Modeling A Glass In Blender

We are going to learn how to model a standard glass in blender. You could think why we are modeling glass. Because doing this we will learn many things.

What we will learn by modeling glass in blender

 We will learn to add primitive object cylinder, modify properties of primitive, modifying object in edit mode selection methods, inset face, extrude and may things. So be ready to learn. Go slow, do everything step by step. Lets start now :

Steps of Modeling Glass in Blender

Now follow the steps given bellow carefully. If you have any confusion let me know in the comments :


Step 1
First of all we should do our unit setup for the file. Set it to 'Metric'. If you don't know how to setup the unit in blender, please go to the one of my post here.

Step 2
Select the default cube by right clicking on it and press x or delete button and then press enter to conform the delete.

Note 1
Now we will add a cylinder to make a glass. Why we are choosing a cylinder? why not cube or anything else?? Because the glass we are going to make will be matching the cylindrical shape. We should choose that primitive mesh which matches our object best. But its not always necessary though it makes process easy and fast a little bit.

Step 3
So first we need to make the 2D cursor at the center of view port, cause the new objects is always added at the position of 2D cursor. And you may have accidentally placed the 2D cursor to somewhere else. Press Sift + S and then choose 'Cursor to center'. To Know more about 2D cursor go to my another post here.

Step 4
To add cylinder press Shift + A and then go to Mesh and then click on cylinder. To know another methods of adding objects in blender go to my another post here.

Step 5
Now before clicking anywhere else you should tweak some options like cylinder size, radius, vertices ( number of side edges for Max or Maya Users) and cap fill type.

By default the vertices in the cylinder is 32 but we will use 12 for our glass and will use a modifier to smooth it. Now enter the following data in there field respectively:

• Radius - 1.5"
• Depth - 5"
• Cap Fill Type - Triangle Fan

Note :   1.5" means 1.5 inch. " is the symbol of inch

Step 6
Now cylinder may look like very small depending on your zoom level. Press full stop symbol on num pad to bring the selected cylinder in focus and framed to viewport (work like F key in Maya).

Step 7
Before going further we should rename the cylinder to glass. Go to Object tab in property window and change the name to glass and press enter.

Step 8
Now press Tab to go into the edit mode.

Step 9
Now press Ctrl + tab and select vertex.

Step 10
Right click on upper middle vertex to select it.

Step 11
Now hold Ctrl button and click on face select button to select connected faces to that vertex.

Step 12
Keep your mouse in the viewport but a little far from the selection then press I button on the keyboard to inset the selection and move your mouse towards the center of selection to scale it down a little or move far from the selection center to scale it up. scale it a little inside from outer edge and then press left click to conform it.

Step 13
Now rotate view to go to the lower side of the cylinder and then go to vertex selection mode and select the center vertex.Now hold Ctrl and click face select to select connected face and then press S button on the keyboard to scale it down a little bit then left click to conform it.

Step 14
Now Rotate the view to look at upper part. Choose vertex selection mode and select center vertex of the upper part then hold Ctrl and click face select to select the connected faces.

Step 15
Now go to the Orthographic side view by first pressing 5 number key on num pad and the pressing 1 number key. and then press Z button on the keyboard to go into the wireframe mode.

Step 16
Now keep your mouse in the view port and and press E button on the keyboard to extrude the selected faces, now drag your mouse down till the selected faces is a little bit above the base. now left click to conform the extrude.

Step 17
Now press S to scale the selection inside the glass like the image given bellow.

Step 18
Now press 5 number button of the numpad to return to the perspective view and then press Z button of the keyboard to return to the solid shading mode.

Step 19
Now we need to give the glass supporting edges so when we apply Subdivision Surface modifier to smooth it, the shape of glass should hold the volume. To do this rotate the view so that the side of glass is visible. Now hover your mouse at the center of the glass and press Ctrl + R ( this is similar to edge loop tool of the Maya ). After pressing Ctrl + R a pink edge will appear at the middle of the glass.

Step 20
Now press left click once and drag the edge towards upper edge and when you are just a little bit far from the upper edge press right click to place the edge there.

Step 21
Do the same thing for lower edge, and for inner wall's upper and lower edges too.

Step 22
Now select the lower faces and inset them.

Step 23
Now place your mouse inside the indicated pink area in the bellow image and insert a edge loop and now drag outward to the outer edge and then place the edge.

Step 24
Do the same thing for inner base.

Step 25
Now place an edge at the thickness of glass.

Step 26
Now go to the side and place the mouse at the middle of the glass and press Ctrl + R. Now rotate the mouse wheel to increase the number of edges.

Step 27
Increase it to 8 and the left click and then right click to place the edges.

Step 28
Do the same for inner wall.

Step 29
Now press Tab to go to object mode. While the glass is selected click on smooth shading button.

Step 30
While the glass is selected go to modifier tab of property window and then click on 'Add Modifier' and then choose 'Subdivision Surface'.

