offer at least 6 types and 2 modes of proportional editing. The previous release only has 2 of these types: Smooth and Sharp Falloff. We'll take a look at the difference between these two now.

• Change to top view again with NUM7. You'll notice that now your "mountain" looks like a few differently shaded squares in the grid; you're looking down on shaded tiles, but in the Z axis, they're all still perfectly aligned with the original grid.
• Select another vertex away from the first. Let's say 4 from the bottom 4 from the right (counting the vertices on the edges).
• Change back to the side view with NUM3
• Select Sharp Falloff from the menu on the bar of the 3D View. Alternatively, using SHIFT+OKEY will switch from one to the next of the 6 proportional editing modes while using the Proportional editing tool.
• As before, move the vertex up 8 units on the Z-Axis (Note: The radius of influence will still be the same size as when we last used it).
  • GKEY
  • ZKEY
  • Type 8 and hit ENTER

Now we can see the differences between the sharp and smooth falloff. The same number of vertices are affected in both cases; only the degree to which they are affected is different.

The different proportional editing modes can be selected from the box immediately to the left of the proportional editing type box. The mode box contains three options: Off, On, and Connected. "Off" means that proportional editing will not be used. "Connected" means that only vertices linked to the selected vertices will be affected by the radius of influence. "On" means that all vertices will be affected.

[edit] Shaping the world

Now that we've created a couple of Mountains, it's time to see how we can use proportional editing to shape them.

• First make sure we're in side view (NUM3).
• Then on the smooth falloff mountain, the first one we created, select the vertex that is immediately down and left from the topmost point.
• Press RKEY to rotate, scroll the MMB to change effective radius so it includes other points. Your screen should look like this:

You can see the size of the proportional editing circle, and that there is only one vertex on the mountainside selected.

• Next hold CTRL and rotate everything by -90. Alternatively, use RKEY, NKEY, and type -90 and press ENTER. Your mountain should now look like this:

Notice that the vertex itself did not move; since it is at the center of the circle it had no effect. The adjoining vertexes within the edit circle were rotated around it in decreasing amounts the further from the center they are. Try doing it again with a larger proportional editing circle. Feel free to play around with scaling or rotating from different view points (don't forget that you can also use GKEY to move vertecies vertically or horizontally).

[Noobie Roy says: Huh??? I don't understand what I'm supposed to be achieving here. What is supposed to happen when I rotate? As far as I can see, nothing at all happens. Can you maybe show us a before and after screenshot? Or maybe explain in more detail? Thanks!] [Noobie Sean says: Roy, you made the mountains by using proportional editing with grab/move. Moving one vertex moved its neighbours, within the proportional circle. Rotate and scale also use proportional editing to rotate or scale about the selected vertex much like the grab/move operation.][noobie larry says i tried rotating just that one point but nothing happens] [One thing to watch out for is the range of affected vertices. If the range is too small, then rotating will affect just the selected vertex. If the range is too large, it will rotate everything together. You can adjust the range by scrolling.]

[Dusty says: To answer Noobie Roy, the reason nothing may happen, is that the circle of influence may be only including the vertex that you have selected when you first hit R. After pressing R scroll the mouse wheel to increase the circle include the other vertices next to the one selected, then type 90 and you'll see the effect. Scroll the mouse wheel further more (to include more vertices) and you see the effect spread out.]

[Another newbie says: two things to keep in mind here: really weird things will happen here if you set the rotation/scaling pivot to "3d cursor" at this point (I assume the intention is to rotate around the single selected vertex, so the other pivot modes will all work, I think), and (as Dusty says) you must increase the effective radius quite a bit (use the scrollwheel after pressing RKEY, just keep going until you are affecting half the plane to see what's going on). What makes it a bit confusing is that some vertices seem to be inside the initial affected region (with the radius you used to create the previous mountain) in the two-dimensional side view, but that affected region is actually a three-dimensional sphere, so you cannot tell from just that side view what vertices are inside the affected region. I am not explaining this very well, but it helps to have more than one 3d view open so you can see that every vertex is outside the affected radius in at least one view (try splitting the main view into 4 equally sized parts so you can have a top, front, side and "free" 3d view open all at the same time).[Yet another noob says: if you are following the tutorial exactly, your proportional edit falloff will be at sharp at this point. This makes the effect of the rotation hard to see unless your circle of influence is quite large.]

[Dbproguy mentions: From what I am seeing, this effects the texture of the mountain, so it's not so plain.]

[hendric: Newbie, but I think I got the tutorial demonstrating what it should be doing. I added screenshots of my full workspace and changed the wording to explain a little better. I am wiki-illiterate so any changes to prettify it are welcome.]

Try viewing your world from top view while rotating with a large effective radius. You will see the nearby vertexes move close to the full amount while vertexes further away move less.

[edit] Smoothing things out

Now that we have a couple of budding mountains, you probably think they look kind of choppy. Sure they would be good if we were making an 8-bit console game, but we're working with 3D here, we want things to look sharper (or maybe smoother) than that. There are a couple of approaches to this. The first is to use more vertices when we create our plane. And I won't lie, it works. But it's also a HUGE resource hog. It would take your home computer hours of work just to keep things updated, let alone run it. So instead, we fake it. The easiest way to do this is to turn on SubSurfaces (we saw this in Detailing Your Simple Person 1.) For our purposes, let's set the subdivision (Levels) to 2. Also, ensure our SubSurf algorithm is set to Catmull-Clark (this is the default setting).

Now, you'll notice that with SubSurf on, we lose a lot of hard edges that we had, essentially we have no sharp corners any more. I don't know about you, but to me that doesn't make for a very interesting mountain range. So to restore our corners, we are going to use Weighted Creases for Subsurfs.

• First turn off proportional editing with the OKEY , and ensure we're in side view with NUM3
  • Noob note: That means, the letter O key, not the zero key. Also, NUM3 means "3 on the numeric keypad," not on the top row of the keyboard.
• Next, while still in edit mode, change to Edge Select mode with CTRL+TAB and select Edges. Alternatively press Edge Select Mode button at the bottom of the object window.
• Under the Edit buttons under Mesh Tools 1 (Mesh Tools More in versions 2.46 and later) ensure that Draw Creases is selected. (Mesh Tools 1 may be off the screen, if so, use the scroll wheel when over the Edit Panel to reveal it. Alternatively, you can pan the buttons window by dragging with the MMB; or you can collapse some of the panels by clicking the arrow next to their names.)
  • Noob note: "Mesh Tools 1" is a separate panel from "Mesh Tools" and from "Mesh". By moving the mouse cursor over the buttons window (remember this 'activates' windows) and using the mouse wheel, you will cause the tabs to scroll from side to side, revealing some you couldn't see before. If the one you need still isn't there you should check to make sure you're still in edit mode, or make sure it isn't 'minimized' which is done by clicking the little white arrow at the top left of the tab.
• On our Sharp Falloff mountain, the second one we did, select the two edges on the right. (see image below)
  
• Press SHIFT+EKEY or SPACE → Edit → Edges → Crease SubSurf, then move the mouse away from the edge until the edge Crease reads 1.000 in the 3D viewport header. If moving the cursor there seems to be impossible, just hit 1 and enter.

As you move the cursor away from the edge you will notice two things. The first is that the edge becomes thicker as we move from it; this is showing how much of a crease we have (with Draw Creases turned on). The second is that you will notice the subsurfed mesh moving closer to the edge as the sharpness increases.

Noob Henry: What I do is take the mountain, and then set a subsurf level of two. Then, I hit the 'set smooth' button, and use the individual vertices to make it look authentic.

[edit] Naturalness

Press CTRL+TAB and select vertices. then go into front view NUM1. Select the second vertex from the top in the centre of our Sharp Falloff mountain, then go into side view NUM3. Push GKEY and drag the vertex inwards, not too far or your mountain will come out of itself on the other side. Just bring it in enough to make a small indent.

Then grab the top vertex and pull it down a small amount. You will notice that there is a small "crunch" in your mountain.

Don't forget to select all, press WKey and hit the set smooth button to smooth everything out.

OK, so your mountains are starting to shape up. But they still look a bit too neat. You could spend time moving each individual vertex but the chances are your model will still lack the natural feel. What we need is some chaos. Thankfully this is quite easy to accomplish. Firstly select the vertices that make up your mountains, all of them and a few around the base (box and circle select will make this easier). Select a few vertices between the mountains too. Next we use something called fractals. Fractals are chaotically (ie randomly) generated variables. In short you can use these variables to give your mountains a "wobbly" look.

Fractals are located in the Mesh Tools section of your edit buttons (next to Noise, Hash and Xsort). Click it and you'll be asked for a value. This value is the strength of the fractal. 1 is very low and will barely change your model. 100 is very high and will twist your models into very odd shapes indeed. Have a play with different values until you find one that you like. Around about 15-30 should do it. Hit OK and hey presto, your mountains have been transformed from clinical neatness, to lumpy chaos.

• If you make too many fractals, your computer will slow down. However, the more fractal you add, the more bumpy and realistic it looks!

Noob Note: Repeatedly using the fractal tool seems to rapidly multiply the amount of vertices on your canvas. I suggest using the tool once, and if the result isn't satisfying, undo the result (CTRL + Z) and try it again with a different fractal strength. Even after undo, your selected vertices remain selected.

Noob Note #2: If you have a new enough version of Blender (2.49 and up definitely has it, not sure about lower versions), there is a setting called Random in the Proportional Editing settings. Using this with a high radius may give a desired result for you without adding more mesh.

 (Under Construction [TO DO: finish me])

[edit] Adding your guy with the hat

If you changed to a new layer-- press (SHIFT) select the layer with your guy on it or (SHIFT + 1). This will display both layers. If you would like to move the landscape from the second layer to the first then with the landscape selected, press (M), and select the layer(s) you would like it on. note- make sure you're in object mode. If you started a new project-- To insert your guy with a hat, you can simply go to file > append or link(shift+F1).

• Then select the file from the previous tutorial.
• You will then see a list of objects you can insert or ‘append’.
• First go into the 'Object' folder. Unless you renamed him/her, your person will probably be named “cube.” Select it.
• Make sure that 'Append' button is pressed; otherwise you will not be able to scale or translate, or edit your model at all. (The 'Link' button will link a copy of your object into the current scene, and will update any changes when you reload the file. Unfortunately, this includes location and size, so we will not use it right now.)
• Press 'Load Library' to place your guy into the mountain scene. Please note, the Load Library button is top right. Confusingly, there is some text bottom left that says Load Library as well, but isn't clickable.
• Repeat the process to get the hat (probably named “circle”). To reset the parental relationship, see the instructions at the end of the previous tutorial. To scale them to the appropriate size, go to object mode by pressing TAB (unless of course you are already there). Select the object you want to resize, then press the SKEY and use the cursor to scale as you see fit. To undo any mistakes, use CTRL+Z.

Noob Note: To import the file once you have the list select the item, i.e. cube, and in the bottom right select "Active Layer" that will append it to your current proj when you click "Load Library" your work should be visible now.

Noob Note: Multiple items may be appended simultaneously. For instance: both 'cube' and 'circle' objects can be appended at the same time by highlighting both object names within the file browser by means of a RMB Click. RMB on object again to deselect.

[edit] Creating Models With Photo Assistance

The first tutorial is about using guide images to place vertices in their proper places in 3D space. The second tutorial is on how to take good reference pictures. These tutorials assume that you have completed all previous tutorials.

[edit] Making A Pyramid

Note: This section may be incredibly frustrating to new Blender users. If you are starting out it is recommended you go over the earlier modeling tutorials first before going through this section.

First we are going to create a pyramid the easy way. Then we are going to show how to use different viewpoints and images as a guide to place vertices correctly in 3D space.

You should have the default cube, if not, press CTRL+XKEY to start a new project.

• Go into Edit Mode (if in Object Mode, press TAB).
• Select side (right) view (NUM3).
• Make sure no vertices are selected by pressing AKEY.
• Ensure the "Limit selection to visible" ("Occlude background geometry" in Blender 2.46 and later) icon is disabled so we can select all four of the top vertices, even the back two which aren't visible.
• Go to Box Select mode (BKEY) draw a box around the top vertices of the box
• Merge vertices by pressing ALT+MKEY → At center and the top of the box is merged to a single point
• Unselect all vertices (AKEY).
• Box select (BKEY) the bottom 4 vertices
• Hollow out the bottom of the pyramid by deleting the bottom face XKEY → faces (remember that if you want to change to face select mode press CTRL + TAB → faces)

  note: with versions 2.46 of Blender and later, you just have to select merge at center after the merge vertices step to create a pyramid, the last 3 steps aren't needed.

  note: you can do this easier by making the top vertices closer to each other (SKEY)

and then use Remove Double (in editing buttons/Mesh tools tab)

Now that we have the pyramid the easy way, let's learn how to use photos as references to build models. First, unselect all the vertices by pressing AKEY. Next, select the bottom four vertices of the pyramid and delete them with DEL or XKEY. The only vertex left will be the vertex which makes the tip of the pyramid. This will be used later.

note: in Blender 2.48 you can go to edit mode face mode select top face and size it down.

[edit] Window Layout

To make things easier, open the user preferences window and in the "View & Controls" sub-menu, turn on the "View Name" option. The window names will be used for reference inside the rest of this tutorial.

Split the Main 3D view window in to 4 windows.

Reminder: to split windows, move the mouse to the border of the view, when the cursor transforms into arrow, right-click and choose "Split Area". (Explained in the guide: Noob to Pro/Blender Windowing System.)

Change the point of view in each window so that they end up like this:

NUM1	NUM7
NUM3	NUM0

And if you click on View, you can see that these windows are respectively:

Front	Top
Side (Right)	Camera

By knowing which view you are looking at you may find that you quickly get the idea of what you are doing and can proceed somewhat intuitively in this section on your own without following all of the step by step instructions.

[edit] Reference Pictures

Make a picture of a white square and of a white triangle in the GIMP, Paint :) , or some other image editor.

Read the following section carefully: Make sure that the drawing of the square is square and not just rectangular. Make the triangle the same width and height as the square. Make sure the apex of the triangle is directly above the midpoint of its baseline.

Suggested method of construction#1: Make the square. Save it, but keep it open. Delete everything except the bottom line. Make the triangle from the lower corners (ends of the baseline) and make sure the two new lines meet exactly above the midpoint of the baseline. Make sure the triangle is visible against a black background as shown in the image. Save as a new file.

Suggested method of construction#2: Download the black and white triangle image on the right of the screen and use that, make a square by filling it white and resaving it.

Suggested method of construction#3: (if you are using Photoshop): make a square selection of "n by n" size, remember the value of "n". Fill it with white color and save. To create a triangle of needed properties make a rectangular selection of same (n by n) size, on a new layer, click RMB on your document, choose "Transform selection" option in the pop-up menu. Once you are in "Transform selection" mode, right-click the blank image again. This time the pop-up menu would be different. Choose "Perspective" from it, and with LMB drag one of the two top vertices toward the other. Once the vertices meet (in the top-center of the image), exit the transformation mode, and fill the resulting triangular selection with white.

Note for Gimp users: turn on the grid (View->Show Grid, View->Snap to Grid), use the rectangle select with a fixed aspect ratio of 1:1 (in the tool options panel) to select a square that you can flood fill. For the triangle, use the node tool to draw a triangular path, convert to selection (Select->From Path) and fill it. Or you could just use Inkscape...

Save the files to a place that is easy to access. Blender only supports the TGA, PNG, and JPG image formats.

[edit] Background Images

Load the white square into the top (NUM7) window by going to the 3D view window and pressing View → Background image → (click on the icon of a file) find your file and click "select image"

Load the white triangle into the front (NUM1) and side (right or NUM3) windows.

If necessary, zoom out so that you can see the whole picture.

Now you have a guide for making a pyramid.

If you can not see the picture, switch to Ortho view by hitting NUM5

[edit] Side One

The vertex that is left will be the topmost point of the pyramid. Use the GKEY to move the vertex around. To get it in the right spot, line it up at the top most point in the front (NUM1) and side (right or NUM3) windows. If you look in the top (NUM7) window the vertex should appear to be in the center. Make sure to keep the vertex highlighted for the next step.

Note: If you delete all of your mesh objects in Object Mode (and remaining vertice), then you'll be stuck in Object Mode. You can however, add a new mesh object as a base, or an empty mesh via a python script (Add → Mesh → Empty Mesh) [Blender 2.49]. Once an empty mesh object has been created, select it (right click on it or AKEY), and then change to the Edit Mode. Now you can begin to create individual vertices with CTRL + LMB.

(note: it might be helpful at some point to zoom in and use the X,Y and Z movement restriction)

Now, we are going to place more vertices in the scene. Since we want to have the new vertices connected to the first one, we will make sure the first vertex is selected and hold down CTRL and click LMB to create a new one. In the side (right or NUM3) window, place a vertex on the lower left edge of the triangle by holding CTRL and clicking there. This should create a line between your 2 points. If needed, use GKEY to line it up in that window and also at the lower right point in the top (NUM7) window.

Next, with only one of the vertices selected, in the front (NUM1) window place a vertex on the lower left edge of the triangle using the same method. Line it up in that window and at the lower left point in the top (NUM7) window.

Now, select your 3 vertices (use AKEY) in the front (NUM1) window and press the FKEY. You should see a triangle appear.

[edit] Side Two

Press AKEY to deselect all vertices and select the vertex at the top of the pyramid again. Repeat the process from Side One to make the next side. Place a vertex in each of the other corners of the square using CTRL and LMB. Line them up in two different views with the corners of the triangle and square. Make sure only the top vertex and the two new vertices are selected and press FKEY. This will fill in a face opposite of the first face in the pyramid.

[edit] Sides Three and Four

To fill in the other two sides, select the top vertex and the two corner vertices on a side where there is no face yet. Again, use FKEY to fill in a face. Repeat this for the last side to have all four sides created.

[edit] Bottom

In the top (NUM7) window, select all four corners and make a face. You should have a solid pyramid! Now, select all 4 faces, hit XKEY, and choose "faces".

[edit] Taking the Best Reference Photos

Remember what I said about turning a cube into a puppy? We'll do that now.

[edit] Step One: Get the pictures of the model

Tip: The images here do not line up. Some need to be rotated and others do not match in size. They will be kept so that you can get the "real feel" for this project.

If you have a puppy and a digital camera, take three pictures of the cute little rascal and upload them. If you don't have a puppy, any object or small animal will do. Ideally, the photos will be looking straight down at the top of the puppy, a side view, and a front view. It's important that the puppy be in the same pose in all three photos! Or at least close to the same pose...we all know puppies don't stand still very long.

You could use two mirrors. One is placed next to the puppy at 45 degrees to the camera and 45 degrees to the puppy. Another is placed above the puppy, also at 45 degrees to the camera and 45 degrees to the puppy. This produces three images, one of the puppy (front \ NUM1), one of its reflection seen 90 degrees to the right (side \ right \ NUM3)), and one of its reflection seen from overhead (top \ NUM7). Take the photo from a long distance away with a zoom lens to get close to an orthographic projection.

Or how about pictures of a toy wolf taken from 6 views points?:

• Left view
• Right view
• Front view
• Back view
• Bottom view
• Top view

Using your favorite image editor, such as PhotoShop or the GIMP, down-scale the images need to a reasonable size (I made mine 512x384), and then match them to each other. To match them, draw construction lines (pulled from the rulers above and to the left) on the left view for example to pick out key features. I picked the tail, the front of the back foot, eye level, tip of the ear, and the front of the nose:

I found when I picked out these features that this first image needed to be rotated slightly. That completed, I proceeded to scale, rotate and shift the other two views (top and front) until they matched fairly well as layers on top:

Once I had the proper results I saved the resulting images, and these are the ones we will use in Blender.

The results are the files you'll need for Step Two:

Just right-click and save them some place where you can find them to load them into Blender for Step Two. You may notice the photos aren't perfect, but we'll use them just to show how you should deal with your real photos. When you are creating your own pictures to import, note parallax. In this example, parallax is present, and we'll attempt to compensate.

Reader note: I used Paint Shop Pro 7. I used layers and played with transparencies to be able to see where the views fitted best with each others and align them better.

[edit] Step Two: Get the Picture into Blender

Getting the image into blender is the easy part. The more difficult part will be creating the mesh, but first things first. Create a new file (File → New) to see the familiar default objects. Don't bother deleting the cube, we'll end up using it in the tutorial. Just as was done in the "Making A Pyramid" section, split the 3D Viewer into four views and assign them the following view ports. Note that the arrangement is different than that used in the previous tutorial.

NUM7	NUM3
NUM1	NUM0

Each window will show you different XYZ coordinates with the NUM0 view being what your object will look like to the camera object.

Now that the screen is set up, let's load the images. In the top left viewport (XY), click View on the viewport's header (the menu at the bottom). From the menu provided, select Background Image .... A small window will appear.

Click the Use Background Image button and several more buttons will appear. Now click on the folder icon located to the right of Image:. A new full-viewport window will appear. Explore this window a bit and end up selecting the image file of the wolf from the top view. What you should get is the picture of the toy wolf from above with the default cube on top of it. Rotate your view of the cube. The picture disappeared! But don't worry - the picture is still there. Press NUM7 to realign the viewport and see the picture again.

Tip: Be sure to be in orthographic view Num 5 or else you won't see the picture.

Now load the front view of the wolf into the NUM3 viewport (YZ) as you did the top view. Repeat the procedure and load the side view of the wolf into the NUM1 viewport (XZ). As a note, each picture is specific to the viewport it was loaded into. When you switch between axes views, the picture will not change. Try this out by changing the top left viewport to NUM3 and NUM1. Return the viewport to NUM7 before continuing.

The pictures are now loaded into the Blender viewports. If you look at the pictures on the grid, you may notice that the front view of the wolf isn't quite center. That is okay, Blender has a way to fix it.

Move your cursor over the NUM3 viewport and press Shift + SpaceBar, this expands the current viewport (NUM3/front view) to a fullscreen view, then open the Background Image window for the front view again. Notice that there are picture manipulation options available. One of these includes picture offsets. Click on right side of the 'X Offset: 0.00' to increase the offset to 0.20. The picture will be shifted over slightly so now the wolf is more centered. Press Shift + SpaceBar again to return to the four viewport view you created earlier.

Figure 2.2.1 Viewport picture setup

The setup work is now done! Let's start on actually making the wolf model.

Reader Note: If you, like me, weren't paying that much care to how your "wolf front view pic" was aligned from left to right earlier on during the gimp editing phases, then you may need to use a different 'X Offset: ' value than '0.20' that the author recommends. If that is the case, then just use some appropriate alignment value to center it visually as best you can. Hopefully this helps with avoiding some potential confusion for other readers.

[edit] Step Three: Rough Model Fitting

This is a brute force model creation using techniques discussed previously in this book. This section is meant to help you explore and become more comfortable with them. Do not try to follow the example to the tee. Your wolf and my wolf will probably not look the same since you may want to add more or have less detail.

[Note: If you are following this book all the way through, and are just getting started with blender, the following step (step 3 as a whole that is) may likely take several hours to complete. The best strategy is to take breaks, be patient, and with time you'll figure out the best way to go about this step.]

The rough fit stage requires either some planning or on-the-spot decisions. Think about where the wolf will have parts of its body flex or require parts jutting out.

The first step is to create a blocky wolf. Start out with a column of blocks using the extrude face command (select face, EKEY). Don't worry about snapping the vertices to the grid since we are working with an organic figure.

Figure 2.3.1 Body column formation

The next step is to split the ears and legs off of the body. Do this by subdividing the appropriate faces. Save often, and if you make a mistake, go ahead and use the undo option (CTRL ZKEY). Also, if you find yourself looking at redundant faces, combine them (FKEY).

Figure 2.3.2 Appendage formation
]

If you are having trouble with this, try mousing over the perspective window (the one you designated with NUM0) and using the MMB to rotate the view so that you are looking at the underside of the wolf. Click on the face underneath the wolf that is alongside his front legs (use the side view to check this). We are going to subdivide this face in order to grow legs off the new faces. To subdivide, press the WKEY and choose subdivide. You will see that the face has been divided into four. Take one of these faces and extrude it as many times as is necessary to make the right leg. Then do the same again for his left leg. (NOOB NOTE: Be sure to extrude each leg and ear separately exactly as it says here. I multiple-selected both faces to extrude the rear legs from simultaneously and they ended up sharing common vertices at the corners where they meet, making the legs difficult to separate. 2nd Note: Actually it's fine to extrude both, just make sure to select "Individual faces" in the extrude popup menu, rather than region) Use the pictures as a guide.

Doing the ears is similar, except instead of working underneath you will start with the face on top of the wolf which is directly over the ears. Select this face and subdivide it once. Deselect everything using AKEY, then select one of these four faces and extrude it upwards once to make an ear. Do the same for the face alongside it to make the other ear.

Finally, extrude the tail end of the wolf one more time, so that your wolf has as many divisions as the picture above.

Let's start refining the model starting with the tail. Try putting your viewports in wireframe mode by pushing Z, it may make things much easier. Line up the vertices over the wolf in each viewport by lasso selecting multiple vertices (CTRL LMB, Drag). then move to the right location with grab (GKEY).

Figure 2.3.3 Working on the tail

Continue onto the hind legs of the wolf. It is trickier to manipulate the legs so keep rotating a viewport to look at the model from multiple perspectives. Remember that we are working in three dimensions.

Figure 2.3.4 Working on the hind legs

Continue working up along the wolf fitting the blocks to the pictures. If you have problems seeing the picture because the model is in the way, let's hide the model. In Edit Mode, select the entire model by AKEY or by pressing LKEY when you have the cursor over the model. Simply pressing HKEY will hide the selected items. To unhide the view, use ALT+HKEY. By hiding and unhiding the model, or parts of the model, you should be able to keep using the picture as a guide.

Once you have the first pass done, you'll notice that the model just won't fit all three pictures correctly. This is due to parallax. The most obvious example is the side view. The four feet should be level, as they are all standing on a flat surface. Since they are not, we'll just ignore some of the aspects of each picture and continue with the model. (This is a helpful example to show what you need to consider when taking your own pictures.)

Figure 2.3.5 Completed rough fit

Attention: The top right Viewport is said to be "NUM3 - Side" but the Picture shows the wolf from the front! So care and change the picture with the left window at the bottom or change the Viewportsettings

Reader Note: this is because for the pictures to line up correctly the front has to be in the side viewport and the side has to be in the front viewport.

Reader note: The author realizes that he can't line up the images this way in Blender but forget to explain why after changing the position of the wolves. If you put the TOP wolf in a window set up for a TOP VIEW (NUM7) you'll have a VERTICAL looking down wolf. In the same way if you put a SIDE VIEW of the wolf (looking right) you'll have an error in the FRONT VIEW because SIDE VIEW (NUM3) is planed to receive a LEFT SIDE VIEW of your object, the result is that in FRONT VIEW You'll have the ass o the wolf.

Put in your SIDE VIEW (NUM3) an left looking wolf and in TOP VIEW a looking down wolf and all will be in order, or use the side view to represent front and front to show the side as he does at last, wich is much more complicated and difficult to explain.

[edit] Step Four: Refining the Wolf Model

Now that the rough fit is done, let's smooth out the wolf. Add a Subsurf modifier and set the Levels to 2. The wolf will now be smoothed, but we want to add some of the hard lines back into the model. This may be accomplished with creased edges.

First, turn on the view creased edges by toggling the Draw Creases button in the Mesh Tools 1 window. Enter Select Edges or Select Faces mode (CTRL TAB). Highlight the edge or face you want to crease and press SHIFT + EKEY. Use the mouse and pull away from the center until the Crease value is close to what you want. A value of +1.000 will give you the sharpest look and is useful for places such as the bottoms of the paws. When an edge has been creased, the edge will be highlighted in yellow (positive crease) or black (negative crease). These highlights are shown due to the 'Draw Creases' button being turned on.

In this example, I creased edges along the paws, tail, ears, and nose to give them some sharpness.

Figure 2.4.1 Creased edges

The last step is to refit the model to the pictures. You may have noticed that when the model was smoothed, the result didn't quite fit to the pictures. Now is a great time to tweak the vertices to fit to the pictures or add to/modify the model.

And here is my basic wolf based on three pictures!

Figure 2.4.2 Final toy wolf model

[edit] Alternative Wolf Modelling

(user comment) I was doing this tutorial and though I´m still a noob at this I thought I could contribute a little to this. I decided only to do half a wolf and then mirror it to create a complete wolf. I started out with creating the silhouette of the wolf body in the side view, and then in front view I started to shape the wolf head, tail and legs...

User Note: If you are attempting this method, I read in a much later tutorial that it is best to avoid using triangles in rounded areas of a Mesh, because they tend to cause artifacts in your model (artifacts are protruding edges or other things that don't look realistic). Apparently, using quads is a much better alternative. Triangles should only be used on flat areas of your mesh if they cannot be avoided.

And at any rate this is what I ended up with. Not the best wolf ever, but as I said before I´m still pretty noobish.

From this point forward there are multiple ways to do the exact same thing, however for simplicity's sake and so that I can be more detailed I will be using one method (the one which I use) and be using GIMP.

I found it best to size all the photos to a known width, with an easy to find center. (Mine happened to be 850x638 pixels, I don’t recommend that but you can choose any size you want really, as long as all of them are the same size). Then drag the construction lines to form a crosshair in the middle of the photo. To do this, click on the top ruler, and drag down to the middle (Exact middle) of the photo, then click on the side ruler and drag across to the middle (Again exact middle) of the photo.

If you are having troubles finding the exact middle of the photo, move the cursor to the very bottom left of your photo and the height of your photo will be listed at the bottom left of the GIMP interface. The numbers are listed in an (x,y) format so you want the first number to say 0 and the second to be the largest you can make it by dragging your cursor. The second number is the height, and half of that is the middle of your photo. You can do the same with the top ruler to find the vertical middle of your photo. Only this time the co-ordinates at the bottom left of the GIMP interface should list the second number (y) as 0, and the first number should be as large as you can make it by moving your cursor (to the upper right of the photo).Once you have your width again half of that will be the middle of your photo.

Then using construction lines put one at the top of your object, and the bottom of your object. Find the "height" of your object by the distance between them. Remove the construction lines from the top and the bottom, and place a new construction line above the horizontal center line by the half of the "height"(of your object). Now place a construction line on both sides of your object and find the “width” (distance between the new vertical lines), then remove those construction lines and place a new construction line vertically half of the "width"(of your object) to the right of the vertical center line. Now cut the object out, and drag it so that the point you used as the "top" is on the horizontal construction line that is above the middle. Then Drag the photo left or right until the right edge of the object is on the vertical construction line you put in right of the middle construction line.

Now the center of your object is at the center of your photo. This is a very important thing because when blender loads in the picture you will need this so that all of your pictures match up with each other 3d. You should repeat these steps with all 3 photos. I also dont recommend doing it in GIMP's "layered mode" as that caused more pandemonium for me. I recommend opening each photo in a new window .

Taking your pictures is the most important part, because if the pictures are not all in the same scale (object size to photo size) then your photos will not line up and you won't be able to place a dot on the same location from front view, side view, and top view.

As a recommendation I would recommend making your first model from a Lego man. That is what I did and it is very simplistic easy practice. To take my photos I took about 10 minutes to construct a photo platform for my object. It consisted of a cardboard box with two sides cut out. I covered the inside area with computer paper. I then used a 2”x4” and a ruler to make sure that the box stayed the same distance from the camera for all shots, as well as marking where the Lego man’s feet were positioned inside the box with a pencil. This will provide good pictures, providing you keep the camera at the same distance and zoom for all three photos.

[edit] Modeling a Gingerbread Man

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 them 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.

• 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 it's selected!

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.

Noob 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.

Noob 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 degrees, 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.
• 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.

Note: While it is true that textures can only be applied to one object at a time, textures as well as materials can be shared between objects. In this case it is best to let both the head and the body share the same material.

• To do this, simply select the object without the materials(head or body).
• Press F5 to open the shading panel or use the shading panel button.
• In the "Links and Pipeline" panel, under "Link to Object," click the arrow next to(left of) the "Add New" button.
• Select the brown material.

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!

[edit] Die Another Way (dice modelling)

[edit] Video Tutorial

A video tutorial has been created for this chapter in Blender 2.48a.

It is compressed and packaged in the Theora (.ogg) video format and requires a player that is able to decode this codec in order to play it, such as the VLC player which is available as a free download for Windows, Mac, and most Linux distributions. Firefox 3.5 is also able to stream Theora video.

For best results, it is recommended that you save this file to your computer for viewing, rather than streaming it inside a web browser, since it is 1020 x 746 pixels.

[edit] Introduction

In the following tutorial you will be creating a die. You will use:

• polygon mesh
• face loop cutting
• subdivision surfaces
• subdivision creases
• bevel
• set smooth
• multiple materials
• extrusion
• merge vertices
• remove doubles
• constraints

There are two methods to create the circles for the die: subdivide first and manual sizing. In either case, start with the default Cube.

[edit] Subdivide First

The die needs to have a 3x3 matrix for the coloured dots (pips). A quick way to do this is to simply Subdivide the cube twice before doing anything else. The disadvantage may be that the spaces for the pips may not be exactly the size that you want. If not, see the next section: Manual Sizing of Pips.

[edit] Manual Sizing of Pips

[edit] Step 1

Hit tab to go into edit-mode and select all faces to prevent bevel messing up normals. Hit WKEY → Bevel, Recursion → 1 (you'll see why later) then choose bevel size (hit spacebar for manual input). Bevel of 0.150 is ok.
Note: If you have chosen to subdivide the die twice, jump to Section "Creating Pips" and put bevel of 0.17 in order to have pip's edges length 0.34

[edit] Step 2

In editmode, go to the Editing tab (F9) and look at the Mesh Tools 1 panel (Mesh Tools More in some versions). Turn on Edge Length and note the length of one of the sides of the square faces. This should be 1.7 if the above settings were used.

Button "Edge Length" may be outside the screen so you may need to close another set of buttons before you can get to it.

Or, you can use MMB to scroll over to see the Mesh Tools 1 panel (in later versions: Mesh Tools More) with "Edge Length" button on it.
Or, you can zoom in and out in the menu window with CTRL and NUM+ or NUM-

[edit] Step 3

A typical die has a grid of 9 possible positions for the pips and the gap between the pips is the pip radius (or half the diameter). So, there are conveniently 10 units on each edge of the square faces, where the gaps use 4 of the units and the 3 pips use two each. This means the gaps are of size 1.7/10 = 0.17 and the pips (1.7x2)/10 = 0.34.

[edit] Step 4

Now it's time to subdivide the surfaces of the die according to the mathematics above. We'll do that using "edge loops" - additional edges you can add to existing objects.

• Select axis aligned view: NUM1
• Enter loop cut mode: CTRL+RKEY (OR KKEY→1KEY OR KKEY→Loop Cut OR CTRL+EKEY→Loopcut OR CTRL+EKEY→NUM5)
• Select loops' placement: move the mouse around until you see a purple line going the right direction.
• Enter the number of loops: 9KEY (OR NUM9 OR SCROLL up 9 times OR NUM+ 8 times)
• Add the loop: LMB (OR ENTER etc.) on one of the big faces

Noob: What's "the right direction?" What should this thing look like after applying the loop/cut? HELP!

Another Noob: It sounds like you have version 2.44 or later. You should do the tuturial "Die Easy"(seriously, it is).

Now we just have to get rid of the 2nd, 5th and 8th loops to make the undivided spaces for the marks.

• Select edge select or vertex select: CTRL+TAB→NUM2 (OR CTRL+TAB→Edges OR CTRL+TAB→NUM1 etc.)
• Deselect all edges with AKEY
• Choose a loop to remove (using the BKEY to enter box selection mode and drawing a box around the one you want; this will get the whole loop, all the way around the cube).Spoiler: you can also use Alt-RMB on an edge to select a loop (or select the edge and click Select --> Edge loop).

Noob: It seems that I could not remove multi loops at the same time, since the error message kept bumping out. Another Noob: That happened to me when I tried to remove them all at once, but it worked fine when I removed one at a time.

• Remove loop: XKEY→7 (OR XKEY→Edge Loop)

Change views with NUM3 and NUM7 and repeat steps as necessary. When you're done, your die should look like the one pictured to the right.

[edit] Creating Pips

The die needs the pips added. Everyone knows how the pips on a die look, right?

[edit] Extrude and Merge

(Note: This is Step 10) Select one of the faces where a pip would go and extrude the face by hitting EKEY and then ESC. Do not click after hitting EKEY. This actually replaces the first face with another one even though it looks like nothing has happened. Merge the second face by using ALT + MKEY to merge the 4 corners into the centre. It will tell you Removed 3 vertices. [User Note: To clarify, pressing ESC when extruding does in fact extrude the face as per usual, but by a distance of zero. This creates four new, infinitely narrow faces around the original square face. These four faces then get 'dragged' into the middle when the four vertices of the original square are merged into one. Test this by extruding by say, 0.01 (instead of pressing ESC), and you'll see the result is almost the same.] You should get the following:

 Do this for the configuration of the dots on that side. So for example, 5 would look like this:

Notes :

• You could create this pip spot on all 9 spots and copy this side of the die to the other six. The amount of time spent doing all of that may be just as long as doing each side individually. You would need to delete the other 5 faces, copy the dented face 5 times, place each face precisely by rotating and moving, and remove doubles.
• (User comment) I accidentally selected some pip faces from the opposite side of the die (the side behind the side I was looking at). To prevent this, I selected Limit selection to visible (Occlude background geometry in 2.47) : which should be the second button from the right in the header of the 3D View.
• Noob, 19th Oct 2008: You can save time by selecting all the 'pip faces' and extruding them simultaneously, ESC-ing immediately after you do so, like above. You'll still need to merge the four corners of each extrusion one-by-one, though, or you'll get some odd results.
• Noob, 28th Dec 2008: You can save more time be extruding all faces simultaneously, as above, and then selecting "Collapse" rather than "At Center" while merging.
• Noob, 02/02/09: I tried with the "Collapse" trick as well but all I got were just black squares.
• Noob, 19/02/09: I got the black squares as well, but it is just a display problem. Press Tab twice (going to Object mode and back to Edit mode) and they are gone.

[edit] Create Pips

(Note: This is Step 11) Select one of the edges of the pips to check the size is 0.34.

Remember the pip radius was 0.17. We need to use this value to lower the centre point of the pips. Select all the 5 centre points at once to save time and move them inwards by 0.17. The side I put the 5 pips on here was the top so I move the vertices inwards by pressing GKEY, ZKEY, -0.17 and hitting ENTER. I then get this:


(user comment) According to step 4 we are still in front-view (NUM1), but then the ZKEY modification gives undesirable result, changing view to top (NUM7) does the trick! This applies to blender version 2.44.

