Assignment 5 Creating a Snowman

Step 1 If there's a square Press the X key to delete the square that is in the middle of the scene. Make sure you are in top view Press the space bar. Select Add  Mesh  UVSphere to add a sphere in the scene (click on the OK button for the number of segments and rings, 32 is perfect). Press Z to the see the sphere in wireframe type Zoom in ("+" key or the scroll button on the mouse) and press the S key (size) to make the sphere 4 squares wide. This is going to be the body of the snowman.

Step 2 Make sure you are in object mode On the bottom of the 3D view, there's a little menu with icons, click on the rectangular icon (or press F9) Now, change the values of the 2 fields with a name that fits (e.g. SnowmanBody). It is not necessary to name the object, but that's a good habit to do so

Step 3 Front view Top view Switch to front view (Numpad 1) and then Add a 2nd UVsphere in the scene as shown in the picture Resize (S) the sphere to 2 squares wide. Name the new sphere SnowmanHead (as done in the previous stage). Now press the G key (G=Grab) and move the head on top of the body. View the snowman in top, side, and front view to see if the head and the body are aligned properly and then get back to front view to continue your work If you're satisfied with the shape of your snowman, you can "link/join" all the elements together. Select them by pressing the B key and drawing a square all around them. Then press Ctrl+J and click on "join selected meshes". Front view Top view

Step 4 Switch to the front view, add a sphere, and make it smaller than the head (S) to be one of the arms of the snowman. put (G) your sphere at the place of one arm. Then, with this sphere still selected, duplicate it by pressing Shift D, and put it (G) at the place of the second arm. View the snowman with added arms in all three views to see if the arms are in the right place. Make appropriate adjustment if needed Front view Top view

Step 5 Now, let's create his face. Stay in the front view, press the space bar and choose Add  Mesh  Cone Switch to the side view (Numpad 3). The cone is going to be the nose, and as you can see, it's much too big. Deselect all the points by pressing the A key. Rotate the cone 90 degrees counter clock wise as shown in picture 1 Move to edit mode [Tab] Deselect all vertices first [A] Select only the points on the base of the cone (press B to draw a box around the points) as shown in picture 2. Now Press the S key and decrease the size of the base of the cone. Switch to the object mode(Tab), and press the S key to decrease the size of the "nose" of the snowman. Then put the nose (G) of the face of the snowman. Again view the snowman with added nose in all three views to see if the nose is in the right place. Make appropriate adjustment if needed Side view front view top view

Step 6 Make sure you are in object mode Make sure you are in front view Add a sphere, and make it small enough (using S) to be one of the eyes of the snowman. Put your sphere (using G) at the place of one eye. Then, with this sphere still selected, duplicate it by pressing Shift D, and put it at the place of the second eye. Zoom in (+) and select the 2 eyes (right-click on the first one if it's not already selected, and Shift+right click to select the other one. They should now appear in 2 different tints of pink. Again view the snowman in all views specially in the side view with added eyes to see if the eyes are in the right place. Make appropriate adjustment if needed Select the two eyes and join them (Ctrl J).

Step 7 Keep the eyes selected, and go on the top view (Numpad 7), and move the eyes as shown in the picture if they are not lined up this way already. To be sure they're visible, press the Z key to switch to the "Solid" mode (instead of the "wireframe" mode), and move around the snowman (hold the middle mouse button down, and move the mouse). As you can see, the snowman is all grey. We're going to make it look better. Press Z once again to switch back to the wireframe mode.

Step 8 In the object mode (tab) select the snowman body. Now go to the editing menu (F9 or the button that is circled) and click on "Set Smooth". If you press Z now, the snowman should look smoother. Then, click on "New" to create a new material for the snowman, Now click on "Shading" (or F5) to go on the shading menu.

Step 9 Name the material "Snow", and change the R,G,B values to 1, to get a white color, and also set the "Hard" value to 1 (If it's bigger than 1, you'll get a grey snowman looking more like metal than snow) and the specularity value to approximately 0.15, and the "Ref" value to 1. If you go on the solid mode (Z) once again, you'll see almost no changes. They'll be noticeable only if you make a render of the scene. (This is the F12 key). If you see nothing, it is because your camera is not "watching" your snowman. If you don’t have a camera in the scene, add one. Then select the camera and then select the body of the snowman and use Ctrl T to make the camera point to the snowman and track it. Alternatively, you can select the camera and use the rotation ( R) and move (G) to point it at the snowman. Press the 0 key (Numpad 0) to be in the "camera view" and check that you can see the snowman, and try to render the scene again.)

Step 10 Now, select the nose of the snowman. On the shading menu (F5) click on "Add New" to create a new material for this part. Name it "Orange" or whatever you want, and set the RGB values to get something orange. There's a big probability that the nose still looks very dark if you make a render (F12). You could change the "Ref" value to 1, and tweak the "Spec" and "hard" values if you want. But the fact that it looks dark is mostly a light problem, and we'll fix the light later. Do the same thing for the eyes of the snowman ( name the material "coal" for example, and set the RGB values to zero).