Step 31
Now increase the view subdivision to 2.

See, by following these steps your glass is ready. Now for the presentation shake we should take render of our glass.

Rendering Our Glass

To render your glass first select the Lamp ( Light ) in the view port then go to lamp data in the property window, and then switch the lamp to Hemi type.

 Now select your glass from outliner and place your mouse in the viewport and press the dot button of the num pad to zoom in the glass.

Now zoom out a little bit like the bellow image.

Now hold Ctrl and press 0 on num pad. It will set the camera to the view.

 Now press F12 to take render.

WOW ! Your glass is ready. Show it to your friends. If you have any confusion or difficulty to understand anything, let me know in the comments. Have Fun and Happy Blending

Using layers, Layer Manager and Naming Layers in blender

If you have ever used photoshop or gimp then you already know the importance of layers. Like 2d designing software, 3d designing software also have the concept of layers and layer managers. In other software like Max its a bit easy to manage layers, but as you have heard blender is not so good at layer management. Even you cannot name a layer if you are using default options of blender. But the beauty of blender is addons. So don't worry I will show you the way around to do things that are not meant to be done Oooohahahahah...
Lets begin...

 

Where you should use the layers?

Lets take a scenario where you have to make a spoon with a plate and have to place the spoon in the plate then give your objects a nice steel shader and you have to take a render of it. you can do it easily without any need of layers. But think of a big scene where you have to make whole dinner set then place it on a wodden table and that table should be placed in a room under the fan and the switch of the fan should be on and light should be off as windows are open and curtains are flowing and bla and bla and bla bla bla... Now my friend I think you should use layers. The dinner set, the table, walls, switch board, fan, curtain, everything similar should be in there own layers. so if your boss asks you to use different kind of fan or to just give two renders with different kind of fans you can easily turn the layers on and off and take render easily. And apart from these scenario there are many cases where you feel the need of layers.

 

Layers in Blender

There are only 20 layers provided in blender, you cannot add or remove layers. You can turn on or off the layers, switch the layers.



In the above image you can see the icons for 20 layers. If a icon is dark grey it means this layer is active and visible. If a icon has a tiny yellow dot in it that means this layer contains some objects in it. These layer icons are also available in 'Render Layer' tab under 'Scene' label in the property window. There are also Render Layers and Mask Layers, don't confuse them with Scene Layers, we will talk about that when the time come.

 

Switching or activating multiple layers in Blender

To switch layers in blender you can do two things given bellow.

1. Click on the icon of the layer to make it active and visible and hide other layers.
2. Press the corresponding shortcut button of the layers to make it active.

The shortcut key for the first 10 layers is the buttons from 0-9 above your qwerty buttons of the keyboard and for the next 10 layers you can use Sift along with 0-9.

Keep in mind Num Pad button does not belong to layers.

To activate multiple layers you have to press Shift and then click on the layer icons to make them visible and active.

 

Moving objects from one layer to another

In blender you can easily move objects from one layer to another. Follow the steps given bellow to move objects from one layer to another.

1. Select the objects you want to move from current layer to another
2. Now press 'M' on the keyboard and click on the layer icon from the popup menu in which you want to move the objects. M is the shortcut to move selected objects from one layer to another.

 

Relating or Linking one object to multiple layers in Blender

• An object can be linked or related to multiple layers. When moving object after pressing M hold shift when choosing layer to move object. After this the object will be linked to the other layers to but the current layer will also have it.
• If you relate the object with multiple layers that doesn't make copies of the object but the data of the object will be linked, if you delete the object from one layer it will be deleted from all layers it was linked to.

 

Layer Manager in Blender

There is no inbuilt layer manager provided in the blender but they have included an Add-on for the layer management in blender. But you have to activate it to use it. To activate Layer Manager follow the steps given bellow.

1. Go to the file menu and click on 'User Preferences' or press Ctrl + Alt + U
2. In the user preferences window go to Add-ons tab.
3. Start typing layer manager in the search box and the add-on will appear.
4. Activate the add-on by turning on the check box of the add-on and then click on save user setting. and close the dialog box.

Now in the Tool Self of 3D view a new tab is added named Layers. Click on that tab and you will find your new layer manager. You can give a name to the layers, select objects of the layer by one button click, change shading mode of the objects of a layer, lock the objects of the layer etc.

If you face any problem using layer manager in blender, let me know in the comments.

If you like the post let me know through the comments and sharing the link to the blog, it encourages me to write more post. And if you want a post on a specific topic, tell me in the comments. I have to leave for now...Happy Blending..

Unit Setup and Saving Start up file in Blender

Its been a long time since I have posted here. I was actually busy. But then I thought that humans are always busy so it will not be fair to not let other learn what you know. So Here I am continuing my post about Blender...