• (response) Actually, at the end of step 4 it states to change to side and top view (NUM3 and NUM7) as necessary, so really there is no official view the tutorial left the user in. Also, in this step, the writer mentions they put 5 pips on the top.
• (user comment) using YKEY instead of ZKEY is also fine.
• (user comment) Depending on which axis it's supposed to be moved, use the ZKEY,XKEY and YKEY after the GKEY accordingly.
• (user comment) Pressing ZKEY twice should move them along the normal, which should work no matter which faces are selected.
• (user comment) I noticed a shortcut: When you extrude, extrude by -0.17 and then do the Merge -> Collapse. Then the point is already inside.
• (user comment) I just noticed something different. If you extrude and collapse, after applying the subsurf, you got sharp edges of the pips than the pips I got in this tutorial way.

[edit] Smooth Out

TAB out of Edit Mode. If you haven't done this already, hit Set Smooth in the Editing panel and turn on subdivision surfaces
It should look something like this:

File:DieAnotherWay12a.png
File:DieAnotherWay12b.png

In present versions, you just need to use "Add Modifier" on the Modifiers tab (in Edit-mode), to add a SubSurf modifier. (Or press SHIFT+OKEY)
In the image below Levels is set to 3.

[edit] Make Sharp Edges

On a die, the edges of the pips are usually sharp so we'll use subsurface creasing to do that.

Go back into editmode and with the edge select mode on, select all the perimeters of the pips like so (it may help to turn off subsurf for the moment):

Press SHIFT+EKEY to enable creasing and move the mouse until the display says crease is at 1. (to see the effect, you must have the subsurf modifier turned ON).  After pressing SHIFT+EKEY, you can then set crease values in the information box that you get by pressing NKEY when objects are selected. This can be useful to check if all the edges have the right crease because it gives you the average crease value and if it is less than 1, there is an edge wrong.
Newbie Note: Trying to crease all 6 sides of the die at once using SHIFT+EKEY and moving the mouse doesn't crease all sides of the die. Better to use NKEY, or do one side at a time.

[edit] Repeat

Repeat steps 10, 11 and 13 (that is Extrude and Merge, Create Pips and Make Sharp Edges) for all the sides of the die. REMEMBER, a die is numbered so that opposite sides add up to 7. In my example, that means I put 2 on the bottom etc. Once you finish, if you turn on subdiv level 2, you will get something like this:
[User Note: Do you mean subsurf instead of subdiv?]

• Noob note: On the side with 6 pips, I had a hard time getting the creases to work. It turned out to be because I selected in vertex mode when I selected the edges for creasing, and I tried to crease all 6 pips at once. This put crease values on the short vertical edges between the pips, which messed things up.

• User Shortcut: To do them all at once with no repeating. However, order of operation has to change to make it work:
  • In Face Select mode, select all pip faces on all sides.
  • SHIFT+EKEY to crease the edges. (needs to be done before extruding, since extruding changed the selection)
  • EKEY -> Individual Faces then type -0.17 to extrude all faces inward.
  • ALT+MKEY -> Collapse will merge all the extrusions to their respective centers.

(noobie) Some of my pips are square and I tried everything. What should I do?

[edit] Camera Setup

You can make a test render now to see that the pips are the right size and that the bevel is right. So, turn the subsurf level for the rendering up to 3. To help position the camera so that you centre the die, you can make the camera look at the die by adding a track-to constraint to it. I prefer to track an empty though, because it is more flexible.

Make an empty by going into top down view (NUM7) and hitting SPACE → Add → Empty. (Noob note: If you can't find "empty" in the list, make sure you are in Object mode.) It's always best to go into one of the set orthographic views so as to align new objects to the axes. If you add something misaligned, just go to the object menu then clear/apply > clear rotation (or ALT+RKEY). Because the empty was created at the origin, you might not be able to see it as it is inside the die. Hit ZKEY to enable wireframe mode and select the empty. Just move it outside the cube until we get the constraint set up.

To add a track-to constraint, select the camera first then SHIFT+RMB the empty and press CTRL+TKEY and choose "TrackTo Constraint" from the list. Move the empty back inside the die. You can edit constraints in the object tab (F7). Add a couple of lamps (both intensity 1) to get the scene like this or feel free to experiment with a more advanced lighting setup:

Another way to position the camera is by selecting it and then looking through it as you move it. Look through the camera by pressing NUM0. Use the GKEY to pan across and rotate around the local axes of the camera by pressing say RKEY,XKEY,XKEY to rotate in X-axis. To zoom in and out press GKEY, ZKEY, ZKEY and then move your mouse forwards or backwards. Another useful keystroke (for pre-2.43 especially) to know is that when you are in camera view, pressing Gkey and then MMB, movement will be constrained to the way you are facing. The mouse wheel zoom moves your view towards and away from the camera, without actually moving the position of the camera.

You can also move the Camera in free "Fly" mode by going into the Camera view (press NUM0) and then Shift+F. Now you can "Fly" through the scene and use this setup the camera angle. Make sure that you keey the flying velocity very low by using the scroll wheels or -/+ buttons or the camera will be simply out of control.

[edit] Render

To render, set the size of the image you want. 800x600 is a decent size so put these settings in the format panel in the Scene tab (F10). In the render panel, make sure 100% is selected. If it's 50%, the render will come out as 400x300. For preview renders, don't turn on OSA, which is anti-aliasing because it slows your renders down significantly. Try to only use it for a final render.

Another important point is to set the image format. This is done in the format panel. The listbox has a number of image types. I find that png is generally the best because it is lossless and offers the highest compression among the lossless formats. It also supports an alpha channel for transparency. When rendering an animation, it is better to render as an image sequence than as a movie because it is easier to edit these and repair broken frames. Quicktime supports loading of image sequences and you can save as a movie using a wide range of compression formats.

To save the render, go to the file menu → save image (Or press F3) and type in the full name of the image including the extension e.g. die.png.

The output should now be looking something like this:
File:DieAnotherWay16.png

[edit] Color

[edit] Multiple Materials

. .
To give it some colour, we will need to use multiple materials because a typical die has pips that are a different colour from the die itself.

In the Buttons Window go to the Editing panel (F9) again and make sure the die is selected. In the Links and Materials subpanel there is a section for materials (the right; the left one is for vertex groups) and the box left of the question mark should read "0 Mat 0" (the first number is the number of material links for this object; the second number is the number of the currently selected material link).

The die may have more than zero materials if you had assigned materials to the object already. By pressing the New button add enough materials to make 2 in total.

Go back to the Shading panel (F5) and there is a box at the very top of the Links and Pipelines subpanel with the number 2 beside it. If there is no such subpanel select Material buttons (cycle shading buttons using F5 too). Click this number and select Single user in the dialog to make the two materials you've just created independent. Use the arrows on the left side of the box to switch materials.

Note: If you do not see a 2 to the right of the material name, that means the material is already a single user material. To change it back you can click the button labelled F, but for this example, you do not want to do that.

Note: There should be at least two materials now. One has the materials initial name the other has a number appended to its name (e.g. Material and Material.001).

Use the Material subpanel to make material 1 bright red by just picking red in the colour picker (the rectangle to the left of the Col button) or by setting the RGB sliders (right of the Col button). Make material 2 white by doing the same. Or pick whatever colour you prefer and material settings.

--MSK61 (talk) 11:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC): The colour picker is to the left(not right) of the Col button, while the the RGB sliders are to the right(not left) of the Col button.

Note: It is possible that the two materials were not automatically linked to the material links of your die. If so use the Links and Pipeline subpanel to link the materials to the respective material links. First select the link then the material.

Note from noob: Using white as a colour will not let you spot a change in colour, since the default colour is white. For test purposes I recommend you choose another colour (e.g. blue), so you can avoid getting confused.

[edit] Assign Materials

These colours need to be assigned to the right parts of the die.

Go into Edit Mode and turn off subsurf to make selecting easier. Do this in the Editing panels (F9) Modifiers subpanel. Right after the subsurf modifiers name there are three buttons (darkgrey). Press the rightmost to deactivate the modifier in the edit mode.

[edit] To make the die red

• Select the entire die (AKEY).
• Click the Editing button (F9).
• In the Link and Materials panel, on the right-hand side you will see "2 Mat X" where X is either 1 or 2. Click the left/right arrows until you see the adjoining square to the left turn red. As you click on the arrows, notice that the label above "2 Mat X" changes from "Material" to "Material.001". These are the names of the materials that you created in the Shading (F5)->Links and Pipeline panel.
• Click the Assign button (in the Material column, not the Vertex Groups column). The Assign button associates the selected faces with the selected material.

The entire die should now be red.

[edit] To make the pips white

Use the same method as above, but with only the inner faces of the pips selected and with the colour white.

There are a variety of ways to select the inner faces of the pips:

[edit] Pip Selection Method 1

Note: Here you may find Lasso Select useful.

• Make sure you are in Edit Mode (TAB)
• Select Face select : CTRL+TAB→3KEY
• Select Limit selection to visible : should be the second button from the right in the header of the 3D View
• Go through the axis align views and select the faces:
  • Align view: NUM1 (CTRL+NUM1, NUM3, CTRL+NUM3, NUM7, CTRL+NUM7)
  • For each view, lasso select the pips' faces: hold CTRL and drag LMB around the pips' middle vertex (no need to press SHIFT, Lasso Select automatically adds the new faces to the previous selection).
• If all went well you should be able to read Fa:84-449 in the User Preferences right after the Blender version number. (84 = 4*(1+2+3+4+5+6))

[edit] Pip Selection Method 2

Press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+3KEY and every triangular face will be selected.(Every pip + The 8 corners of the dice. Just deselect the 8 corners and you're good to go!) ;-) Similarly, you can select quad faces using the 4KEY.

[edit] Pip Selection Method 3

You can also use circle select to easily select the desired faces. Enter circle select mode by hitting BKEY twice. The circle can be made bigger or smaller by using the scroll wheel. Drop out of the mode (RMB) to rotate the cube and drop back in as above. Selected vertices are added to those already selected like with lasso mode but without the need to keep holding the control key or draw an accurate lasso)

Turn subsurf back on (Modifiers panel→subsurf modifier→enable in edit mode) and render F12 with OSA (only put it up as high as you need for the resolution of the image you are rendering).

(Note: in Blender 2.44 you should use the Assign button in the editing panel (Link and Materials))

(another noob says: don't be fooled (as I was!) by the fact that there are TWO Assign buttons in this tab, you want the big one on the right under materials, not the small one on the left under Vertex groups!!)

[edit] Pip Selection Method 4

That's the easiest way: 1- select one of the triangles (the face) 2- Shift+Gkey, then choose perimiter or press 4NUM.

[edit] Extra

The reason I modelled the die this way is because it is also very easy to change the sizes of the components e.g. the bevel and the pip size. You do this by selecting the vertical or horizontal segments and just scaling them in one axis. Here we will reduce the pip size and the bevel by half.

Go into front view (NUM1), turn off clipping (i.e., allow selection of invisible vertices) and select a line containing pips (i.e., Select vertices mode (CTRL+TAB+NUM1), and box select a thin vertical line of vertices to the left of a row of pips, then box select another thin vertical line of vertices to the right of that row of pips, making a total of 64 vertices). Then just scale in one axis e.g. SKEY, XKEY, 0.5. Remember to have your pivot point set to median:
File:DieAnotherWayE1.png
Do this horizontally and vertically around the die. You should need to scale 9 times for the pips and 6 times for the bevel:

(Noob note: I find this confusing. what is a line containing pips? does this mean a loop line? Using alt-RMB no longer works to select a loop, but selects a single edge.)

(Noob response: he meant a pair of loops of vertices adjacent to a row containing pips. alt-RMB no longer seems to select complete loops - it works until it hits a pip and then it stops - but the box selection can be used.)

(Another Response: Any time you change the geometry of a shape you effect how the automated tools will work. Many dont work at all once you get to complex organic shapes, so its best to not rely on them too heavily.)

File:DieAnotherWayE2.png
You may need to add extra geometry once you are satisfied with the sizes of the dots and the bevel so that the edges of the die don't look warped due to the subdivision. You can use face loop cut again for that and add extra lines in the middle of the gap segments.
File:DieAnotherWayE3.png

[edit] Edit Mode HotKeys Review

[edit] Edit Mode HotKeys

The Period Key

• .KEY (on the number pad) - centers the view around the current selection or active object.
• .KEY (on the alphanumeric pad) - changes the pivot point to the 3D cursor. The pivot point is the point where all things meet when scaled to 0, and the point of 0 translation during a rotation transformation. See the menu on the 3D view header, located immediately to the right of the Viewport Shading menu.

The Comma Key

• ,KEY - changes the pivot point to the bounding box center.

A

• AKEY - Toggles between selecting all or selecting none.
• ALT+AKEY - changes the current Blender window to Animation Playback mode. The cursor changes to a counter.
• ALT+SHIFT+AKEY - the current window, plus all 3DWindows go into Animation Playback mode.
• SHIFT+AKEY - brings up the toolbox.

B

• BKEY - Activates box-select tool.
• BKEY+BKEY - Circle Select. If you press BKEY a second time after starting Border Select, Circle Select is invoked. Use NUM+ or NUM- or MW to adjust the circle size. Leave Circle Select with RMB or ESC.
• ALT+BKEY - Select portion of viewing area to only be visible.

C

• CKEY - Centers the 3D View where the 3D cursor currently is.
• SHIFT+CKEY - snap the 3D cursor back to the origin

D

• DKEY - Brings up a Draw Type menu.
• SHIFT-DKEY - Duplicates an object

E

• EKEY - Extrude selection

F

• FKEY - creates segment/edge/face. If two vertices are selected, create an edge connecting the two vertices. If three or four vertices are selected, or two edges are selected, create a face connecting the vertices or edges. If two co-planar faces are selected, join the faces to create an FGon, or dismantle a previously created FGon.
• ALT+FKEY - Beauty Fill. The edges of all the selected triangular faces are switched in such a way that equally sized faces are formed. This operation is 2D; various layers of polygons must be filled in succession. The Beauty Fill can be performed immediately after a Fill.
• CTRL+FKEY - Flip faces, selected triangular faces are paired and common edge of each pair swapped.
• SHIFT+FKEY - Fill selected. All selected vertices that are bound by edges and form a closed polygon are filled with triangular faces. Holes are automatically taken into account. This operation is 2D; various layers of polygons must be filled in succession.

G

• GKEY - "Grabs" the current selection and allows you to move it around with the mouse. Use LMB, ENTER, or SPACE to drop it in place. Use RMB or ESC to cancel the move.
• GKEY XKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its Z and Y position. In this mode it will only move along the global X axis.
• GKEY XKEY XKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its Z and Y position on the local axis. In this mode the selection will only move along the local X axis.
• GKEY YKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its Z and X position. In this mode it will only move along the global Y axis.
• GKEY YKEY YKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its Z and X position on the local axis. In this mode the selection will only move along the local Y axis.
• GKEY ZKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its X and Y position. In this mode it will only move along the global Z axis.
• GKEY ZKEY ZKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its X and Y position on the local axis. In this mode the selection will only move along the local Z axis.

H

• HKEY - Hides the currently selected vertices, edges and faces. They will be hidden only while in Edit Mode.
• ALT-HKEY - Unhides vertices, edges, and faces that were previously hidden. Vertices, edges, and faces that are unhidden will be added to the current selection.

I

• IKEY - inserts a "key". Keys are used for animation.

J

• ALT+JKEY - converts triangular faces to quads.

K

• SHIFT+KKEY - knife tool.

L

• LKEY - Select connected vertices under mouse pointer. (by Noob Lucio Renovato)

M

• MKEY - Brings up Mirror Axis menu.
• ALT+MKEY - Merge selected points.

N

• NKEY - brings up a Transform Properties mini window.

O

• OKEY - toggles proportional edit mode

P

• Enter the Blender Game Engine

Q

• QKEY - prompts if you would like to quit the Blender.

R

• RKEY - allows rotation of the selection. Move the mouse after pressing RKEY to rotate it. Press LMB, SPACE, or ENTER to confirm the rotation. Press ESC or RMB to cancel the rotation.

S

• SKEY - begins scaling (resizing) of the selection. Move the mouse to scale larger or smaller. Press LMB, ENTER, or SPACE to confirm the scaling. Press RMB or ESC to cancel the scaling.

T

U

• UKEY - Opens UV Unwrap Menu
• SHIFT+UKEY - N/A

V

• VKEY - Rip - for example, select one edge of a cube, and press VKEY to separate and drag it away from the edges it's attached to.

W

• WKEY - Boolean Tools menu in Object mode. Specials Menu in Edit mode.

X

• XKEY - delete the selection.

Y

• CTRL+YKEY - redo previously undone edit

Z

• ZKEY - Toggles between drawing the scene in wireframe and solid mode.
• CTRL+ZKEY - undo last edit
• SHIFT+CTRL+ZKEY - redo previously undone edit

TAB

• TAB - toggles in and out of Edit Mode of the selected, active object.

F1-F10

• Nothing Really

F11

• F11 - Shows/hides the window with the last render.

F12

• F12 - begins a single frame render based on the Scene settings in the Buttons Window.

LMB

• LMB - places 3D cursor where you click
• CTRL+LMB - places a copy of what is selected at the place clicked.
  • if a single vertex is selected or vertexes on a non-enclosed object are selected, a copy will be created and will be joined to any previously selected vertices by an edge, or edges.
  • if an enclosed mesh (a cube, etc.) is selected, an unconnected copy will be created under the cursor.

RMB

• RMB - selects vertex, edge or face, depending on select mode.

[edit] Object Mode HotKeys Review

[edit] Object Mode HotKeys

The Period Key

• .KEY (on the number pad) - centers the view around the current selection or active object.
• .KEY (on the alphanumeric pad) - changes the pivot point to the 3D cursor. The pivot point is the point where all things meet when scaled to 0, and the point of 0 translation during a rotation transformation. See the menu on the 3D view header, located immediately to the right of the Viewport Shading menu.

The Comma Key

• ,KEY - changes the pivot point to the bounding box center.

A

• AKEY - Toggles between selecting all or selecting none.
• ALT+AKEY - changes the current Blender window to Animation Playback mode. The cursor changes to a counter.
• ALT+SHIFT+AKEY - the current window, plus all 3DWindows go into Animation Playback mode.
• SHIFT+AKEY - brings up the toolbox.
• CTRL+AKEY - prompts to "Apply Changes." Size and rotation changes to the model object become permanent.
• CTRL+SHIFT+AKEY - prompts to convert dupliverted objects to real objects.

B

• BKEY - Activates box-select tool.

C

• CKEY - Centers the 3D View where the 3D cursor currently is.
• ALT+CKEY - brings up the convert menu.

D

• DKEY - Brings up a Draw Type menu.

E

• ALT+EKEY - Start/stop EditMode. Alternative hotkey: TAB.

F

• FKEY - In the 3D View, switches to UV Face Select Mode if selected object is a mesh. Pressing FKEY again will bring you back to Object Mode.
• CTRL+FKEY - Sort Faces. The faces of the active Mesh Object are sorted, based on the current view in the 3DWindow. The leftmost face first, the rightmost last. The sequence of faces is important for the Build Effect (AnimButtons).

G

• GKEY - "Grabs" the current selection and allows you to move it around with the mouse. Use LMB, ENTER, or SPACE to drop it in place. Use RMB or ESC to cancel the move.
• GKEY XKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its Z and Y position. In this mode it will only move along the global X axis.
• GKEY XKEY XKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its Z and Y position on the local axis. In this mode the selection will only move along the local X axis.
• GKEY YKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its Z and X position. In this mode it will only move along the global Y axis.
• GKEY YKEY YKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its Z and X position on the local axis. In this mode the selection will only move along the local Y axis.
• GKEY ZKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its X and Y position. In this mode it will only move along the global Z axis.
• GKEY ZKEY ZKEY - Grabs the selection and locks its X and Y position on the local axis. In this mode the selection will only move along the local Z axis.

H I

• IKEY - inserts a "key". Keys are used for animation.

J K L M

• MKEY - move selection to a different layer.

N

• NKEY - brings up a Transform Properties mini window.

O P

• PKEY - starts the game engine.

Q

• QKEY - prompts if you would like to quit the Blender.

R

• RKEY - allows rotation of the selection. Move the mouse after pressing RKEY to rotate it. Press LMB, SPACE, or ENTER to confirm the rotation. Press ESC or RMB to cancel the rotation.

S

• SKEY - begins scaling (resizing) of the selection. Move the mouse to scale larger or smaller. Press LMB, ENTER, or SPACE to confirm the scaling. Press RMB or ESC to cancel the scaling.

T

• TKEY - brings up a Texture Space menu. Allows translation and scaling the Texture.

U

• UKEY - brings up Make Single User menu.
• ALT+UKEY - opens undo history menu.

V

• VKEY - enters Vertex Paint Mode. Pressing VKEY again will switch back to Object Mode.

W

• WKEY - Brings up Boolean menu. Choose Intersect, Union or Difference.

X

• XKEY - delete the selection.

Y Z

• ZKEY - Toggles between drawing the scene in wireframe and solid mode.
• CTRL+ZKEY - UNDO Note: If Blender claims there are no more steps to undo, hit tab to switch to object mode and try again.

TAB

• TAB - toggles in and out of Edit Mode of the selected, active object.

F1-F11 F12

• F12 - begins a single frame render based on the Scene settings in the Buttons Window.

[edit] Curve and Path Modeling

Frighteningly enough, we know what you're thinking. You're thinking that mesh modeling is cool and all, but what about if you want to make an object that has smooth curves in it? Ok, so maybe you weren't thinking that, but in case you're curious move on to the next page to learn more.

[edit] 2D Image (logo) to a 3D Model

[edit] Using Bezier Curve to Model a 3D logo from a 2D logo

{Construction on hold, feel free to complete}

The image to the left is used in this tutorial. However, the tutorial is easier to follow using letter/numbers, or simple shapes/curves. Basically we will be using the graphic as a template for a 3d logo, tracing it, then discarding the 2d image.

[edit] Set up

You need a 2D logo similar to mine (preferably in JPEG format as Blender understands jpegs fairly well). If you haven't already done so, open blender and select one of the orthogonal view angles by pressing NUM7, NUM3, or NUM1.. At the bottom of the 3D viewport on the left, there are some menus, click View-->Background Image

A small window will appear containing just one button marked use background image; click this button. A few more buttons will appear. One of them says image: and has a small button with a picture of a folder on it; click this button. You are now presented with a file selection screen. Using the navigation techniques from the previous tutorials, find your 2D jpeg image on your computer, click the file in the list once then click the Select Image button at the top right of the screen.

Blender now displays this image in the background of the 3D view for you to trace its outline. The image is only displayed in orthogonal view. If perspective view is enabled, toggle to orthogonal view by pressing NUM5. The image will not be rendered as it is not part of your scene.

Once a background is selected you'll have a dialog like this one. (Note: This tutorial was originally generated from Blender v2.37. v2.43 has been added - older versions may differ.) The background dialog buttons are described below:

The is a toggle button that turns display of the image on or off. Turning the button off will not clear the settings; it just hides the image. When you turn the button on again, your previous settings are back. Try it - click the button a few times. In v2.43 the equivalent button is the button.

Image selection is controlled on the row labeled . There are 2 buttons, a text box, and a final button. The first button is used for browsing for an image. The 2nd button is for selecting an image from a history list. (This will be empty for the first time. Selecting it now will display the image you currently have selected.) The text box allows typing in the file directly. The button removes the current background image. Version 2.43 is the same with the addition of the button that refreshes the image or movie, and the button which shows the number of users of the image block.

The third row is called Texture and will not be used for this tutorial.

The fourth line, labeled blend controls the transparency of the background image with a slider. A setting of 0 is completely solid and 1 is completely transparent. You can adjust it by clicking left or right of the knob for gradual changes, clicking and dragging on the slider for rough settings or clicking directly on the blend text for numeric entry.

The use of the blend function will become obvious once we start tracing our logo. For now, play around with it, see how it changes the image, and put it back to the 0.500 default.

The fifth line, size, controls the size of the image. This size setting is independent of the zoom for the 3D view window. To see how the size works move the default cube off to the side so that you can see both the cube, the background dialog and the background image. Now watch both the cube and image as you change the size. Notice how the image changes size but the cube doesn't? Now press NUM+ and NUM- to change the view's zoom. Now both the cube and image change size.

The final row controls the X and Y offset for the image. These controls move the image up and down (Y) or left and right (X). These settings can be useful if you need to reposition the image from the default position. Like the size, these offset values are independent of the view. As you change the offset values the cube you added earlier won't move. Now scroll the view using by clicking and dragging the SHIFT MMB and notice how the cube and image move together?

Once you start tracing the image you won't be using the size or offset setting. Delete the cube (select it, press XKEY and select All from the Erase menu), and set the size so that the entire image is viewable. Then set both the X and Y offsets to 0. Finally minimize the Background Image dialog. You'll only need it to adjust the blend setting until you finish tracing.

[edit] Introducing the Bezier Curve

The Bezier Curve allows drawing graceful, complex curves and only requires a few control points. Specifically, it only requires 4 points for a curve. Two end points and two control points.

For the moment set the blend to 1 on the Background Image dialog. With the center of the 3D view still selected, press SPACE -> Add -> Curve -> Bezier Curve. Alternatively you can use the Add menu at the top of the screen or press SHIFT -> AKEY to jump directly to the add menu. You should now have something like this:

Unlike the traditional Bezier Curve each Bezier vertex has 3 points. I've labeled the 3 points for the left vector: A, B and C.

Point A is an end point. The curve will always go through this point. Points B and C are control points. These points influence the path of the curve as it leaves Point A. Because the path stops at A, Point B has no real effect on the path. Instead B is currently locked with C. (If you move either B or C, the other will move.) We will fix Point B to move independently a little later.

The control points have 2 effects on the path exiting the end point: direction and distance (these are termed slope and magnitude in math circles) from Point A. The direction will provide the direction that the path will follow when it leaves A and the distance will determine how long the path follows that direction before it starts making its way to the curve's next point.

The example to the left shows how the control points influence the path of the curve. In the top picture, we see three curves. The top curve is the default curve. In the next curve down, C has been moved to give a drastically different direction. Notice how the path leaving A moves away from the other end point. The third curve, the distance was changed dramatically. Watch the path move much higher than the other two curves.

In the bottom example, I've built a heart shape using just the points shown. Dragging the bottom end point down will make the shape closer to a leaf. You'll be able to do the same at the end of this tutorial. Go ahead move around the points for the curve and see how they all interact. Get a good feel working with the curve and when you're ready we'll move on to tracing.

Now that you know how to work with a bezier curve set blend back to 0.5 on the Background Image dialog so we can start tracing.

[edit] Rough Tracing

The first step in tracing is to click the Polygon convert button on the curve tools panel. You'll find this in button on the Buttons Window. You may need to select the Edit Panel. Press F9 if this panel isn't visible. If you don't already have a curve add one now. It will help to move the curve to the center of the yellow lightening bolt if you must add a new one.

User's Note: The 'Curve Tool' panel will not appear if you don't have a bezier curve already placed. I learned this the hard way.

Next, move the vertices of the curve to the points shown in the image to the left. This is called Rough Tracing because you don't need to exactly trace the image. You only need to approximate the image. Moving the vertices should be done using the instructions from the Creating a Simple Hat tutorial.

Note: Selecting the best place to put a vertex is a bit of an art that you'll acquire as you work with curves. For now follow the arrows along the cutouts and place each of the vertices as shown.

This tracing uses all the vertices of the polygon. Other cases, you'll need add or remove extra vertices. Adding and removing vertices as shown in Turning a Cube into a Puppy tutorial (Note: To add a vertex select the end point of your curve press CTRL and click LMB. At the place you clicked a new vertex will appear connected to your curve.).

After moving the last vertex, we finish the rough tracing by pressing the CKEY to close the polygon. You should see an image similar to the one on the right. (If you only have an outline switch your view port shading to solid by pressing the ZKEY for now.) Notice how the polygon doesn't cover all of the yellow of the bolt and how in some places the polygon fails to conform to the shape of the bolt. This is expected and should not be a cause for concern. We correct this in the next section.

Once you've finished several logos you should begin to get a feel for the required placement of vertices. Until then, here are some general guidelines to keep in mind:

• A gradual curve may only require a single vertex.
• Tight curves will likely require two closely placed vertices.
• Curves may not require a vertex at all - you can define some curves using the control points of the adjacent vertices. We did this for both of the inside curves of the bolt above.
• Corners require a single vertex placed where the curve bends. A square, for instance, requires four vertices - one at each corner - to be modeled properly.
• The end point of a curve will always be on the curve. So should all of the vertices you place.

We are now ready to move onto the next step modeling the logo. Press ZKEY to return to wire frame mode and prepare for the next step.

[edit] Polishing the Tracing

First, press the Bezier convert button to convert the polygon back to a curve. This will convert your polygon back into a curve. Nothing obvious will happen. If you look close, you should notice the number of points on the curve tripled. When you converted the curve back to a Bezier curve, Blender changed all of the polygon vertices to Bezier vertices. While the polygon vertex is a single point the Bezier vertex is made of an end point and 2 control points. So the extra points are the control points of the Bezier vertices. These control points are placed along the curve to produce the same shape as the converted polygon.

Our job is to move the control and end points so that the curve follows the edge of the bolt. The trick is to move the 2 control points between adjacent end points to bend the curve to the edge of bolt. First, move the right control point of the top-left vertex. This should pull the curve from its end point to more closely match the line of our bolt. After placing this point, we move to the next control point following a clockwise direction around the bolt. Use the RMB to select the point you want to change and move it with GKEY to place it.

As you move the second point notice how the curve exiting the first end point is drawn away from the edge of the bolt being traced. We now have to adjust the first control point again to get that line back on track. This quickly turns into a balancing act adjusting each set of control points. The trick is to make smaller movements for each iteration of adjustments. Make a game of it and move the control points all along the bolt. Always move along the clockwise direction. This practice is not just for consistency, it keeps your place and ensures that moving a control point doesn't change a portion of the curve that you've already completed. In time you learn to move the first point only part of the way. Then moving the second brings the curve for the first into correct alignment.

If you have some trouble aligning the curve to the edge of the bolt, consider adding a new point. There are two (at least) ways to accomplish this:

• Select 2 points that surround the problem spot where you want a new vertex and click the Subdivide button on the Curve Tools 1 tool panel.
• If near an end point, Select it, press the CKEY to open the curve, then Control+LMB click to add a new point beyond the end of the selected final vertex. Press the CKEY to reclose the curve.

The new end point should be positioned and then you have to adjust the curve on both sides of the end point you move. Any time you move an end point be sure that the curve going into both adjacent (clockwise and counter-clockwise) end points still aligns with the edge of the bolt.

Once you've made the complete circuit around the bolt, you're ready for the final polishing of the edge of the curve. Press the TAB to switch to the object mode. This makes the polishing easier as Blender hides the points and lines for editing the curve. Now zoom in on the bolt's edge using the NUM+ or Control+LMB drag. Use Shift+MMB drag the screen so that you closely observe the entire edge of the bolt while zoomed in closely. Look for places where the curve pulls away from the edge. Also look for sharp bends at each of the end points that should be smooth. You can see several defects that I found in my project after tracing the bolt. Switch back into edit mode to fix the curve and then go back into object mode to look for more defects.

Sharp end points are adjusted by decreasing the angle between end point and the control points. For Blender specific case that I know of, sharp points have a tendency to show to the side of the end point. This typically requires adding a new vertex between the two end points to smooth out the curve. Places where the curve pulls away from the edge can be resolved by moving the control point closer to the edge. In the above image the curve was found to have been pulled away from the edge. This was fixed by moving the control point a little to the left.

Here's the final polished curve for my project. It is shown in both edit mode and object mode so you can clearly see both the control and end points on the left and the curve to the right.

Note: If you have never worked with Bezier curves before, try it with a 2D paint program such as Inkscape or Paint Shop Pro. It might be quicker and easier to learn proper placement of control points in a program where drawing the curves is quick and simple.

Helpful Tip: In blender 2.37 and later (not sure of earlier versions) pressing the HKEY toggles the control points between free and aligned (Edit Mode). Free Control Points are good for sharp angles, and aligned are good for smooth curves. This shortcut is in the Space>Edit>Control Points menu.

This concludes the tracing of the bolt. All that remains is making the curve 3 dimensional, applying a material and positioning the final object. Before doing that, we will trace the circle in the next part of the tutorial. Save this project if you want to take a break before continuing. You'll need it on the next turorial.

[edit] Adding a Third Dimension

First, give the object some depth. Leave editmode, go to the editbuttons screen, and under the "Curve and Surface" tab, set the following values:

(*Make sure the Front and Back buttons under the "Curve and Surface" tab are selected, otherwise the logo will be a solid outline lacking a face on the front and back.*)

Extrude: 0.2 (the height of the extrusion on either side)

Bevel Depth: 0.02 (the radius of the round bevel applied to the exruded edge)

BevResol: 4 (the number of subdivisions on the bevel curve)

(Note: In previous versions, Extrude and Bevel Depth were Ext1 and Ext2.)

Also, if you have a simple logo go ahead and increase the DefResolU value to 25. If you have an extremely complicated image this is totally overboard but looks nice when you are just tracing text or numbers.

Now you can use your knowledge from earlier in this book to change the material and/or add texture to your logo. Feel free to rotate, add lighting, or whatever floats your boat. Don't forget to press ZKEY to toggle wireframe mode.

-=< Tutorial under Construction, ready soon, thanks for input spiderworm >=-

[edit] Continue tutorial using bezier curves

- This continues the tutorial, finishing up the sample logo from the image in the tutorial using bezier curves. These instructions make the assumption that you completed the first part in front view with NUM1. An alternative method for doing this using mesh circles has been presented below.

First, to make the lightning bolt distinct from the second part of the logo, it may help to apply a yellow material to it before getting started.

[edit] Adding the circle

Switch to object mode by hitting TAB if you aren't already there. Press space -> Add -> Curve -> Bezier Circle to add a closed bezier curve with four points forming a circle. If you are in solid draw type, switch to wireframe with ZKEY so you can see the underlying image better. Hit SKEY to scale the bezier circle to fit over the circle in the image. You will probably find that the bezier circle is not dead center on the sample logo so you will need to move it with GKEY to center it. You may need to scale it and move it several times to get it right. You will also find that the circle in the sample image is actually a slight oval, so scale and position the bezier circle so that it touches the circle in the image on the left and right sides. Normally, you could then scale the circle and constrain it on the z axis by hitting SKEY then ZKEY, but it turns out that the oval isn't regular anyway, so just select the point on the top and hit GKEY then ZKEY to move it down until it touches the top of the oval in the image. Then do the same for the bottom point and you should have a pretty good fit.

Just to understand what's happening in the next steps, switch to solid view with ZKEY. As you can see, you now have a circle, but it's filled in the middle where you want to be able to see through it. To cut a hole out of the circle, hit space -> Add -> Bezier Circle while you still have it selected in edit mode. A new circle will appear inside the larger circle. As you should be able to see in solid mode, the new circle actually cuts its shape out of the larger circle surrounding it. Switch to wireframe mode with ZKEY so that you can see the underlying image again. Scale up the smaller circle so that it approximately fits the inner part of the circle in the image. Don't worry about getting it exact since you'll be manually moving all four points anyway. Move the bottom point of the bezier circle to the top left corner of the bar that crosses the circle.

Move the right point of the circle to the other corner. When you create a Bezier Circle, Blender by default sets the alignment of all the control points to aligned. To make the diagonal bottom edge you need to break the alignment on the two lower sets of control points. Hitting the HKEY will toggle between free control points and aligned. Once you've selected the two lower bezier points and hit the HKEY to make them free you can move each of the inner control points to create a nice straight edge.

Then move the other two points and adjust their control points until you have a pretty good approximation of the rest of the inside curve. Next step is to press space -> Add -> Bezier Circle again and repeat the same steps, but for the lower opening in the logo. Once you've completed both openings, switch back to solid view with ZKEY and examine your work. Make any adjustments you need to swithing the draw type back and forth as needed.

The next step is to make this part three dimensional like you did with the lightning bolt. Go to object mode with TAB, then select the editing buttons. Under curve and surface, set Extrude/Ext1 to 0.2, Bevel Depth/Ext2 to 0.02 and BevResol to 4. You can also set DefResolU to 25 as suggested for the lightning bolt. Looking at the results, the bevel effect may not be enough, so try increasing Bevel Depth/Ext2 to something like 0.15. That should look better, but there will be a problem. Switch back to wireframe mode with ZKEY and you'll see that the bevel has widened everything so that the circle no longer matches the original image. This can be fixed fairly easily by reducing the width parameter under curve and surface until it fits again.

For final steps, select the lightning bolt again and switch into sideview with NUM3 and hit GKEY and then YKEY to move the bolt backwards. Move the bolt back so it no longer intersects with the circle and bar. Apply a red material to the circle and bar portion. Finally, you can go to view, then to background image and hit the background image button to hid the image now that it is no longer needed. At this point, you can add any finishing touches for lighting and camera angles and render the logo.

[Noob Note: I'm new to Blender but have been dealing with bezier's for a long time, and this method of creating the slashed circle seems excessively complicated (whereas the other alternative presented bypasses the point of using curves altogether). The inside of the circle is just 2 half circles cut out from the original larger circle and would only need 2 points to draw out (for each half). Here's what I did.

Another noob note: I found that instead of doing all of this, just insert the inner circle, rotate by 45 degrees, and scale and grab along y and x axis and you will have a much better looking circle

After placing the large circle as instructed above, add a Bezier curve space -> Add -> Curve -> Bezier Curve.

Select the individual points and use to move them to the ends of the half circle. grab the control points and pull it up and away from the actual vertex points until the shape of the curve fits the image.

Select the vertex points again and hit HKey to change the control points to Free mode.

Now adjust the remaining two control points so they are pointed right at each other (so it will draw a straight line when we close the shape). Then CKey to close the shape and there is a Bezier half circle.]

note added 12/08..... all these methods produce something that is "LIKE" the logo jpg but all end up different. Look at the picture..THE TOP PART OF THE LIGHTNING BOLD IS ON TOP OF THE RED CIRCLE... only the body and bottom tip of the lightning bolt are underneath it. The lightning bolt must be rotated on the x axis to correctly finish the logo.

[edit] Johnos Addition (the tutorial on the next page does this too)

- The following tutorial assumes that you were creating a logo from the one above, and that you are willing to listen to an idiot. :-)

I am new to Blender3D but I will try to finish this tutorial, and leave you with this:

[edit] Adding The Circle

OK, what you have so far is a lightning bolt, which is great. It's also nice and rounded which is even better. However, what we are missing at the moment is the outside circle. This is probably not the best way of doing it, but it is one way. Instead of using the Bezier Curve, I am using Circles.

