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..

Blender : 3D Cursor, Adding Objects In General and A little about Placing Them

What we will learn

In this post I am going to tell you about how to add objects in Blender. In previous post I have gave you a teaser of adding objects in blender. But here we will talk about the different methods to add objects and a little about placing them in 3D space. If we talk about placing the objects the 3D cursor have a very important role to play, and we will talk about that also. Placing the objects in depth will come in the following posts. So without wasting time lets get started.

3D Cursor

First we should know about the 3D cursor. Peoples switching from other 3D development softwares like 3Ds Max or Maya will found themselves dealing with something new. Yes its very unique feature the blender has. At start it will feel awkward how your left click places the 3D cursor rather than doing a predictable action like selecting an object. Well you can change this behavior from user preferences, but I will suggest not to do so. The following image is showing the 3D cursor in viewport :

3D cursor and Object's Position

Whenever you are adding a new object it will be added at the position where the 3D Cursor is. The 3D cursor mainly deals with placing the objects. You can snap any object to cursor, the cursor to any selected object or sub object like vertex. Different snapping options are available for 3D cursor and objects. You can access these options by pressing Shift+S inside the viewport.The following image is showing the options that will open after pressing Shift+S :

Changing the 3D Cursor Position

By default the 3D cursor is placed at the center (0,0,0) of the viewport. If by mistake you have left clicked somewhere else in the viewport, the cursor would have been misplaced by now. To place the cursor at the center (0,0,0) again press Shift+S and then choose 'Cursor to Center'.

Another way to change 3D cursor's position is from properties. Press N key to toggle Properties in viewport, and then go to 3D cursor segment to enter the position. The following image is showing the position of 3D cursor segment in Properties:

As we will keep talking about the 3D cursor wherever its needed, lets focus on adding objects in detail.

Adding Objects in blender 3D

Adding different kind of objects to the scene in blender is pretty easy. There are two methods by which you can add objects, and these methods are

• From menu bar
• By using shortcut

Adding objects from menu bar

To add objects from menu bar just click on Add menu and choose the object from there respective categories. For example if you want to add Cube you have to choose it from Mesh category. You can add different kind of objects like Mesh, Curve, Surface, Text, Armature(Bone in 3Ds Max), Empty (Helpers in 3Ds Max), Camera, Lamp ( Lights in 3Ds Max) etc.

Adding objects by using shortcut

The same list of objects can be opened for adding objects inside the viewport by using shortcut Sift +A while mouse pointer is inside the viewport. From this list you can add all these objects which you can add from Add menu.

Precautions for adding objects

There are two things that you should know before adding an object into blender.

The first thing is that new object is always added at the position of 3D cursor. 3D cursor's position can be changed by left clicking anywhere in the scene. Wherever you left click somewhere, the 3D cursor will be placed there. So if you have by mistake placed the 3D cursor somewhere else or outside the view the object will be placed there, if you want to add the object at the center, place the 3D cursor at the center, read the 3D cursor section of this post to do so.

The second thing is the properties of the objects you added like radius of sphere, size and radius of cylinder etc. You can tweak these properties for one time only when you added the object. These properties are tend to lost as soon as you transform the object or add another object. So you should tweak these properties immediately after adding the object before doing anything else. You can change these properties from bellow the toolbar.

The name of some of these properties are a little different in blender. Cube always have similar sided so rather giving it height, width and depth they gave it only one property Radius. Another thing is the sides of the objects like Cylinder and Cone became the vertices, means if you want 8 sides in the cylinders then you have to enter 8 vertices in the properties. The place from where you can change the properties is shown in the image bellow:

These are some general information about 3D cursor and adding objects in blender. We will talk about the methods of adding some specific objects like Text and Curves in the following posts.

And now hear is a tip for you, you can press F12 to take render of your scene, and after render press Esc to return to the 3D view.

Well I think its enough for now, see you in the next post and Happy Blending :)

Blender : Installing, Viewport Navigation and Adding Objects

Introduction

Blender is a free software that allow you to create 3D contents just like Autodesk's 3Ds Max and Maya. When I was using 3Ds Max and Maya, I thought Blender is a very poor application and one cannot do everything that he/she can do with blender. Yes my fellow blender users, there are still so many users who don't even know about Blender, or think its to hard to switch to. So for all these Max and Maya users, who wants to do some professional work but don't have enough money to buy 3Ds Max or Maya, I am suggesting you to use Blender.

Don't worry, its not that hard, Yes I accept that the UI of Blender and workflow is a little different, but for dealing with that worth it. And I am here to help you cut through the process of switching. I am again telling you that its so easy. I have switched from 3Ds Max and Maya to just only Blender. And believe me you also can easily switch.

So if you have made your mind to give it a try, follow me along and never hesitate to ask anything you dont understand, I am always here to help you.

Installing Blender

First thing is that you need to download the blender. Use the following link to download your free copy of blender. Use 32bit or 64bit version, whichever version your operating system is :

http://www.blender.org/download/

Choose the installer or zip file to download. If you have downloaded the installer then you need to double click the installer to install the Blender. And if you have downloaded the zip file then you need to extract it to a safe location and you are ready to use blender.

Now open the blender and you will see something like this:

Viewport Navigation

Click anywhere out of splash screen to hide it. Unlike Max or Maya the Blender by default contains some objects into its scene which are a cube, a camera and a point light. The Blender uses the camera for rendering and the light to illuminate the scene, unlike Max or Maya it doesn't uses the view to render the scene. So if you will delete the light the objects in the scene will be rendered as black, and if you will delete the camera there will be no rendering, the blender will prompt you that scene has no camera. So never delete the camera or light unless its intended to.

Now here is something for you to start with :

• Right click on any object to select that object
• After selecting an object press x and enter to delete that object 
• Middle click drag to rotate the view 
• Ctrl+Middle Click drag to zoom in or out
• Sift+Middle Click drag to pan the view

Adding Objects

First delete the default cube. To delete right click on the cube to select it. Now press x and then enter to delete it. Now press sift+A in viwport to add a object. Click on Mesh and then choose cube or sphere or any other object you want to add. 

See, Its so easy. More will come in the next post. Feel free to ask if anything in this post is confusing. And at last here is a quick tip for you to experiment, you can press Tab while your newly added object is selected to toggle the edit mode and you can modify the shape of the object.

Good Bye for now, and Happy Blending :)