Now lets talk about setting units in blender. Setting units is very important when you are working on architectural projects or even its good habit so whenever you need to develop scene according to real life you have a real life measuring unit in blender.

Lets take an example where setting units can help you. Suppose you are making a scene where you have to build houses in a row on the bank of a river and there is a bridge to cross the river and peoples walking on bridge. Now in this situation either you will guess the width of river by making it then you will make bridge, you will make it according to the feel of your own when you think the bridge is looking ok then you will make humans walking on bridge and then you shall feel like either my bridge is too wide or my humans are small, and when you scale your humans then the side railing of bridge looks smaller than it should be. I am not saying it will always happen but it will happen often if you are not good at proportion and not have enough experience.

So setting units is good for anyone who wants no further scaling and adjusting the scene for proportion. After unit setting you know how much wide your river is, and how much long a human should be.

By default the unit is set to none in blender, or you can say its set to the blender units. So every time if you are making a scene you have to set unit first.

• Note : Unit setting for a scene should be done just after creating a new scene before working any further, first you should setup your unit.

So to setup the unit, create the new scene, then go to the Scene tab(sphere cylinder light composed in one Icon) in Properties window then open the Unit section.

Now there are options for Unit setup which I am explaining bellow, select the options according to your preference :

• Metric : If you prefer to use kilometers, meter, centimeter type of scheme for measurement.
• Imperial : If you prefer to use Ft, inch type of scheme for measurement
• Degrees : self explanatory for rotation
• Radians : Its used in many area of mathematics for measuring rotation. An arc of a circle with the same length as the radius of that circle corresponds to an angle of 1 radian.

1 Radian = 57.296 degrees 

You can use Radians for rotation if you prefer or needed.  

Maybe you don't want to setup unit every time after creating a scene and want it to already set at your preferred unit. To do this you need to save a startup file.A startup file is the file that opens by default when you launch Blender. By default it contains a cube, a camera and a light.

To save a startup file with your preferred unit setup, first create a new file then set the unit by the method I have explained above and then go to file menu and click on “Save startup file” or you can press ctrl+U to save startup file.If you don't want the cube to show up when you start the blender then you can delete the cube and save startup file.

So this is all for now. If you have any question or anything just let me know in comment section. See you in the next post. Happy Blending...

Adding Text, Extruding Text and Changing Text Style in Blender

In this post we are going to learn about adding the text in blender. There are some things that you have to keep in mind. I will tell you these on the way of adding text in blender, whenever its needed. So lets get started.

Setting default font folder in Blender

If you are going to add text in your scene in blender you would probably need to change the font of the text. For changing font of the text object in blender there is no easy way. To make it a little easier you have to set user preferences in the blender, cause you cannot directly choose font for text object in blender from a drop down list. You have to choose the font from the folder. So first set the font folder from the user preferences. To change the user preferences go to file menu and then click on user preferences, or just press Ctrl + Alt + U

Now in the user preferences go to the file tab. Here you can set the default folders. Set your default font folder here by browsing to it or directly entering the path. Usually default font folder for Windows is “C:\Windows\Fonts”. After setting the path click on Save User Settings.

Adding Text in Blender

Now you are all set, just press Shift + A inside the viewport and choose Text. A text object will be added to your scene. See! that is so easy, but you don't want that, you will live happily ever after if you see your name written there instead of Text.

Editing Text in Blender

To edit the text in blender you just follow the same method as for other objects, just press Tab. Just like the other text editors a cursor will appear in the viewport with the text. You can press backspace to delete the Text and type whatever you want. After typing just press Tab to return to the object mode.

There are two more things that you probably want to know

• How to make text thick in Blender
• How to change font of Text object in Blender

You have noticed that the Text you have added has no thickness at all, its just like plane. May be this is not what you wanted. So to add thickness to the text, you have to increase the amount of extrude property of the text object. To do that just open the Text properties tab, its just right beside the Add modifiers tab. Now in the geometry section increase the amount of extrude.

Changing font of the Text in Blender

To change the font of the text go to the Font section of Text properties. Now you have to brows to the font file you want to apply. By default the Bfont is applied.

If you have already set the User Preferences and saved the default font folder then clicking on open will open the font folder.

And one more thing, You have to open all file of a font if you want to use all styles for example Font Arial's Regular in Regular, Bold in Bold, Italic in Italic etc. But its not necessary to open all file, if you want to use only Bold style then only open bold style file. By default the regular style is applied.

After opening the files you can access them from drop down list.

Now After opening text file press Tab in the viwport to go to edit mode while the text object is selected. Now select the written text by pressing Sift + Right/Left Arrow depend on the position of your text cursor.

Now choose the style from tools menu.

That's it. Now you know how to Add Text in Blender, Adding thickness to Text in blender and changing font and font style of text object in blender. And here is a tip for you, you can bevel the text object's edges by increasing the bevel amount, which is placed side by side the extrude. Bye for now and Happy Blending :)