Here are two ways of doing this:
Easy way:
Place two vertices (CTRL+LMB), one on the inner circle and one on the outer circle so that they form a line. This line has to be perpendicular to the circle you are tracing. Then place the cursor on the middle of the circle. Then just use the spin tool under the Mesh tools tab (360 degrees and 32 steps). This creates a circle made of 32 adjacent squares. Give it more steps to increase the quality of the circle.

Detailed way:
Go to the top view (NUM7), and press SPACE -> Mesh -> Circle. Accept the 32 vertices, you can make it less but it won't look as good.

Move it into the center of the circle, if you don't then I advise you have wireframe on for the moment (press Z). Then press S, for scale, and make it the correct size for the inside of the circle. Once you have that in the correct place, like so:

You may notice that I needed to stretch it sideways a little; you will too. OK, press 'E' to extrude (choose Only Edges), press 'S' to scale and another sized circle will appear, size this appropriately then click LMB.

If you don't read this carefully, then you may not get the wanted end result. Deselect the second circle, then select four vertices that are near each other and that form a square.

Once you have that, press F and a face will appear, i.e. the box will be filled (turn off Wireframe, press z). Now do this right around the circle. To do this, hold down Shift and Ctrl, then draw a circle around the two vertices you wish to deselect with the Left Mouse Button. Then draw a circle around the next two vertices while holding down Ctrl and LMB, NOT SHIFT. Shift changes the control from selecting, to deselecting. This might take a while, sorry. Once you have got right around the circle it's time to make the line through the middle... this is easy!

To make the crossing line however, you need to move 4 of the vertices slightly; example below:

Once you do this, highlight the 4 you moved, then press F.

Making the circle 3D

Highlight the full circle by pressing A either once or twice. Go to Side View, and press E for extrude and drag it down so that it is the same thickness as the lightning bolt (you'll see why). Now this bit is purely for art's sake, you won't probably learn anything here but it's good practice.

Now look at what you have made... it looks nice enough but where the lightening bolt goes through the circle it looks a bit odd so we will make it look like the circle is lying on top of the bolt. Where the bolt goes through the circle, note the edges and the vertices. Move them so that the lines are just either side of where the bolt goes through. Then make new edges using CTRL+R on the outsides of these edges. Like so:

Now you have squares where the lightning bolt hits the circle. Change to Wireframe (z) if you are not already in it then highlight the 16 vertices of these boxes and raise them. Now do the same for where the center line crosses the bolt but create 4 lines instead of two. To explain why, I've done a diagram.

Now we can make the finishing touches, add subsurf and set it to 2 or 3 and add color! Then you are done :-) I won't go over subsurf and adding color because people have covered that better than I could in previous 'Noob to Pro' pages. I think that's everything. I did this and ended up with the first screenshot so I'm sure you will as well. Sorry about any spelling mistakes, and I'm sure I didn't use the easiest methods but I've only been doing this kind of stuff for 3 days :-) Good luck

[edit] Extra Practice

An Alternate More Difficult Tutorial

[edit] Simple Vehicle

The idea of this tutorial is to learn to face a complex project. A vehicle is a nice object to use to test yourself and find new problems.

First, we must understand that a project does not reproduce the real world; a project shows an idea or thought and will result in a final image or video. Whatever does not appear in the final result is unnecessary to include in the model.

What vehicle should we make? Let's go with the classic jeep. This will allow for a lot of doodads.

Let's decide what objects of the jeep model will need to be made - body, wheels, seats, and a rocket launcher for good measure. Objects we can ignore include the engine, which remains hidden under the hood. There are many additional objects you can make such as seats and steering wheel to customize your jeep.

[edit] Modeling a picture

[edit] Modeling a picture

Ever seen an awesome looking picture you wanted to turn into a 3D model? Like a logo or a symbol? Well, it's actually pretty easy... it just takes some time to do.

• First off, you're going to need a picture to trace. I'm currently doing a project for a friend to do with devils and demons, so I chose a demonic looking face for this tutorial: Demonic Face

• Now open Blender and start a new project. Delete the default cube. Before you start tracing the face, you need to set the face as the background image. To do this, click 'view', then 'Background Image'. A box should pop up with only one button in it (Use Background Image), click it. Now some settings appear, we're only interested in one of them for this tutorial. Click the small button with a picture of a miniature folder on it (it looks kind of like a feather pen). It's the first one under the Use Background Image button. From there, select the picture you want to trace. Like this: Background Selection

• OK, now for the long part. Zoom in to the new background image just a little bit. Now, add a Bezier curve, and size it down a little. Hit F9 and, in Curve Tools, find and click the Poly button. Now there should be a few more vertices to work with and the curve should be just a bunch of joined lines. Select one point at a time and using the GKEY move it to a point along the background image(or face in this case). Do the same for all of the rest of the vertices, making sure you only have one vertex selected at a time or you'll move more than just the vertex you want to. Once this is done, select one of the end vertices of the curve (it doesn't matter which end) and use SHIFT+DKEY to copy that vertex. Move the newly copied vertex to a point along the edge of the face a small ways away from the vertex you copied it from. Continue doing this until you have a complete outline (of the whole face or just one part, like the ear). Here's what it should look like (I did the left ear): Tracing. You can't see it in the picture, but six of the points on the right side of the ear are connected, while the rest aren't. In order to get the effect we're looking for here, we need to connect all of the points around the edge to make an outline (make sure not to connect the points across the picture or you'll have a messed up outline).

(user note: hitting CTRL-LMB instead of SHIFT-DKEY will add a vertex that is already connected.)

• To get the outline for the whole face, just do the exact same thing around all of the edges. We still have a problem though: most of the points aren't joined by a line, so all we have is a bunch of dots. This is easily solvable. Using the BKEY or the right click of the mouse, we select a bunch of vertices at a time (somewhere between 5 and 10), and hit the FKEY a few times. Every time you hit the FKEY it should connect two of the points. Do this until all of the selected points are connected, then deselect them and select another group and use FKEY to join them. Keep doing this until all of your points are connected. To connect the last two points, select all the points and press the CKEY, to close the polygon.

[edit: A better option would be to select a vertex on one of the ends of the whole line, hold down the CTRL and left-click on a certain point on the image. This will create a new vertex, immediately connected to the vertex you selected.]

• Now that we've got the entire face traced (or outlined if you want to call it that), we can make it 3D. Hit F9 again and find the Ext1 and Ext2 properties, shown here: Ext1 & Ext2. Change the values and see what happens. They correspond to the depth of the outline. Try changing them around until you find what looks good. Now, you'll notice that the lines just stick out straight. I'm still investigating how to actually model a head from the outlined face ... so if anyone has any ideas, feel free to add them to this page.

• In order to make it have depth you should make the outline out of mesh points instead of a curve. Add a primitive mesh and delete all the vertices in edit mode, then ctrl click to all point outline. Add depth to the surface in a side view (split views so you can see what you're moving). It helps to have 2 or more reference images, but you can wing it. Usually the final result has to be subsurfed.

(USER EDIT: I accidentally started it with mesh instead of curve. You can do the same thing with extrude, but I have no idea how to go on after that) (USER EDIT LATER: If you subsurf it, it creates a relatively 3D looking image. Its really cool)

(Another user, even later: If you want to turn your curve into a mesh, hit Alt-C while in Object Mode. Note that this is NOT reversible.)

(user edit: You can delete one vertex of a plane, in order to get a line. You may find easier to outline the picture extruding and moving points of the line you created.)

(user edit: you can use this tracing technique to make solid and symmetric models, else, you would really have to use normal modelling)

[edit] Printing a Rendered Image

Render your image. Exit or minimize the "Blender:Render" window. In blender, go to File -> Save Image... Then save your image. Then you can print it as you would print any other picture, using The Gimp, Paint, Microsoft's Photo Editor, or many others.

[edit] Using Bones

Bones are a modeling tool that are especially important for animating characters. Bones allow you to move characters' limbs in a way that is much simpler than trying to re-arrange the vertices every time.

Basically how it works is that a bone will be associated with certain vertices, which will move along with the bone when the position is changed in pose mode. Using bones is fairly simple once you get the hang of it, but, like many things in Blender, can be a little daunting at first sight. Never fear - that's what tutorials are for!

[edit] A model

Bones don't do much on their own - in fact, they turn invisible at render time! So, we'll need a model to use them with. If you haven't already, use an earlier tutorial to create a simple model, and we'll be on our way!

For this tutorial, we're going to use a model with human proportions, but bones can be used with just about any body type. The same idea can be applied to cats, spiders or whatever!

[edit] Laying down bones

Note: This just shows the basics of adding bones to an object. Go to the advanced animation page for a more comprehensive guide on this.

First of all, we'll need a model to put some bones on! For this tutorial, we're going to use a humanoid model. I'm using a quick model that I made based off of the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Modeling a Simple Person first tutorial. It's rather blocky, but this isn't a detailed tutorial. However, you can find a model pre-made just for you here.

Okay, first of all, here's our setup, with Block Dude standing on the plane.

Now, let's put some bones on Block Dude! In Object Mode go to Space Bar -> Add -> Armature.

What we are looking at is an armature. This is a single bone. Now, we need to put the bone in Block Dude! Move and rotate the bone so that it's in the middle of Block Dude's chest. If your bone does not have the correct length, then change the size of the bone by moving one of the ends of the bone : switch to Edit Mode, select one of the ends of the bone, then move it using GKEY (You might be tempted to scale a bone, but this will mess things up). You might need to toggle wireframe mode if you have solid mode enabled - simply press ZKEY to toggle between them.

To create a second bone starting from one of the ends of the first bone, make sure you are in Edit Mode, select the end of the first bone, then press EKEY. The second bone appears, with its start point on the selected end of the first bone. Move the mouse to position the end point, then press LMB, ENTER, or SPACE. Now, extrude (EKEY) and scale the bone as needed to put the bones in his body! Make sure that you are in Edit mode, and click the pink dots at the end of the bone to do things like extrusion. These operate much the same way as vertices, you can extrude, rotate, move, and even subdivide. Your finished result should look something like this:

Now, just to make things easier, we're going to name the bones. For example, my bones are named RT_Forearm, Left_Forearm, RT_Upper_Arm, etc. Select the bone and press F9 to display the Editing panel. In the "Armature Bones" sub-panel click the top left box to edit the name, indicated with a red arrow in the screenshot below. (noob note: when you are naming the bones remember that if you are looking at the person from the front, your left is the person's right. To make the naming easier switch to viewing the person from behind using CTRL+NUM1.)

File:Naming bones.JPG

Now, we need to parent the bones to the mesh. Go back into Object Mode and select Box Dude. Now, select the Armature as well, and press CTRL+PKEY (noob note: the selection order is important in defining which object is the parent, so you cannot select both objects at the same time). A menu will pop up, select Armature, then Create From Bone Heat (Create From Closest Bones before blender 2.46). Select the armature, and enter Pose Mode (CTRL+TAB) (you need to select the armature for this option to appear!). Try moving a bone around. If you've done everything correctly, your mesh should move when you move the bones! If this doesn't happen, scale the bones up so that they fit better in the mesh, and scale up the bones until they do what you want (read comment below on adjusting the bones envelopes if you do not get an effect while moving/rotating the bones). With the bones now, you can put Box Dude into a lot of different positions without moving individual vertices.

Note: Create From Bone Heat creates vertex groups within the parented object that are associated with armature bones. This is done automatically, according to the bones' position and size. Alternatively, choose Name Groups instead of Create From Bone Heat if you don't want Blender to assign groups automatically, and do it manually. To manually change vertex groups go to Edit Mode (Edit Mode, F9, Links and Materials tab) and use the Assign and Remove buttons. 'Assign' adds vertices to the group (without removing any members that are not currently selected) and 'Remove' obviously removes them. Vertices can be assigned to multiple groups.

In response to the previous comment, if the vertices are properly assigned to the bones they will move regardless of whether the bones are inside the cylinder or not (HOW they deform WILL be affected however). I'm guessing that your mistake was creating and (more importantly) parenting the cylinder to the armature while it was outside the cylinder, which caused Blender not to assign vertices to any bones at all. You can check this by editing the cylinder, selecting a vertex group in the Links and Materials tab, and pressing select. This will highlight the vertices associated with the bone. If none are selected, it means none were assigned in the first place - in which case you need to assign them manually as explained above.

If there is no effect, select in Edit or Pose mode that bone (or bones) and choose Envelope display mode (F9 -> Armature -> Envelope), then press Alt+S and increase its area of influence to cover all faces that should be influenced by the bone.

Finally, here's an example of how you can move Box Dude with the bones:

[edit] Materials and Textures

[edit] From Red to Blue and Everything In Between!

Materials and textures are nearly as important to any great 3D Design as the model itself. Without the coloured design, or the vibrant texture, to whom will an animation targeted towards children appeal? How will that "Grassy-Hill Scene" look without the vibrant greens, gentle blues, and dazzling colors reflecting off a clear, shining pond? It would be a fairly boring scene if all your objects were.....gray.

This is why it is very important that you learn to use the Blender 3D Material-Windows as much as possible. The vast scope of functionality and customization that the material system in Blender offers will allow you to create the most dynamic scene possible. The next few tutorials will have you go over the entire spectrum of options in Blender's material system. Once you finish them, the tutorials after that will help you develop your skills and imprint the system into your mind until it is almost second nature.

[edit] Quickie Material

This tutorial was created using Blender v2.49

[edit] Your First Material

If you open the default scene in Blender, the cube has a material already. All material settings are made in the Shading buttons, the basic material settings are done in the Material buttons.

The default material has a simple grey color. It is linked to the Mesh (ME button), not to the object directly. You can see that the mesh has only one material in use, and that you are editing this material (1 Mat 1).

Delete a material

Click the next to MA:Material in the Links and Pipelines panel to delete the link to the datablock. This removes the material from the mesh, removes several tabs from the Button window, and removes a lot of information from the Material panel and replaces it with an Add New button. You could click that to create a new material, but what we want to do is reapply the old material to it.

Apply an existing material

Click the button that looks like this:. You'll see a drop-down list and you want to choose "Material". This nifty drop-down will list all of the materials you've created thus far and let you apply them to any mesh or object in the scene. Choose the one called "O Material" (which is the same material that was originally on the cube). The "0" in front shows that zero users are using this material.

Note: Unused materials in the Material List (those with a 0 in front of them) are deleted once a Blend project is saved and reopened. Hence, if you wish to delete a material from the Material List... save and re-open the project.

[edit] Meaningful Names

"Material" isn't a very creative name for a material. What is worse than the lack of creativity is the difficulty of finding a specific material in a large scene using dozens of materials with names like "Material.001, 002, 003 ...". There are a couple of different ways to rename the link to a material.

1. Press the automatic name button that looks like a little car . This will automatically give your material the name of the color currently assigned to it. For example: if the color of the material is currently grey, which is the default color, the word grey will appear in the material name space. If you have changed the color, the name of your chosen color will appear. This is a quick option for when you don't have time to give the material a unique name.
2. Press LMB over the material name, and the existing name will be highlighted. You can now type a new name for the material, or Press LMB again to place the text cursor and add to the existing name. Rename the material to "Green Ooze".

Note:Your materials will be much easier to find, and manage later when you give them brief, descriptive names you can recognize at a glance.

[edit] Setting the Color

Obviously, just changing the name of the material doesn't make the material green. We have to do some work on it still.

• You set a color with the RGB color sliders (Img. 2a).
• You can also LMB click on the number and type in the value directly.

• The most comfortable way to change the color is to LMB click on the color itself (Img. 2b), where you get a full fledged color selection panel including a sample Pipette to choose colors from any Blender window, including the rendering window (Img. 2c, 5).

• Set the R value to 0.149, the G value to 1.000, and the B value to 0.446.

R, G and B of course stand for red, green and blue respectively. By mixing these values, any color can be achieved. The Col value is the basic color of the material. Spec(ularity) is the faked reflection of a light source (like a lamp bulb) on an object. Mir is the mirror color for true reflections.

Physically most materials don't change the color of reflected light, so Spec and Mir may normally be left at their default values (white). A notable and important exception is metals. They do change the color of reflected light. We're not doing a physics course here, so we're going to set the Spec color to what we like.

• Click the button marked Spec.

The color dialog can now be used to adjust the specular color. Keep your eyes on the Preview of the material and start messing with the R, G, and B sliders.

• Set the specular color to R = 0.640, G = 0.990, and B = 0.566.

With this value we should be able to get a good ooze down the road. The colour preview and settings should now look similar to this:

There are a lot of other material buttons. We will discuss some of them eventually. For examples on how to achieve a certain effect see Every Material Known to Man.

• Keep this file open and go to the next tutorial, where we will perfect the ooze.

[edit] Multiple Materials

How to Assign A Different Material To Each Face Of A Cube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCYViRJFf5w

[edit] Quickie Texture

This tutorial was created using Blender v2.49

Textures are laid on top of materials to give them complicated colors and other effects. An object is covered with a material, which might contain several textures: An image texture of stone, a texture to make the stone look bumpy, and a texture to make the stone deform in different ways. This tutorial uses the file from the previous tutorial. If you didn't do it before, go back and do it now.

A texture may be an image or a computed function. What the texture does and how it is mapped onto your object is set in the material buttons. Some commonly used texture types are shown on the page Using Textures.

[edit] Adding a texture

The file we're working with has a texture already, but if you add a new material to an object, it hasn't got a texture by default. Then add a texture:

• In the Texture panel of the Material buttons click on Add New to add a new texture, or select an existing one with the Drop-Down button.
• Select the Texture Buttons with the spotty square icon (or by pressing F6).
• Select the texture type Clouds from the drop-down list. You can also change the texture's name, as we have done for the material.

A preview appears, as well as some parameters to experiment with. A Clouds texture provides some irregularities.

• Head back to the Material Buttons (Click the red sphere or press F5) and a colored preview of the texture appears. It is purple! All new textures default to this colour.

On the right hand side of the material buttons window there are three tabs: Texture, Map Input, and Map To. Since we want to change a material property that is affected by the texture we have to look at the Map To tab. This means: map the value that a texture provides to a material property. A texture may provide different values:

1. RGB color (all images, Magic, every texture with a colorband)
2. Intensity, either as grey scale or/and an alpha value (most of the procedural textures, image textures with alpha, textures with a colorband)
3. Normal values (Stucci, normal maps)

If you want to use textures you always have to be aware of the value a texture provides and the Map To settings for the material.

• Select the Map To panel.

The activated Col button in the top row shows that the texture affects the color of the material. A Clouds texture provides an intensity value, ranging from 0 (where the texture is black) to 1 (where the texture is white).

The RGB (Red, Green, Blue) sliders here adjust the target color of the texture. This is mixed (Mix) with the material color, where the intensity of the Clouds texture is 1 only the target color is used, where the intensity of the Clouds texture is 0, only the material color is used.

• Set the target color to black.

Procedural textures are not shown in the 3D window (only if you would use excessive amounts of vertices), even if you use GLSL materials. This means that we have to render the image to see the texture properly.

• Render the image (F12), or use the preview to judge the result of the texture.

Next we will add a Stucci texture to make our clouds look bumpy.

[edit] Adding a Stucci texture

• Go back to the Texture Buttons and select the next texture channel (one of the blank buttons under "NewCloudTexture").
• Add a new texture here and set the type to Stucci.
• Back to the Material Buttons, and click the "Map To" tab.
• Turn Col off and Nor on.

Col means the texture affects the colour. Nor means it affects the rendered normal, i.e. the angle the renderer treats the surface as - creating fake shadows on the surface.

• Play with the Nor slider, but leave it on about 4.

Render to see the effect. A texture changing the surface normal is called a "Bump" map or "Normal" map. Since that is fake 3D, you don't see it under every circumstance, you will get a greater effect on smoothly curved surfaces with high specularity, only a little or no effect on flat surfaces with low specularity.

[edit] Procedural Textures

Procedural Textures

Texturing objects can be broken down into two categories: procedural and image texturing. Procedural texturing makes use of mathematical formulas to generate textures. This is nice because it can be used to make relatively nice looking textures without external images which are very temperamental where you put them. Procedural Textures are all stored in the .blend file. These textures are obviously generated within Blender itself. Image texturing uses images created or captured outside of Blender, either from an image manipulation program such as the Paint.NET GIMP or Photoshop, or captured on a camera. We have already learned about procedural texturing, so move on to the next tutorial to learn about image texturing.

Current Procedural Textures

Blender currently supports many procedural textures, including: Clouds, Marble, Stucci, Wood, Magic, Blend, Noise, Musgrave, Voronoi and DistortedNoise.

[edit] Creating Basic Seawater

[ed. note: Need a much more basic introduction to what materials, textures, maps, and all the accompanying terms are with illustrative examples before diving into a specific sea-water example. Much more effective learning when you know what you're changing.]

75% of the Earth's surface is covered with water. In homage to this great fact, we will develop your materials skills first by creating basic seawater.

First we create a new file in Blender and delete the default cube by pressing XKEY and confirming the popup dialog. Now switch to top view with NUM7 and enter SPACE > Add > Mesh > Plane to create a plane. Then scale it up to 20 its original size with the SKEY the way you've already learned in one of the earlier tutorials. Go to the side view (NumPad 3) and duplicate this plane two more times using Alt-D (not Shift-D), moving the plane down on the Z axis by two grid spaces each duplicate. This will make the transparency of the water more realistic once we set it.

Now off to the actual texturing work. Select any one of the planes and press F5 to bring up the Material Buttons in the Buttons Window. You will probably find two new small windows appearing here: one called Links and Pipelines and the other one Preview.

Click the 'Add New' button in the Material window to create a new material named `Material.001'. To make life easier we'll rename it to something meaningful like 'Seawater' by simply clicking it and typing in the letters, as shown here (SHIFT+DELETE in field to clear):

Now, on the same tab, give the seawater material a color of RGB (0.100, 0.310, 0.435). Find the tab that reads 'Mirror Transp' and click it. Click on 'Ray Mirror' and 'Ray Transp'. For the "Ray Mirror" box, move the 'RayMir' slider to 0.3, the 'Fresnel' slider to 2.5 and the Depth to 5. For the 'Ray Transp' box, move the 'IOR' slider to 1.33, the 'Fresnel' slider to 2.0 and the Depth to 5. This will give the water realistic transparency and reflection. Also click the 'Shaders' tab, change 'CookTorr' to 'Blinn', move 'Spec' to 2.000, 'Hard' to 180 and 'Refr' to 10.000. This will make the water look more glossy.

Now we'll add a procedural texture to our seawater, which will give it a "wavy" look. Click the Texture button (looks like bricks) or press F6 to view the texture buttons subcontext. Click on the knob to the left of the texture name and select the "Add New" button. This creates a new texture named "Tex.001". Click on the name and change it to "Waves".

Go to the Texture Type pull-down (F6) and select 'Clouds'. On the Clouds tab change 'NoiseSize' to 0.050. Our Waves texture is ready; next, we will refine how it is applied to our Seawater material.

Noise Size increases the size of the noise, in this case, the clouds. Soft Noise blends the intensities and reduces the contrast. Makes a mellow effect, like soft waves. Hard noise creates a high contrast, and brings out individual 'shapes'.

If you want to add more detail to your water, add another texture and rename it to "LargeWaves". Make it a cloud texture like the previous one, but make it's 'NoiseSize' 0.300 and use 'Hard noise'.

Left click on the Materials button (looks like a red sphere) to return to the material buttons subcontext. Look at the Texture panel, and you'll see that the "Waves" texture has been automatically associated with the Seawater material.

Select the 'Map To' tab. Click the 'Nor' and 'Spec' buttons so they're selected and have white text (the white text indicates a positive mapping). Click the 'Hard' button twice so it's selected and has yellow text (the yellow text indicates a negative mapping). Click the 'Col' button so it is not selected, this button will show any color in the texture which we do not want. Find the 'Nor' Slider and move its value to about 5.00.

If you created the "LargeWaves" texture, select the "LargeWaves" texture under 'Texture and Input', go to the 'MapTo' tab, deselect 'Col', select 'Nor' and move the 'Nor' slider to 7.00. Do not select 'Hard' or 'Spec' this time.

For lighting press Space > Add > Lamp > Sun. You shouldn't need to move the sun or change any of it's settings. Finally move the camera to the edge of the plain and move it up towards the sky a bit.

Go to the Scene tab (F10), and look for the six buttons next to the big render button. Deselect all these, leaving only the 'Ray' button selected. This will tell Blender not to render some features in our scene that we really don't need. Go and press F12 to render the water, it may take a while depending on your system.

Admire your water, and maybe drink a tall glass of something refreshing!

[edit] Extra Practice

This tutorial might also help you make even more realistic water: Link

[edit] Mountains Out Of Molehills 2

[noob note: I just got a flat gray plane when i did this, I believe you have to press Nor on and increase the Nor value to something relatively high, I used 11.37.]

(another noob's note: In my current version (2.46) I don't think Nor is what you want. Nor will affect the bump-mapping effect (normal values). You want to have Nor unchecked, Disp checked and the slider for Disp set to something like 0.200. Though I'm not clear on the difference between Nor and Disp.)

Nor (normal) only changes what direction the point on the plane looks like it's facing. Disp actually moves the points on the plane up and down

By adding some Mist in the World buttons, adding a Cloud Texture to the World and make it blend from white to gray we could get something like this:

[edit] Basic Carpet Texture

[edit] Goal

I am using a basic scene that I quickly set up before I started to create the carpet material. It shows a monkey (suzanne), a plane, camera, 3 area lamps and 1 spot lamps.

The purpose of this tutorial, is to highlight the power of blenders built in shaders and procedural textures to create a carpet material to use in your scenes.

NOTE:  For those of you needing help getting a similar scene to the one above, here are some axis positions,etc to help out:
(Spot-Lamp)-X=1.62,Y=0.86,Z=6.74;rotation-X=37.26,Y=3.16,Z=181.34;
(Area-Lamp-1)X=4,Y=3.27,Z=4.12;rotation-X=54.67,Y=-18.59,Z=-109.47;
(Area-Lamp-2)X=-2.07,Y=-2.08,Z=4.85;rotation-X=29.37,Y=-28.98,Z=355;
(Area-Lamp-3)X=0.315,Y=-2.89,Z=4.29;rotation-X=49.23,Y=-10.63,Z=6.68;
(Monkey)X=0.05,Y=0,Z=0.42;rotation-X=58.61,Y=-16.07,Z=23.245;DIM(dimensions)X=2.734,Y=1.969,Z=1.703;
(Plane)x=0,y=0,z=0;(no rotation);Dimensions: X&Y=14.30,z=0.

NewbyNote: With these settings, I get a big white-out.

[edit] The Basic Material and Shader Settings

For the basic material for the carpet set the colour settings of your material as follows -
Col (R 0.714) (G 0.134) (B .134) Dark Red
Spe (R 0.590) (G 0.210) (B 0.084) Redish Brown
Mir (R 1.000) (G 1.000) (B 1.000) White

Change the specular shader to ('phong') and leave the default lamert diffuse shader as it is. Change the ('spec') to [0.13] and the ('hard') to [12]. Lastly click the ('Full Osa') button to enable it. If you render now you will notice that the plane looks like a ugly pastel colour (if not, you have a different lighting setup to mine and the shader will not look the same as the images in this tutorial.) Dont worry about this ugly looking plane it will soon be a beautiful carpet.

[edit] Cloud Texture 1

Press 'F6' on the keyboard to bring up the texture panel. Click the bottommost of the long boxes to create a texture in the bottom channel. Create a new texture and rename it something like 'Red Clouds 1'. From the ('Texture Type') pull down select clouds. In the 'Clouds' settings panel change ('NoiseSize') to [0.210] and ('NoiseDepth') to [4].

Now select the Colors tab which will bring up the ColorBand for the texture. Press the orange ('Add') button to add a cursor on the colourband. Next make sure the 'Cur : 0' is showing next to the add button and change the colours as follows - (R 0.770, G 0.168, 0.168). Now click on right side of the 'Cur : 0' so it shows 'Cur : 1'. Change 'Pos' to 0.6. Set Alpha to 1 and change the colour to (R 0.732 G 0.243 B 0.243).

Now go back into the material settings and change the settings in the Map To tab as follows. Click ('Spec') twice so the text becomes yellow do the same for ('Hard'). Now select 'Subtract' for the texture blending mode. Change ('Col') to [0.188].

At this stage if you render you might find it hard to notice the difference, it is apparent only where there is low light levels on the plane, don't worry about this at the moment. It means if you render with Ambiant Occlusion you get a nice carpet effect of slightly varying colour.

[edit] Cloud Texture 2

Go back to the texture panel and create another texture, call it 'Clouds' and put it in the channel above 'Red Clouds'. Change ('NoiseSize') to [0.054] and ('NoiseDepth') to 4. Select 'Improved Perlin' from the Noise Basis pull down. Finally change ('Nabla') to [0.031]. Do not change any more settings here.

Now in the material panel, under the Map To tab change the following - Click ('Nor'). Click ('Spec') and ('Hard') twice so as they are yellow.

As you can see the material is starting to look a bit better, only 2 more textures to go.

[edit] The Final Cloud Texture

Switch to the texture panel once again and create a new Clouds texture in the next channel up. Change ('NoiseSize') to [0.010] and ('NoiseDepth') to [6]. Now click on the 'Colors' tab and change the colour of the left cursor ('Cur : 0') to (R 0.713 G 0.262 B 0.223) and Alpha to 0. Switch to Cursor 1 ('Cur : 1') and its colour settings (R 1.000 G 0.363 B 0.000) and Alpha to 1.

Now in the materials panel under the 'Map To' tab Click ('Nor'). Click ('Spec') and ('Hard') twice so as they are yellow. Leave the blending mode as 'Mix'. Change ('Col') to [0.464] and ('Nor') to [1.00].

[edit] The Last Texture

Finally, go to the textures panel one last time. Create a new Stucci texture in the next channel up. Change ('NoiseSize') to [0.006] and ('Turbulence') to [10.94]. Click on the 'Colors' tab. The first cursor 'Cur : 0' should be black with alpha 0. 'Cur : 1' should be red (R 1.000 G 0.000 B 0.000) with alpha 1.

Now go to the materials panel. Under the 'Map To' tab Click ('Nor'). Click ('Spec') and ('Hard') twice. Change the Blending type to 'Subtract'. Change ('Col') to [0.056] and ('Nor') to [0.50]. And that's it. When you render now, you should have a nice-looking carpet material. By tweaking with the colours you can create any colour of carpet.

[edit] Image Textures

Procedural texturing is very powerful; however, sometimes it is difficult or impossible to generate the desired realism with them. Image texturing is there for you when you need it. To review, the basic idea is to take an outside image and wrap it around your model. Now move on to the next tutorial to learn how to do this.

[edit] Free Image Texture Editors

• Wood Workshop A free utility (Requires Operating System: Windows 2000/XP) that generates surprisingly high quality tiling wood texture images. These textures can be exported as standard image files for use within Blender.
• The GIMP GIMP, a free image editor that has many of the same functions as Photoshop.
• MapZone A free utility for Windows (works perfectly in Wine) that generates node based procedural texture maps. Mapzone can export diffuse, normal and alpha texture maps as standard image files. It can also import SVG regions created with Blender's UV mapping tools.

[edit] The Rusty Ball

Making objects with image textures is not really hard for simple objects like balls, cubes, and tubes. I'll show you how to do this:

• Make a new Scene in Blender and delete the default cube (XKEY).
• Make an object you want to have the image on (I recommend a Mesh plane, sphere or tube).
  • if you are making a Mesh Plane, change your view to above, by pressing NUM7

To make a rusty ball i suggest an icosphere with a size of 2 wich will fit nicely in the camera wiew.

• Sequence is: spacebar, add, mesh, icosphere.
• Go to the materials (F5) and select "O Material" from the popupmenu by the "Add new" button. (the little arrows)
• Now go to the textures (F6) and choose "Texture Type" A drop down (or up) menu appears and you will get many options, the one we need is "Load image". Click it, then select "Load" and navigate to an image you want to use. (Note: JPGs, PNGs or TGAs are recommended for Blender. Bitmaps tend to get all screwy.)
• After this, you'll have to specify how your image should be applied to your object. To do this, go to the materials again, where you'll have to find the "Map input" tab (near the textures tab). If you have selected it, you'll see four buttons: Flat, Cube, Tube and Sphere. Select the option which meets your object best. You can see a simple preview of the different options in the "Preview" window and try the different modes.
• Render your object. If you can't see your picture well, you can try to rotate your object or select another option in the "Map input" tab.

You can also render videos onto objects using this method. Just select a movie in the "Load image" dialog and enable the option "Movie" at the textures buttons. NOTE: Blender ONLY works with Full Resolution video, not video which has been compressed using a codec. Most video software will allow you to export video as "full frames" or "no compression". Experiment a bit!

[edit] UV Map Basics

In case you're wondering, UV mapping stands for the technique used to "wrap" a 2D image texture onto a 3D mesh. "U" and "V" are the name of the axes of a plane, since "X", "Y" and "Z" are used for the coordinates in the 3D space. For example: increasing your "U" on a sphere might move you along a longitude line (north or south), while increasing your "V" might move you along a line of latitude (east or west).

You can watch a good video tutorial from the main Blender site. It is called LSCM UV Mapping or (Least Squares Conformal Map UV Mapping) and it is located on this page: http://www.blender.org/education-help/video-tutorials/modelmateriallight/

[edit] The Basics of UV Mapping

[edit] Add an icosphere

We'll use a sphere for this demonstration. Make sure you are in top view so the equator of the Iconosphere we are creating will be parallel to the x/y-plane and unwrapping will give good results (NumPad7 or View → Top). Delete the initial cube (x). Then, create a new model, an icosphere (SPACE → Add → Mesh → Icosphere). Leave the settings at default: subdivisions 2, radius 1.0

[edit] Mark a seam

In side view, select a ring of vertices on the icosphere. (Like an equator). This can be done easily by going to a side on view (NUM1 or NUM3) and drawing a selection box around the middle row of vertices (BKEY + click&drag). Make sure Limit Selection to Visible is NOT enabled first.

(Limit Selection to Visible appears to be labelled "Occlude Background Geometry" in 2.48. It is the cube button that appears toward the right of the 3D View header [note on edit: this is also not available in the depicted 'Draw Type -> wireframe' mode for later versions])

Press CTRL+EKEY and select Mark Seam, or select Mesh menu → Edges → Mark Seam. This tells the UV unwrapper to cut the mesh along these edges.

[edit] Unwrap the mesh

[2.49 is a complete revision, this method wont work but contains useful information and notes by users. For a finishing method that that is current see *Don't Unwrap]

Next, create a window for the UV mapping: click the MMB (RMB works as well) near the top border of the 3D View window and select "Split Area". Set its window type to "UV/Image Editor" with the drop down box at the bottom left corner of the new window or with SHIFT + F10.

In the 3D View window, select all your vertices, and hit UKEY and then LSCM. For Blender 2.42 or later select all the faces, and use UKEY → unwrap or Face menu → Unwrap UVs → Unwrap to use LSCM.

Noob Note: I use Blender 2.45 and UKEY doesn't work for this. It seems to be an undo key. Is there another way to bring up the Unwrap menu? Same Noob: The tutorial doesn't say, but you have to be in UV Face Select mode for UKEY to work for this. Yoshi: For Blender 2.48a there is no LSCM but you can use Unwrap.

NOTE: Make sure you switch to the UV Face Select Mode in 3D window. Then "UKEY" does not work as a shortcut for Undo, rather it serves the purpose.

LSCM is one of the algorithms for unwrapping a mesh onto the 2-dimensional UV space, acronym for Least Squares Conforming Map. It is a very useful unwrapping method because it attempts to preserve the shape of each face, much like unwrapping the cloth of a garment.

[edit] Make a template image

When you have tweaked a nice layout and intend to make the texture image yourself, you may ease the texture drawing by saving an image of the UV layout. This image can then be opened in your image editing program of choice to make a basis for the UV texture by showing where each surface goes. In the UV/Image Editor window, select UVs menu → Scripts → Save UV Face Layout... (User note: for pre 2.43 versions, use UVs menu → Save UV Face Layout). '<<Noob note: I use Blender 2.48. UVs menu → Scripts is empty. There's no Save UV Face Layout... option... What to do?>>'Yoshi: I also use 2.48, make sure all the vertices are selected then hit UVs -> Scripts -> Save UV Face Layout. New Blender User: This is because you don't have the proper Python software installed. It is this software that provides all the scripts for Blender, so it is important to have the proper software. Note: Blender 2.48 requires Python 2.5.2, which is NOT the newest version. Python 2.6, the newest version, doesn't work with Blender, so make sure to get Python 2.5.2 (2.5.4 that is available at the Python site works too). There is another way to export the images, however, that does not require scripts. Go to Image -> New, and this will create an image of the net. Then go to Image -> Save As, and save the image to where you want it.

With Wrap selected, the layout will maintain its proportions, which is best for general purposes. Not selecting it will scale your layout into square proportions which is mostly useful for Blender's game engine where textures should preferably be square. Choose the location of the image file as desired (the default name is the name of the object to be textured) and press Export. Tip: if your image painting program supports layers, try putting the UV layout in a locked, transparent layer above the actual painting. If you do not alter the dimensions of the exported UV image in any way it will fit perfectly with your UV layout when the image is loaded back into Blender.

[edit] Apply an image

Save the following image(Click to view in full high resolution (4,096 × 2,048 pixels)):

Load it in the UV/Image Editor window by clicking Image menu → Open... (or Image menu → Load image in older Blender versions). Then with the very basic operations, grab, rotate and scale, adjust the unwrapped mesh so that it fits nicely on top of the image.

[noob note: when i downloaded this image it did not load correctly, try copying it into paint if you have this problem -> or better click in the link and it's send you to the correct link] [another noob note: when I used the image (in 2.49a/OSX) , it deformed the mesh, I found using a resized image (405 px. square - the same image as above placed on a square black background) sorted this out]

[2.49b Don't unwrap. After 3D View -> 1. (CTRL+E) Mark Seam -- 2. (AKEY) Select All >> UV/Image Editor - 3. Load: BlueMarble-2001-2002.jpg. -- 4. Click the 'belly button' to select the picture. (You should see the picture.) Now unwrap. This will load the mesh horizontally on unwrap. Then use the regular manipulation keys (RKEY, SKEY, GKEY) and buttons in UV/Image Editor to fit the uv meshes. Observed: The uv mesh loaded alone is one vertical island while the uv mesh loaded on an image was two. Weird. In your Edit Panel buttons around now you can see the sub-context master panel called UV Calculation. This is like an important thing so don't worry if it is brain overload. Experimentation with that pack margin will separate the mesh islands in either case. ]

[edit] Admire your new creation

Back in the 3D View window, select Object mode. The next drop-down menu to the right is the Draw Type menu; use it to set the Draw Type to Textured. (Greybeard calls it "potato mode" because of the icon that the menu shows.) Hit TAB a couple of times to refresh your object, and admire your new picture mapped onto your object!

