A Quick Blender Tutorial

Blender 3D Modeling Tutorial

This tutorial teaches creating basic 3D models using primitive geometries and extrusion techniques.  At the end, there are tips to further enhance a geometry prior to UV mapping.  If you ca do this tutorial and UV Texture map it, you are on your way to being a pro 3D Asset modeler.

1.       Open Blender (blender.exe)

2.       In the outliner, left click on the camera and press delete.  Do the same for the light.  Keep the cube for now to give us a sense of scale.  It is 2x2x2 meters.

3.       Add a reference image to “trace” to build your model:

4.       Press g to grab and reposition the image close to what you want to be its center.

5.       Press s to scale the image. Use the cube as a point of reference – which is about  6 foot (2 meters).  You don’t have to be precise here.

6.       Delete the cube.

7.       Sometimes, it’s good to made the image transparent.  You do so in the properties pane by first selecting the image and then clicking the Object Data Properties tab and adjusting the opacity:

8.       Study your image and picture how you would build it with cubes and cylinders.

·         For example, a check valve can be considered essentially a bunch of cylinders with some addons like studs and a lifting lug.

9.       In this example, we’ll first click the image and press g to put the inlet and outlet on the x axis.

10.   Now add your cylinders.  Click AddàMesh-->Cylinder

11.   Type r90 to rotate it 90 degrees.  Type sy to scale it on the y axis. 

12.   Press gy to move it in position.  The addition of y locks it to the y axis.

·         When scaling, use the point of the image that would be closest to you.  This will ensure the lens focal point  doesn’t cause a dimensional issue due to its perspective.  Keep perspective in mind as you develop your model.

13.   Click the middle mouse button and move the mouse to admire your work.

14.   Now that you have at least one cylinder in place, you can hone in the dimensions.  Click on the image and do a gx to slide it forward.  This will allow us to match your cameras perspective while editing!

15.   Click the X on the axis to straighten things back up.  Click the grid icon under the axes to switch from perspective to orthogonal view:

16.   Use the perspective view to help dial in your dimensions.  Note:  be sure to use gy to lock in your y axis when moving or you’ll get out of wack.

17.   In this example, I know all flanges are physically the same dimension.  So, I’ll do CTRL C and CTRL V and then gy to drop paste in the others.

                                                               i.      NOTE:  OLD SCHOOL BLENDER USERS SIMPLFY COPY PASTE USING “SHIFT dy” TO DUPLICATE AND LOCK TO AN AXIS.  Although not your everyday Windows approach, it’s preferred.

 

NOTE:  I COULD HAVE JUST USED TWO CYLINDERS HERE – I WOULD THEN LET THE TEXTURE GIVE THE ILLUSION OF TWO CYLINDERS.  THIS WOULD BE EASIER TO RENDER ON SLOW COMPUTERS.

18.   I’ll continue these techniques to drop in the rest of the body and top flanges using gz and sz this time as well to lock in that z axis when grabbing and scaling.  If I don’t I’ll drift off center.

19.   There is an issue with this model however.  To the eye, all looks well, but in reality, I have objects stabbing into one another which is not good for rendering performance and quality.  It will shows as jagged line flashes.  We need this to be a shell of the object.  You can see the objects stabbing into one another when you view it as a wireframe:

210.   We will use “modifiers” to join the objects together to make a single shell:

·         Click on one object

·         Click the modifiers tab in the properties.  It looks like a wrench:

·         Click Add Modifier and select Boolean

·         Now click Union and then click the dropper:

·         With the dropper click on the other object.  You will immediately see vertices disappear creating the single shell we want.  Back in the day you would have had to manually delete verticies and map them to edges.  Thank the maker.

here, I’ve just applied the modifier to the flange, but still need to go

·         If all looks good to you, you have to apply the modifier:

·        

·         It may leave the original object along with the newly joined objects.  They will be intermingled and hard to see it overlapping the old. Click through your Object Explorer, locate it, and delete it.

·         You will now have a perfect shell with no objects stabbing into one another.

·         Last, find that image you used for reference in the Object Explorer and delete it.  That way it doesn’t import into your simulator.

·         You can now apply your UV Texture Mapping techniques to make it awesome.

 

Tips for Refining Your Model

Hiding an object so you can work on another

·         Sometimes objects get in the way of the one you want to edit. 

·         Click on it and press h to hide it.

·         To bring the object back, hold ALT and press h

Selecting vertices, edges, and faces

·         In Edit Mode (select the object and hit tab), you can select a group of vertices, edges, or faces by first selecting the what you want to select with these icons: 

·         You can do old school fence-and-select by simply left clicking, dragging, and releasing.  Hold shift and do it on some more to add to that selection.

·         Pressing b will allow you to box off multiple.  Pressing b again, you can add to that selecting.

Adding a taper

1.       Go into edit mode (select the object and hit tab)

2.       Select the end’s vertices (you can fence it off with left click drag, or press the letter b and select)

3.       Press the key combination ex or ey or ez (depending on the axis) for extrude.

4.       Drag it out to the length of the taper. 

5.       Last, press s to scale down the taper. 

6.       Press e again to extend it more at the new smaller diameter.

 

Beveling and Rounding Edges

·         Blender has powerful tools for beveling.  The kicker is you have to do it to an object versus just a single edge.  So, if you want to bevel something – do it very early before you do any Boolean procedures to join meshes.