Step 11 Switch to the top view (Numpad 7), and add a Cone (Add Mesh  Cone) Switch to the front view(Numpad 1), and make the cone a little flatter as follows: Select the cone and go to edit mode Deselect all the vertices (A) Right click on the top of the cone to select it and move it in the direction of Z access. This is done by pressing G and then pressing Z and then moving the vertex down Then switch to the object mode (Tab) and increase the size (S) of the cone: make it approximately 8 squares wide.

Step 12 Keep the cone selected, and go to the shading menu (F5). Click on Add New (as you did in previous steps) and name the new material "FirTree". Then, click on the Texture Menu button. A texture panel should appear.

Step 13 Click on "Add New" to add a texture to the FirTree material From the texture type choose image’ From the image panel, click on "load image" and choose the image called “tree-texture.png” From the “Map Image” panel, set the "Xrepeat" value to 2

Step 14 Go to the material menu (F5), and select the in the "Map Input" panel, choose “Tube” Then, make sure the cone is still selected and go back to the editing menu (F9) and select "Set Smooth” in the “Link and Material” panel By the way, the textures can't be seen in the solid mode (Z), they're visible only in the renders.

Step 15 Being in object mode, use Z to see the wireframe of the cone as shown below In the front view, duplicate (Shift D) the cone, and put the duplicated cone above the other. Repeat this to have 3 cones. Decrease a little the size of the cone on the top and on the middle. You should have something looking like below

Step 16 Switch to the top view to make sure the cones are right on the top of each other. If not do a bit of rearrangement Go back to front view and add a cylinder (Add>Mesh>Cylinder). Resize it (S) if needed to make it the trunk of the tree, and put it at the right place in the front view. Repeat the same things as you did in previous steps to make it smooth and add a material to it. Make the material brown (approximately R:0.500 - G:0.250 - B:0.000). View this in top view to make sure the trunk is right on the center of the cones

Step 17 Switch to the top view, make sure the trunk is right in the center of all cones. If not rearrange it If the fir tree is over the snowman, move it (G) beside. Select the entire tree and scale it (S) down to make it a bit smaller

Step 18 Use Shift+D to copy the fir tree and create a little forest around the snowman. Don't put fir trees in front of him, or he'll be totally hidden from the camera. In order to create different sizes of tree do Duplicate a tree Resize it with (S) Use LMB to stop resizing Use G to move the resized copy You can make some trees bigger or smaller, so it won't look too artificial Make sure (in the front/side view) that the bigger trees are not half-underground and the smaller trees half-flying.

Step 19 Being in the object mode add a plane (Add  Mesh Plane) Grow the plane (S) to be bigger than the forest. This is going to be the ground. Switch to the object mode (Tab) and make sure in the front or side view that the ground is not floating above the tree, but under them.

Step 20 Now go to the shading menu (F5), and instead of choosing "Add New", click on the small arrows on the left of the AddNew button and choose "Snow". This give the plane (or your ground) snow texture too

Step 21 Let's start with the camera. Select it, and try to point it at the snowman (with G and R), so that you can see the snowman and also the forest. You can go in the camera view (Numpad 0) to help you. You can move the camera while you're in this view. The easiest way is to divide the 3Dview in 2 parts, one to display the camera view, and the other one to move the camera and see the changes as shown in the picture.

Step 22 This part is a little more difficult, because the quality of the image could change a lot depending on the lights, and there's not "magical tip" that will make the lights always looks right, in general you'll have to try many times before having something good. Select the light/lamp Then go to the shading menu (F5) and click on "Lamp Buttons" (the square button with a light bulb). Select "Sun" (one of the green button on the left). Then try to place it (G and R) somewhere where is would light the scene enough. Don't forget to try rendering (F12) to see what it looks like). Add another lamp (Add>Lamp), and in the same menu as before, click on "Spot“ in the preview panel and then turn on "Only Shadow“ in the “Shadow and Spot” panel so the spot will not light the scene, only add shadows to it.

Step 23 Try to place the spot approximately at this place with the grab (G) and rotate(R) tools. With spot light selected and still being in the Lamp menu, tweak the values of "ClipStart" and "ClipEnd“ in the “Shadow and Spot” panel, so that the 'line' coming from the spot is tightened around the objects of the scene. (Increase a bit the value of ClipStart and decrease a bit the values of ClipEnd). Without that, some of the objects may have a strange shadow, or no shadow at all). You could also increase the size of the spot "SpotSi“ in th e”Shaow and Spot” panel and its distance "Dist” in the “lamp” panel.

Step 24 Select the camera, and on the shading menu (F5) try to make the "world" color looking sky-blue.

Step 25 On the Scene menu (F10), select "OSA" (this will enable anti-aliasing). The 5,8,11,16 buttons below set the quality of the anti-aliasing (the highest, the best). Also select the "100%" button to render the image at 100%, and then change the values of the SizeX and SizeY (this is the size of the final image). Then you'll only have to click on the big "render" button (or F12) to star the rendering. To save your image, press F3 after the rendering.

Step 26 At the end you should have something like this.