To make the texture visible in renderings, you also need to add the texture to the icosphere as a new material. In the Buttons window, switch to the Shading buttons by clicking the small shaded-sphere button or by pressing F5. Create a new material by pressing Add New in the Links and Pipelines mini-window, then turn on TexFace in the Material mini-window:

To finish your work, switch to Edit Mode and select all vertices. In the Buttons window, switch to the Editing buttons by clicking the small four-vertices-in-a-square button or by pressing F9, and then click Set Smooth in the Links and Materials mini-window. In the Modifiers mini-window, click Add Modifier → Subsurf and set Render Levels to 3. Switch back to the Shading buttons (F5) and activate the World buttons by clicking the small "Earth" button in the second button group. Enable Stars in the Mist/Stars/Physics mini-window. The scene is ready! Render it by selecting Render menu → Render Current Frame.

[edit] Some notes

All this relates to the UV/Image window.
If you are going to edit the layout of your unwrapping (so you can make a better picture), make sure Select->Stick Local UVs to Mesh Vertex is on. You can "pin" vertices when they have been unwrapped with PKEY. If you do, make sure you put at least one pin on every island. You can remove all pins with alt-p. LSCM works by trying to maintain the angles between each vertex. If an unwrapping should be symmetrical and it's not, try putting one pin in the middle of the outside edge of the big side and one on the small side, and unwrapping again with EKEY.

IMPORTANT:

• Remember to set your map input with the UV and Flat buttons enabled.
• As said before, to make the texture visible in renderings, too, you also need to toggle on TexFace from the Material buttons.

[edit] Questions

1. Question: I can't get the image to load in blender v.2.44, thought I did everything you said. What to do?
   
   • Answer: In v.2.44: click 'Image' button on the bottom of the UV/Image Editor view port. There is the 'Open' option for loading an image file.
     
   • Answer 2: There appears to be a bug in Blender. If you still don't see an image, try cropping your image to dimension that are power-of-2, like 256x256, or 512x512, or 1024x1024.
   • Answer 3:Make sure to select the image in the file browser with both the right AND the left mouse button
   • Answer 4:Undo (Ctrl + Z) one step also helps to refresh the window and makes the image visible again.
     
2. Question: Whenever I press U in the step above everything is deselected and nothing appears in the UV window. What to do?
   
   • Answer: First you select the circle on the icosphere (the 'equator'), ctrl-E, mark seam. Then where it usually says Edit Mode or Object Mode, click that and select UV Face Select, THEN Press U.
   • Elaboration: I'm experiencing the same thing even if I hit ctrl+E and mark seam. And AFAIK on 2.48a there's no UV Face Select mode. Well after hitting UKEY->Unwrap there's no projection of the sphere on the UV window. Update: I found the problem. In the 3d window you have to select all vertices in edit mode. Then the projection will show up.
3. Question: My image won't load and is there a way to load images other than typing in it's entire address? (I.E. is there a 'browse' button?)
   • Answer: While there is no visual list of common shortcuts, if you type in the crude location of your file and double click on directories to get to the fine one containing your file.
4. Comment: I selected "Save target as.." instead of "Save picture as.." in my browser, so tried loading a saved HTML file instead of the jpeg. Also it seems you need to reload the directory listing in the "Open" dialog box in Blender else it won't find the newly saved file. You can do this by going to the parent directory and back into the child directory.
   • Response: Normally the image file used by the html file will be downloaded along with the html file. Loading an html file as your texture is not recommended.
5. Comment There does not seem to be a "UV Face Select" mode in blender 2.46 - There is a face select mode in 2.46+, but, first go to edit mode, than find the small triangle icon in your window's toolbar, hovering over it will give you the tooltip: "Face Select Mode". you can also use the shortcut CTRL+TAB+3KEY in edit mode. (The default mode is vertex mode, the four dots icon)
6. Question: Because 2.46 has no UV face select mode, how do I apply something like "two-sided" to a whole group of faces instead of just one at a time? - See the tip above on how to get in face-select mode
   • Response: Changing a material property for any user (even a single selected vertex) will change that for all the users of the material. You can assign faces their own material (those 3 vertex if the face is a polygon) even though they are normally selected with a mesh. With using Similar to Selection -> Material you can then perform other actions on those faces. Beyond that you can create groups that do not use materials as their commonality. I am a Noob, so I have never seen UV Select as a mode, but you can work out details before mapping, and there are some buttons like Sync which seems relevant.
     
7. Question: when i press u it does not show the menu you have on your screen shot it has unwrap and some other things but does not say LCSM
   
   • Response: "LSCM" has been renamed to just "Unwrap"
8. Question: When I finished the mapping, I had the normal earth sphere, but with this black ring where the seam was made. It's not a flat line.
   • Response: Make sure that all the verticies are inside the circumference of the Earth image. Also notice that each half of the Earth image is shadowed on the right side. Try rotating one half of the verticies 180 degress around so that the shadows on the Earth match up on both halves.
   • Question: My earth won't show up in renders. I've mapped it, I've tried all sorts of lighting, but it won't show up. What should I do?
9. Question:In the UV Image Editor panel, I can click on Image > Open and select the edited TGA file, but when I click Open Image, nothing happens. Is there a problem between Blender 2.49 and Python 2.6?
   • Response:Nothing actually changes in the UV Image Editor window. You might need to change your Draw Type in a 3D window to Textured.
10. Question:UV export is not working: I have python 2.5.4 with blender 2.49b. I can generate the UV in Blender but I cannot see any of the script options (menu empty) even when all the meshes are selected. Furthermore when I try to export an image with save or save as, it just creates an empty tga with only the background color and no edges whatsoever.
    
    • Response:Make sure blender is properly installed, in my case the installer forgot the .blender and plugin directory. Try the .zip file from the blender website instead of the installer. uv_export.py should be in the .blender/scripts folder. In the uv image editor use UVs -> scripts -> save UV face layout to export to tga.

[edit] Source

Greybeard's LSCM Mapping video tutorial: http://www.ibiblio.org/bvidtute/mytut/uvtut.avi

[edit] Extras

Blender 2.49 UV Map Basics tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_8OV92HLPY

[edit] Every Material Known to Man

[edit] "Every Material Known To Man" Project

Want to share your material settings with the world? This is the place! This page is going to be turning from a page to a chapter, but to do that we need your support!! If you have an idea for a material, even if you don't know how to make it, just put it in the list to help! Someone out there knows how to make it, and if they come across this page with it listed, they might be willing to share.

[edit] Modeling Keyboard Shortcuts

Blender HotKeys - Relevant to Blender 2.36 - Compiled from Blender Online Guides

[edit] Window HotKeys

Certain window managers also use the following hotkeys. So ALT+CTRL can be substituted for CTRL to perform the functions described below if a conflict arises.

CTRL+LEFTARROW. Go to the previous Screen.

CTRL+RIGHTARROW. Go to the next Screen.

CTRL+UPARROW or CTRL+DOWNARROW. Maximise the window or return to the previous window display size.

SHIFT+F4. Change the window to a Data View

SHIFT+F5. Change the window to a 3D Window

SHIFT+F6. Change the window to an IPO Window

SHIFT+F7. Change the window to a Buttons Window

SHIFT+F8. Change the window to a Sequence Window

SHIFT+F9. Change the window to an Outliner Window

SHIFT+F10. Change the window to an Image Window

SHIFT+F11. Change the window to a Text Window

SHIFT+F12. Change the window to an Action Window

[edit] Universal HotKeys

The following HotKeys work uniformly in all Blender Windows, if the Context allows:

CTRL+LMB. Lasso select: drag the mouse to form a freehand selection area.

• • ESC.
  • This key always cancels Blender functions without changes.
  • or: FileWindow, DataView and ImageSelect: back to the previous window type.
  • or: the RenderWindow is pushed to the background (or closed, that depends on the operating system).

SPACE. Open the Toolbox.

TAB. Start or quit EditMode.

F1. Loads a Blender file. Changes the window to a FileWindow.

SHIFT+F1. Appends parts from other files, or loads as Library-data. Changes the window to a FileWindow, making Blender files accessible as a directory.

F2. Writes a Blender file. Change the window to a FileWindow.

SHIFT+F2. Exports the scene as a DXF file

CTRL+F2. Exports the scene as a VRML1 file

F3. Writes a picture (if a picture has been rendered). The fileformat is as indicated in the DisplayButtons. The window becomes a File Select Window.

CTRL+F3 (ALT+CTRL+F3 on MacOSX). Saves a screendump of the active window. The fileformat is as indicated in the DisplayButtons. The window becomes a FileWindow.

SHIFT+CTRL+F3. Saves a screendump of the whole Blender screen. The fileformat is as indicated in the DisplayButtons. The window becomes a FileWindow.

F4. Displays the Logic Context (if a ButtonsWindow is available).

F5. Displays the Shading Context (if a Buttons Window is available), Light, Material or World Sub-contexts depends on active object.

F6. Displays the Shading Context and Texture Sub-context (if a ButtonsWindow is available).

F7. Displays the Object Context (if a ButtonsWindow is available).

F8. Displays the Shading Context and World Sub-context (if a ButtonsWindow is available).

F9. Displays the Editing Context (if a ButtonsWindow is available).

F10. Displays the Scene Context (if a ButtonsWindow is available).

F11. Hides or shows the render window.

F12. Starts the rendering from the active camera.

LEFTARROW. Go to the previous frame.

SHIFT+LEFTARROW. Go to the first frame.

RIGHTARROW. Go to the next frame.

SHIFT+RIGHTARROW. Go to the last frame.

UPARROW. Go forward 10 frames.

DOWNARROW. Go back 10 frames.

ALT+A. Change the current Blender window to Animation Playback mode. The cursor changes to a counter.

ALT+SHIFT+A. The current window, plus all 3DWindows go into Animation Playback mode.

IKEY. Insert Key menu. This menu differs from window to window.

JKEY. Toggle the render buffers. Blender allows you to retain two different rendered pictures in memory.

CTRL+O. Opens the last saved file.

QKEY. OK? Quit Blender. This key closes Blender. Blender quit is displayed in the console if Blender is properly closed.

ALT+CTRL+T. TimerMenu. This menu offers access to information about drawing speed. The results are displayed in a pop-up.

CTRL+U. OK, Save User defaults. The current project (windows, objects, etc.), including UserMenu settings are written to the default file that will be loaded every time you start Blender or set it to defaults by pressing CTRL+X.

CTRL+W. Write file. This key combination allows you to write the Blender file without opening a FileWindow.

ALT+W. Write Videoscape file. Changes the window to a FileWindow.

CTRL+X. Erase All. Everything (except the render buffer) is erased and released. The default scene is reloaded.

CTRL+Y. Redo. Mac users may use CMD+Y.

CTRL+Z. Undo. Mac users may use CMD+Z.

SHIFT+CTRL+Z. Redo. Mac users may use SHIFT+CMD+Z

[edit] Object Mode HotKeys

These hotkeys are mainly bound to the 3D Viewport Window, but many work on Objects in most other windows, like IPOs and so on, hence they are summarized here.

HOME. All Objects in the visible layer are displayed completely, centered in the window.

PAGEUP. Select the next Object Key. If more than one Object Key is selected, the selection is shifted up cyclically. Only works if the AnimButtons->DrawKey is ON for the Object.

SHIFT+PAGEUP. Adds to selection the next Object Key.

PAGEDOWN. Select the previous Object Key. If more than one Object Key is selected, the selection is shifted up cyclically. Only works if the AnimButtons->DrawKey is ON for the Object.

SHIFT+PAGEDOWN. Adds to selection the previous Object Key.

ACCENT.(~) (To the left of the 1KEY in US keyboard) Select all layers.

SHIFT+ACCENT. Revert to the previous layer setting.

TAB. Start/stop EditMode. Alternative hotkey: ALT+E.

AKEY. Selects/deselects all.

CTRL+A. Apply size and rotation. The rotation and dimensions of the Object are assigned to the ObData (Mesh, Curve, etc.). At first glance, it appears as if nothing has changed, but this can have considerable consequences for animations or texture mapping. This is best illustrated by also having the axis of a Mesh Object be drawn (EditButtons->Axis). Rotate the Object and activate Apply. The rotation and dimensions of the Object are 'erased'.

SHIFT+CTRL+A. If the active Object is automatically duplicated (see AnimButtons->DupliFrames or AnimButtons- >Dupliverts), a menu asks Make duplis real?. This option actually creates the Objects. If the active Mesh Object is deformed by a Lattice, a menu asks Apply Lattice deform?. Now the deformation of the Lattice is assigned to the vertices of the Mesh.

SHIFT+A. This is the AddMenu. In fact, it is the ToolBox that starts with the `ADD' option. When Objects are added, Blender starts EditMode immediately if possible.

BKEY. Border Select. Draw a rectangle with the LeftMouse; all Objects within this area are selected, but not made active. Draw a rectangle with the RightMouse to deselect Objects. In orthonormal ViewMode, the dimensions of the rectangle are displayed, expressed as global coordinates, as an extra feature in the lower left corner. In Camera ViewMode, the dimensions that are to be rendered according to the DisplayButtons are displayed in pixel units.

SHIFT+B. Render Border. This only works in Camera ViewMode. Draw a rectangle to render a smaller cut-out of the standard window frame. If the option DisplayButtons->Border is ON, a box is drawn with red and black lines.

CKEY. Centre View. The position of the 3DCursor becomes the new centre of the 3DWindow.

• • ALT+C. Convert Menu. Depending on the active Object, a PopupMenu is displayed. This enables you to convert certain types of ObData. It only converts in one direction, everything ultimately degrades to a Mesh! The options are:
    • Font -> Curve
    • MetaBall -> Mesh The original MetaBall remains unchanged.
    • Curve -> Mesh
    • Surface -> Mesh

• • CTRL+C. Copy Menu. This menu copies information from the active Object to (other) selected Objects.
    • Fixed components are:
      • Copy Loc: the X,Y,Z location of the Object. If a Child is involved, this location is the relative position in relation to the Parent.
      • Copy Rot: the X,Y,Z rotation of the Object.
      • Copy Size: the X,Y,Z dimension of the Object.
      • DrawType: copies Object Drawtype.
      • TimeOffs: copies Object time offset.
      • Dupli: all Duplicator data (Dupliframes, Dupliverts and so on)
      • Mass: Real time stuff.
      • Damping: Real time stuff.
      • Properties: Real time stuff.
      • Logic Bricks: Real time stuff.
      • Constraints: copies Object constraints.
    • If applicable:
      • Copy TexSpace: The texture space.
      • Copy Particle Settings: the complete particle system from the AnimButtons.
    • For Curve Objects:
      • Copy Bevel Settings: all bevelling data from the EditButtons.
    • Font Objects:
      • Copy Font Settings: font type, dimensions, spacing.
      • Copy Bevel Settings: all bevelling data from the EditButtons.
    • Camera Objects:
      • Copy Lens: the lens value.

SHIFT+C. CentreZero View. The 3DCursor is set to zero (0,0,0) and the view is changed so that all Objects, including the 3Dcursor, can be displayed. This is an alternative for HOME.

DKEY. Draw mode menu. Allows to select draw modes exactly as the corresponding menu in the 3D viewport header does.

SHIFT+D. Add Duplicate. The selected Objects are duplicated. Grab mode starts immediately thereafter.

ALT+D. Add Linked Duplicate. Of the selected Objects linked duplicates are created. Grab mode starts immediately thereafter.

CTRL+D. Draw the (texture) Image as wire. This option has a limited function. It can only be used for 2D compositing.

ALT+E. Start/stop EditMode. Alternative hotkey: TAB.

FKEY. If selected Object is a mesh Toggles Face selectMode on and off.

CTRL+F. Sort Faces. The faces of the active Mesh Object are sorted, based on the current view in the 3DWindow. The leftmost face first, the rightmost last. The sequence of faces is important for the Build Effect (AnimButtons).

• • GKEY. Grab Mode. Or: the translation mode. This works on selected Objects and vertices. Blender calculates the quantity and direction of the translation, so that they correspond exactly with the mouse movements, regardless of the ViewMode or view direction of the 3DWindow. Alternatives for starting this mode:
    • LMB to draw a straight line.
  • The following options are available in translation mode:
    • Limiters:
      • CTRL: in increments of 1 grid unit.
      • SHIFT: fine movements.
      • SHIFT+CTRL: in increments of 0.1 grid unit.
    • MMB toggles: A short click restricts the current translation to the X,Y or Z axis. Blender calculates which axis to use, depending on the already initiated mouse movement. Click MiddleMouse again to return to unlimited translation.
    • XKEY, YKEY, ZKEY constrains movement to X, Y or Z axis of the global reference.
    • a second XKEY, YKEY, ZKEY constrains movement to X, Y or Z axis of the local reference.
    • a third XKEY, YKEY, ZKEY removes constraints.
    • NKEY enters numerical input, as well as any numeric key directly. TAB will switch between values, ENTER finalizes, ESC exits.
    • ARROWS: These keys can be used to move the mouse cursor exactly 1 pixel.
    • Grabber can be terminated with:
      • LMB SPACE or ENTER: move to a new position.
      • RMB or ESC: everything goes back to the old position.
    • Switching mode:
      • GKEY: starts Grab mode again.
      • SKEY: switches to Size (Scale) mode.
      • RKEY: switches to Rotate mode.

ALT+G. Clears translations, given in Grab mode. The X,Y,Z locations of selected Objects are set to zero.

• • SHIFT+G. Group Selection
    • Children: Selects all selected Object's Children.
    • Immediate Children: Selects all selected Object's first level Children.
    • Parent: Selects selected Object's Parent.
    • Shared Layers: Selects all Object on the same Layer of active Object

• • IKEY. Insert Object Key. A keyposition is inserted in the current frame of all selected Objects. A PopupMenu asks what key position(s) must be added to the IpoCurves.
    • Loc: The XYZ location of the Object.
    • Rot: The XYZ rotation of the Object.
    • Size: The XYZ dimensions of the Object
    • LocRot: The XYZ location and XYZ rotation of the Object.
    • LocRotSize: The XYZ location, XYZ rotation and XYZ dimensions of the Object.
    • Layer: The layer of the Object.
    • Avail: A position is only added to all the current IpoCurves, that is curves which already exists.
    • Mesh, Lattice, Curve or Surface: depending on the type of Object, a VertexKey can be added

CTRL+J. Join Objects. All selected Objects of the same type are added to the active Object. What actually happens here is that the ObData blocks are combined and all the selected Objects (except for the active one) are deleted. This is a rather complex operation, which can lead to confusing results, particularly when working with a lot of linked data, animation curves and hierarchies.

KKEY. Show Keys. The DrawKey option is turned ON for all selected Objects. If all of them were already ON, they are all turned OFF.

SHIFT+K. A PopupMenu asks: OK? Show and select all keys. The DrawKey option is turned ON for all selected Objects, and all Object-keys are selected. This function is used to enable transformation of the entire animation system.

LKEY. Makes selected Object local. Makes library linked objects local for the current scene.

• • CTRL+L. Link selected. Links some of the Active Object data to all selected Objects, the following menu entry appears only if applicable.
    • To Scene: Creates a link of the Object to a scene.
    • Object IPOs: Links Active Object IPOs to selected ones.
    • Mesh data: Links Active Object Mesh data selected ones.
    • Lamp Data: Links Active Object Lamp data to selected ones.
    • Surf Data: Links Active Object Surf data selected ones.
    • Material: Links Active Object Material to selected ones.

• • SHIFT+L. Select Linked. Selects all Objects somehow linked to active Object.
    • Object IPO: Selects all Object(s) sharing active Object's IPOs.
    • Object Data: Selects all Object(s) sharing active Object's ObData.
    • Current Material: Selects all Object(s) sharing active Object's current Material.
    • Current Texture: Selects all Object(s) sharing active Object's current Texture.

MKEY. Moves selected Object(s) to another layer, a pop-up appears. Use LMB to move, use SHIFT+LMB to make the object belong to multiple layers. If the selected Objects have different layers, this is ORed in the menu display. Use ESC to exit the menu. Press the "OK" button or ENTER to change the layer setting. The hotkeys (ALT-)(1KEY, 2KEY, ... - 0KEY) work here as well (see 3DHeader).

CTRL+M. Mirror Menu. It is possible to mirror an Object along the X, Y or Z axis.

NKEY. Number Panel. The location, rotation and scaling of the active Object are displayed and can be modified.

ALT+O. Clear Origin. The `Origin' is erased for all Child Objects, which causes the Child Objects to move to the exact location of the Parent Objects.

SHIFT+O. If the selected Object is a Mesh toggles SubSurf onn/ off. CTRL+1 to CTRL+4 switches to the relative SubSurf level for display purpouses. Rendering SUbSurf level has no HotKey.

• • CTRL+P. Make selected Object(s) the child(ren) of the active Object. If the Parent is a Curve then a popup offers two choices:
    • Normal Parent: Make a normal parent, the curve can be made a path later on.
    • Follow Path: Automatically creates a Follow Path constraint with the curve as target. If the Parent is an Armature, a popup offers three options:
    • Use Bone: One of the Bones becomes the parent. The Object will not be deformed. A popup permits to select the bone. This is the option if you are modelling a robot or machinery
    • Use Armature: The whole armature is used as parent for deformations. This is the choice for organic beings.
    • Use Object: Standard parenting. In the second case further options asks if Vertex groups

should not be created, should be created empty or created and populated.

• • ALT+P. Clears Parent relation, user is asked if he wishes to keep or clear parent-induced transforms.
    • Clear Parent: the selected Child Objects are unlinked from the Parent. since the transformation of the Parent disappears, this can appear as if the former Children themselves are transformed.
    • ... and keep transform: the Child Objects are unlinked from the Parent, and an attempt is made to assign the current transformation, which was determined in part by the Parent, to the (former Child) Objects.
    • Clear Parent inverse: The inverse matrix of the Parent of the selected Objects is erased. The Child Objects remain linked to the Objects. This gives the user complete control over the hierarchy.

• • RKEY. Rotate mode. Works on selected Object(s). In Blender, a rotation is by default a rotation perpendicular to the screen, regardless of the view direction or ViewMode. The degree of

rotation is exactly linked to the mouse movement. Try moving around the rotation midpoint with the mouse. The rotation pivot point is determined by the state of the 3DWiewport Header buttons. Alternatives for starting this mode:

• • • LMB to draw a C-shaped curve.
  • The following options are available in rotation mode:
    • Limiters:
      • CTRL: in increments of 5 degrees.
      • SHIFT: fine movements.
      • SHIFT+CTRL: in increments of 1 degree.
    • MMB toggles: A short click restricts the current rotation to the horizontal or vertical view axis.
    • XKEY, YKEY, ZKEY constrains rotation to X, Y or Z axis of the global reference.
    • a second XKEY, YKEY, ZKEY constrains rotation to X, Y or Z axis of the local reference.
    • a third XKEY, YKEY, ZKEY removes constraints.
    • NKEY enters numerical input, as well as any numeric key directly.
    • ENTER finalizes.
    • ESC exits.
    • ARROWS: These keys can be used to move the mouse cursor exactly 1 pixel.
    • Rotation can be terminated with:
      • LMB SPACE or ENTER: move to a new position.
      • RMB or ESC: everything goes back to the old position.
    • Switching mode:
      • GKEY: switches to Grab.
      • SKEY: switches to Size (Scale) mode.
      • RKEY: starts Rotate mode again.

ALT+R. Clears Rotation. The X,Y,Z rotations of selected Objects are set to zero.

• • SKEY. Size mode or scaling mode. Works on selected Object(s). The degree of scaling is exactly linked to the mouse movement. Try to move from the (rotation) midpoint with the mouse. The pivot point is determined by the settings of the 3D Viewport header pivot Menu. Alternatives for starting scaling mode:
    • LMB to draw a V-shaped line.
  • The following options are available in scaling mode:
    • Limiters:
      • CTRL: in increments of 0.1.
      • SHIFT+CTRL: in increments of 0.01.
    • MMB toggles: A short click restricts the scaling to X, Y or Z axis. Blender calculates the appropriate axis based on the already initiated mouse movement. Click MMB again to return to free scaling.
    • XKEY, YKEY, ZKEY constrains scaling to X, Y or Z axis of the local reference.
    • a second XKEY, YKEY, ZKEY removes constraints.
    • NKEY enters numerical input, as well as any numeric key directly. ENTER finalizes, ESC exits.
    • ARROWS:These keys can be used to move the mouse cursor exactly 1 pixel.
    • Scaling can be terminated with:
      • LMB SPACE or ENTER: move to a new position.
      • RMB or ESC: everything goes back to the old dimension.
    • Switching mode:
      • GKEY: switches to Grab.
      • SKEY: starts Size mode again.
      • RKEY: switches to Rotation.

ALT+S. Clears Size. The X,Y,Z dimensions of selected Objects are set to 1.0.

• • SHIFT+S. SnapMenu:
    • Sel->Grid: Moves Object to nearest grid point.
    • Sel->Curs: Moves Object to cursor.
    • Curs->Grid: Moves cursor to nearest grid point.
    • Curs->Sel: Moves cursor to selected Object(s).
    • Sel->Center: Moves Objects to their barycentrum.

TKEY. Texture space mode. The position and dimensions of the texture space for the selected Objects can be changed in the same manner as described above for Grab and Size mode. To make this visible, the drawingflag EditButtons->TexSpace is set ON. A PopupMenu asks you to select: "Grabber" or "Size".

CTRL+T. Makes selected Object(s) track the Active Object. Old track method was Blender default tracking before version 2.30. The new method is the Constrain Track, this creates a fully editable constraint on the selected object targeting the active Object.

ALT+T. Clears old style Track. Constraint track is removed as all constrains are.

UKEY. Makes Object Single User, the inverse operation of Link

• • (CTRL+L) a pop-up appears with choices.
    • Object: if other Scenes also have a link to this Object, the link is deleted and the Object is copied. The Object now only exists in the current Scene. The links from the Object remain unchanged.
    • Object & ObData: Similar to the previous command, but now the ObData blocks with multiple links are copied as well. All selected Objects are now present in the current Scene only, and each has a unique ObData (Mesh, Curve, etc.).
    • Object & ObData & Materials+Tex: Similar to the previous command, but now Materials and Textures with multiple links are also copied. All selected Objects are now unique. They have unique ObData and each has a unique Material and Texture block.
    • Materials+Tex: Only the Materials and Textures with multiple links are copied.

VKEY. Switches in/out of Vertex Paint Mode.

ALT+V. Object-Image Aspect. This hotkey sets the X and Y dimensions of the selected Objects in relation to the dimensions of the Image Texture they have. Use this hotkey when making 2D Image compositions and multi-plane designs to quickly place the Objects in the appropriate relationship with one another.

WKEY. Opens Object Booleans Menu.

XKEY. Erase Selected? Deletes selected objects.

ZKEY. Toggles Solid Mode on/off.

SHIFT+Z. Toggles Shaded Mode on/off.

ALT+Z. Toggles Textured Mode on/off.

[edit] Edit Mode - General

Again, Most of these hotkeys are useful in the 3D Viewport when in Edit Mode, but many works on other Blender Object, so they are summarized here. Many Object Mode keys works in Edit mode too, but on the selected vertices or control points; among these Grab, Rotate, Scale and so on. These hotkeys are not repeated here.

TAB or ALT+E. This button starts and stops Edit Mode.

CTRL+TAB. Switches between Vertex Select, Edge Select, and Face Select modes. Holding SHIFT while clicking on a mode will allow you to combine modes.

AKEY. Select/Unselect all.

BKEY+BKEY. Circle Select. If you press BKEY a second time after starting Border Select, Circle Select is invoked. It works as described above. Use NUM+ or NUM- or MW to adjust the circle size. Leave Circle Select with RMB or ESC.

CTRL+H. With vertices selected, this creates a "Hook" object. Once a hook is selected, CTRL+H brings up an options menu for it.

NKEY. Number Panel. Simpler than the Object Mode one, in Edit Mode works for Mesh, Curve, Surface: The location of the active vertex is displayed.

OKEY. Switch in/out of Proportional Editing.

SHIFT+O. Toggles between Smooth and Sharp Proportional Editing.

PKEY. SeParate. You can choose to make a new object with all selected vertices, edges, faces and curves or create a new object from each separate group of interconnected vertices from a popup. Note that for curves you cannot separate connected control vertices. This operation is the opposite of Join (CTRL+J).

CTRL+P. Make Vertex Parent. If one object (or more than one) is/are selected and the active Object is in Edit Mode with 1 or 3 vertices selected then the Object in Edit Mode becomes the Vertex Parent of the selected Object(s). If only 1 vertex is selected, only the location of this vertex determines the Parent transformation; the rotation and dimensions of the Parent do not play a role here. If three vertices are selected, it is a `normal' Parent relationship in which the 3 vertices determine the rotation and location of the Child together. This method produces interesting effects with Vertex Keys. In EditMode, other Objects can be selected with CTRL+RMB.

CTRL+S. Shear. In EditMode this operation enables you to make selected forms `slant'. This always works via the horizontal screen axis.

UKEY. Undo. When starting Edit Mode, the original ObData block is saved and can be returned to via UKEY. Mesh Objects have better Undo, see next section.

WKEY. Specials PopupMenu. A number of tools are included in this PopupMenu as an alternative to the Edit Buttons. This makes the buttons accessible as shortcuts, e.g. EditButtons-> Subdivide is also `WKEY, 1KEY'.

SHIFT+W. Warp. Selected vertices can be bent into curves with this option. It can be used to convert a plane into a tube or even a sphere. The centre of the circle is the 3DCursor. The mid-line of the circle is determined by the horizontal dimensions of the selected vertices. When you start, everything is already bent 90 degrees. Moving the mouse up or down increases or decreases the extent to which warping is done. By zooming in/out of the 3Dwindow, you can specify the maximum degree of warping. The CTRL limiter increments warping in steps of 5 degrees.

[edit] EditMode - Mesh

This section and the following highlight peculiar EditMode Hotkeys.

CTRL+NUM+. Adds to selection all vertices connected by an edge to an already selected vertex.

CTRL+NUM-. Removes from selection all vertices of the outer ring of selected vertices.

ALT+CTRL+RMB. Faces loop select.

ALT+RMB. Edges loop select.

CKEY. If using curve deformations, this toggles the curve Cyclic mode on/off.

EKEY. Extrude Selected. "Extrude" in EditMode transforms all the selected edges to faces. If possible, the selected faces are also duplicated. Grab mode is started directly after this command is executed.

SHIFT+EKEY. Crease Subsurf edge. With "Draw Creases" enabled, pressing this key will allow you to set the crease weight. Black edges have no weight, edge-select color have full weight.

CTRL+EKEY. Mark LSCM Seam. Marks a selected edge as a "seam" for unwrapping using the LSCM mode.

FKEY. Make Edge/Face. If 2 vertices are selected, an edge is created. If 3 or 4 vertices are selected, a face is created.

SHIFT+F. Fill selected. All selected vertices that are bound by edges and form a closed polygon are filled with triangular faces. Holes are automatically taken into account. This operation is 2D; various layers of polygons must be filled in succession.

ALT+F. Beauty Fill. The edges of all the selected triangular faces are switched in such a way that equally sized faces are formed. This operation is 2D; various layers of polygons must be filled in succession. The Beauty Fill can be performed immediately after a Fill.

CTRL+F. Flip faces, selected triangular faces are paired and common edge of each pair swapped.

HKEY. Hide Selected. All selected vertices and faces are temporarily hidden.

SHIFT+H. Hide Not Selected: All non-selected vertices and faces are temporarily hidden.

ALT+H. Reveal. All temporarily hidden vertices and faces are drawn again.

ALT+J. Join faces, selected triangular faces are joined in pairs and transformed to quads

• • KKEY. Knife tool Menu.
    • Face Loop Select: (SHIFT+R) Face loops are highlighted starting from edge under mouse pointer. LMB finalizes, ESC exits.
    • Face Loop Cut: (CTRL+R) Face loops are cut starting from edge under mouse pointer. LMB finalizes, ESC exits.
    • Knife (exact): (SHIFT+K) Mouse starts draw mode. Selected Edges are cut at intersections with mouse line. ENTER or RMB finalizes, ESC exits.
    • Knife (midpoints): (SHIFT+K) Mouse starts draw mode. Selected Edges intersecting with mouse line are cut in middle regardless of true intersection point. ENTER or RMB finalizes, ESC exits.

LKEY. Select Linked. If you start with an unselected vertex near the mouse cursor, this vertex is selected, together with all vertices that share an edge with it.

SHIFT+L. Deselect Linked. If you start with a selected vertex, this vertex is deselected, together with all vertices that share an edge with it.

CTRL+L. Select Linked Selected. Starting with all selected vertices, all vertices connected to them are selected too.

MKEY. Mirror. Opens a popup asking for the axis to mirror. 3 possible axis group are available, each of which contains three axes, for a total of nine choices. Axes can be Global (Blender Global Reference); Local (Current Object Local Reference) or View (Current View reference). Remember that mirroring, like scaling, happens with respect to the current pivot point.

ALT+M. Merges selected vertices at barycentrum or at cursor depending on selection made on pop-up.

CTRL+N. Calculate Normals Outside. All normals from selected faces are recalculated and consistently set in the same direction. An attempt is made to direct all normals `outward'.

SHIFT+CTRL+N. Calculate Normals Inside. All normals from selected faces are recalculated and consistently set in the same direction. An attempt is made to direct all normals `inward'.

ALT+S. Whereas SHIFT+S scales in Edit Mode as it does in Object Mode, for Edit Mode a further option exists, ALT+S moves each vertex in the direction of its local normal, hence effectively shrinking/fattening the mesh.

CTRL+T. Make Triangles. All selected faces are converted to triangles.

UKEY. Undo. When starting Edit Mode, the original ObData block is saved and all subsequent changes are saved on a stack. This option enables you to restore the previous situation, one after the other.

SHIFT+U. Redo. This let you re-apply any undone changes up to the moment in which Edit Mode was entered

ALT+U. Undo Menu. This let you choose the exact point to which you want to undo changes.

• • WKEY. Special Menu. A PopupMenu offers the following options:
    • Subdivide: all selected edges are split in two.
    • Subdivide Fractal: all selected edges are split in two and middle vertex displaced randomly.
    • Subdivide Smooth: all selected edges are split in two and middle vertex displaced along the normal.
    • Merge: as ALT+M.
    • Remove Doubles: All selected vertices closer to each other than a given threshold (See EditMode Button Window) are merged ALT+M.
    • Hide: as HKEY.
    • Reveal: as ALT+H.
    • Select Swap: Selected vertices become unselected and vice versa.
    • Flip Normals: Normals of selected faces are flipped.
    • Smooth: Vertices are moved closer one to each other, getting a smoother object.
    • Bevel: Faces are reduced in size and the space between edges is filled with a smoothly curving bevel of the desired order.

• • XKEY. Erase Selected. A PopupMenu offers the following options:
    • Vertices: all vertices are deleted. This includes the edges and faces they form.
    • Edges: all edges with both vertices selected are deleted. If this `releases' certain vertices, they are deleted as well. Faces that can no longer exist as a result of this action are also deleted.
    • Faces: all faces with all their vertices selected are deleted. If any vertices are `released' as a result of this action, they are deleted.
    • All: everything is deleted.
    • Edges and Faces: all selected edges and faces are deleted, but the vertices remain.
    • Only Faces: all selected faces are deleted, but the edges and vertices remain.

YKEY. Split. This command splits the selected part of a Mesh without deleting faces. The split parts are no longer bound by edges. Use this command to control smoothing. Since the split parts have vertices at the same position, selection with LKEY is recommended.

[edit] EditMode - Curve

CKEY. Set the selected curves to cyclic or turn cyclic off. An individual curve is selected if at least one of the vertices is selected.

EKEY. Extrude Curve. A vertex is added to the selected end of the curves. Grab mode is started immediately after this command is executed.

FKEY. Add segment. A segment is added between two selected vertices at the end of two curves. These two curves are combined into one curve.

HKEY. Toggle Handle align/free. Toggles the selected Bezier handles between free or aligned.

SHIFT+H. Set Handle auto. The selected Bezier handles are converted to auto type.

CTRL+H. Calculate Handles. The selected Bezier curves are calculated and all handles are assigned a type.

LKEY. Select Linked. If you start with an non-selected vertex near the mouse cursor, this vertex is selected together with all the vertices of the same curve.

SHIFT+L. Deselect Linked. If you start with a selected vertex, it is deselected together with all the vertices of the same curve.

MKEY. Mirror. Mirror selected control points exactly as for vertices in a Mesh.

TKEY. Tilt mode. Specify an extra axis rotation, i.e. the tilt, for each vertex in a 3D curve.

ALT+T. Clear Tilt. Set all axis rotations of the selected vertices to zero.

VKEY. Vector Handle. The selected Bezier handles are converted to vector type.

• • WKEY. The special menu for curves appears:
    • Subdivide. Subdivide the selected vertices.
    • Switch direction. The direction of the selected curves is reversed. This is mainly for Curves that are used as paths!

• • XKEY. Erase Selected. A PopupMenu offers the following options:
    • Selected: all selected vertices are deleted.
    • Segment: a curve segment is deleted. This only works for single segments. Curves can be split in two using this option. Or use this option to specify the cyclic position within a cyclic curve.
    • All: delete everything.

[edit] EditMode - Metaball

MKEY. Mirror. Mirror selected control points exactly as for vertices in a Mesh.

[edit] EditMode - Surface

CKEY. Toggle Cyclic menu. A PopupMenu asks if selected surfaces in the `U' or the `V' direction must be cyclic. If they were already cyclic, this mode is turned off.

EKEY. Extrude Selected. This makes surfaces of all the selected curves, if possible. Only the edges of surfaces or loose curves are candidates for this operation. Grab mode is started immediately after this command is completed.

FKEY. Add segment. A segment is added between two selected vertices at the ends of two curves. These two curves are combined into 1 curve.

LKEY. Select Linked. If you start with an non-selected vertex near the mouse cursor, this vertex is selected together with all the vertices of the same curve or surface.

SHIFT+L. Deselect Linked. If you start with a selected vertex, this vertex is deselected together with all vertices of the same curve or surface.

MKEY. Mirror. Mirror selected control points exactly as for vertices in a Mesh.

SHIFT+R. Select Row. Starting with the last selected vertex, a complete row of vertices is selected in the `U' or `V' direction. Selecting Select Row a second time with the same vertex switches the `U' or `V' selection.

• • WKEY. The special menu for surfaces appears:
    • Subdivide. Subdivide the selected vertices
    • Switch direction. This will switch the normals of the selected parts.
    • Mirror. Mirrors the selected vertices

• • XKEY. Erase Selected. A PopupMenu offers the following choices:
    • Selected: all selected vertices are deleted.
    • All: delete everything.

[edit] VertexPaint Hotkeys

SHIFT+K. All vertex colours are erased; they are changed to the current drawing colour.

UKEY. Undo. This undo is `real'. Pressing Undo twice redoes the undone.

WKEY. Shared Vertexcol: The colours of all faces that share vertices are blended.

[edit] EditMode - Font

In Text Edit Mode most hotkeys are disabled, to allow text entering.

RIGHTARROW. Move text cursor 1 position forward

SHIFT+RIGHTARROW. Move text cursor to the end of the line.

LEFTARROW. Move text cursor 1 position backwards.

SHIFT+LEFTARROW. Move text cursor to the start of the line

DOWNARROW. Move text cursor 1 line forward

SHIFT+DOWNARROW. Move text cursor to the end of the text.

UPARROW. Move text cursor 1 line back.

SHIFT+UPARROW. Move text cursor to the beginning of the text

ALT+U. Reload Original Data (undo). When EditMode is started, the original text is saved. You can restore this original text with this option.

ALT+V. Paste text. The text file /tmp/.cutbuffer is inserted at the cursor location.

[edit] UV Editor Hotkeys

EKEY. LSCM Unwrapping. Launches LSCM unwrapping on the faces visible in the UV editor.

PKEY. Pin selected vertices. Pinned vertices will stay in place on the UV editor when executing an LSCM unwrap.

ALT+PKEY. Un-Pin selected vertices. Pinned vertices will stay in place on the UV editor when executing an LSCM unwrap.

[edit] EdgeSelect Hotkeys

ALT+CLICK. Selects an Edge Loop.

[edit] FaceSelect Hotkeys

ALT+CLICK. Selects a Face Loop.

TAB. Switches to EditMode, selections made here will show up when switching back to FaceSelectMode with TAB.

FKEY. With multiple, co-planar faces selected, this key will merge them into one "FGon" so long as they remain co-planar (flat to each other).

LKEY. Select Linked UVs. To ease selection of face groups, Select Linked in UV Face Select Mode will now select all linked faces, if no seam divides them.

RKEY. Calls a menu allowing to rotate the UV coordinates or the VertexCol.

• • UKEY. Calls the UV Calculation menu. The following modes can the applied to the selected faces:
    • Cube: Cubical mapping, a number button asks for the cubemap size
    • Cylinder: Cylindrical mapping, calculated from the center of the selected faces
    • Sphere: Spherical mapping, calculated from the center of the selected faces
    • Bounds to x: UV coordinates are calculated from the actual view, then scaled to a boundbox of 64 or 128 pixels in square
    • Standard x: Each face gets default square UV coordinates
    • From Window: The UV coordinates are calculated using the projection as displayed in the 3DWindow

[edit] Render Window Hotkeys (to be written)

To be written (if someone could it would be very useful! : there's no place about it on the internet (or I didn't search enough) )

JKEY. Changes the image output. You have two slots in which to render. Very useful when you want to see what a specific change did to the image.

AKEY. Toggles display of alpha channel. The alpha channel of a picture determines it's transparency: Black areas are fully transparent, white areas are fully opaque and grey means semi-transparent. This can be useful when rendered images are arranged in layers, or used in applications which support alpha channels in images. To save images with alpha channel, make sure that the RGBA button in the render panel (F10) is enabled. Also, not all image formats support alpha channels, i.e. TGA and PNG do, but JPG does not. Note: Any background texturing which is done via the world panel (F8) will have an alpha value of 0, meaning it will be transparent. However, the world background will still be rendered correctly on (opaque) surfaces as reflections (i.e. mirrors) - this must be taken into account when later composing rendered images with a different background.

ZKEY. Toggle Zoom (2x). This will zoom the rendered image. The mouse can still be used to scroll around the zoomed image.

---

[edit] Beginning Modeling Final Project

Now that you've gotten the hang of 3D modeling, it's important to get some community feedback on your progress. Don't be an idiot and skip this part, or you'll regret it later. Basically this will help you track your progress and give you something that you'll be working on over a long term and something you'll be proud of.

• First, you need to come up with a project idea. You can choose your own modeling project, or choose one from the list below.

• Second, you need to create a model of your idea. Spend a couple of hours on it, and give it some details.

• Third, once you believe you've come far enough with the model, post it in the Works In Progress forum on BlenderArtists.org(formerly elysiun.com) (you will have to create an account if you haven't already). Post several screenshots of your model from within the Blender (note: creating screenshots is outside the scope of this wikibook, though see note lower down the page). You can post whatever subject and message with your posting that you would like, or you can use this suggested subject and message:

Subject: Beginning Modeling Final Project - <project name>

Please assist me with any feedback on my model, keeping in mind that I am an absolute beginner still. I appreciate your help.

• Wait for feedback. It usually comes very quickly. If you have any questions about feedback that you are given, don't be afraid to ask your questions in the forum.

• When you and others that have viewed your work feel that you are ready, save your model in some place you can get back to easily. You will continue working on this project once you've learned some new skills.

• Move on to the next page.

(BTW. in Windows and/or maybe other OS, to take a screenshot press 'PrtScn' (PrintScreen). It will copy the screen to clipboard for you to paste in your favourite graphics application. This may not work in other OSs but try anyway. You can also create Blender screenshot directly from Blender using menu File>Dump 3DView... or File>Dump Screen... )

(In linux under the KDE I use ksnapshot, check under the graphics tab and see if you have it. If not it should be just a google search away :) gl and happy blendering)

(On Mac OS X, press Command (Apple) + Shift + 3 to do a full screen capture)

• List of ideas:
• A Computer and keyboard
• A fishing rod
• A train engine
• A skyscraper
• A robot
• A Tank (real or made up)
• An airplane
• A truck or car
• Household appliances
• A Weapon

[edit] Beginning Lighting

Lighting, you say? Psshh. Just throw up one light source and let her run, right?

Wrong. Lighting is probably the most underestimated part of a scene by new 3D artists. By the following tutorials, you will gain knowledge of the technical use of lights in your scenes.

[edit] Adding Lamps

You can quickly add several different types of lights to your blender scene

SPACE > Add > Lamp > Spot

A light will appear in the location of the 3D cursor. You can move a light just like any other object.

If you want to quickly light a scene just for illumination, not for a specific look, add four lamps around your subject. If you are interested in experimenting with a lighting arrangement, a nice quick way to experiment is to create a Monkey in the scene to test with.

SPACE > Add > Mesh > Monkey

The monkey is just as good of a test subject as a human face, so give it a try. You can throw various materials on the monkey and try different textures too. Don't bad mouth the monkey, she is really useful.

[edit] Explaining the Different Lights:

• Lamp: Single point light source. This simple light source can cast sharp shadows, but is best for filling in dark areas without shadows turned on.
• Sun: A light with parallel rays that will illuminate the scene with a bright even light. Often a good starting point for outdoor scenes.
• Spot: Spot lights produce light in a cone shape, and have some special features. They are the only light source that can be made visible with the 'halo' option, to simulate light in a fog. They are also the only light source that cast fake shadows, called buffer shadows. Unlike raytraced shadows , these buffer shadows are smooth, but not as accurate. They are FAST though, the only real choice for animation.
• Hemi: 180° constant light source. Great for use as a fill light, or as a back light.
• Area: These are similar to lamps, except that they are rectangular instead of an infinitesimal point. As a result they can cast accurate raytraced soft shadows. These are my lamp of choice for still shots, but they take a lot of time to render.

Standard lamp

Area lamp

Spotlight lamp

Sun lamp

Hemi lamp

[edit] Creating a basic scene with basic lighting

• This addition is simply a way to apply what you know about lights and to discover a few settings like colors or creating simple shadows. The purpose here is to create a basic scene with a sphere over a plane, nicely lighted. You should already know the basics of Blender (creating a mesh, moving and rotating it, rendering).

[edit] Creating the scene

• Okay, let's start! Open a new file. Add a UVsphere of 32 rings and 32 segments. Exit EditMode. Leave it in the center of the scene.

Tip : Go in the Editing buttons , and push Set Smooth so the sphere will render as a nicely smoothed sphere.

• You should already have a plane in the basic scene, otherwise add a Plane. Have it in ObjectMode and move it just under the sphere. Scale it so it is very big. The ideal would that we can't see borders with the camera.

• Then we will move the Camera. Grab it and rotate it so it looks at the sphere from top and a bit from the right. You can have an idea of what it sees pressing Num0 to have a CameraView.

Trick : First click on the Camera, then on the Sphere holding Shift( the order is very important ). Do a Ctrl+T and select TrackTo Constraint . The camera will be looking at the center of the sphere... You can then move either the camera or the sphere and the camera will still point at the sphere. hieudaigia

[edit] Adding the lights

• Okay, what we have is a pretty beautiful scene, isn't it?... Well, it isn't! But it is enough to add some lights... Here I will describe a basic lighting scene I use as a default for fast renderings. I picked it out from another tutorial, you can find the link at the end of this page.
• Now we will add our so-awaited lights. Add>Lamp>Spot. Yes, we will first use the Spot light. We can see it as a projector. This is the only light casting shadows. Place it so it is upper and on the left of the sphere. Rotate it so it looks at the Sphere (you can use a Trick I gave you before to have the light looking at the sphere).
• Okay, let's see what we can tune with the spot light. Having the lamp selected, go in the Lamp settings . You will see these buttons.

• Yeah, really lots of options. Don't worry, I'll explain the basic ones.
  • Dist : Sets the maximum distance the light can reach. Increase it so the lighting cone really goes behind the sphere. I set it to Dist:40.
  • Energy : This is the force of the light. You can leave it at Energy:1.
  • RGB : You can change the colour of the light. Click on the colour and a little window will appear to select the colour you want. Leave it white.

• • Buf.Shadow : Enables the light to cast shadows, leave it pushed.
  • OnlyShadows : This light only creates shadows, without casting light ( yeah quite unrealistic, but it can be useful ). Leave it unpushed. File:OnlyShad.png
  • SpotSi : This is the angle of your cone, in degrees. Leave to SpotSi:45.
  • SpotBl : This smoothes the circle cast by the light. We will smooth it so that it looks better. Set it to SpotBl:0.4.
  • ClipSta and ClipEnd : This is the distance from the light between which shadows will be cast. You can see the "line of effects" in the 3D windows when you change these. Set them so the line starts before the sphere and ends far ( well, a bit ! ) behind the plane. You should obtain something like this. (this is very important... If you do this badly, it can result in completely dark scene!)

• Now, we have set our Spot light. This light will be our side light and shadowing light. You can make a fast preview pressing F12. You can see your so nice shadow. But there isn't enough light... Let's add some more!

• Time to add a second light! Add>Lamp>Lamp. This time, we will create a basic lamp. This is like a point which emits light in every direction from that point. You should place it at the opposite of the camera, quite at the same height. This light will be used to better see the form of the sphere and to add a sort of general lighting of the scene.

• Go in the Lamp buttons, and set it to a higher energy like Energy:1.25. You can make a quick render to see how much this light is important to a scene.

• Now, we will add a second basic lamp. Add>Lamp>Lamp and we will place it just behind the camera point of view, a bit moved at the opposite of the Spot light. This third light will slightly light the dark parts of the sphere.

• Decrease the energy of this light, as it is only supposed to fake the reflections of the environment. I set it to Energy:0.8. Another little trick, as this is not supposed to be a direct light, there shouldn't be a little white glow called Specular on the sphere coming from this light. Push the No Specular button.

• Okay, it's time for the final rendering. Of course, this is a really basic lighting set you can use for rendering a simple mesh; but for more complicated scenes, lights can come from other places, with other colors, etc... Thus we didn't use the Sun, Hemi and Area lights, which are a bit more complicated.

Note that the following site contains nude figures: For a more in-depth tutorial, here is a tutorial from the Blender Documentation, which has been a great source of help for me.
User note: you might want to check this tutorial on lighting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=YJiR2Q7uvbQ

[edit] Outdoor lighting

• Here you will use a Sun in conjunction with a Spot light and some little Lamps.

[edit] Lighting Without Lamps

• It is possible to light a scene without lamps.
• Ambient Occlusion Video Tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKUAemD7oo4
• Radiosity Lighting Video Tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M4ffj2w_WY

[edit] Render Settings

The render settings control various options related to the output of rendered, or full quality images. Rendering an image will calculate effects not displayed in the editing environment (due to their complexity), and therefore takes a larger amount of time to produce an image. If you notice an error partway through a render, then you can press escape to abort.

[edit] The Scene Tab

Let's take a look at all of the rendering options that Blender has. Open up a new scene (CTRL + X) and press F10. You should see something that looks like this:

These are the default settings for Blender. Let's take a look at all of these tabs and see what they do.

[edit] Output / Render Layers

This is the first tab on the left. First of all, we see a file locator icon ( ) to the left of /tmp/. This is Blender's temporary directory. (Normally C:/tmp on Windows) Below that, we see another file locator icon, labeled //backbuf. This is the Back Buffered image, one way to make an image the background on your render. Simply use that file locator to find a file, and Blender will use it as the background image (the backbuf button must be clicked to activate it). Finally, the last one is //ftype. The Blender description reads "image to use with FTYPE image type."

The next row down, we see this: "What do these do?!" you ask. Well, it's actually quite simple. First of all, the first button is the backbuf button that I just talked about. If you have selected a background image to render using the "backbuf" option, clicking this button will make it show up. Next, on the right, are the 'Edge' and 'Edge Settings' buttons. Clicking the 'Edge' button will render your image with edges. Edges are rendered where the camera sees an edge. For an experiment, turn it on and render to see what happens. Notice how the default cube now has a black edge around it. If you want it bigger, click the 'Edge Settings' button. Here, you can change the size of the edge that is rendered, as well as the color. The next button we are going to talk about is the 'Threads' button. Clicking this enables threads, which allows the renderer to do threaded processes. Basically, if you have a dual-core processor (Athlon X2, Intel Core2Duo, etc.) it will have one processor render part of the image at the same time that the other processor is rendering another part. This (generally) helps reduce rendering time. Finally, the last button on this row is the 'Free Tex Images' button, which "Frees all images used by textures after each render".

There is one last row of buttons below. The bunch of little squares enable you to tell Blender where to put the render window on your screen. Try pushing one and then rendering to see for yourself. The "Save Buffers" button saves all the tiles from every render layer and SceneNodes to files, saving memory. Experiment to try it out. The dither button will put dither noise in your image. The render window button allows you to render your image in a new window, render it full screen in the UV Image Editor, or render the result in the UV Image Editor (but not in full screen), a good idea when working with nodes. The extensions button adds extensions to your animations.

[edit] Render

Now, let's move on to the render tab! The first thing you should notice is the VERY BIG button that says 'Render' on it. This button performs the same action as the F12 button. Below this is a drop-down box, allowing you to change between the Blender Internal Render engine and YAFRAY. (For more on YAFRAY, see YAFRAY Render Options). Next to the 'Render' button are 5 buttons: Shadow, Env Map, Pano, Ray, Radio. These are explained in detail below:

• Shadow: Lights will cast shadows. If this is turned off, nothing will cast a shadow. To see this, add a plane below your default cube and render. Now turn this button off and see how there are no shadows.
• EnvMap: Use the environment map.
• Pano: This enables panoramic rendering. For more on panoramic rendering, see Panorama Settings
• Ray: This enables Ray Tracing. Turn it off, and render the same images as I talked about in the description of the Shadow button. "What!?" you say. "That did the same thing as turning off the shadows! What's the deal?" Well, ray tracing is used to calculate how light goes through objects like glass and stuff. It also has something to do with shadows.
• Radio: This stands for Radiosity.

Moving on, the next button we come to is the 'OSA' button. For the use of this button, see OSA

To the right of the OSA button, are some percentages. These will set the renderer to render at the specified percent of the resolution that you have set. (We'll come to resolution later) For an experiment, press the '50%' button. As you can see, Blender renders the image at 50% of the set resolution. This is an easy way to make a quick render.

Next on our tour, we come to two boxes labeled 'Xparts' and 'Yparts'. These buttons change the number of boxes that Blender will render in total. Play around with these to see how they change the number of small boxes in the render window when you render.

[edit] Anim / Bake

The final tab we'll (briefly) cover is the Anim(Animation) tab. If you have made an animation, pressing the 'ANIM' button will render your animation. Right below it are two buttons, Do Sequence and Do Composite. The Do Sequence button will render your animation with any effects you have done in the Sequence Editor and the Do Composite button will render an animation with your composite node work included. The Sta: and End: are the start and end frame numbers. The default setting is that your animation will start at frame 1, and will end at frame 250.

[edit] Output Format Options

[edit] Output Format Basics

When you render a scene in Blender, by default a small window will open showing your image. If you want to publish your picture, you may want to render it a bit bigger. To do this, you have to open the Scene context (F10) and locate the Format tab (usually on the right).

You will see some settings there. Let's go through their meanings:

• SizeX: This parameter sets the width of the image in pixels.
• SizeY: This parameter sets the height of the image in pixels.
• AspX, AspY: These parameters specify the aspect ratio of the pixels. By default, this is 100:100, because a pixel on a computer screen has equal width and height. These settings can be used for screens whose pixels don't have equal width and height. For example, on a PAL system one pixel's width/height ratio is 54:51, which you can select there easily. Notice that these parameters don't change the size of the image.

Don't forget, setting the number of pixels changes the resolution. Resolutions for your computer desktop are normally 1024x768, but can be larger. This means that it is 1,024 pixels wide and 768 pixels tall. To make an image this size in Blender, change the SizeX to 1024 and the SizeY to 768.

If this does not come out correctly, then you should right-click your desktop and click Properties, then go to Appearance. The highlighted numbers are X by Y.

[edit] Output formats

Blender has the ability to save in a wide variety of formats. To change the format, click the drop-down box ( ) halfway down the format tab. Currently, Blender can save files in the following formats:

• TIFF
• OpenEXR
• DPX
• Cineon
• Radiance HDR
• Iris:
• Iris + Zbuffer:
• HamX: extremely compact but only for the "Play" option
• Jpeg: default format. Lossy compression.
• BMP: uncompressed.
• PNG: open, lossless compression, alpha channel.
• Targa Raw: uncompressed Targa.
• Targa: Compressed Targa.

Single rendered images are not automatically saved to disk. Once Blender finishes rendering a scene (this can take some time), press F3 and the save dialogue will be opened where you can specify a filename and location for the output. You can retrieve the last picture rendered by pressing F11.

Video:

• AVI Codec: saves an AVI with a compression codec. Once selected a pop-up menu will appear giving options as to what codec you want.
• AVI Jpeg: saves an AVI as Jpeg images. Compressed but lossy.
• AVI Raw: saves an AVI with uncompressed frames.
• QuickTime: saves a QuickTime MOV file. Once selected, a pop-up menu will appear giving various video codecs to choose from. Can also remain uncompressed.
• FFMpeg: Implemented in a Google Summer of Code event, this codec is composed of multiple software libraries, so you can choose which codec to use under the video tab. The audio tab lets you choose from several different audio codecs to use and also has a bitrate setting. The Multiplex Audio button will render your animation with sound (if you have any), a nice feature.

For more information, see

• Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Creating animated GIFs using Blender and Gimp
• Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Creating Ogg-Theora movies using Blender

[edit] Cropping

You can see button next to drop-down box. If you activate it, image automatically gets cropped after rendering.

[edit] Palette

You can select three different palettes in Blender:

• BW - images are saved with BW (greyscale) data
• RGB - images are saved with RGB (color) data
• RGBA - images are saved with RGB and Alpha data (if supported)

[edit] Pre-sets Just For You

The render settings in blender are customizable for unique results, but blender includes 9 pre-sets for common render outputs. One can use the pre-set as is or can use it as a starting point at which the settings are then modified.

PAL and NTSC are systems used in analogue Television. If someone were making an animation for TV or DVD, that individual may use one of these depending on which is used in their country. Both the PAL and NTSC pre-sets in Blender only affect the dimensions and pixel aspect ratio of the render and doesn't turn on anti-aliasing (OSA) or affect any other variable in the render. Pal 16:9 is a newer an improved version of PAL which is also known as PALplus.

The Default pre-set uses the dimensions and an pixel aspect ratio as PAL but also includes OSA and shadows.

The Preview pre-set generates a low quality setting for a fast render that usually is not used as a final output.

• PANO is short for Panorama. This setting allows for a full 360 degree panoramic render.
• FULL produces a render that fits your monitors full screen.
• HD is for High Definition.

[edit] OSA

OSA stands for oversampling, also known as anti-aliasing. It prevents "jaggies," or "aliasing" as it's called.

This occurs when you have a diagonal change of colour, which results in rough edges. Remember drawing a diagonal line in Paint? To overcome this hindrance of square pixels, a technique called anti-aliasing or "oversampling" is used. It blends the colours around the rough edge to create a smooth, but defined edge. One way of doing this is to by creating the image twice as large, then scaling it down - oversampling. Blender can do this for you if you select an OSA rate. Remember this will take much longer, but results in better renders, so use this for the final product, not while testing. In some cases the scene can seem blurred due to oversampled textures; try changing the OSA setting, or oversampling yourself.

Here's a quick illustration of how OSA changes a render (look at the edges):

OSA settings can be manipulated in from the Render Settings panel.

[edit] Looking All Around - Panorama Settings

[edit] Panoramic Renderings

[edit] This Article is Out Of Date

This article is out of date, and the panoramic features mentioned do not work this way in recent Blender versions. Panoramic features were changed somewhere between 2.37a and 2.42. More information, including how to actually use panorama, can be found in this thread in the forums: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?p=797886

[edit] Building the Example Scene

Ever wondered how that cool looking 360 degree panoramas that you see on some websites are made? Well, I don't know either, so someone else will have to tell about that. What I found out though is how to make Blender output a 360 degree panoramic image - quite probably this at least is the first step when making something like on those websites.

Now, let's try to progress like in a tutorial, as in the other pages of this Wikibook. So, fire up Blender, and look at the well known initial box scene. Or rather, change it somehow. Assuming you have read the book in order, it shouldn't be hard to get something like in the picture.

I placed the camera and the light both above the origin, deleted the cube, and added 8 cylinders, all around the origin. One way to do this is to place one cylinder, then duplicate and rotate it around the origin. For this to work, set the rotation center to the 3D-cursor (with the Pivot button), and position the 3D cursor at the origin (use SHIFT+S to make the 3D cursor snap to the grid).Place the first cylinder using GKEY and then holding CTRL while moving the mouse. Change to object mode, then use SHIFT+D to duplicate it. Next, press RKEY to rotate it, then hold CTRL while rotating it by 45 degrees. Repeat the same for the remaining cylinders. Use G to move the light. Use NKEY to enter the camera values like shown, so it looks parallel to the ground.

Speaking of ground, lets also add a ground. I added another cylinder, below the other ones, as shown. It's easy to add by switching to front view (NUM1), duplicating a cylinder (SHIFT+DKEY), and then moving it holding CTRL pressed again, so it snaps to the grid. To scale it, use the SKEY , but hit SHIFT+ZKEY to lock the z scaling, and hold CTRL pressed while scaling in x and y direction so you can snap to the exact size you want.

Now, to have a complete scene, we need some colors. I made the ground cylinder green, the 8 example cylinders gray, and also added a noise normal to the ground. This doesn't really matter here though, just needed some example scene for the 360° camera.

Something more interesting is the sky texture, because Blender's sky can be made to seamlessly wrap around with 360 degree. Belows is a screenshot of the sky settings I used. To get there, click on the Shading button, then select World.

To change the texture, click the textures button or press F6, then add a new texture with the small button with two arrows, and select the type (e.g. "Marble" or "Clouds") instead of "None" for the texture. Go back to the World pane, and enable the Real and Blend buttons. And don't forget to use nice colors, I used blue and white. Now it looks a bit like white clouds in a blue sky.

[Maybe should add here more details? What is important so you don't get a seam at the 0 - 360 degree point? How do you map pre-made sky textures?]

And we are already done, this is the example scene. All that is left to do is to render it as a panorama.

[edit] Panoramic Rendering

Go to the render settings (F10), and click the Pano button. Change the Xparts value to 4. The value in Xparts will tell how many times the camera will 'turn' horizontally when rendering. The Yparts value would do the same vertically. Each part (Xparts or Yparts) will render the size of the whole image you set. To make things easier, make the output image size quadratic and set both X and Y Aspect to 100. E.g. make your image size 600x600, but not 800x600, otherwise the following will not work.

If you want a seemless 360 degree view, it is important to know how many degrees one single image spans. For example, if you know one image is 90 degree, then you can set Xparts to 4, and the result will be a single panoramic picture, and with the right panorama viewer, you can spin around in it endlessly.

But, how do you make a single picture 90 degree? The angle a picture spans is called field of view (FOV). And it is a property of the camera. To change it, select your camera, then click the edit button (or hit F9). Make sure you haven't set your camera to orthographic (the "Ortho" button), since FOV only exists with a normal camera.

You can directly enter the FOV in Blender's camera settings (as of version 2.42) - Toggle the 'D' button on, next to the parameter called Lens. Type in 90 to get a 90 degree FOV. Now hit F12 to render our test image.

If you want, you can also try it out with any other scene. Place the camera somewhere in the middle with a good view all around, set the camera's Lens to 90, and go into the render settings (F10). Set Xparts to 4, enable Pano, and render. You should get an image 4 times as wide as a normal image, and the left and right edges should fit together seemlessly. Also note that Blender doesn't know if it should apply the FOV as horizontal or vertical viewing angle, but we always want it to be the horizontal angle. Therefore just make the single images of the panorama quadratic, as mentioned above - then horizontal and vertical FOV is the same and Blender gets it right.

This is the resulting panoramic image:

Warning: Didn't convert following lens settings to the new possibility with the 'D'-button for passing the FOV value directly. One problem remains, the image will be quite distorted. This is because a FOV of 90 degree is too high. Let's try with 45 degree and 8 XParts instead. As you will have noticed when playing around with the Lens parameter before, setting Lens to 8 instead of 16 will not achieve this, it will make the FOV even bigger. Setting it to 32 looks better, but definitely is not 45 degree. The picture to the right explains how FOV and Lens relate to each other:

The camera is at the bottom, the red angle is our desired FOV, and the length of the green line is what the Lens parameter represents in Blender. Therefore, the formula to calulcate Lens when we know FOV:

Lens = 16 / tan(FOV / 2)

For a FOV of 45 degree, we therefore get a Lens of 38.627. Now, write that into the Lens field in the camera settings, and render with 8 XParts. This time it will render an output image which is 8 times as wide as a normal output image, and again it will be a seamless 360 degree all around panorama of your scene. And this time with less distortion. With the above formula, you can now use any number of XParts you want - just divide 360 by the number of parts, and calulate the Lens parameter for the resulting FOV. Note that you also need to take the Aspect settings into account, unless you set it to 100 and create a quadratic output, as we did.

Some Lens settings:

• 4 parts: 16
• 8 parts: 38.627
• 16 parts: 80.437

The output with 8 parts can be seen below.

As always, feel free to modify this page in any way you want or add feedback to the Talk page.

[edit] Other Important Render Options

Rendering by Parts (Bucket Rendering)

Images can be rendered in pieces or layers rather than all at one time. Your computer will only need to compute smaller bits of information thus using less memory. By changing the Xpart and Ypart values (up to 8 each since Blender can't support more than 64 [8x8] parts) in the Render panel of the Scene context(F10,) you can divide your image into an invisible grid. The pieces will layer one at a time until they are whole.

Edge Renderings - Tutorial Here

Blender has an option of adding a border – a defined edge to objects (like in cartoons). To do that you need to go to the render buttons (F10) and then, under "output" change the edge setting: set the "Eint" to a value of about 100 and check the "edge" icon to enable edge rendering. This would give you edge line at the edge of each polygon. To prevent it from applying on all polygons the same way change to "unified render" under the format tab. Then, in the edge settings change the "antishift" value, it will decrease itself from the fint value when the line is between identical materials. By also checking the "all" icon you tell the render to apply the edge rendering on transparent materials as well.

Note: User Terrywallwork - The edge bordering feature in Blender 2.43 only seems to work when Blender Internal renderer is used, when Yafray is used, no edge is show even if the options is clicked. I'm not sure if there is a way round this or not.

HDRI Rendering - Tutorial Here

Multi Thread Rendering

Blender has the option to render with 'Multiple threads' meaning it can render more than 1 part at once. This is done by sending more than 1 Render parts to the CPU to process at the same time, if your CPU can handle it. The Option is found in render buttons (F10). Change the number of threads used by changing its number.

Note in Blender 2.46+: Blender 2.46 automaticly selects the number of threads.

[edit] Basic Animation

[edit] Note About Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Basic Animation

I created this little note section to both warn learning users, and to give information to those who would make this wikibook better. The animation section in this book leaves a lot to be desired. It needs to go slower, and be more thorough. It is not finished (hence the accurately drawn "status images"). Here are a few things that need to be mentioned:

• What a key is
• How to manipulate keys after they are drawn
• How to delete keys (both IPO and Lattice)

I recommend that new users read the animation section in the blender documentation first. It is written for an older blender version, but it is more informative than this tutorial, and most of the information in there is still accurate. Here is a link: http://www.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/p6390.html

[edit] Basic Animation Introduction

Animating, in principle, isn't that hard. Good animation is a very different story. These steps show you how to make a simple keyframe animation:

1. It is a good idea to switch into the animation screen using the screen selection drop-down on the main menu or by pressing CTRL + Left Arrow.
2. Go to the starting frame, using the arrow keys on your keyboard (Shift+Left Arrow goes to Start Frame, Shift+Right Arrow goes to End Frame, the Up and Down arrows Skip 10 Frames, the Right and Left arrows skip 1 Frame)
3. Go into the correct mode. To animate solid objects, go into Object Mode. To animate bones, go into Pose Mode (in this case, you don't have any right now).
4. Place the object or bone at the desired starting location and/or rotation.
5. Press the i-key on your keyboard while the mouse is in the 3D view and you will see a menu of the different properties which you may animate. Choose the most appropriate one, based on the properties you wish to change in the next keyframe. For example, if you wish to change the location, rotation and size of the object, select LocRotSize (now called LocRotScale). You have now made the first keyframe, which is a frame of animation which you have personally set up.
6. Now go to the frame of the next keyframe you wish to define, and put everything in the place you want for that frame. Remember, if you have a frame rate setting of 25 frames per second (fps) then if you want to make the next keyframe one second later in the animation, you need to go to frame 25 to make the keyframe. Then press the i-key again, and select the correct option again, depending on the changes you've made. (All in-between frames are automatically made to interpolate between the two neighboring keyframes).
7. Repeat the previous step for each keyframe of the animation.
8. If you want more control over the transition between the keyframes, use the IPO-window (if you followed step 1, it should already be open on the right of the screen). Select the object you have keyframed and the IPO-window will display its animation curves (one curve for each of the properties you selected). You can select and edit the curves using the normal Blender controls. Use the curve menu for more options, such as making the curves actually curve instead of being straight lines.

For more information, see this YouTube Tutorial or The Blender Userguide

[edit] Particle Systems

This tutorial was written for Blender v2.49

Particle systems are used to simulate large amounts of small moving objects, creating phenomena of higher order like fire, dust, clouds, smoke, or fur, grass and other strand based objects. You may also use other objects as a visualization of particles.

Before you start with the tutorials, you should at least take a brief overview about the very extensive manual pages of the particle system. You will find every single parameter explained in the manual if you have the desire to delve deeper ...

Don't forget: particles alone don't do any magic. They are only a placeholder for something nice to view. You have to take care of the visualization also, and that is usually the harder part than to create the particle system.

[edit] The very first particle system

[edit] Creating a particle system

To create a particle system:

• insert a plane
• select the object (only mesh objects can emit particles)
• change to the object buttons and to the particle subcontext
• click on Add new (Img. 1a)

Voila, your first particle system! It doesn't do anything useful now, but we're going to change that on the following pages.

• To see any particles press Alt-A. The frames change and you see particles appear. Press Esc to stop the animation.

You return to frame 1. The particle movement is cached (stored), so if you play your animation again it will go faster (well, you won't notice any difference in this simple case).

• If you want to stop in a certain frame, press Space.
• To see the particles even better change to wireframe mode (Z),

If you change anything in your particle system you always have to return to frame 1, to recalculate the system from start.

Use a timeline window to change easily between frames (Img. 1b).

[edit] Changing properties of the system

The most important properties are probably:

• Amount: the total number of particles
• Sta/End: the start and end frame of the emission
• Life: the lifetime of the particles
• The initial velocity. This is often set with Normal causing the particles to get a speed in the direction of the face normal (if emitted from faces).
• A constant global force. AccX/Y/Z set's a force in the respective direction.

For now change:

• the Amount to 5000
• the Lifetime to 100 frames
• the Normal value to 1.0.

The Particles are emitted directly upwards (if your plane is orientated that way) and life for 100 frames.

If you render now, you will see a white "Blob". This is the default Halo rendering of the particles.

[edit] Changing the material of the particles

• Change to the Shading buttons and assign a material to the plane.
• Activate Halo in the Links and Pipeline panel.

The Halo settings are in the Shaders panel. The color of the Halo is set in the Material panel (see also the Manual on Halos). Halos are a post rendering effect, that is applied after the scene is finished. So halos can't shed any lights on other objects, they are not rendered behind RayTransp materials (like glass).

• Set the Halo color to deep blue (RGB: 0/0/1)
• Halo Size: 0.05 so each halo is quite small.
• Hard: 127 so that each halo has the maximum sharp edge
• Add: 0.5 so that the brightness increases where several halos overlap

Set the world color to black and render (Img. 3b). Nothing special till now, but that will change soon. So proceed to the next page, where we're going to make some fire.

[edit] Links

• Blender 2.49b Basic Particles Video Tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwsR8v5VE4M

[edit] Making Fire

This tutorial was made with Blender v2.48a

We're going to create a camp fire with a simple particle system. This tutorial is based on the method described in the Blender Manual. The result of this tutorial is shown in Fig. 1, the Blend-File is included at the bottom of this page.

If you need more realistic looking fire, you should use the method described in BlenderArt Magazine No. 16, though that method is more advanced and uses Compositing Nodes heavily.

The starting point of the tutorial is how fire behaves physically. The flames are made of hot gases. These accelerate upwards due to their lower density in contrast to the cooler air in the environment. Flames are in the middle hot and bright, to the outside they are darker.

[edit] The particle system

I've created the usual scene with some stones and a few pieces of wood (the wood is by courtesy of Teeth). (Fig. 2a).

• Add a Plane in the middle of the stones.

This will become the particle emitter.

• Rename the Plane object to "Emitter".

If you use good names you will find it much easier to orientate yourself in your scene later. Having 100 objects named "Cube.something" will make it very difficult to quickly select a desired object.

• Subdivide the plane once in Edit mode.
• Change the shape of the plane, so that it's shape equals the base of the fire.
• Change to object mode.

• Change to the Particle buttons of the Object buttons.
• Create a particle systems (Add New in the Particle System panel - and make sure the plane is selected!).
• Type: Emitter The plane emits the particles.
  • Amount: 9000 The total amount of particles.
  • Sta: -45 The simulation shall start before the rendering, to have a fully developed flame in the first frame.
  • End: 200 The simulation shall last 200 frames - here: the particles are emitted till frame 200.
  • Life: 16.6 I've adjusted the lifetime of the particles to their speed. Both parameters together regulate the hight of the flame.
  • Rand: 0.5 The lifetime is changed randomly.
• Emit from:
  • Random
  • Faces
  • Even
  • Random

This creates particles with a random distribution on the faces of the emitter object.

The movement of the particles is controlled with particle physics. You set the Initial Velocity and let the physics do the rest.

• Normal: -0.099 The particles are emitted slightly against the direction of the face normal. This leads to a bit wider fire at the base.
• Random: 0.014 This creates a random start velocity as well in speed as in direction (you could use a texture to randomize only the speed, see the discussion page for that).

After you have given the particles an initial velocity they are moved by forces.

• AccZ: 2.57 A force in positive Z direction (upwards).
• Drag: 0.1 Air drag decelerates the particles.
• Brown: 1.99 Random movement simulates agitated air movement.

The particle system is finished. Until now is doesn't look like much (see the white Blob in Fig. 2c). Therefore the emitter will get a material, this material will be animated.

[edit] Material

• Create a new material for the emitter, call the material Flames.
• Activate the Halo button in the Links and Pipeline panel. Else we couldn't set the particle parameters. The particles would be rendered with the default Halo values.
• Halo color: 1/0/0 (red)
• Alpha: 0.8 The particles shall always be a bit transparent.
• HaloSize: 0.132 I wanted many, but fairly small particles.
• Hard: 45 The transition from fully transparent to fully opaque.
• Add: 0.875 Several Halos over each other combine their power. This makes the fire in the center really bright.
• HaloTex: A Halo can bear an individual texture, but only the texture in the first texture slot is evaluated.

To give the Halo a bit more structure, give it a texture:

• Add a new texture in the first texture slot.
• Map To:
  • Col
  • Color: Bright yellow (1/1/0.664)

• Use an adjusted Clouds texture with a NoiseSize of 0.6.

[edit] Animation of the particle material

The particles "pop" into life and vanish suddenly. We should change that. Therefore we're going to animate the Alpha value of the particles.

• Make sure the material buttons are visible in the buttons window.
• Change to frame 21, move the mouse cursor over the button window and press I->Alpha. This is going to be the maximum visibility of the particles.
• Change to frame 1. Change the Alpha value to 0 and insert the next key.
• Change to frame 100. Change the Alpha value to 0 again and insert the third key.

If you want to see the IPO curve in the IPO Editor window you must change the IPO Type selector in the window header from Object to Material.

The Alpha value therefore changes during the individual lifetime of each particle from 0 to 0.8 and back to 0 (Fig. 3c).

[edit] Rendering

Our particle animation is finished.

• Change the end frame in the Anim panel of the rendering Buttons to 200 and click on Anim.

Note: If after rendering your particles are too small, such that the fire doesn't look realistic, try increasing the Halo size slightly. I used 0.300 instead of 0.132

To actually let the fire glow you have to use one or more lamps and animate them as well. But that would be part of another tutorial ...

[edit] Links

• The resulting blend file: [10].

[edit] Furry

This tutorial was created using Blender v2.48a. There is an older version of this page created with Blender v2.40.

This tutorial deals with fur, i.e. lots of relatively short hairs covering a body. We will use particles to create the fur, and discuss a few aspects here:

• How to determine the length and the thickness of the hair.
• How to determine the place to grow the hair.
• How to color hair.
• How to render efficiently.

The particle system is far too complex to show more than one method in this tutorial. You can achieve many of the same effects shown here in different ways.

[edit] The emitter

• Remove the cube.
• Add an UVSphere. This will become our emitter.
• Change to the Particle buttons in the Object buttons (Fig. 2a).
• Click on Add New.
• Rename the particle system to "Fur".
• Change the particle system type to Hair.

A Hair particle system has a lot of specialties, the most important thing is that we can edit the particle "motion" by hand if we want to. Apart from that normal particle physics apply, so everything a particle does hair can do also and vice versa. A particle hair shows the way of the particle during it's lifetime at once. To do that efficiently not every single frame is rendered as a point, but a certain number of control points are calculated. Between these control points there will be drawn an interpolated path. The number of control points is the number of segments + 1.

For fur you need lot's of particles, like 1.000.000 upwards. This will hurt us badly if we have to deal with so many particles in the 3D window and want to render it. Therefore we will create the great amount of particles with so called "children", that mimic the behavior of their parents. The amount of particle parents should be as low as possible, but you need a certain amount to control the distribution of the hair. We will also use as little control points as possible, three segments should be enough for short fur.

• Set the Amount to 1000.
• Set the number of Segments to three.
• Emit from:
  • Random:Faces
  • Even  :Random

This will create a nice, uniform distribution.

Let the hair grow - the hair shows the path of the particle:

• Set Normal to 0.05.
• Random 0.005

Nothing special here: the hair grows in the direction of the face normals. Length and direction are a bit randomized.

The Visualization type changes automatically to type Path if you select a hair particle system. If you would render now, you couldn't see the emitter object any more.

• Activate Emitter in the Visualization panel.
• Activate Strand Render.

The Strand Render (which I have baptized keypoint strands to differentiate from the "normal" polygon strands) renders the hair strands extremely efficiently and magnitudes faster than the normal strand. It is the only way to handle many hairs in terms of memory consumption. But it has a few disadvantages:

- They are not seen by raytracing, so you don't get raytracing reflections and no raytracing shadows. You can use environment mapping to compute the reflections and Spot Lamps with buffer shadows for the shadow.

- If the hair is very thick (like 1 BU) sometimes the shape is not correct.

• Activate Children from Faces.
• Amount: 5 This is the amount of particles visible in the 3D window. Keep this low.
• Render Amount: 50 This is the amount of particles during the render.
• Rough 2: 0.1 Random variation of the shape of the particles. So the hairs will not stand plain upright and appear a bit curly.

The parent particles are not rendered by default, so now we have 50.000 Particles that render on my old machine in 6 seconds. If we use 1.000 children we have 1.000.000 particles, that need approx. 1 GB of RAM and render in 1:42 minutes. If you render keypoint strands with Children from Faces you can also use Child simplification, which will reduce the amount of particles on objects far away from the camera automatically.

Now we should change the lighting to get a preview.

• Select the lamp.
• Change to the Lamp buttons.
• Change the lamp type to Spot.
• Change the shadow type to Buf. Shadow
• Change the buffered shadow type to Classic-Halfway.

This is a great shadow type that renders keypoint strands very well and creates fewer artifacts than Classical (In my opinion). I have inserted two other lamps and used a the classical three point lighting for the first rendering (Fig. 2c).

[edit] Material

In the material buttons you can set different aspects for the strands:

- their width and form

- the used shader

- the base color

- a texture along the strand

- different particle attributes like length, density or roughness

• Add a material to the emitter.
• Name the material "Fur".

[edit] Strands Shader

The default strands settings for Keypoint strands are shown in Fig. 3a. Take a look in the Manual about Strands for an explanation of all settings.

• Change the End value to 0.25, this will make the hair more spiky (not shown in Fig. 3a).

[edit] Giving the hair its base color

Strands are rendered with the material of the unterlying face/vertex, including shading with an UV-Texture. Since you can assign more than one material to each face, each particlesystem may have its own material and the material of the underlying face can be different from the material of the strands. We will use an UV texture and use it for the surface of the emitter as well as for the color of the hair.

• Change to Front view in the 3D window (View->Front).
• Make sure you are in Orthographic view mode (also in the View menu).
• Change to Edit mode of the sphere.
• Press U to unwrap, select Sphere from View. This is a quick and well working method to correctly unwrap a sphere the easy way.

You don't need to assign a texture in the UV/Image Editor, we only need the coordinates now.

• Add a texture to the material, name it "FurColor".
• Set Map Input to UV.
• Go to the Texture Buttons and set Texture-Type: Image.
• Load an image texture. I have used the image in Fig. 3b.

Normally I would just stop here, I think the material is good enough. But if you want to make the fur more fluffy and soft, you should a second texture along the strand, which changes the alpha value.

If you want to do that:

• Activate ZTransp.
• Add a second texture.
• Map Input: Strand
• Map To: Alpha and Spec, DVar=0
• Use a blend texture (Linear or Quad)

You can change all other properties this way, for example the color along the strand (bleached tips).

[edit] Changing Hair length with a texture

At first I will show you how to render the emitter mesh with a different material than the strands. Then I will show how to change the length of the hair with a texture semi-interactively.

• Change to the Editing Buttons.
• Change to Edit mode.
• In the Links and Materials panel click on New in the material section (right hand side).
• Make sure all vertices are selected.
• Click on Assign.
• Change back to Object mode.

Now the emitter bears a second material.

• Return to the material buttons.
• In the Links and Pipeline panel click on the X next to the material name (Deletes link to this Datablock).
• Add a new material.
• Name it Emitter.

Now you got a new material on your emitter object. Since the particle system uses material no. 1 you can use different settings for the emitter.

We have already unwrapped the emitter, this is something that will probably be the case also for any real models. Now we will use an UV-Image and texture painting to determine the hair length.

• Split the 3D window.
• Change the right hand side to an UV/Image-Editor window.
• Change to edit mode of the emitter object.
• In the UV/Image-Editor use Image->New... and confirm the default settings. This will create a new image, that we will paint on.
• Click on the package icon in the windows header of the UV/Image-Editor window. Confirm.
• Change the object to Texture Paint mode.

Now you see the texture on the object.

• Paint a structure on the object.
• Change back to object mode.
• Go to the Material buttons.
• Change the active material to Fur (click on the arrows in the Links and Pipeline buttons where it reads 2 Mat 2).

• Create another texture. Name it FurLength.
• Set Map Input to UV.
• Set Map To
  • Turn Col off.
  • PAttr
  • Length
  • DVar=0 All the white areas on the texture will produce a particle length of 0.
• Load the image texture that we have painted.

The result is shown in Fig. 4c, you can also see the particles change in the 3D window.

There would have been other ways to achieve this result, e.g. with vertex groups or with particle editing. But I like to work with textures, because you have very fine control and may change the strength of the effect at any time. Vertex groups don't allow for such fine control or you need very many vertices in the emitter. Particle editing (what we will do in the next step) is lost if you change the base particle settings late on, and you can't change it's effect so easily.

[edit] Comb it!

An effect that is often underestimated is the importance to comb fur in the natural directions. Fur doesn't simply stand upright, and it also doesn't follow gravity (or only to a small amount). So back to the particle system!

• Change back to the Particle buttons.
• Click on Set Editable in the Particle System panel.
• Change to Particle Mode.

Particle Mode only appears if you have made the particle system editable, and only hair systems can be made editable. There are a few lifesavers to know when working in Particle Mode.

- you can edit only the control points (remember the setting Segments from the beginning of this tutorial)

- you can only edit parent particles, so you need enough parents for good control

• Activate Limit selection to visible
• Activate Point select mode for even finer control.

Both settings are in the window header of the 3D window.

• Open the Particle Edit Properties panel with N key in the 3D window.
• Select Comb.

You have quite a few different tools at hand in Particle Mode, see the manual on Particle Mode.

• Comb the hair following the natural flow.

On the example sphere I have used here it is a bit difficult to tell what the natural flow should be ;-). So I have just very carefully combed and changed the length at a few places a bit. You find the rendered result in Fig. 1, the Blend file is linked below.

[edit] Links

• The result of this tutorial: [11]
• A tutorial in German that shows how to create Grass with a very similar method.
• Awesome fur shown here: Tiger

[edit] Game Engine Basics

Purpose: To demonstrate the object collision feature of Blender's Game Engine.

[edit] Introduction to Object Collision

In this tutorial, you will learn the basics of object collision within the Blender Game Engine (BGE). These physics simulations can be used for many things, from Blender games to use in animations, the bullet physics engine offers a massive number of possibilities, limited only by your imagination (and the amount of RAM your computer possesses). The tutorials found within this wikibook on the subject of the BGE are generally focused on game creation, but the concepts taught within them can be applied to a multitude of situations.

With the mouse cursor over a 3D viewport, press NUMPAD-7 to switch to TOP view.

Press the spacebar and select Add >Mesh >Plane. Press TAB to leave edit mode and enter object mode. [12]

Enlarge the plane by pressing S and dragging the mouse cursor away from the center of the plane. Click to stop re-sizing. The plane will serve as the 'floor'.

Add A UVSphere using the same sequence for adding the plane object. Press TAB to enter object mode.

With the mouse cursor over a 3D viewport, press NUMPAD 1 for Front view, then press G and move the sphere above the plane. Click to exit Grab Mode. You may need to scale the sphere down. It will be the ball which collides with the floor.

Go to logic panel (move cursor over Button Viewport and press F4).

Click on actor button (in the upper left corner of the logic panel), then Dynamic, then Rigid Body. This activates physics properties for the sphere so it can bounce.

Change the value of "Radius" to 2.0. Notice the dotted line that appears around the sphere. This dotted line marks how big the physics engine thinks this sphere is. For now, set it back to 1.0.

Next, you want to add some colour to the sphere and the plane (see Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Quickie_Material for details), so you can tell the two apart during simulation.

Move the cursor over a 3D viewport and press P. The sphere will drop down and collide with the plane. Press ESC to end simulation

For fun, try rotating the plane in front or side (NUMPAD 3) view and press P again. The ball will first hit the plane, then roll down. Add several more planes rotated to differing angles and position them in the falling path of the ball to keep it going.

This YouTube tutorial might also help: Link.

[edit] Your First Test

The Blender Game Engine is an interesting feature of Blender. It is basically a 3D environment in which 3D objects move around and react to each other upon contact. One common application is to recreate 3D architectural tours.

In this tutorial, you will learn the basics of object collision within the Blender Game Engine (BGE). From Blender games to use in animations, the bullet physics engine offers a massive number of possibilities. The tutorials found within this wikibook on the subject of the BGE are generally focused on game creation, but the concepts taught within can be applied to a multitude of situations.

As a start, we will teach you to make a ball roll realistically down the hill using Blender's game engine.

[edit] Adding the Hill

First, make a plane, then switch to Edit mode (TAB), and multi-subdivide it with 2 cuts (WKEY → Subdivide Multi → 2). Next, enter face select mode (CTRL+TAB → Faces) to drag the center face up, in order to form a rough outline of a hill. Add a subsurf modifier (in the edit buttons) to about 3, then apply. You should now have a serviceable, but small, hill. Scale the hill up (SKEY) by about 10 times, and we're ready to add the ball.

[edit] Creating the Ball

Now, add an icosphere (SPACE → Add → Icosphere) and relocate it to be just above the hilltop (GKEY or use the translate widget by pressing CTR+ALT+G). Let's change the color of the sphere so we can differentiate it from the plane. Go to the material buttons (with the sphere selected) and click on the white panel beside the COL value. In the color selection wiget that appears, change its color to a bright red.

Next we need to make the Physics engine iterate over it. With the sphere selected, go to the logic buttons (the little purple Pacman-icon). You will see a button in the top left that says Actor. Press it. Now select from the selection box beside of the "Actor" button Rigid Body. This makes the ball roll, instead of staying completely upright the entire time. You will see a bunch of settings available now. Change Radius to 2. This changes size the physics engine thinks the ball is. You notice a dotted circle around the object; this is the boundary. Now change the Radius back to 1. You now have your first Blender game ready to go.

[edit] Testing your game

Now the time has come for the first test of our game.

1. Add a light source well above the maze (SHIFT+AKEY → Lamp → Lamp). Align in front view (NUM1)
2. Press NUM5 to switch to Perspective mode, which gives a realistic view, rather than a view in which objects stay the same size with distance (be sure to switch back to Orthographic view when you are editing again using NUM5)
3. Enter textured mode (ALT+ZKEY -- press ZKEY to switch back to solid view mode)
4. Switch into side view (NUM3) and press NUM8 several times to get a good perspective on the ball.
5. Press PKEY to play the game (Make sure you are in Object mode (TAB)
6. Press P to start testing the game. You should see the red ball drop onto the hill.
7. Press ESC to quit testing the game

[edit] Conclusion

With the knowledge acquired in this tutorial, there are many things you could accomplish within the Blender Game Engine, although the majority of them would require more knowledge. So read on, and work your way through the multitudinous seas of tutorials (That is, two).

[edit] Extra Tutorials

Making a Basic Game: Link, The State Actuator: Link, Blender Game Engine Mouse Follow: Link, Blender Bullet Physics: Link, Domino Game: Link, Rag Doll: Link

[edit] Build a skybox

One way to add a realistic feeling to your 3d environment in a game engine is to create a skybox. A skybox is a large cube which has on its inside a projection of a 360° environment. When the player (camera) is inside this environment, the scene is rendered with the illusion of being inside a gigantic world. This is a similar effect to Quicktime VR (see http://fullscreenqtvr.com for examples). And, by setting up the skybox as a simple cube shape, you place the least amount of strain on the graphics engine. It's a great advantage for your game with very little overhead.

This tutorial will show you how to create skyboxes relatively easily from panoramic photos. My favorite part is, you can do it easily using free tools such as Blender and the Gimp.

Using the Gimp to manipulate images is not really in the scope of this tutorial... check out some other page on using that software. You should have an understanding of how to edit images and apply alpha channels. (You could also use the Gimp to apply a polar coordinate texture to your rectangular image in order to create a fisheye image. Hint: it's not the sphereize filter.)

[edit] Gather your graphics

You can take panoramic images yourself using a regular digital camera and a tripod. A quick way to accomplish this is to draw marks on your tripod base at every 30 degrees (think of the hours on a clock face). Make a single mark on the swivel of your tripod to allow you to line up your shots -- twelve shots at 30 degrees each. Then, using a program such as the Gimp or the incredibly cool Autostitch to merge the photos into one big panorama.

Or, if you're lazy like me, you can just grab photos online to use as templates to create original images. There are also many places you can download non-copyrighted photos for free as well. One resource for cloudy sky textures, as well as panoramic photography instructions, is Philippe Hurbain's site Philo's Home Page. This tutorial will use a fisheye sky photo from his copyright-free Panoramic Skies images collection.

You'll also probably want a photo for your ground, unless you prefer to use real models such as buildings in your skybox. This earlier chapter on creating landscapes can be incorporated into setting up your skybox. However, this tutorial will use the sky photo for the top half of our world, and a panoramic landscape with an alpha channel for the bottom half. I've created a ground image using copyright-free textures obtained from Accustudio.

Here are the images I'll be using (you'll want to use images with higher resolution): Note that the sky has trees, etc.

Note: I've outlined the horizon of the ground texture with an alpha channel which will allow me to place the ground mesh right against the sky mesh with a very natural feel.

[edit] Create a dome for the sky

Open a new file in Blender. Your default new file will probably be a two-unit cube in the center of the screen, with a single light source and a camera. You can delete the light source because we won't be needing it. Leave the cube, because that is what will become our skybox.

The cube will be the center of our environment, so use Object->Snap->Cursor To Selection if your cursor is not centered. Then, from the top view [KEYPAD-7], Use [KEY-SPACEBAR] to insert a new mesh; make it a UV sphere. I find a 32-segment, 32-ring sphere to be sufficient. We create the sphere from the top view because that is the projection from which we want to add the sky texture.

Scale up the sphere so it resembles a large "arena" in comparison to your cube, and select and delete the lower half of the vertices, using the front view [KEYPAD-1] and [KEY-B] to create a bounding box. It helps if "Select Visible" is turned off so you can select all of the vertices in one go.

Turn on proportional editing with [KEY-O], then select the bottom row of vertices and scale them up with [KEY-S] so that the bottom of the sphere gets a bell shape. Because the projection of the sky texture will be from the Y-axis (ceiling) we need the bottom faces of the sphere to be at an angle, to catch the texture. (Faces perpendicular to the projection will look like smears.) Alter the influence of proportional editing with [KEY-PAGEUP] and [KEY-PAGEDOWN]. Linear or Sharp falloff works best with the sphere shape.

Now you're ready to add your sky texture to this mesh. In the Materials menu, create a new material and a new texture. Be sure to set your material not to recieve shadows by clicking the "Shadeless" button. Then, in the Texture menu, set the texture type to Image, and click the Load Image button to insert our sky texture. Back in the Materials->Texture->Map Input menu, you may need to scale your image to get rid of the distorted textures at the edges of the fisheye by setting the Size to, say, 0.950 for X, Y and Z.

At this point, if you wish, you can reposition the camera and render the scene to see how your sky mesh looks.

[edit] Create a dome for the ground

I found it easiest to move the sky dome to a new layer with the [KEY-M] move to layer command. Then you can select the cube, Object->snap cursor to selection if you need to, select the top view [KEYPAD-7] and insert another UV sphere just as before -- except this time, remove the top hemisphere of vertices. I left an extra row of vertices at the "equator", scaled up, to function as a "billboard" to display the the horizon of our ground texture with the alpha channel. This sphere should be slightly smaller than the sky hemisphere.

This time, I will apply the ground texture with a tube projection, so it is projected onto the mesh horizontally [Materials panel | Map Input tab | Tube button]. Because I have an alpha channel on this texture, I click "Use Alpha" in the Texture menu and Map To -> both Col and Alpha buttons [Materials Panel | Map To Tab | -> both Col and Alpha buttons]. You will also need to set ZTransp in the Mirror Transp menu [Materials Panel | Links and Pipelines Tab | ZTransp button] so that your alpha channel shows up in the envmap (which will become your skybox), and Alpha to 0 [Materials panel | Material tab | A slider ] to allow the masked areas to be transparent. (Alpha channels appear to require Z buffering to appear on procedural textures.) Also, you may need to adjust the offset of the ground texture (Y-axis), so that the horizon appears properly on the "billboard" area of your ground hemisphere.

Again, you can reposition the camera and render the scene to make sure everything is properly aligned. Be sure to activate the layer where you moved the sky mesh. Your results will look similar to the following image. Set OSA on in the render screen for best results. Also, use higher resolution images with cleaner alpha channels -- the image below is rather blurry and you can see a halo around the horizon.

[edit] Render the environment map

The last step is to use the procedural Envmap texture to project the dome textures onto the cube, which will become our skybox. Select the cube and create a new material. Set the material to "Shadeless" [Materials Panel | Materials Tab | Shadeless button]. Add a new texture and make its type Envmap. Set the CubeRes [Envmap tab | CubeRes setting ] to whatever you want the resolution of your skybox to be (512 is a good resolution for a game; 1024 or 2048 are fairly high-res; I stuck with low-res for this tutorial). If your sky & ground hemispheres are very physically large, you may also need to increase the ClipEnd value to include all of the faces. You may want to set the Envmap calculation to Anim so you don't have to keep freeing envmap data if you're experimenting. (Anim automatically clears Envmap data with every render, otherwise you must click 'Free Data' to reset the Envmap.)

Once you've created the Envmap texture, you should be ready to render the Envmap for your skybox. If you want to set your file format such as JPG or PNG, you should do that first. Then, simply go to the render screen and click "Render." Again, make sure all layers are visible. The rendering window appears. First, Blender renders the environment map of the cube. Afterward, the camera view is rendered, at which point you can hit [KEY-ESCAPE] to stop rendering -- we are only interested in the environment map which is already complete.

Select the cube again, then get to its texture menu. You will see the newly-rendered Envmap on the sample texture. Click "Save EnvMap" in the texture menu to save the rendered Envmap.

Blender environment maps are saved as a 3x2 matrix of squares, as seen here:

The cube faces are in the following order.

You can now load this image as an envmap texture in a new cube, which you can incorporate into your game as a skybox. This file can also be edited in the Gimp to remove any unwelcome artifacts such as trees, buildings, jet trails, etc. Also, because I used a tube projection on the lower hemisphere, in the bottom face of the envmap you see a strange star shape at the "pole." You'll most likely have a floor in your game, so you probably won't see that face anyway, but sticklers can avoid it with clever use of the Filters->Distorts->Polar Coords filter in the Gimp or Filter->Distort->Polar Coordinates (Polar to Rect.) in Photoshop. Patching also works well.

To make the skybox appear as a static background in your game, vertex-parent it to the current active camera object.

[edit] Match Moving

Next page: Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/HDRi
Previous page: Blender_3D: Noob to Pro/Build a skybox

Match moving is the art of merging 3D with live action film. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, take a look at the WikiPedia article on Match Moving

Blender cannot perform the match moving itself, you use a 3rd party tool to determine the camera position and the way it moves, then import this data into Blender. While there are many software tools to do this, this page references two free options: Voodoo and Icarus.

[edit] Icarus

Icarus is a discontinued University of Manchester project which can be used for non-commercial work. The download links from the official page no longer function, but Windows and MacOS X versions are available from this Icarus video tutorial by Colin Levy.

[edit] Voodoo

Voodoo is an actively developed free match mover available for Windows and Linux. Here is a tutorial on using Voodoo and Blender

Next page: Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/HDRi
Previous page: Blender_3D: Noob to Pro/Build a skybox

A reader has identified this page or section as an undeveloped draft or outline. You can help to develop the work, or you can ask for assistance in the project room.

[edit] High Dynamic Range imaging (HDRi)

[edit] Introduction

You may have heard various people talk about HDR images. (WETA, Lucas, even Tim Sweeny). HDR images are part of a technology called HDRi which stands for "High Dynamic Range (image)". So... what on earth does that mean?

Here's a link to Wikipedia's article on the HDR format which I personally give all my credit to Paul Debevec for putting it to use for computer graphics purposes. Anyway, before you start trying to understand the usefullness of HDRi, please read the wikipedia link.

Also, visit Paul Debevec's website if you've got some more time to spare.

To sum up the excitement of HDR CG, think of it like the hype of the next-generation videogames that are about to come out, except set the stage for 1996 instead of 2006. Paul Debevec pioneered paralax mapping, HDR lighting, image-based modeling, his latest work includes some even more amazing technologies, and for the record he's my hero too.

To use HDRi images for 3D rendering, you need something called a light probe...

[edit] Definitions

HDRI

HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Imaging, and is basically an image format that contains from the deepest shadow up to the brightest highlight information. While an 'ordinary' digital image contains only 8 bits of information per color (red, green, blue) which gives you 256 gradations per color, the HDR image format stores the 3 colors with floating point accuracy. Thus the 'depth' from dark to light per color is virtually unlimited. Using HDR images in a 3D environment will result in very realistic and convincing shadows, higlights and reflections. This is very important for realistic emulation of chrome for example.

Light Probe

Light Probe is a HDR image containing 360 by 360 degrees image information. In other words : it's a 360 degree spherical panorama image, not only looking around the horizon, but also up and down. Thus a Light Probe image contains all visible information as can be seen from a specific point, wherever you turn your head.

[edit] Usage

Given that a Light Probe image is an 'all around' image with a high dynamic range, it's the perfect solution for your 'world' background, especially for a 3D animation.

[edit] Quick Tutorial (for experienced blendies)

First of all, you'll need an HDR image. There is a whole range at http://debevec.org/Probes/ that you can download for free. (There are even more at http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=24038 ). I will use the St. Peter's Basilica probe, but any other HDR image will do just fine.

To apply the HDRI environment to your scene:

• Go to the shading settings (press F5) and click the World button.
• Enable "Real" to force the horizon to stay still, as opposed to follow the camera
• In the "Texture and Input" tab, click "Add New" and "Angmap".
• Then go to the "Map To" tab and deactivate "Blend" and activate "Hori".
• Now go to the Texture settings (press F6) and change the "Texture Type" to "Image".
• Click the "Load Image" button and locate your HDR image.
• To be able to render using this environment, you may need to enable YafRay. Press F10 and change the "Blender Internal" to "YafRay". You need to turn on Global Illumination and to set the quality to something other than "none".

[edit] Step-by-step Tutorial

[edit] Build a simple scene

To see the advantage of using a 360 by 360 world image, the simplest example to demonstrate this is a scene with a mirrored sphere.

1. Add a sphere and a cube to your scene and place them in a bit of an interesting position. (note that I added a second lamp to light up the shadow part of the cube)
2. Perhaps give the cube a different color than the default grey.

1. Give the sphere a mirrored material : go to the Shading -> Material panel (F5) and find the Mirror Trans buttons.
2. Check that Ray Mirror button is pressed. If it is not, check it.
3. Set the RayMir value to a value of 0.5 or higher. Your preview should show the reflection of the checkboard environment.

[edit] Use the HDR image for the world texture

1. Download a HDR image (see Paul Debevec's website).
2. Go to the shading settings (press F5) and click the World button.

1. In the "Texture and Input" tab, click "Add New" and "Angmap". Note that the Angmap button is the important thing to tell Blender that this file is a Light Probe file !
2. Then go to the "Map To" tab and deactivate "Blend" and activate "Hori".
3. Now go to the Texture settings (press F6) and change the "Texture Type" to "Image".
4. Click the "Load Image" button and locate your HDR image.

(optional step, as it was not needed for my setup :)

5. To be able to render using this environment, you may need to enable YafRay. Press F10 and change the "Blender Internal" to "YafRay". You need to turn on Global Illumination and to set the quality to something other than "none". Note that the YafRay renderer does not come standard with the Blender installation. You need to download and install this separately.

Your result should look like this: (Rendering: left with Blender, right with YafRay) Click for larger version

Note that the reflecting ball reflects the whole interior from every angle, even though we added just a single image to the World settings !

[edit] Creating a Light Probe

A reader has identified this page or section as an undeveloped draft or outline. You can help to develop the work, or you can ask for assistance in the project room.

The light probe is, in the simplest terms, a photograph of your environment. they work in very much the same way that reflection maps do, and are made the same way.

Equipment:

1. A pure silver ball. Try a plastic christmas tree ball ornament.
2. A camera, prefferably digital. If you have a high-end digital camera, you'll have less work ahead.
3. A place you'd like to capture the lighting from. Try laying different things in your environment to get a good idea.
4. Something to fire the shutter without touching the camera. For digital cameras, Paul Debevec recommends using a program that will take all the pictures for you.
5. A tripod.

Set it up like so. Remember that the height of your camera and the height of the ball relative to each other controls the angle at which the horizon will be shot. In other words, shoot the ball at the same angle that you plan to shoot your 3D scene in. If your scene is animated... consider making a similar rig except attaching your reflective ball to a video camera as was done for Flight of the Navigator.

1. Note that the diagram is incorrect. The camera will see items reflected from behind the sphere as well.

The process:

1. Set up your rig and take a series of images with varying exposure times.
2. Taking 2 sets of pictures, each offset by 90 degrees, will enable you to get better coverage of the background and eliminate the reflection of the camera taking the picture.

Good article

[edit] Blender FAQ

This section of frequently asked questions is intended to cover general information about the goal and structure of Blender 3D: Noob to Pro and the software in is designed to teach, Blender.

Contents 1 Beginner Tutorials 2 Tutorial Syntax 3 Keyboard 4 Mouse 5 Path menu 6 Footnotes 7 Become Familiar with the Blender Interface 8 Learn the Blender Windowing System 9 Before You Begin 10 An Interface Divided Will Surely Stand 11 Window Headers 12 Changing the Window Type 13 Resizing Windows 14 Splitting Windows 15 Joining Windows 16 FAQ 17 The Buttons Window 18 What's with all the buttons?! 19 Mini-Windows 20 Button Types 20.1 Logic Buttons 20.2 Script Buttons 20.3 Shading Buttons 20.4 Object Buttons 20.5 Edit Buttons 20.6 Scene Buttons 20.7 The 3D Viewport Window 20.8 Rotating 20.9 Panning 20.10 Zooming 20.11 Placing the 3D cursor 20.11.1 Useful User Comments 20.12 Layers 20.13 Exercise (3D space in 2D output) 20.14 Adding and Deleting Objects 20.15 Non-standard equipment 20.15.1 Mice lacking MMB 20.15.2 Tablet PCs 20.16 Other Windows 20.17 Learn to Model 20.18 Mesh Modeling 20.19 Beginners Tips 20.20 Starting with a box 20.21 Subdivision Surfaces 20.21.1 Adding a Subsurf modifier 20.21.2 But I want a box! 20.21.3 Show subdivision surface's cage 20.21.4 Choose an edge to crease 20.21.5 Crease selected edges 20.21.6 Finally build a real box 20.22 Footnotes 20.23 Quickie Model 20.24 Selecting objects 20.25 Edit Mode 20.26 Selecting vertices 20.27 Moving vertices 20.28 Creating Vertices 20.29 Extra Practice 20.30 Quickie Render 20.31 Rendering the current scene 20.32 Saving a render 20.33 Extra Practice 20.34 Mesh Modeling 20.35 Modeling a Simple Person 20.36 Creating a New Project 20.37 Selection Methods 20.37.1 1. Box Selection 20.37.2 2. Circle Selection 20.37.3 3. Lasso Selection 20.37.4 4. One By One Selection 20.37.5 5. Edge Selection 20.37.6 6. Face Selection 20.38 Learning Extrusion 20.38.1 Region extrusion 20.38.2 Starting with a simple leg 20.38.3 And now, the pelvis 20.38.4 Drawing the other body parts 20.39 Adding the head 20.40 Summary: Keys & Commands 20.41 Detailing Your Simple Person I 20.42 Subsurfaces 20.43 Smooth Surfaces 20.44 Detailing Your Simple Person II 20.45 Starting with the right modes 20.46 Scaling with axis constraint 20.46.1 Selecting two hip edges 20.46.2 Scaling the hips 20.46.3 Drawing the armpits 20.46.4 The belly and the chest 20.47 Modeling the arms 20.48 Modeling the legs 20.49 Modeling the head 20.50 Creating a Simple Hat 20.51 Adding an object 20.51.1 Setup 20.51.2 Create a circle 20.52 Deleting a selection 20.53 Creating the hat profile 20.54 Spinning the hat 20.54.1 Setup 20.54.2 Spin the curve 20.55 BIG UPDATE 20.56 Final touches 20.56.1 Now it's time to subsurf 20.57 Putting Hat on Person 20.58 Rotation 20.59 Location 20.60 Size 20.61 Putting it on 20.62 Mountains Out Of Molehills 20.63 Creating a simple plane 20.64 First mountain 20.65 Peaks vs. hills 20.66 Shaping the world 20.67 Smoothing things out 20.67.1 Naturalness 20.67.2 Adding your guy with the hat 20.68 Creating Models With Photo Assistance 20.69 Making A Pyramid 20.69.1 Window Layout 20.69.2 Reference Pictures 20.69.3 Background Images 20.69.4 Side One 20.69.5 Side Two 20.69.6 Sides Three and Four 20.69.7 Bottom 20.70 Taking the Best Reference Photos 20.70.1 Step One: Get the pictures of the model 20.70.2 Step Two: Get the Picture into Blender 20.70.3 Step Three: Rough Model Fitting 20.70.4 Step Four: Refining the Wolf Model 20.70.5 Alternative Wolf Modelling 20.71 Modeling a Gingerbread Man 20.72 Modelling 20.73 Camera Positioning and Rendering 20.74 Applying Textures 20.75 Die Another Way (dice modelling) 20.76 Video Tutorial 20.77 Introduction 20.78 Subdivide First 20.79 Manual Sizing of Pips 20.79.1 Step 1 20.79.2 Step 2 20.79.3 Step 3 20.79.4 Step 4 20.80 Creating Pips 20.80.1 Extrude and Merge 20.80.2 Create Pips 20.80.3 Smooth Out 20.80.4 Make Sharp Edges 20.80.5 Repeat 20.80.6 Camera Setup 20.80.7 Render 20.81 Color 20.81.1 Multiple Materials 20.81.2 Assign Materials 20.81.2.1 To make the die red 20.81.2.2 To make the pips white 20.81.2.3 Pip Selection Method 1 20.81.2.4 Pip Selection Method 2 20.81.2.5 Pip Selection Method 3 20.81.2.6 Pip Selection Method 4 20.81.3 Extra 20.82 Edit Mode HotKeys Review 21 Edit Mode HotKeys 21.1 Object Mode HotKeys Review 22 Object Mode HotKeys 22.1 Curve and Path Modeling 22.2 2D Image (logo) to a 3D Model 22.3 Using Bezier Curve to Model a 3D logo from a 2D logo 22.4 Set up 22.5 Introducing the Bezier Curve 22.6 Rough Tracing 22.7 Polishing the Tracing 22.8 Adding a Third Dimension 22.9 Continue tutorial using bezier curves 22.10 Adding the circle 22.11 Johnos Addition (the tutorial on the next page does this too) 22.12 Adding The Circle 22.13 Extra Practice 22.14 Simple Vehicle 22.15 Modeling a picture 22.16 Modeling a picture 22.17 Printing a Rendered Image 22.18 Using Bones 22.19 A model 22.20 Laying down bones 22.21 Materials and Textures 22.22 From Red to Blue and Everything In Between! 22.23 Quickie Material 22.24 Your First Material 22.25 Meaningful Names 22.26 Setting the Color 22.27 Multiple Materials 22.28 Quickie Texture 22.29 Adding a texture 22.30 Adding a Stucci texture 22.31 Procedural Textures 22.32 Creating Basic Seawater 22.33 Extra Practice 22.34 Mountains Out Of Molehills 2 22.35 Basic Carpet Texture 22.36 Goal 22.37 The Basic Material and Shader Settings 22.38 Cloud Texture 1 22.39 Cloud Texture 2 22.40 The Final Cloud Texture 22.41 The Last Texture 22.42 Image Textures 22.43 Free Image Texture Editors 22.44 The Rusty Ball 22.45 UV Map Basics 22.46 The Basics of UV Mapping 22.46.1 Add an icosphere 22.46.2 Mark a seam 22.46.3 Unwrap the mesh 22.46.4 Make a template image 22.46.5 Apply an image 22.46.6 Admire your new creation 22.46.7 Some notes 22.47 Questions 22.48 Source 22.49 Extras 22.50 Every Material Known to Man 22.51 "Every Material Known To Man" Project 22.52 Modeling Keyboard Shortcuts 22.53 Window HotKeys 22.54 Universal HotKeys 22.55 Object Mode HotKeys 22.56 Edit Mode - General 22.57 EditMode - Mesh 22.58 EditMode - Curve 22.59 EditMode - Metaball 22.60 EditMode - Surface 22.61 VertexPaint Hotkeys 22.62 EditMode - Font 22.63 UV Editor Hotkeys 22.64 EdgeSelect Hotkeys 22.65 FaceSelect Hotkeys 22.66 Render Window Hotkeys (to be written) 22.67 Beginning Modeling Final Project 22.68 Beginning Lighting 22.69 Adding Lamps 22.70 Explaining the Different Lights: 22.71 Creating a basic scene with basic lighting 22.71.1 Creating the scene 22.71.2 Adding the lights 22.71.3 Outdoor lighting 22.71.4 Lighting Without Lamps 22.72 Render Settings 22.73 The Scene Tab 22.74 Output / Render Layers 22.75 Render 22.76 Anim / Bake 22.77 Output Format Options 22.78 Output Format Basics 22.79 Output formats 22.80 Cropping 22.81 Palette 22.82 Pre-sets Just For You 22.83 OSA 22.84 Looking All Around - Panorama Settings 22.85 Panoramic Renderings 22.85.1 This Article is Out Of Date 22.85.2 Building the Example Scene 22.85.3 Panoramic Rendering 22.86 Other Important Render Options 22.87 Basic Animation 22.87.1 Note About Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Basic Animation 22.87.2 Basic Animation Introduction 22.88 Particle Systems 22.89 The very first particle system 22.89.1 Creating a particle system 22.89.2 Changing properties of the system 22.89.3 Changing the material of the particles 22.90 Links 22.91 Making Fire 22.92 The particle system 22.93 Material 22.93.1 Animation of the particle material 22.94 Rendering 22.95 Links 22.96 Furry 22.97 The emitter 22.98 Material 22.98.1 Strands Shader 22.98.2 Giving the hair its base color 22.99 Changing Hair length with a texture 22.100 Comb it! 22.101 Links 22.102 Game Engine Basics 22.103 Introduction to Object Collision 22.104 Your First Test 22.105 Adding the Hill 22.106 Creating the Ball 22.107 Testing your game 22.108 Conclusion 22.109 Extra Tutorials 22.110 Build a skybox 22.111 Gather your graphics 22.112 Create a dome for the sky 22.113 Create a dome for the ground 22.114 Render the environment map 22.115 Match Moving 22.116 Icarus 22.117 Voodoo 22.118 High Dynamic Range imaging (HDRi) 22.119 Introduction 22.120 Definitions 22.121 Usage 22.122 Quick Tutorial (for experienced blendies) 22.123 Step-by-step Tutorial 22.123.1 Build a simple scene 22.123.2 Use the HDR image for the world texture 22.124 Creating a Light Probe 22.125 Blender FAQ 22.125.1 What is Blender? 22.125.2 What is this book about? 22.125.3 How accurate is the information in the book? 22.125.4 I have a question, where can I get help? 22.126 Advanced Tutorials 22.127 Introduction: 22.128 Window Layout: 22.129 Setting your Neutral Pose 22.130 Setting up your additional Pose Lines 22.131 Set your Poses 22.132 Name your Poses 22.133 Time to Animate (b) 22.134 Adjust your Slow in & Out 22.135 Python Scripting 22.136 Introduction 22.137 Introduction 22.138 Your First Python Script 22.138.1 Exercises 22.139 Export scripts 22.140 Finding out about things in a scene 22.141 Creating a script 22.142 Exporting a Mesh 22.143 Import scripts 22.144 Importing a Mesh 22.145 Procedural object creation 22.146 Generating Elements with Python 22.146.1 Vertices 22.146.2 Faces 22.146.3 Objects 22.147 Iterative Loops 22.148 Links 22.149 Scripts for modifying meshes 22.150 Creating a GUI for your script 22.151 Advanced Animation 22.152 Index 22.153 Introduction 22.154 Guided tour: 22.155 Armature Object 22.156 Armature Object in Object Mode 22.157 The Armature Object 22.158 The Edit Panel When in Object Mode 22.159 Extra Practice 22.160 Armature Object in Edit Mode 22.161 Now the basics about bones 22.162 The edit panel 22.163 Naming convention 22.164 Mirror Editing 22.165 Armature Object in Pose mode 22.166 So What Can You Do? 22.167 Mesh Object 22.168 Connection between Armature and Mesh 22.169 The Armature Modifier 22.170 The Old Way 22.171 Tip: Bake envelope to vertex groups 22.172 Envelope 22.173 What is Envelope 22.174 Edit Envelope 22.175 Envelope Options 22.176 Vertex Groups & Weight Paint 22.177 What Are Vertex Groups? 22.178 Weight Paint 22.179 Vertex Groups and Armatures 22.180 Using Weight Painting with Armatures 22.181 Shape Key 22.182 Constraints 22.183 The Constraint 22.184 The Constraint Panel 22.185 The Constraint Index 22.186 Copy Location 22.187 Copy Location 22.188 The Constraint Panel 22.189 Where To Use It 22.190 Copy Rotation 22.191 Copy Rotation 22.192 The Constraint Panel 22.193 Where To Use It 22.194 Track-To 22.195 Track-To 22.196 The Constraint Panel 22.197 Where To Use It 22.198 Floor 22.199 Locked Track 22.200 Follow Path 22.201 Follow path 22.202 The Constraint Panel 22.203 Where To Use It 22.204 Stretch-To 22.205 Stretch-To 22.206 IK Solver 22.207 The IK solver 22.208 The Constraint Panel 22.209 Where To Use It 22.210 Degree Of Freedom 22.211 Action 22.212 Timeline Window 22.213 IPO Window 22.214 Data Type 22.215 Channel 22.216 Curve Edition 22.217 Driven IPO 22.218 Action Window 22.219 Introduction To Action Data Block 22.220 Key Edition 22.221 NLA Window 23 (about this placeholder) 24 The NLA Window 24.1 Forum Notes 24.2 Walkthrough 24.3 Introduction To NLA Editor 24.4 NLA (Non-Linear Animation) 24.5 Setting up the Scene 24.6 Adding Action Strips 24.7 Getting the Strips to Play 24.8 Conclusion 24.9 Key Editor In the NLA 24.10 Strip Edition 24.11 Strips Properties (NKEY) 24.12 The Stride feature 24.13 Working example: Bird 24.14 Build The Rig 24.15 Add Constraints 24.16 Deform The Mesh 24.17 Create A Fly Cycle 24.18 Working example: Bob 24.19 Getting Started 24.20 Build The Rig 24.21 Add Constraints 24.22 Deform The Mesh 24.23 Create Shape Key 24.24 Create A Walk Cycle 24.25 Miscellaneous Tutorials 24.26 All Blender Tutorial Links 24.27 Official Blender Documentation 24.28 Interface 24.29 Mesh Modeling 24.30 Nurbs and Subsurface Modeling 24.31 Specific Object Modeling 24.31.1 Human 24.31.2 Cars 24.32 Texture Mapping 24.32.1 UV Mapping 24.32.2 Animated Textures 24.32.3 Nodes 24.33 2D Texture Painting Techniques 24.34 Lighting, Shadows and Rendering 24.35 Armatures and IK 24.36 Animation 24.37 Particles 24.38 Fluid Simulation 24.39 Compositing 24.40 Game Engine 24.41 Python and Plugins 24.42 Using other Programs with Blender 24.42.1 Distributed Computing 24.42.2 Maybe someday ... 24.43 Video Tutorials 24.44 Blender WikiBooks 24.45 FAQ 24.46 Repository 24.46.1 Blueprints 24.46.2 Materials 24.46.3 Models 24.46.4 Photos 24.46.5 Textures 24.47 Miscellaneous 24.47.1 Open Movies 24.47.2 IRC 24.47.3 Tests 24.48 Other Lists 24.48.1 Tutorials 24.48.2 Miscellaneous 24.49 About 24.50 Ways to create "fluffy" effect (materials and lights) 24.51 Spherical Blend Texture 24.52 Backlighting 24.53 Troubleshooting 24.53.1 ATI Radeon Slowdown Problems 24.53.2 For people who the above solution leads to Blender crash at start up 24.54 Creating Pixar-looking eyes in Blender 24.55 Parts of the Eye 24.56 Materials 24.56.1 Eye White 24.56.2 Iris 24.56.3 Pupil 24.56.4 Cornea 24.57 Lighting 24.58 Changing the Eye Color 24.58.1 Changing the Cornea Color 24.58.2 Changing the Iris Color 24.58.3 Useful Links

[edit] What is Blender?

Blender is a free and open source program available at blender.org for Windows (32 and 64-bit XP, Vista, and 7), Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel 32 and 64-bit), Linux (32 bit and 64-bit/x86_64/AMD64), Solaris, and Irix. Blender 2.49b is the current stable version with 2.50 alpha 0 being the current developmental testing build. It is designed to be a fully functional 3D content creation suite, allowing all common methods of 3D editing, animation, texture mapping, and rendering. Interested readers may learn more about Blender's history, functionality, and productions which have utilized Blender at its entry on Wikipedia.

[edit] What is this book about?

This book is designed as a series of tutorials, which lead a user to high general proficiency in using Blender. Following the tutorials in order is highly recommended, as tutorials introduce actions which readers will be expected to know about in later sections. This book is not intended as a knowledge compendium or reference manual, although there is a great number of links to external resources for further information on specific topics.

[edit] How accurate is the information in the book?

Blender is in active development, and as such the appearance, function of the user interface, and tools in the program are subject to change. With Blender 2.50, an entirely new graphical user interface and heavily edited internal code will result in a different appearance and possible changes to keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys). Every attempt is made to keep up with the current standards within Blender and most tutorials remain valid between versions.

[edit] I have a question, where can I get help?

BlenderArtists and Blender Newbies forum, both large English user forums, can be posted on or searched easily and BlenderWiki also has a large documentation database. Similar forums in most languages can be found at blender.org's community page and the discussion pages are also useful. If your question turns out to be very common, please take a moment to see if you can add it to the book by integrating it smoothly with an existing page.

[edit] Advanced Tutorials

Schedule to be re-written from the ground up. --Bullercruz1 (talk) 13:39, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

---

Author: Anthony Gomez (Extensor) Date: March 5, 2005

Short Description: RVK tutorial

• Letters in brackets i.e.:(z) mean there is addition information at the bottom of the page.

[edit] Introduction:

This tutorial is meant to stop all the RVK (Relative Vertex Keys) questions.

[edit] Window Layout:

Set the left half of the screen as 3D View. The other half is divided in two. The top is Action and the bottom is IPO (set to vertex display).

[edit] Setting your Neutral Pose

Make sure you are on the first frame (a). With the cursor over the 3D View, select the mesh you want to animate. (mesh in object mode) and press the I key. Select Mesh from the pop up menu then Relative Keys from the next pop up menu. A line will appear in the IPO view. This line is your neutral pose.

[edit] Setting up your additional Pose Lines

Now, figure out how many key frames you will need. If you want to move both eyebrows up and down then you will need 4 additional IPO lines.

Left Brow Up Left Brow Down Right Brow Up Right Brow Down

Press the up arrow (cursor key) to move to forward 10 frames. Press the I key while over the 3D View and select Mesh. Repeat until you see a total of 5 lines in the IPO window.

[edit] Set your Poses

Right click on the Neutral pose line in the IPO window. This sets the mesh to the neutral pose. Now Right click on the next line up in the IPO window. Enter edit mode in the 3D View and move the vertices as desired (in this case you will be moving verts to get the left Brow up pose). Press Tab to exit edit mode. Now right click your Neutral pose line in the IPO window. You will see your object in its neutral state. Right click the next line up and you should see the changes you just made to your object. Set up all your mesh poses following the above instructions.

[edit] Name your Poses

RIght click on the Key names in the Action window. Change the name and click OK.

[edit] Time to Animate (b)

Click on the arrow next to the Sliders text. This will give you access to the pose sliders. Move to frame 20 to start your action. Move the pose slider but release the mouse when set to 0. Now move 10 frames forward and move the same slider to 1.00 (maximum). Use this method to set up all your actions(c). Remember to add a 0 value frame to end the pose.(d).

[edit] Adjust your Slow in & Out

In the IPO View select from the menu to find the IPO curves. You can get back to the Pose lines by selecting KeyIPO from the same menu. Right click the spline you want to edit and press TAB to enter edit mode. Move the handles to adjust slow in/out.(e)

(a) In this case moving to a frame has nothing to do with animation. It is done so that your pose lines are separate from each other. (b) Select your key frame marker and use the usual commands to move <g> and duplicate <d> them. (c) Be subtle by not pushing the slider all the way to 1.00. (d) Try overlapping your poses. (e) When setting slider values they can sometimes go into the negative value. This will give you weird results. Although sometimes they can make your animation more interesting. To fix this edit the IPO, select the point where the line dips below zero and press the V key. Do the same at the other end of the curve if needed.

Warning! Blender has a limit to the number of verts you can use.

---

Click here to read the advanced animation tutorial guided tour.

Help. When you save runtime it doesn't carry across the materials that were mapped to the object. If you render then it is there but not in the .exe. Also how do I network the game once I have made it. ie how do I send messages across a port? Why does save dynamic runtime never work?

Please help. The reason why I am posting this here is because I have not been able to enter an email forum. So far. Please can you tell me how to do this. Please post your reply to ir_nyad@hotmail.com

[edit] Python Scripting

One of Blender's powerful features is its Python API. This allows you to interface with Blender through the Python programming language. The Python interface allows you to control almost all aspects of Blender, for example you can write import or export scripts for meshes and materials of various formats or create procedurally generated textures. You can also create complete animations procedurally and write scripts to modify existing scenes in any way you can think of. On top of all, you can easily create a user interface for your script, transforming it into a generally usable tool.

The relevant section of the Blender User's Manual is here.

Download Python Scripts from the Blender site here.

This forum on blenderartists.org discusses Python scripting.

here is a remix and update to the great noob tutorial : Tutorial (Blender 2.4.9)

[edit] Introduction

For a general introduction to python programming, see the official python tutorial: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html

[edit] Introduction

Python is used in Blender to write plugins as well as automate tasks. It is one of the easiest programming languages to learn.

[edit] Your First Python Script

Open a text editor (e.g. "Notepad" in Windows) and type this script:

• • Noob question: where do I save this file, and what do I do with it once i've saved it?**

A: You can save the script anywhere. To load it, just open the text editor(shift+F11). Click "Text->Open", now find your script. To run it, click "Text->Run Python Script" (or alt+p). You can also use this text editor to create your scripts right there on blender.

[edit] Exercises

1. Change the script so that it sets the object's location-x to 6
2. Change the script so that it sets the object's location-y to 1

[edit] Export scripts

Blender is not just useful to create complete animations, but it's also a great modeller. You can build your complete 3D scene in Blender, and then export it to a useful format. In fact, you can use it for much more, for example I was using it as a level editor for a freeware 2D game someone else made. There was a short deadline for the game to be finished, and 2 weeks before that deadline, there still was no level editor for it. It had a custom ASCII level format, consisting of lists of materials, vertices, triangles and objects. So, remembering the Blender Python exporters, I volunteered to write an export script for Blender, so it could be used as level editor. And it worked out very well, Blender can be completely used as level editor for that game now.

In this tutorial we'll learn how to write a simple Python export script for Blender. Without requiring previous Python knowledge, it will explain how to query the objects in your scene, and how to write them to a file. It will also demonstrate the usefulness of export scripts, by showing how you can process the data while exporting, so you can achieve things that would not work by using any other existing format.

So, open Blender (2.44 or greater), make sure the default scene is loaded, and let's begin..

[edit] Finding out about things in a scene

Before we can export something, we must know what to export. One way to get this information is the Outliner window (SHIFT-F9). It will list all the things currently known to Blender. Now, we want the same information from a script. Open the scripts window (green snake symbol). Click on the menu titled Scripts, and go to Scripts → System → Interactive Python Console.

Now, you are ready for the big moment, you are about to execute the first Blender scripting command. Type this and hit RETURN (or you could type into the scripts window import Blender on the topmost line, then these lines below it, precede all the 'dir(x)' lines with print and choose file->Execute): [Note:that you shall have typed

import bpy

before you can use the list function (bpy.data.objects) else will you get the "python error" in blender ]

list(bpy.data.objects)

As a result, you should see this:

[[Object "Camera"], [Object "Cube"], [Object "Lamp"]]

Now, what just happened? The line "list(bpy.data.objects)" consists of three words, separated by two dots, The dots separate different things. The first, bpy, means to use a function from the bpy module. data is a sub-module of Blender. And finally objects is an iterator of bpy.data. The list() function is used to loop through all data in bpy.data.objects and return that as a list of all available objects. In our case, this is a Camera, a Cube, and a Lamp.

To get more information about an object, you can use the object name as a key in bpy.data.objects, and assign it to a variable, like this:

camera = bpy.data.objects["Camera"]
cube = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]
lamp = bpy.data.objects["Lamp"]

We just assigned the three objects to three variables, camera, cube and lamp. To see the contents of a variable, type just its name:

cube 
[Object "Cube"]

camera 
[Object "Camera"]

lamp 
[Object "Lamp"]

Sometimes it's useful to use Python's dir() function to get more information about an object. For example

dir(cube)

will write the names of all functions and properties of the object. Quite a lot. But don't worry, soon you will know how to use all of them. You also may want to find out the type of something, which you can do like this:

type(cube)

In this case, just typing "cube" already displays the type, but from within an actual script, you would use type(). Something else which can be useful is viewing the documentation of Python objects. To do so, use the help() function on a variable or object.

help(bpy.data.objects)

This will print the documentation of the bpy.data.objects function we used. Of course, an easier way to view the documentation is the online HTML help. Click on Help->Python Scripting Reference. Hopefully now your browser opens and displays the online documentation of the Blender Python API. If not, you should find it also here:

http://www.blender.org/documentation/244PythonDoc/index.html

In the documentation, click on bpy, then on data and you can see more examples. Using the documentation will get absolutely vital whenever you need to do something in a script not covered in a tutorial. And you will need to do so, else you wouldn't want to learn scripting at all.

Another resource you will need, depending on how far you will go with scripting, is the Python reference:

http://docs.python.org/

For this tutorial, maybe read the "Tutorial" section in the python docs, but you will understand everything without doing so.

Now, let's try to find out more about our cube. Type:

cube.type

It will tell us that the cube really is a Mesh object in Blender. Look up "type" in the online docs. Since the variable cube holds an Object, and "type" is an attribute of that Object, click on Object. There you find its "type".

Now that we know that the cube is a mesh, let's find out more about the mesh.

mesh = cube.getData(mesh=1)

Every Blender object has data assigned to it, depending on the type. In the case of a mesh, the data are of type Mesh. In the documentation, go to the top again, and look for the Mesh module. It will contain documentation for the Mesh type. You can also try

dir(mesh)

to get an idea about the available functions and properties. Try these:

list(mesh.verts)
list(mesh.faces)

The first line will list the 8 vertices of the cube's mesh. The second line will list its 6 faces.

To get a member out of a list, you specify the index in square brackets, starting with 0. So:

v = mesh.verts[0]

This will assign the first vertex of the cube to the variable v. By now, you already know how to use dir() to get a list of possibly interesting things in v, find out about its type with type(), and where to look for the API documentation. It is in the module Blender/Mesh, when you click one "MVert" under "Classes".

v.co

This will display the 3D coordinates of the first vertex. Now, what if we want to know the coordinates of all vertices? We could of course assign them all to a variable, but the real way to do this is using a looping constructs. There are numerous ways to do this, but one simple way looks like this:

for v in mesh.verts: print v.co

The for variable in list: construct assigns each element of the list to the variable in turn, and then executes the commands after the colon with the variable having the value of one particular list element. In a real script, you will have much more than a single command after the colon - so you would write them in the following lines.

By now, you should know enough to try yourself at a real script in the next section.

[edit] Creating a script

You can write scripts either in an external text editor, or in Blender's built in text editor. The built in text editor can be hard to use if it doesn't have the standard shortcuts of your preferred text editor. To copy text to and from your clipboard in blender, you have to use CTR+SHIFT-C and CTR+SHIFT+V, otherwise it uses an internal clipboard. Otherwise, it is quite usable. You reach it over the window selector, or by pressing SHIFT+F10 (SHIFT+F11 for Blender 2.41 and up). If you want, you can enable line numbers and syntax coloring with the buttons at the bottom. Create a new script with File → New, paste the code below into it, and save it. Or alternatively, paste the code below into a file, and open that file with File → Open in Blender. As name choose something with the extension .py, for example wikibooks.py. Put it into Blender's user scripts path.

For different operating systems this is:

• Linux: ~/.blender/scripts
• Windows XP: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts
• Windows XP (alt): C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts
• Windows Vista: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts
• Mac OS X:
  • Under Mac OSX the path is actually hidden in the blender.app so to know the path you would have to know that the script folder is actually hidden in the blender.app itself. Assuming that Blender is in the applications directory the path would be "/Applications/blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts" If you try to open the .app contents from the finder you will notice that .blender section of the path is not visible, while blender will still be able to navigate to this folder.
  • Right-click (or ctrl-click) the file "blender", and select "Show Package Contents" in the popup-menu. It will display all the hidden files under blender's folder, and select "scripts" folder inside it.
  • To see this folder from the OSX terminal use the ls -a command (lists all folders/files even hidden) in the MacOS folder of the listed path. It is probably a good idea to create an alias to the scripts folder in the "/Applications/blender-2.37a-OSX-10.3-powerpc" folder so that scripts can be easily manipulated through the finder. I know that its confusing that Blender should have its script folder buried inside the app but it is necessary to keep the app portable and not require an install.
  • A safer approach than the one above consists in keeping your scripts somewhere in your home folder: with this scheme, there is no risk of deleting your scripts when you upgrade your blender application, as they are not contained within its folder. A method that follows this principle is as follows: create a folder that will contain your scripts (or some of them) inside your own home directory; then, instead of putting your files directly in the .../.blender/scripts/ folder discussed above, simply add a link to your script directory in the .../.blender/scripts/ folder (for instance with the "ln -s" Unix command, or by doing "open /Applications/blender-2.37a-OSX-10.3-powerpc/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts/" [adapted to your version of blender] and then creating a link through the Finder, with File->Make Alias). Blender will now find all the scripts that you put in your home directory: it will follow the link you created in its .../.blender/scripts/ folder and go to the corresponding folder in your own directory, and find all the python scripts you put there.

#!BPY

"""
Name: 'Wikibooks'
Blender: 244
Group: 'Export'
Tooltip: 'Wikibooks sample exporter'
"""
import Blender
import bpy

def write(filename):
    out = file(filename, "w")
    sce= bpy.data.scenes.active
    for ob in sce.objects:
        out.write(ob.type + ": " + ob.name + "\n")

Blender.Window.FileSelector(write, "Export")

Now, go back into the scripts window, and in its menu, click Scripts → Update Menus. If you saved it into the right path, from now on there should be an entry "Wikibooks" in the File → Export menu. Try exporting any scene with it. It should open the file chooser dialog, and after you select a file and press the "Export" button, write a list of all objects in the scene into it. There will be one object per line, with the type, followed by a colon and the name.

How does it work? If you look at the script, you probably already know. But just in case, let's look at the script line by line. The first line contains this:

#!BPY

It tells Blender that this is a Blender script, and therefore it will consider it when scanning for scripts. Next simply follows a string, enclosed in triple quotation marks, so it can span multiple lines.

"""
Name: 'Wikibooks'
Blender: 244
Group: 'Export'
Tooltip: 'Wikibooks sample exporter'
"""

It contains four items, which Blender uses to place the script into its menus. The name, group (menu location), and tooltip, all enclosed in single quotes. And the Blender version this is for.

import Blender
import bpy

Remember how we said all functions from the bpy module start with "Blender."? In the interactive shell, we could simply use them, but in a python script, all used modules must be declared with an import statement (if you want to directly use functions from the Blender module in a script, you can simply replace the import statement above with "from Blender import *": no "Blender." prefix is necessary anymore; however, this slows down the loading of your script). So the above simply allows us to use the functions from the Blender module in our script.

the bpy module is new and will replace Blender for data access.

def write(filename):

This defines a function in Python. The syntax is def name(parameters):. In our case, the name is "write", and we have one parameter, called "filename".

    out = file(filename, "w")

Here we open a file for writing (the "w"), with the name passed to the function (filename). The python function "file" will open the file, and return a reference to it, which we store in the variable "out".

   sce= bpy.data.scenes.active
   for ob in sce.objects:
       out.write(ob.type + ": " + ob.name + "\n")

These three lines are our real export script. You already know what the first line does - first we get the current scene, then get a list of all objects in that scene, the for loop is assigning each one in turn to the variable "ob". The second line writes to the file - first the type of the object, then the string ": ", then the name of the object, and finally a newline.

Blender.Window.FileSelector(write, "Export")

This is where execution of the script starts. It is simply a call of a Blender function (look it up in the API docs), which opens the file selector. It will display an "Export" button, and when the user clicks it, our function "write" from above gets called and is passed the selected filename.

This script isn't really very useful yet, but it shows the basics. You should now be able to e.g. also list all the materials in the scene. (Hint: They are just like objects, try to find them in the API docs.)

In the next section, we will learn how to export additional information about objects to our text file.

[edit] Exporting a Mesh

Our export script lists the type and name of every object, but that's not very useful yet. If we want to load the exported data in another application, we need more. Let's try to export a mesh object in the OBJ format.

The example below is a cube in the OBJ file format.

v 1.000000 1.000000 -1.000000
v 1.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000
v -1.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000
v -1.000000 1.000000 -1.000000
v 1.000001 1.000000 1.000000
v 0.999999 -1.000000 1.000000
v -1.000000 -1.000000 1.000000
v -1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
f 1 2 3 4
f 5 8 7 6
f 1 5 6 2
f 2 6 7 3
f 3 7 8 4
f 5 1 4 8

Here is a simple obj export script that exports a selected mesh object, used to export the OBJ file above.

import Blender
import bpy

def write_obj(filepath):
	out = file(filepath, 'w')
	sce = bpy.data.scenes.active
	ob = sce.objects.active
	mesh = ob.getData(mesh=1)
	for vert in mesh.verts:
		out.write( 'v %f %f %f\n' % (vert.co.x, vert.co.y, vert.co.z) )
	
	for face in mesh.faces:
		out.write('f')
		
		for vert in face.v:
			out.write( ' %i' % (vert.index + 1) )
		out.write('\n')
	out.close()
Blender.Window.FileSelector(write_obj, "Export")

This script will export an OBJ file that can be read by many applications. Let's look at whats going on.

	sce = bpy.data.scenes.active
	ob = sce.objects.active

Here we are getting the object you last selected in the current scene. This will raise an error if there are no selected objects, but its an easy way to test a new exporter.

	mesh = ob.getData(mesh=1)

This gets the objects linked datablock. At the moment we dont know its a mesh, another case where error checking would need to be added.

	for vert in mesh.verts:
		out.write( 'v %f %f %f\n' % (vert.co.x, vert.co.y, vert.co.z) )

Here we write a line for every vertex, using string formatting to replace the "%f" on the left, with the 3 values on the right.

	for face in mesh.faces:
		out.write('f')
		
		for vert in face.v:
			out.write( ' %i' % (vert.index + 1) )
		out.write('\n')

In the OBJ format each face references a number of vertex indices. For every face we have a line starting with "f", then loop through the vertices in the face. Just as mesh.verts are a list of all the the vertices in a mesh, face.v is a list of verts in the face limited to 4 vertices maximum. (where mesh and face are arbitrary variable names assigned to Mesh and MFace objects) Every vertex writes its index on that same line with 1 added. This is because with the OBJ file format the first vertex is indexed at 1, whereas with Python and Blender the first item in a list is 0.

A new line is written so the next face will start on a new line. - in python '\n' represents a new line when written to a file.

[edit] Import scripts

Importing objects into Blender is not that different from exporting. However, there are a few additional things to take care of. Firstly, all references to "export" in the header should be changed to "import". Secondly, instead of simply writing out data that Blender provides to us, we are responsible for giving data to Blender and ensuring that it is properly formatted. Although Blender is flexible, allowing us to ignore things like vertex indices, we do need to be careful that we do things in a sensible order.

Additionally, there is a bit of housekeeping to deal with. We should be in edit mode while modifying the mesh data. We also need to link up our newly created data to the scene, after it has been properly constructed, so that Blender can see it and maintain it. This makes it visible to the user, as well as ensuring that it gets saved along with the scene.

[edit] Importing a Mesh

Here is a simple script that can import an OBJ file created by the export script.

import Blender
def import_obj(path):
        Blender.Window.WaitCursor(1)
        name = path.split('\\')[-1].split('/')[-1]
        mesh = Blender.NMesh.New( name ) # create a new mesh
        # parse the file
        file = open(path, 'r')
        for line in file:
                words = line.split()
                if len(words) == 0 or words[0].startswith('#'):
                        pass
                elif words[0] == 'v':
                        x, y, z = float(words[1]), float(words[2]), float(words[3])
                        mesh.verts.append(Blender.NMesh.Vert(x, y, z))
                elif words[0] == 'f':
                        faceVertList = []
                        for faceIdx in words[1:]:
                                faceVert = mesh.verts[int(faceIdx)-1]
                                faceVertList.append(faceVert)
                        newFace = Blender.NMesh.Face(faceVertList)
                        mesh.addFace(newFace)
        
        # link the mesh to a new object
        ob = Blender.Object.New('Mesh', name) # Mesh must be spelled just this--it is a specific type
        ob.link(mesh) # tell the object to use the mesh we just made
        scn = Blender.Scene.GetCurrent()
        for o in scn.getChildren():
                o.sel = 0
        
        scn.link(ob) # link the object to the current scene
        ob.sel= 1
        ob.Layers = scn.Layers
        Blender.Window.WaitCursor(0)
        Blender.Window.RedrawAll()

Blender.Window.FileSelector(import_obj, 'Import')

This will load an OBJ file into Blender, creating a new mesh object. Let's take a look at the more interesting portions.

Blender.Window.WaitCursor(1)

Turn on the wait cursor so the user knows the computer is importing.

name = path.split('\\')[-1].split('/')[-1]
mesh = Blender.NMesh.New( name ) # create a new mesh

Here, we create a new mesh datablock. The name is made from the path only with the filename.

ob = Blender.Object.New('Mesh', name)
ob.link(mesh)

Next, we create a new object and link it to the mesh. This instantiates the mesh.

scn = Blender.Scene.GetCurrent()
scn.link(ob) # link the object to the current scene
ob.sel= 1
ob.Layers = scn.Layers

Finally, we attach the new object to the current scene, making it accessible to the user and ensuring that it will be saved along with the scene. We also select the new object so that the user can easily modify it after import. Copying the scenes layers ensures that the object will occupy the scenes current view layers.

Blender.Window.WaitCursor(0)
Blender.Window.RedrawAll()

Now the finishing touches. We turn off the wait cursor. We also redraw the 3D window to ensure that the new object is initially visible. If we didn't do this, the object might not appear until the user changes the viewpoint or forces a redraw in some other way.

[edit] Procedural object creation

[edit] Generating Elements with Python

A quick reference for commands to create elements through a Python script instead of manually. All of these scripts require the following code at the start:

We will also, for the tutorial, be working with an object, known as obj. To work with obj, after the import sequence, add the line

If the name in quotes of an existing object is entered into the parentheses instead of left blank, it will use that object's mesh as a template.

[edit] Vertices

The basic structure of the vertex generation command is:

Where v is the name of the vertex and x.x, y.y, and z.z are the X, Y, and Z coordinates of v, which must end in a decimal place.

For example, here is how one might create the three vertices of a triangle and attach them to obj's mesh:

Or, for vertices not created under the same name (v), it can be written thusly:

[edit] Faces

The basic structure of the face generation command is:

Where f is the name of a given face to be created.

To append vertices (maximum 4) to a face, use the line

Where x is the order of the vertex around the perimeter (beginning with 0).

Let us mix the previous vertex assigning conventions in with our example of a creation and appendage of a face to more efficiently demonstrate the degree of flexibility had by the command. This code adds a square to Obj.

[edit] Objects

All of this code hasn't so much modified or created a mesh. It's more like a blueprint for the changes. To actually construct the new object, insert the following line of code at the end of the blueprint:

The first argument is the name of the mesh to be used to create "square", the second argument, which is the name of the object. This can be anything you like. The third argument is the renormalization boolean. When set to 1 (true), this forces Blender to recalculate the mesh's normals before generating the object in 3D space. Finally, use this piece of code after all of your object creation and other visual modification scripts to tell Blender to refresh the screen:

[edit] Iterative Loops

Possibly the most important advantage of procedural object creation is the work it saves you when creating something with any sort of replicable quality. Here we will give the basic format of a loop in Python, then show some example scripts you can build on. The basic loop is thus:

Where i is the iteration number, a is the start value of the iterations, b is the end value of the iterations, and c is the increment. Entering in c is not necessary if the increment is 1. If a is 0, b is 100, and c is 1, it will run the iterative loop 100 times, starting with the 1st iteration, where i=0. If c is 2, it will run the iterative loop, adding two to i each loop, until i=100.(50 times - for iteration 1 i=0, iteration 2 i=2, and iteration 50 i=98). Note that when i=b (end value of the iterations), the loop will end prior to executing the loop code.

If you nest loops, you can perform such tasks as placing a row of ten vertices in with one of the coordinates set to i, so that when i makes another iteration the nested loop makes another row of ten vertices in the new position given by i.

A loop that produces a vertex at the origin, (1,1,1), and (2,2,2)

A square-producing loop:

A two-square-producing loop:

[edit] Links

• Blender tools:
  • http://www.makehuman.org/
  • http://www.geocities.com/blenderdungeon/lsystem/
• Python:
  • http:///www.alcyone.com/software/lsystem/
• Other:
  • http://www.devx.com/Intel/Article/20333/2046 , "Procedural 3D Content Generation, Part 2"
  • ModelingCloudsShape --antont, Sun, 20 Mar 2005 03:33:07 +0200 reply http://www-evasion.imag.fr/Publications/2004/BN04/

[edit] Scripts for modifying meshes

(to be written)

Also see saltshaker a basic but functional python script for blender, page includes details of how it was made.

http://jmsoler.free.fr/didacticiel/blender/tutor/python_script01_en.htm is a good one for learning about mesh creation.

[edit] Creating a GUI for your script

It is very easy to create a GUI for your script, and that way make it easy to change aspects of it for everyone.

The command to create a Graphical User Interface (GUI) is:

Blender.Draw.Register(draw,event,button)

This command registers the functions:

• draw - to draw the GUI
• event - to action mouse and key presses
• button - to action GUI button presses

However, this command will NOT work by itself !!!. You first need to define these 3 functions.

First we will import Blender's library of built in functions:

import Blender

Next, we will define the draw function.

def draw():

Inside this function we will draw the GUI. Here is an example of a drawing function we can use. It will clear the current window.

	Blender.BGL.glClear(Blender.BGL.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT)

And the next command will draw a button. Note that the first number in the command, '1' identifies the button as button 1. We will refer to this button later.

	Blender.Draw.Toggle("Clear origin",1,10,20,100,20,0,"Tooltip")

Next, we will define the event function. The code of a key pressed on the keyboard is passed into the function as the variable evt.

def event(evt,val):

Now we will test to see if the escape key is pressed:

	if evt == Blender.Draw.ESCKEY:

If it is pressed, exit the script, and return from the function:

		Blender.Draw.Exit()
		return 

Next, we will define the button function. This function will perform an action if the button is pressed.

def button(evt):

Now test the variable evt which holds the button number that we previously identified.

	if evt == 1:

If it is pressed, we will move the selected object in the 3d window back to the centre and redraw the screen:

		Blender.Scene.GetCurrent().getActiveObject().loc = (0,0,0)
		Blender.Window.Redraw()

Lastly, we can create the Graphical User Interface by typing the command:

Blender.Draw.Register(draw,event,button)

That's it !!! To enter the script yourself, type the following into the Text Editor window in Blender, and then press alt p to execute the script. Here's the entire script. Everything after the hash # is a comment and can be left out.

Noob Note: When I tried to run that script it came up with an error: Attribute Error: 'Scene' object has no attribute 'getActiveObject'. I changed "Blender.Scene.GetCurrent().getActiveObject().loc = (0,0,0)" to "Blender.Scene.GetCurrent().objects.active.loc = (0,0,0)" and it worked.

[edit] Advanced Animation

This section will show you the Animation system as it is in Blender 2.4. Most of the features will be explained and some tutorials will follow. It is assumed that the user has a good understanding of Blender here.

[edit] Index

• Advanced Animation
  • Introduction
  • Guided tour:
    • Armature Object
      • Armature Object in Object Mode
      • Armature Object in Edit Mode
      • Armature Object in Pose mode
    • Mesh Object
      • Connection between Armature and Mesh
      • Envelope
      • Vertex Groups & Weight Paint
      • Shape Key
    • Constraints
      • Copy Location
      • Copy Rotation
      • Track-To
      • Floor
      • Locked Track
      • Follow Path
      • Stretch-To
      • IK Solver
    • Timeline Window
    • IPO Window
      • Data Type
      • Channel
      • Curve Edition
      • Driven IPO
    • Action Window
      • Introduction To Action Data Block
      • Key Edition
    • NLA Window
      • Introduction To NLA Editor
      • Key Editor In the NLA
      • Strip Edition
      • Strip's Properties (NKEY)
      • The Stride feature
  • Working example: Bird
    • Build The Rig
    • Add Constraints
    • Deform The Mesh
    • Create A Fly Cycle
  • Working example: Bob
    • Build The Rig
    • Add Constraints
    • Deform The Mesh
    • Create Shape Key
    • Create A Walk Cycle

[edit] Introduction

Welcome to the wonderful yet complex world of computer animation! Through these pages I will try to show you everything old and new about the new animation system in Blender 2.4. But, before we get started, there are some basic notions about datablocks you should know. Animation in Blender is based on the fact that you have something moving in a Blender scene. For example, a ball bouncing on a floor plane:

-So you have a scene datablock, which holds some info about the scene itself, as you can see in the Render button window (F10KEY). -You populate this scene with various objects (which in this case refers to containers for data, not the actual mesh data that shapes the object itself). The only goal of an object is to hold the whereabouts of the data you want to see in your scene. It also holds the object instance's properties such as "does it have soft body or particle options, and do we draw its name?". Most of the info on an object can be seen in the Object Window (F7KEY).

An object links to all of the data you can see in a 3D view such as mesh, curves, nurbs, lattices, armatures, metadata, the empty property, text, camera and lamps.

So the ball you just added to the scene is in fact a mesh, linked to an object that is in turn linked to the current scene.

Now there are also data blocks you can't see in 3D view, such as material, texture, Ipo, action and image. Instead, you have a special window in which to edit them. This is the idea behind the Blender interface, wherein each data block has a window for you to edit the data.

So back to this bouncing ball: It's also moving across the plane! So an ""Ipo"" data block is linked to the object, telling it where in space the object will be at each frame of the animation. This Ipo is editable in the Ipo window when selecting the ball in 3D view. In Blender, the work you are performing is always on the currently active (selected) object and data.

Looking at the OOPS (object oriented programming system) view (or SHIFT-F9KEY), we can get a good idea of the internal data structure:

Again, you are working in the scene "Scene", with an object "Sphere" linked to the mesh data block "Sphere" and the Ipo datablock "ObIpo". Why is that important? Because from there, you can start playing with the datablocks, linking them all around your projects to reuse old work. For example you can create more than one Ipo, and use the one you want, or tell more than one object to use the same Ipo, or to use the same object in more than one Scene.

Most of the linking job can be done in the Edit button window (F9KEY). Where you can tell an object to use another mesh's data block for Ipo, material, texture or image. There is always a little dropdown menu button for you to select an already-existing data block.

Now, when it comes to animation, you have to understand the way Blender handles data very well, because using Blender is always a matter of plugging data blocks together when working with Ipos, actions and NLA objects.

[edit] Guided tour:

Here I'll show you all the stuff you need to know about the interface when animating. Where is it? How does it work? Why use it?

We are going to talk about:

• Armature Object
• Mesh Object
• Constraints
• Timeline Window
• IPO Window
• Action Window
• NLA Window

[edit] Armature Object

The Armature Object in itself is a tool for the animator to move an object or group of vertices in a reliable way. An armature is made of bones, which can be parented to each other, or connected to each other. It was built with the idea of a skeleton in mind.

You can add it using the SPACEKEY in 3Dview and selecting Armature. You'll then enter into editmode where you can add or move bones to build your default rig. An armature has 3 states. You can switch using the dropdown menu in the header of the 3Dview or use TABKEY to switch between Editmode <-> [Objectmode|Posemode] and CTRL-TABKEY to switch between Objectmode <-->Posemode:

• Object Mode: Your armature is like any other Object, you can move it around the scene, scale it, rotate it and edit options in the button window.
• Edit Mode: Your armature is in what we call rest position, you can modify the bones it contains.
• Pose Mode: Your armature is ready to be animated, each bone can be moved, scaled or rotated, constraints get applied, you can pose your character and animate the bones' behavior over time.
  Take note that Pose mode is now a state of the armature you can switch on/off using CTRL-TABKEY. So when in Pose, you are still in object mode (you can select another object, contrary to the editmode)

Note: The following 3 pages of this tutorial contain screenshots and discuss techniques that are only available in Blender 2.40a and later. Refer to the Blender 2.40a release notes on Armature draw types and Armature envelopes.

[edit] Armature Object in Object Mode

[edit] The Armature Object

Armature Object is like any other object type:

• It has a center, a position, a rotation and a scale factor.
• It can be edited.
• It can be linked to other scenes, and the same armature data can be reused on multiple objects.
• All animation you do in object mode is only working on the object, not the armature's contents like bones.

Try it now: add an armature to your scene: SPACEKEY --> Add --> Armature.
When you add a new armature, you'll enter editmode automatically. To switch between modes, use the TABKEY or the dropdown menu in the Header of the 3Dview window:

[edit] The Edit Panel When in Object Mode

This is how the edit panel looks after you have added a new armature and switched to object mode (TABKEY):

• Link and Materials panel:
  • The AR: field let you rename your armature Datablock. The dropdown is a quick way to select which Armature datablock you want to connect to this armature. You can keep more than one version for the same character. Useful when you have a special move to achieve in a shot, you can turn on an armature for a special purpose.
  • The F button is an option to assign a Fake user to the Armature. Again if you have more than one armature for your character, it's a good idea to turn the Fake on, because if your armature datablock is not used (linked) it's not going to be saved in your .blend files. You can always do batch Fake-assignment of armatures by opening the Datablock browser (SHIFT-F4KEY), go in Armature datablock, select all the armatures you want to keep, and Press the FKEY.
  • The OB: field is just to Rename your armature Object to something more cool and useful than Armature... Armature.001...

• Armature panel:
  • Editing Options:
    • X-Axis Mirror Edit: Not really useful now, it's more of an editmode option. This feature tells Blender you want to replicate all of your bones on one part of the Armature to the other. It's a clean way to just do half the job ;). The axis of mirroring is X so left<-->right in frontview (NUMPAD_1KEY) and the center is the center of the armature object. We will see this feature in detail in the next page.
    • X-Ray: This option will let you see the armature through anything in the scene, solid or not. It's useful to see where your bones are in your character so you can select them.
    • Automatic IK is a Posemode option. It lets you pose a chain of bones as if the bone you were holding was an ik target. More info in Posemode page.
  • Display Options: These options give you the chance to visualise your bones in various ways. Also note that there is some specific options and features regarding the display mode you're in.
    • Octahedron: This is the default view. Nothing exciting except you have a good idea of the rolling of the bones.
    • Stick: This display mode is really useful when you have a lot of bones in your view. It lets you "unclutter" the screen a bit. It draws the bones as tiny sticks.
    • B-Bones: It's more a feature than a display mode. This is only useful to visualise the effect you get when you activate the B-bones (Bezier-Bones). Each bone acts like a curve handle and lets you get extremely curvy poses. This will be exposed in the following pages.
    • Envelope: Again it's more a feature than a display mode. But in this case the visualisation will be useful to tweak your rig later. Envelope lets you easily tell which part of your character this bone will animate and it's visually possible to change the zone of influence exclusively in this display mode. The zone is only visible in Editmode or Posemode though.
    • Draw Axes: To draw the axes on each bone of the armature when you are in Editmode or Posemode. Useful when you want to know where you are and which axis to use in a constraint for example. Mental note: Y is up, Z is depth and X is side, contrary to object for which Z is up, Y is depth and X is side.
    • Draw names: This lets you see names of bones whatever the mode you are in. It's useful again to edit your armature, create parent dependencies or add constraints.
    • Ghost: This option lets you see a ghost of the armature in frames behind and over the current time. This is only working when you have an action linked to the armature, as we will see later.
    • Step (Armature_button_obj.jpg needs update): This option lets you choose the frames interval between ghost instances.
  • Deform options:
    • Vertex Groups & Envelope: These two toggles let you choose if you want the armature to deform your character using the Vertex Groups and/or the Envelopes. We will see that later.
    • Rest position: This will bring the character back to factory default (item as Editmode), and no actions will be applied to the armature so you can easily edit it in the middle of an animation.
    • Delay Deform: This was useful before as the old system was very slow. What it does is when you do a manipulation to the rig, it waits until you finish to update the view. Can still be useful though.

[edit] Extra Practice

This YouTube tutorial might also help: Link The short tutorial might be a help Link 2

[edit] Armature Object in Edit Mode

Now you've got your armature, but it's not much use until you add some more bones to it. Think about your body for a moment -- you've got this thing you call a 'skeleton', which for our purposes corresponds more or less to an armature object. Your skeleton consists of a number of bones (about 206, to be precise), but generally these are not independent from each other. If you move your femur (the bit of your leg between your pelvis and your knee) then conveniently the rest of your leg moves with it. In that example, the tibia/fibula would probably be counted as one bone, with the femur as their 'parent' bone. In this way, you build up a hierarchy of bones, making animation much simpler.

Editing an Armature Object gives you the chance to add, move or connect bones together. Whilst in edit mode, you will see all of the bones within the currently selected Armature.

When you create a new armature in Object mode a single bone will automatically be created for you, centered at the cursor position. Blender will then switch straight to Edit mode to allow you to add further bones. At this point we're just defining the default 'rest' position of the bones and specifying how they connect together -- you'll have to wait until the next chapter to find out how to create specific poses.

[edit] Now the basics about bones

Having created and selected an armature in Object mode, you can add and modify the bones in this armature by switching to Edit mode.

• You can add a new bone at cursor position by pressing SPACEKEY in the 3DView --> Add --> Bone.
• A bone has two ends: a root (the lower part) and a tip (the upper part). You can select and move the tip or the root independently with RMB, or you can select the entire bone by clicking on its body.
• You can extrude a new bone from the selection using EKEY. This will create a bone connected to the original one, meaning the Root of the new bone will follow the Tip of the original one. You can also CTRL-LMB to extrude a new bone. It will extrude to where you clicked.
• Alternatively, you can connect two existing bones by selecting them one after the other and pressing CTRL-PKEY. You can then choose either 'Connected' (the child bone - the one you selected first - will automatically be moved so that it touches the parent) or 'Keep offset'.
• You can use SHIFT-DKEY to duplicate a bone
• Using the WKEY menu, You can subdivide your bone or flip the name of the bone between Left-Right (See Naming convention below).
• You can delete the bone with XKEY
• You can select a chain of bones (connected together) using LKEY, when you hover your mouse over a bone.

[edit] The edit panel

• Armature Bones Panel
  • OB: this field lets you rename your bone.
  • "Child of" Dropdown: lets you choose which bone will be the parent of this bone. If a parent is selected, there will be a small button labelled "con", meaning connected. Setting the parent defines the relationship between your bones. When one bone has another as its parent, it will do everything the parent does, such as rotate, move and scale. A dotted line between the parent and child will appear. If you select Connected, the Root of the Children will go stick to the tip of the parent, giving you a chain of bones like the 2 bones in your arm.
    
  • Segm: If you set this value to something greater than 1, it will cut your bone into several little segments and deform them on a bezier curve - referred to as a 'B-Bone'. You need to create a chain of bones to really show off this feature though. In the example below, the image on the right has 1 segment, and the one on the left has 3 segments each (these are shown in Object mode to show the effect more clearly):
    
  • Dist: This is the area of influence of the bone. It can be visualised using the Envelope display mode. We generally don't touch this field as there is an easier and faster way to change this option. Turn Envelope on and select a bone. Then using ALT-S, you can scale the zone of influence. This has the advantage that you can do it on multiple bones simultaneously, and it works in both editmode and posemode:
    
  • Weight: This specifies how strongly this bone will influence the geometry around it, relative to the other bones. If two bones crossing each other, both with envelope influence, have the same weight (like 1:1) they will influence the surrounding geometry equally. But if you set one to 0.5, the geometry will be affected more significantly by the other one, with weight 1. For example, in this image, 2 bones using envelope influence try to move the same geometry. The 2 on the left have the same weight, you can see the geometry didn't move. On the right, one of the bones has 0.5 so the bone with weight 1 is winning the tug-of-war!:
    
  • Hinge: This tells the bone to remain motionless in a chain. It doesn't copy the rotation and scale of the parent. Useful for mechanical rig I would say, as you can animate the rotation of the hinge bone without having to correct it because the parent rotated:
    
  • Deform: This lets you say if you want the bone to deform the geometry at all. Switching it off is like setting the weight to 0, except it's faster this way. Useful when using a bone as a target or a controller, i.e. a bone you just want to use to control other bones, but not the geometry itself.
  • Mult: to deform geometry you can use vertex group and/or Envelope. The ability to mix both of these methods is handy for using one to tweak the other. For example, you might use envelope everywhere but tweak difficult places manually with vertex group. We'll discuss this in more detail later on.
  • Hide: This option lets you hide the bone. You can use it to hide the less important bones when you want to see what you're doing or for when you come to animate later on. For example, when you animate you don't need to see the entire chain of the leg, just the controllers. The values you select here apply to both Editmode and Posemode.

[edit] Naming convention

In many cases, rigs are symmetrical and can be mirrored in half. In these cases, it is helpful to use a left-right naming convention. This is not only useful for your own sake, but it gives Blender a hint that there is a pair of equivalent bones, and enables the use of some very cool tools that will save you some significant work.

• It's helpful to name your bones with something useful telling you what it's there for, such as leg, arm, finger, back, foot, etc.
• If you get a bone that has a copy on the other side, however, like the arm (you have 2 arms right?), then the convention is to call them arm.Left and arm.Right.
• Other alternatives are also possible, like _L, _LEFT, _left, .L, and .Left. Anyway, when you rig try to keep this left-right thing as accurate as possible; it will pay off later on.
• You can copy a bone named blah.L and flip it over using WKEY --> flip name. So the bone will be blah.L.001 after you copy it, and flipping the name will give you blah.R. Blender handily detects if the .001 version already exists, and increments the number for you.

This is an example of naming in a simple rig:

[edit] Mirror Editing

Now we come to the X-Axis Mirror Edit feature. This handy little number allows you to define only half of your character and tell Blender to automatically repeat the same actions on the other side. It's cool, it's simple and it saves a whole lot of time.

We will create a little guy out of sticks for the occasion -- don't worry about the geometry yet.

• Create a new, empty scene. Since the mirror editing feature mirrors along the X Axis, make sure you've got the front view selected (NUMPAD_1KEY) so that the X Axis runs from left to right. Add a new armature to the scene (SPACE, Add|Armature). Enable 'Draw names' from the 'Display options' section of the Editbutton panel, so we can see what we're doing.
• Now enable mirror editing by pressing F9 on the buttons window and clicking the X-Axis Mirror button in the Armature panel under Editing options. You'll also need to use the center of the armature (indicated by a purple dot) as the center of your rig, otherwise the symmetry will go wrong when we come to create the mirror image.
• Name the first bone you have "Back". You can scale it to make the entire back of the guy.
• Select the tip of this and extrude a new bone from it to do the Head. Name it Head.
• Select the tip of Back again and do SHIFT-EKEY to tell Blender you're starting a mirrored chain of bones. Blender will automatically extrude another bone and will create an exact mirror of whatever you do. Take note that the name of both bones are Back_L and Back_R. Blender also tries to keep to the naming convention. Unfortunately, since we extruded from the Back bone, the names aren't quite right anymore.
• To change the names: Start by editing one of the names as Arm. Add the suffix to it (_L or _R). Then hover your mouse over the name field and do CTRL-CKEY. You just copied the name of the bone! Select the other bone, hover you mouse over the name field and do CTRL-VKEY. This will paste the name as-is. But as there is already a bone with the same name, Blender will add .001 after it. No problem; just go into 3Dview and do WKEY --> Flip name. There you have it -- a working mirror again.
• Mirror editing works using names. If you move a bone named blah_L and there is a bone named blah_R in the same armature, Blender will mirror the move you do to it, so make sure you follow name convention correctly.
• Then we can continue: extrude an other bone to make the lower part of the arm using EKEY or CTRL-LMB. The new set of bones should be arm_L.001 arm_R.001.
• Then we will add the legs. Up till now we have always worked from the tips of the bone. This is easy as Blender understands you want to create children of the selected bone, but to make the legs you need to extrude from the root of "Back". So go ahead, select the root of "Back" and do SHIFT-EKEY to start a pair of chains. Rename them to "leg"+suffix.
• Now take note that doing so will not parent or connect the new bones to anything. We don't want it to be connected to the tip of "Back", it would look silly. But we want it to follow the body!
• The way to go is to parent the two legs we just created to the "Back" bone. The old way (pre 2.40) was to select all bone and select the parent manually in the drop down. In the new version, editmode and posemode have an active bone. The active bone is the last bone you selected. In this case we can't work with more than 2 bones selected. Select the child (a leg) then select the parent (Back) and Do CTRL-PKEY. A menu will popup asking Connected or Keep offset. For now use Keep offset. Do this for the other leg as well.
• it's also possible to remove parent easily. Select any bone you want to remove parent relation from and do ALT-PKEY. A menu will popup asking if you want to clear all or just to unconnect. Of course you don't need to select the parent and/or the child for this to work since any parent relationship will be cleared. So if you do that on a bone which is parent of 5 bones, then immediately all the children will be parentless.
• Extrude one more time to get a leg with 2 bones.
• Turn on the Stick display mode and enjoy your guy made of sticks!

• Now you can go into Posemode and pose your guy as you want.
• You can move the entire guy just by moving the "Back" bone, since this is how we built him. This bone is the highest in the bone hierarchy, "The daddy of all bones", you could say!

[edit] Armature Object in Pose mode

Posemode is a very versatile place where you Animate your character, create and manage constraints and apply your rig to your character.

Contrary to Editmode, Pose mode isn't an obligatory mode where you can't do anything else. It's now part of the UI like any other object. A good example of it is you can be in posemode and still select another object.

[edit] So What Can You Do?

When you are done building your armature, you can go into Posemode to add constraints and start creating actions. There are also some new tools accessible in Posemode that you may want to look at. You can easily get into "pose" mode by selecting the mode from IPO type list box in the left portion of the lower screen.

The panel has changed a bit too:

• What's new in the panels?:
  • You can use the Automatic IK feature in the Editbutton(F9) to pose a chain of bones like it was an ik chain. It's usefulness is very limited though. It works well only if there is no other ik solver in the chain, and if your chain is isolated from the rest of the rig.
  • Ghost: in the armature panel the ghost option lets you see the action linked to the armature over time. Also called onion skinning.
    
  • There are two number fields to better tweak the effect of B-Bones. The in/out is used to tell the scale of the virtual handle of the bezier curve. In is the Root of the bone, and Out is the Tip. The bigger the value, the bigger the effect of rotation.
    
  • There is now a Constraint panel where you can add a constraint to a bone, like any other object in the scene. This will be shown later.

• You can pose your rig using GKEY, SKEY and RKEY. Note that if the bone is part of a chain it can't be moved (except if it's the first of the chain, moving all the chain as they are all children), so you rotate the bone instead.
• You can do ALT-SKEY on one or more bones while in Envelope display mode to tweak the envelope size in real time while animating. Useful when for example you move the hand and some part of the character isn't in the influence zone; the result will be that some vertices will stay behind.
• You can do CTRL-CKEY to copy stuff from a bone to bones. The options are location, rotation, scale and constraint. Constraint is very handy when you wan to copy a constraint to other bone. The way it works is easy.
• The WKEY menu get some neat options too:
  • Select constraint target: Will select the target of the bone's constraint currently selected.
  • Flip name: Yep, you can flip name in Posemode too.
  • Calculate/Clear path: This is a visual way to see the action linked to your armature. You can select just some bones and ask Blender to show you the paths of the bones.
    
• You can pose your character and select all bones you want to see included in the action and press IKEY. You can insert a key just for loc, rot or size. Avail will add a key to all available channels in IPO window (all channels you previously added something).
• When you insert key for your armature, a new action is created and linked to the armature if there was no action before. You can also see the curves of each selected bone of the armature in the IPO window. We will see action window and IPO window later.
• You can parent a bone to an external object by selecting this object then selecting the bone in question so it's active (The armature is in Posemode so you can select a bone). Do CTRL-PKEY. Then when you move the bone the object will follow. This kind of Hard relationship doesn't include any bending at all. It's useful when doing robot rigs as you are just moving objects around.

[edit] Mesh Object

This section will explain you how to deform your mesh using the armature.

There are two ways to tell Blender which vertex will go with which bone: Vertex group, and Envelope.

There is also a tool useful when animating which is part of the mesh object: the Shape key, to create a preset deformation. For example: deform the face to look like a smile.

• Connection between Armature and Mesh
• Envelope
• Vertex Groups & Weight Paint
• Shape Key

[edit] Connection between Armature and Mesh

How to tell Blender: "use this armature to deform this mesh"

[edit] The Armature Modifier

Blender now has a Modifier stack (Editbutton, F9KEY). As such, we should use it over existing methods to pair mesh and armature, as the modifier stack is optimised and simple to use. Note: You don't need to parent the mesh to the Armature anymore. The only case you could need to do this would be animating the Armature object itself. Then the mesh should also follow the armature. In this case select mesh, then armature, and do CTRL-PKEY --> Object.

The clean way to do so is to go in the Editbutton window (F9KEY) and press "Add modifier" in the Modifier panel, then select "armature" in the dropdown menu. Then you'll get a new modifier "Armature" like the previous picture. Change the OB: field to the name of the armature object that should control the mesh. This step is very important! Without the armature object being defined, Blender won't know how to modify the mesh since there may be multiple armatures within your world. To limit the effect of the modifier, you can enter the name of a vertex group in the VGroup: field. This will minimizes unwanted distortions in very dense meshes. There are also fields to enable/disable the modifier when rendering, enable/disable when working to only move the armature (could get handy with massive character), and when editing (that's very handy, you can edit the topology while it's deformed). There are also two toggles to tell Blender what it should use to deform: Vertex Groups and/or Envelopes. You may have noticed these options are repeated also in the Editbutton --> Armature panel, but as the tooltip says: these two are used when you use virtual modifier (the old way) to keep compatibility with old files.

Parenting the mesh to the "armature" will create an old-way link, still visible in the modifier stack, but not very useful. The first entry with the "make real" button is what appends if you do a CTRL-PKEY to "armature". You should not use that kind of connection when you see that. Press "make real" to get a working modifier.

[edit] The Old Way

This way is not recommended but can still be useful. When doing CTRL-PKEY to "armature", you will get a menu like this:

• Don't Create Groups will just create a virtual modifier so you can deform the mesh (the "make real" button)
• Name Groups is almost useless now as blender will create a group for you when you do weight painting.
• Create From Closest Bones is a function to remember when you want to bake all your envelopes to vertex groups.

[edit] Tip: Bake envelope to vertex groups

The workflow is very simple. When you are done with the envelope's tweaking and you have gotten the best out of it, delete the Armature modifier and parent the mesh to the armature. To parent it, go to object mode, first select the mesh and then the armature, then press CTRL-PKEY. Select Create From Closest Bones.

Do ALT-PKEY and redo the Armature modifier. Now all the envelope influence are converted to Vertex Groups. This way you can further tweak influence zone using Weight paint. More info in the following pages.

[edit] Envelope

[edit] What is Envelope

Envelope is a new visual tool to help you rig your characters faster and easier. It can often save you a lot of time. Each bone has a special area around it, allowing you to tell Blender what part of the geometry will follow each bone. This zone is customizable so you can move, scale and blend them together.

[edit] Edit Envelope

You can edit this white zone in Editmode or posemode by going in Envelope display mode, selecting bones and using SKEY or ALT-SKEY.

In Editmode: you can select the Tip, the Body or the Root and scale using SKEY. This area in the middle will assign a weight of 1 to all vertices contained in here. All vertices with a weight of 1 will completely follow this bone. The white transparent area around the center is a zone of influence which loses power as you go away from the center. This area is scaled when selecting the body of a bone and doing ALT-SKEY. In Posemode: You can only scale the zone of influence with ALT-SKEY when in Envelope display mode. It's real time, and lets you tweak the influence while you animate. So if you notice there is a vertex not following in the new pose you just did: Just select the bone it should follow, and scale the zone a bit until the vertex goes back with his friends. Example:

[edit] Envelope Options

It's possible to enable/disable the use of Envelope in the Modifier stack using the "Envelope" toggle.

There are also two important buttons in the Armature Bones panel: Deform and Mult.

Enabling the Deform button will tell Blender to deform geometry with this bone. It's useful because in a more complex rig not all the bones are there to deform, some bones are just there to move other bones.

The Mult option will tell Blender to multiply the weight it gets from envelope (let's say 0.7) with the weight you painted in weight paint (let's say 0.5). The result will be 0.5*0.7=0.35 so in fact you just tweaked the envelope influence to 0.3 when it was at 0.7. If you don't want vertices to be part of the zone, you can always paint it with 0, as 0*(something) will always give 0. This way you can give custom shape to your envelope. More on weight paint on next page.

In this example of a formerly flat surface you can see that all the selected vertices are not following the bone when it is moved upwards. This is because I painted a weight of 0 on them. In weight paint you'll see nothing. But just the fact that they are part of the group with a weight of 0 will make that possible. If Mult is off and you have both a vertex group and envelope, Blender will add value.

[edit] Vertex Groups & Weight Paint

[edit] What Are Vertex Groups?

Vertex groups are very useful. You can use a vertex group to:

• Group vertices together while you model (keep a selection and come back to it later).
• Define which vertices softbody simulation affects.
• Define which vertices emit particles.
• Define which part of a mesh will follow a specific bone.

Vertex groups are specific to the Mesh object and can be modified in Editmode.

If you have vertices assigned to multiple groups (for example, in a character you may have some vertices in the "upper arm" vertex group that are also in the "lower arm" vertex group), you can assign weights to those vertices to specify how much relative influence the different groups have. A weight can range from 0 to 1 and is assigned when you create the group. Let's take a peek at the GUI of vertex groups in the Editbutton(F9KEY):

From top down:

• The dropdown menu lets you select an existing vertex group or rename the current one.
• The weight numfield lets you choose the weight value assigned when you add vertices.
• You can add a new group or delete the current one.
• Assign or remove selected vertices to/from current group.
• Select/deselect all vertices in current group.

[edit] Weight Paint

As mentioned above, you may often find that you have some vertices that are assigned to more than one vertex group. By assigning weights, you can specify the relative influence each of the vertex groups have. You have two options to assign weights: 1) manually selecting each vertex and typing in a weight value, or 2) use weight painting to - you guessed it - paint weights.

Weight painting lets you paint weight values on the mesh like you were painting on a wall with a can of spray paint. It is a Mode of the 3Dview and is accessible in the 3Dview's header in the dropdown menu with Objectmode, Editmode and such. A hotkey is also available: CTRL-TABKEY.

In Weightpaint Mode, the first thing you'll notice is the blue color of the mesh. Blender provides an easy way to quickly visualise the weight value of each vertex. This is the color spectrum used:

When you are in Weightpaint mode you can paint all over the mesh as if it was a solid object on your desk. The paint only works on vertices so don't try to paint in the middle of an edge or a face, it will never work. To help you in your task there is a new panel in Editbutton:

• The weight slider is just the same thing as the weight numfield we saw earlier in the vertex groups button. It's just easier to work with. It's simply the weight you want to apply to the vertices. In painting terms, think of this as the color.
• The buttons from 0 to 1 are shortcuts for weight value, to speed up the workflow.
• The opacity slider (and shortcuts) tell Blender what is the percent of the weight value you want to apply in one shot. If you set opacity and weight to 1 the vertex will turn red instantly. In painting terms, think of this as the pressure.
• "All faces" tells Blender if you want to paint on all faces in the mesh or just the visible one.
• "Vertex Dist" tell blender to use vertex distance instead of faces. When active, the painting will only check if the vertex is in the brush, then apply a weight value. If it's off, all vertices part of the faces in the brush will receive weight value. Turning on Vertex Dist can give good results when you have a lot of polys in your mesh.
• "Normals" will apply vertex normals before painting. This means Blender will take consideration of the direction the vertex is pointing when painting: the more it's facing away from view, the less it will receive value.
• "Spray" really makes it like spraying paint. Without it, a single click will only paint one value. With Spray on, each time you move the mouse a a paint shot will be added. To get a good effect, use a small opacity value so the weight will increase slowly.
• "X-mirror" will tell Blender to apply the weight paint on the other group if there is one. Like Hand.L --> Hand.R. If you paint the group hand.L and there is a hand.R the paint will be copied over. For this to work your groups must be created, the name of the groups have to follow name's convention (left right) and both side of the mesh need to be identical.
• "Wire toggle" toggles the visibility of wire while painting. Useful to find where the vertices are (activate the edit mode option "Draw all edges" to see even better).
• "Mix"/"Add"/"Sub"/"Mul"/"Filter" is how you want to apply the paint based on what is already there. Mixing will do a mean from brute weight value and current weight value, "Add"/"Sub" will directly add or subtract value, "Mul" will multiply (exponential painting) and "Filter" will paint based on alpha value.

[edit] Vertex Groups and Armatures

So what use are vertex groups in rigging? You can specify what vertices will move when a bone moves. When you want to paint a mesh for an armature, do the following:

• Make sure the Mesh has an Armature modifier.
• Select the armature and enable Armature Posemode (CTRL-TABKEY).
• Select the mesh and enter Weightpaint mode (CTRL-TABKEY).
• Select the bone you want to paint for with RMB.
• Paint the parts you want that bone to affect.

You'll notice that, if there is no group created when you first paint, Blender will create a group for you, and give it the same name as the selected bone. This is important, because when the "Vert. Groups" toggle is on in the Armature modifier, Blender will try to match bones with Vertex Groups based on the same names.

What happens when we try to blend groups together? See this simple example of 2 bones trying to bend a tube:

The Groups are painted so the body of each bone is in red and the zone between the two bones are gradually going from 1 to 0. This will bend nicely. If, for a special reason, you want a side to react differently, you can always move the bone while painting and try the new modification you just did. By the way, having Subsurf on while painting can be very cpu expensive. It's a good idea to turn it off.

[edit] Using Weight Painting with Armatures

Armatures are used for many purposes, but one common use is to deform a mesh with an armature. This example will demonstrate how weight painting can improve armature-deformed meshes.

In this example, we have two objects; each has an armature modifier applied. The one on the left is going to be the "before" and the one on the right will be the "after".

For the object on the left, take a look at the vertex groups as initially assigned (from left to right: Bone1, Bone2, Bone3, and Bone4). These same vertex groups were assigned for the object on the right:

Important: A bone in an armature will only act upon those vertices that are in a vertex group with exactly the same name as the bone.

• In Blender 2.37 and previous, this was the ONLY way to get a bone to deform a mesh.
• In Blender 2.40 and on, selecting the "Envelope" button in the armature modifier will allow bones to deform even if you haven't assigned any vertex groups yet.

If you enter Weight Paint mode (CTRL-TAB with object selected) right after assigning the vertex groups, you can see that the vertex groups as assigned all have a weight of 1.0:

OK: both objects have vertex groups assigned and they have armature modifiers. Let's grab a bone (select the Armature, CTRL-TAB to enter Pose Mode, select Bone4, GKEY to grab, and move) to deform the mesh. We haven't made the objects different from each other, so after moving their armatures in the same way . . there's still no difference. That's good.

[edit] Shape Key

Blender Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/Mesh/Shape

[edit] Constraints

[edit] The Constraint

A constraint is what makes everything easier, magic, automatic, customised (add more words here) in a rig. It tells a bone or an object to do something special based on the position of another object, and the position of the constrained object itself. There are many constraint types for you to play with. Most will work everywhere but, the IK solver will only be available in the Armature Editmode or Posemode.

There are no strict rules to follow for when to use constraints. As long as they save you time and make everything work by itself. A constraint should never be "time-consuming" or difficult to use. Think about the animator who is going to work with this rig (it could be you!). So, do everything in a smart way.

It's possible to copy constraints from one object/bone to a bunch of objects/bones. A useful thing to know when doing a repetitive task like rigging all the fingers of a hand. Just select all bones/objects that you want to give a copy of the constraint, and then select the bone/object containing the constraints. Press CTRL-CKEY in 3DView, and select Object Constraints from the popup menu. The idea behind this is to copy the constraints of the active object to the selection.

When working on an armature in Posemode, the bones will change color if they contain a constraint. Green for almost all, except for the IK constraint, which turns the bone Yellow.

[edit] The Constraint Panel

You can add a Constraint to an object or a bone by going in Object button window(F7) for objects and bones. Look for a Constraint panel like this (note, it's usually empty):

The panel also appears in Editbutton(F9) when you are in Armature Editmode or Posemode. So what you get:

• A button to add a new Constraint. The choice you have is listed down this page.
• When you add a new Constraint, A block get added in the stack. The UI is almost the same as the Modifier Stack. Each block represent an entry. You can delete it with "X", move it up or down in the stack, Close or open it.
• Constraints are calculated from first to last. So if you have two Constraints working on the same channel, let say Location, The last one will most probably win the chance to move the object. But...
• Most of the constraints have influence slider to tell how much it influence on the stack. If the last constraint have an influence of 0.5 it will mix the result with the one before.
• You can animate the influence of the Constraint by moving the time, changing the Influence slider and adding a key with the Key button.
• The Show button will display the influence IPO curve in an IPO window for editing. (The IPO window must be opened before pressing the 'show' button).
• You can change the name of the Constraint by clicking on the name when the constraint is open.
• By Clicking on the white jacket of the Constraint you select which one is active for edition, same as "show" button.
• If most of the Constraint you can enter the name of the Object you want to work with as a target or reference. For a bone, you need to enter in which Armature object it is, then an other field for the bone name will appear. When filling those fields, remember you can use autocompletion using TAB.

[edit] The Constraint Index

• Copy Location
• Copy Rotation
• Track-To
• Floor
• Locked Track
• Follow Path
• Stretch-To
• IK Solver
• Action

[edit] Copy Location

[edit] Copy Location

The Copy Location constraint does as the name states: it will copy the location of the target to the source (constrained object). Less Influence will drag the constrained object less and less to the target.

If it's an armature, a new field will appear to let you tell which bone will be the target. Don't forget TABKEY completion while writing the name of your object/bone!

You can tell Blender to work only on the selected axis. Many uses are possible :)

[edit] The Constraint Panel

• The Target field will let you select which Object the constraint holder will follow.

[edit] Where To Use It

Most of the time this little constraint is useful to stick objects to one another. By playing with the Influence you can tell when it will work, when it will remain motionless.

A good use of it is to ask a character to pick up something. By having a bone or empty for each side of the releationship (hand <-> glass), as the hand approaches the glass, you can align the two empties and fire the constraint up (1.00) to stick them together. You add another child-bone in the middle of the hand to tell where the glass will be. Thus moving the hand will move the glass. On the side of the glass just add an empty and make it parent of the glass. Add a copy location to the empty pointing to the bone in the hand we just did. There you go. Of course when the hand rotates the glass will not. For that you will need to add a Copy Rotation Constraint.

Before Blender 2.40, the above method was a good way of faking parent relationship without rotation. But now we have the hinge option which does the same.

Create this kind of tracking device using the X Y Z toggle button

[edit] Copy Rotation

[edit] Copy Rotation

This constraint copies the rotation of the target. As simple as that. It can be an object or a bone. As you can see in the example, only the rotation gets copied.

[edit] The Constraint Panel

• You have 3 buttons to select which axis get copied over.

[edit] Where To Use It

Can be used with Copy Location to fake parent relationship. As you can key the influence you can make a character pickup something and holding it in his hands. Check the .blend for the hand-glass scene.

(?)link to the Blend(?)

You can also use this to align a plane with a 2D effect on it to the camera at all times. This works better than pointing it at the camera in some cases, such as a ring of atmospheric halo around a planet, where you don't want it disappear behind the planet.

[edit] Track-To

[edit] Track-To

The Track-To constraint lets you influence the Rotation of the constrained object by making it track a target with one of the constrained object's axis.

[edit] The Constraint Panel

• You can enter the name of the target you want to track.
• You can select which axis is going to track the target.
• You can select which axis is going to stay up.

[edit] Where To Use It

A good example of use is the make a camera track an object. The setting to use on a camera is track: -Z and up: Y. You can turn Axis drawing in objectbutton window to help you choose the good axis.

Another example with armature would be the eyes of a character:

(?)link to the Blend(?)

[edit] Floor

Using the floor constraint will keep a bone from passing through an object from a given direction. It is useful when making floors of course but also when making walls and other items which are obstacles for the armature.

There is also an offset value which is very useful when say for example you have a foot where the mesh stretches down below the actual tip of the armature you can then use the offset to make the bone stop before it actually reaches the obstacle object.

[edit] Locked Track

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Advanced Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/Const/lt

[edit] Follow Path

Next page: Stretch-To
Locked Track

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[edit] Follow path

File:Ie cons

[edit] The Constraint Panel

File:Panel

[edit] Where To Use It

File:Example

(?)link to the Blend(?)

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Next page: Stretch-To
Locked Track

[edit] Stretch-To

Next page: IK Solver
Follow Path

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[edit] Stretch-To

Description

Stretch To causes the affected object to scale the Y axis towards a target object. It also has volumetric features, so the affected object can squash down as the target moves closer, or thin out as the target moves farther away. Or you can choose not to make use of this volumetric squash-'n'-stretch feature, by pressing the NONE button. This constraint assumes that the Y axis will be the axis that does the stretching, and doesn't give you the option of using a different one because it would require too many buttons to do so.

This constraint affects object orientation in the same way that Track To does, except this constraint bases the orientation of its poles on the original orientation of the bone! See the page on Tracking for more info. Locked Track also works with this constraint. Options

R

   Pressing the R button calculates the rest length as the distance from the centers of the constrained object and its target 

Rest Length

   Rest Length determines the size of the object in the rest position 

Volume Variation

   Volume Variation controls the magnitude of the effect 

Vol

   The Vol: buttons control along what axes the volume is preserved (if at all) 

Plane

   The Plane buttons define which local orientation should be maintained while tracking the target 

Next page: IK Solver
Follow Path

[edit] IK Solver

Next page: Action
Previous page: Stretch-To

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[edit] The IK solver

The IK solver constraint is a wonderful tool for all animators. IK stand for "Inverse Kinematic" and is the opposite of FK (Forward Kinematic).

• FK: You have a dependancy to the root of the chain. In Blender, a FK chain is a chain of bones connected together. You have to animate the bones rotation one by one to get it animated. It takes longer, but gives you entire control over the rig.
• IK: Both ends are roots. All bones in the chain are trying to rotate to keep both ends on targets. Now this Constraint got most of the attention durring Animation refactoring, hopefully we have a lot of toys to play with now.

The IK solver has a special shortcut in Posemode to be added easily to a bone. If you select a bone and press 'CTRL-IKEY', You get a little menu asking for more info on the new constraint, the target: to a new empty object or without target. It's now possible to work without target. Though you have less freedom (no rot feature, difficult parent relationship).

You can also select the target and then the IK constraint holder and press CTRL-IKEY. With this way of selecting ensure that your target is selected, but the bone you want to apply the constraint to is active (the last one selected). The menu will then let you add a constraint to the current bone with a target. If the target would itself be part of the IK chain, you get an error message - so make sure the target bone is not connected to the bone you want to add the constraint to.

It's also possible to remove all IK constraints from selected objects or bones with 'ALT-IKEY'.

Q: ctrl+i doesn't seem to do anything

A: Either the 3D Window is out of focus (r-click in empty space to solve) or you're not in Pose Mode (ctrl-tab, selected bone will be magenta in color)

A: in the 2.48 version : the shortcut is 'SHIFT-I'.

[edit] The Constraint Panel

• You can rename the constraint.
• You can select which Object or bone will be the target. Don't forget Tab completion.
• The Rot button let you tell Blender to use the rotation of the target to influence the rest of the chain:

• The Tip button lets you tell Blender which part of the bone is the target, the Tip or the Root. It's interesting to use tip, because this way the Bone holding the IK constraint can be used to deform geometry.

• Len lets you tell Blender the length of the chain the IK solver will try to rotate. If set to 0, the entire chain will enter in the constraint. If for example the len is 4, only the 4 last bones of the chain will try to touch the target.

• Also If you set len to 0 and your chain's root is a child of another bone, The IK solver will reach and rotate all the bones until it gets to the end of the parent relationship. If all the bones are linked up to a master root, then all other sub-branchs will be affected. If there is another IK target in other sub-branchs of the rig, Blender will try to mix them. This concept of multiple IK targets in a rig is called Tree IK and can be used to get completely automated animations. For example like a doll: if you pull one hand, all the body will follow. In the 3D-view you'll see a yellow line from the IK solver to the root of the chain it covers. This line appears when you select the bone containing the IK solver.

• PosW and RotW let you tell Blender if this IK solver will influence the final result more of less in the case of a Tree IK setup. With these options it's possible to use an IK solver just for location and an other one just for rotation.

• Tolerance and iterations are performance and precision options. IK solving is done in more than one pass, the more passes you calculate, the more accurate results you get. The tolerance is the distance from the IK solver to the target you can accept. If Blender manages to place the target near enough, it will stop doing iterations. The Iterations value is a hard limit you set to limit the time blender can reach on each IK solver per frame. Try to set it to a very low value to know why Blender needs more than one pass ;).

• You can set the general influence this constraint will have over bones, and it's animatable.

[edit] Where To Use It

In any chain of bones you don't want to animate by hand but you want both ends to be at precise location. The best example is a leg: The leg is connected to the body and to the foot. You don't need to animate the 2 bones in the legs, just place the body and the foot, the leg will follow automagically.

[edit] Degree Of Freedom

DOF are now possible to set for bones in a Ik chain. This way you can set what will block where. This is very useful when doing a mechanical rig as you can limit the move or better, lock completely an axis.

• There you can set a limit on each axis, or completely Lock it.
• No limit gives it complete freedom (which is the same as [min:0 max:360] or [min:0 max:0]).
• The stiffness let you tell Blender if there is an axis more difficult to rotate than the rest. If all bone have a stiffness of 1 on X and you try to curve that chain in a way that all bones need to turn on X to follow the target, the Solving will find really weird poses to still touch the target without rotating on X.

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Next page: Action
Previous page: Stretch-To

[edit] Action

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Advanced Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/Const/act

[edit] Timeline Window

Next page: IPO Window
Previous page: IK Solver

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Next page: IPO Window
Previous page: IK Solver

[edit] IPO Window

Next page: Data Type
Previous page: Timeline Window

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Next page: Data Type
Previous page: Timeline Window

[edit] Data Type

Next page: Channel
Previous page: IPO Window

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Next page: Channel
Previous page: IPO Window

[edit] Channel

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Advanced Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/ipo/channel

[edit] Curve Edition

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Advanced Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/ipo/curve

[edit] Driven IPO

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Advanced Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/ipo/drive

[edit] Action Window

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Advanced Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/Action/index

[edit] Introduction To Action Data Block

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Advanced Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/Action/intro

[edit] Key Edition

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Advanced Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/Action/Key

[edit] NLA Window

[edit] (about this placeholder)

Since there has been nothing written on this page for a while, I asked for some basic information on another forum. I'll just quote what I learned from that forum, and this can be massaged into a real page of documentation over time. I won't attribute the individual various quotes, but thank you all for helping out. Remember, ANYONE can edit a Wiki, so create an account and make this thing better.

[edit] The NLA Window

[edit] Forum Notes

It's quite easy and maybe that's why there's no specific tutorial.
Let's say you want to make two actions, AC:Hit and AC:Kick.
Start with poseing Hit and an Action will automatically be created
in the Action Editor consisting of all the Bones that use Action IPO's.
That's done so return to Frame 1 which will be your default Stance of AC:Hit.

Now, in the Action Editor, click the X (delete) next to AC:Hit and the
datablock menu will disappear. (If you Add New instead of deleting then it
will copy selected bones to the new action and you don't always want that).
If you want a new default pose for AC:Kick, then Pose it or the same stance
will be used as was the default in AC:Hit. Pose and Keyframe your Kick
action and name it.

Over in the NLA Editor you can now use Shift-A to add NLA-Strips of your
Actions, Grab and Scale them and use the Transform Properties tab to input
how they Blend.

If you select an Action with the dropdown menu, at first its name will appear in the NLA window
along with its keys. To make this Action into an NLA strip, point at the Action's name in the
NLA and press CKEY.

Close any open Actions by clicking the scary X in the Action Editor. If
you don't do this, only this action will play. Now in the NLA editor,
play the animation. 

If you see any keys (diamonds) in the NLA window, instead of strips
(rectangles), you're still editing an action. It's so much easier if you
have both the Action and NLA windows open so you can see whether an Action
is open or not. (Edited by CD38 23 Feb 2006)

[edit] Walkthrough

With no Actions selected, both the Action Editor and the NLA Editor appear empty. Here, the NLA Editor window does list one Object called -Empty because that object is not an armature but it has some IPO curves attached.

Select an Action you've already made. Here, an Armature named Yui has bones involved in a one-frame action called -AtEase.

Convert the listed Action to an NLA Strip in the NLA Editor by pressing the CKEY with the mouse hovering over the Action to be