1. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 1 Modeling Part 1

2. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 2 As you have seen in the Quick Start chapter, the creation of a 3D scene needs at least three key things: Models, Materials and Lights.Quick Start In this Part we will go deeper into the first of these issues Modeling. Modeling is the art and science of creating a surface that mimics the shape of a real-world object or fits your imagination of abstract objects. Objects come in many forms, shapes and sizes, so Blender has many different tools available to help you make your model quickly and efficiently: Objects: Working with objects as a whole Meshes: Working with the mesh that defines the shape of an object Curves: Using Curves to model and control objects

3. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 3 Surfaces: Modeling a NURBS surface Text: Textual tools for putting words in 3D space Meta Objects: Globs and Globules Duplicates and Frames: Duplicating Meshes Modeling Scripts: Since Blender functionality is extensible via Python, there are a number of very useful scripts that assist you in modeling. Many people use "box modeling" which starts with a basic cube, and proceeds with extruding and moving vertices to create a larger, more complicated mesh. For flat objects, like walls and table tops, you can use "curve modeling" which defines the outline using bezier or Nurbs curves, and then extrudes it to the desired thickness.

4. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 4 Object Mode You can switch back and forth to Object Mode and Edit Mode by pressing TAB. Join Objects Mode: Object mode, Hotkey: Ctrl J, Menu: Object → Join Objects Joins all selected objects to one single object. (The objects must be of the same type.) The center point of the resulting object is obtained from the previously active object. Performing a join is equivalent to adding new objects while in Edit mode.

5. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 5 Selections and the Active Object Blender distinguishes between two different states of selection: Selected Active Object, Selected Object, In Object Mode the last selected item is called the "Active Object" and is outlined in light pink (the others are darker pink). There is exactly one Active Object at any time (unless nothing is selected). Many actions in Blender use the Active Object as a reference If you already have a selection and need to make a different object the active one, simply re-select it with Shift RMB. Selected and active Selected and inactive

6. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 6 Point Selection: The simplest form of object selection consist into using RMB on it. To add to the selection we use Shift RMB on more objects. If the objects are overlapping in the view we can use Alt RMB to get a list of possible choices. Activation of an object that is already selected is done with a Shift RMB click on it. Deselection is achieved by one Shift RMB on an active object and two such clicks if the object wasn't active. Rectangular or Border Select Mode: Object mode, Hotkey: B, Menu: Select → Border Select With Border Select we draw a rectangle while holding down LMB. Any object that lies even partially within this rectangle becomes selected.

7. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 7 Example: In (Start) Border Select has been activated and is indicated by showing a dotted cross-hair cursor. In (Selecting), the selection region is being chosen by drawing a rectangle with the LMB. The rectangle is only covering cubes "A" and "B". Finally, by releasing LMB the selection is complete Notice in (Complete) the bright color of selected cube "B". This means it is the "Active Object", the last selected object prior to using the Border Select tool. Note: If something is already selected, border select adds to the previous selection, so in order to select only the contents of the rectangle A and B, deselect all with A first.

8. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 8 Lasso Select Mode: Object mode Hotkey: CTRL+ LMB Lasso select is used by drawing a dotted line around the pivot point of the objects, in ObjectMode. Usage: While holding CTRL down, we simply have to draw around the pivot point of each object we want to select with LMB. Lasso select adds to the previous selection. For deselection we use Shift Ctrl LMB.

9. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 9 Menu Selection The selection methods described above are the most common. There are also many more options accessible through the 'Select' menu of the 3D view or the 'Select' option of the SpaceBar menu. Select Grouped Mode: Object mode, Hotkey: Shift G, Menu: Select → Grouped There are two ways to organize the objects in relation to one another. The first one is parenting, and the second simple grouping. We can take advantage of those relationships to select members of those families or of those groups.

10. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 10 Select → Grouped in Object Mode uses the active object as a basis to select all others. Available options are: Children: Selects all children of the active object recursively. Immediate Children: Selects all direct children of the active object. Parent: Selects the parent of this object if it has one. Siblings (Shared Parents): Select objects that have the same parent as the active object. This can also be used to select all root level objects (objects with no parents). Objects of Same Type: Select objects that are the same type as the active. Objects on Shared Layers: Objects that have at least 1 shared layer. Objects in Same Group: Objects that are part of a group (rendered green with the default theme) will be selected if they are in one of the groups that the active object is in. Object Hooks: Every hook that belongs to the active object.

11. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 11 Select linked Mode: Object mode, Hotkey: Shift L, Menu: Select → Linked Selects all objects which share a common datablock with the active object.

12. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 12 Select All by Type Mode: Object mode Menu: Select → Select All by Type The types are Mesh, Curve, Surface, Meta, Armature, Lattice, Text, Empty, Camera, Lamp. With this tool it becomes possible to select every visible object of a certain type in one go.

13. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 13 Select All by Layer Mode: Object mode, Menu: Select → Select All by Layer Layers are another means to regroup our objects to suit our purpose. This option allows the selection of every single object that belongs to a given layer, visible or not, in one single command. This selection is added to anything that was already selected at that moment.

14. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 14 Random: Randomly selects unselected objects based on percentage probability on currently active layers. On selecting the command a numerical selection box is displayed for the user to select the percentage chance that an object will be selected. It's important to note that the percentage represents the likelihood of an unselected object being selected and not the percentage amount of objects that will be selected.

15. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 15 Inverse: Selects all objects that were not selected while deselecting all those which were Select/Deselect All: If anything was selected it is first deselected. Otherwise it toggles between selecting and deselecting every visible object. Border Select: As described above in the section on border select.

16. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 16 Moving (translating) objects There are two ways to move or translate an object: moving it by itself, or moving it relative to something else. Moving Object(s) Individually Mode: Object mode, Hotkey: G or Gesture, Menu: Object → Transform → Grab/Move (or Grab/Move on Axis for constraints) “To translate an object” is to place an object in Grab mode. The selected objects will be displayed as white wireframes and can be moved with the mouse (without pressing any mouse buttons); To confirm the new position, click LMB or press ENTER; to cancel Grab mode, click RMB or press ESC.

17. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 17 Movement can be constrained to an axis that is aligned with one of the axes of the global coordinate system, centered on the object's original world location. The cube "B"'s original world location is labeled "C". The center of the global coordinate system is labeled "W"; the Z axis is not visible. By constraining movement to a global axis you are, in effect, restricting movement to one dimension. The global aligned axes are color coded as follows: X axis is dark red. Labeled "X axis". Y axis is dark green. Labeled "W-Y axis". Z axis is dark blue. Labeled "Z axis". The restricted axis is always highlighted in a lighter shade of color. For example, the Y axis is drawn in light green if movement is constrained to the Y axis; labeled "Y axis". There are two ways to constrain movement: using the mouse or using the keyboard.

18. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 18 Using the Mouse: To lock or constrain movement using the mouse, enter Grab mode and move the object while pressing MMB. While in Grab mode you can use the Gesture System to pre-select an axis by moving the mouse in a direction roughly inline with a world axis and then clicking and releasing MMB. For example, if you move the mouse along what visually appears to be the X axis and then click and release MMB the object's movement will be restricted to the world X axis. Alternately, you can interactively choose the constraining axis by dragging with the MMB while in Grab mode. All three axes become visible with a guide line that emanates from the object's original location; labeled "C". This guide is drawn in white dotted line labeled "S". As the guide line nears an axis that axis becomes highlighted in a lighter shade and the object snaps to that axis. If you keep CTRL pressed while moving the object you will activate Snap mode, and the object will move by a whole number of units (grid squares). Snap mode ends when you release CTRL so be sure to confirm the position before releasing it. For finer snapping you can hold both CTRL and SHIFT. You can control positioning to a finer degree by holding SHIFT while you move. Large mouse movements will translate into very small object movements, which allows for finer positioning. The location of selected objects can be reset to the default value by pressing Alt G. The default location is the origin of the global coordinate system.

19. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 19 Using the keyboard: You can constrain movement to a given axis by pressing either X, Y or Z. A single key press constrains movement to the corresponding global axis (Global Constraint), as MMB does. A second key press of the same key constrains movement to the corresponding Object local axis (Local Constraint) and a third key press of the same key removes constraints, (No Constraint). The constrained axis is drawn in a lighter color to better visualize the constraint. (Local Constraint) and (Global Constraint) are all examples of constraints on the X axis using the X key. Once grabbing is activated you can enter the Object translation manually by simply typing in a number. This will change the 3D window header as shown in the following pictures The number entered is a distance number (i.e. how far from the object's current location). Think of the "D" as in displacement, delta or distance.

20. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 20 It is also possible to enter a value followed by an axis letter to indicate that the value that is entered should be made along the specified axis letter. For example, if you wanted to move an object along the y axis by 3 Blender units, you would type Gy3Enter or G3yEnter. You can also enter negative values to move in the opposite direction. As well as being able to constrain along a single specified axis, it is also possible to prevent axis translation/scaling along one axis, but allow translation/scaling along the other two axis; This is achieved by pressing either Shift X, Shift Y or Shift Z to prevent translation/scaling along the specified axis. So if you wished to scale an object on the X and Z axis's but not the Y axis you could type S Shift Y.

21. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 21 Rotating objects There are two ways of changing an object's rotation; individually, and by copying the rotation attribute from another object as described above. Mode: Object mode, Hotkey: R or Gestures Menu: Object → Transform → Rotate / Rotate on Axis Change the rotation by moving the mouse and confirming with LMB or ENTER. You can cancel with RMB or ESC. Rotation in 3D space occurs around an axis, and there are several ways to define this axis. But in general an axis is defined by a direction line and a point that the line passes through. By default, the axis is orthogonal to your screen (i.e. it is going into or out of your screen). If you are viewing the scene from the front, side, or top 3D view windows, the rotation axis will be parallel to one of the global coordinate system axes.

22. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 22 Axis of rotation Constraint Just like Grab mode you can constrain the axis of rotation by using either the mouse or the keyboard. The only difference is that you only enter an angle.

23. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 23 Point of rotation: To select the point-of-rotation that the rotation axis will pass through, use the Rotation/Scaling button accessed in the header of the 3D window,. This will display the (Pivot menu). Active Object: The axis passes through the active object (drawn in pink). Individual Object Centers: Each selected object receives its own rotation axis, all mutually parallel and passing through the center point of each object, respectively. If you select only one object, you will get the same effect as with the Bounding Box Center button. 3D Cursor: The axis passes through the 3D cursor. The cursor can be placed anywhere you wish before rotating. You can use this option to easily perform certain translations at the same time that you rotate an object. Median Point: The axis passes through the median point of the selection. Bounding Box Center: The axis passes through the center of the selection's bounding box. If only one object is selected, the point used is the center point of the object, which might not necessarily be in the geometric center.

24. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 24 For finer control or precision use CTRL or SHIFT. Pressing CTRL switches to Snap mode and rotations are constrained to 5 degree increments. Pressing SHIFT at the same time constraints the rotation to 1 degree increments. Pressing SHIFT alone while rotating allows finer degrees of rotation as precise as 1/100th of a degree. The rotation of selected objects can be reset to the default value by pressing Alt R. Note: An easy way to understand how pivot points work is to create two or three cubes and cycle through each pivot point type while in Rotate mode.

25. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 25 Scaling objects Mode: Edit mode / Object mode Hotkey: S or Gesture System, Menu: Mesh → Transform → Scale Scale the objects by moving the mouse and confirming with LMB or ENTER, and cancel with RMB or ESC. Scaling in 3D space occurs around a center point; much like a rotation occurs around a pivot point. If you increase the size of the object, all points are moved away from the selected center point; If you decrease it, all points move towards this point.

26. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 26 By default, the selected objects are uniformly scaled in all directions. To change the proportions (make the object longer, broader and so on), you can lock the scaling process to one of the global coordinate axes, just as you would with Grab mode and Rotate mode. Again all considerations on constraining to a specific axis, in respect to Grabbing, still hold as well as those on numerical input. Center point of scale: To select the center-point-of-scale use the Rotation/Scaling button accessed in the header of the 3D window, This will display the Pivot menu. Here again the CTRL key switches to Snap mode, with discrete scaling at 0.1 steps. Press SHIFT for fine tuning. The scaling of selected objects can be reset to the default value by pressing Alt S.

27. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 27 Mirroring objects Mirroring objects is a different application of the scale tool. Mirroring is effectively nothing but scaling with a negative factor in one direction. For example, to mirror in the direction of any single axis: Enter Scale mode Select an axis using X, Y or Z key. Enter '-1' as the scaling factor. (Mirrored Frustum) is an example of mirroring a frustum object along the Z axis. These are the steps to mirror the frustum: Enter Scale mode Select the Z axis using the Z key. Enter '-1' as the scaling factor. Hit ENTER

28. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 28 Skinning and Cloning Objects Relevant fields highlighted in yellow. At the very top of the Links and Pipelines Panel, you will find two fields, one in light pink and the other in grey The field in grey starts with OB and is the name of the object itself. It has to be unique within the.blend file across all scenes. The field name on the left starts with a two-letter abbreviation indicating what type of object it is, and the name of its skin, or physical appearance: ME: Is the physical mesh, made up of vertices. CU: Is a curve, surface, or text object, made up of control points. MB: Is a metaball, whose skin is represented as a mathematical function. Any of these skins can be shared by objects. Imagine a scene with 50 cats, some skinny, some fat. You would have two meshes: ME:Cat.Skinny and ME:Cat.Fat. You would create 50 OB:Cat.001, OB:Cat.002,... OB:Cat.050 and assign 20 of the OB to be fat cats, and the rest skinny.

29. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 29 Clicking the F will fake a user of the skin, and it will not be deleted when no one uses it. The next time you open the.blend file, it will be in memory and will not have to be re-made. You can then create an object of its type, and use that skin. At any time you can change the skin of an object by clicking the up-down selector on the left of the field and selecting a different skin for that same object type. When you do, the field will then show the multi-user button, "2" identifying how many other objects share this skin. Cloning: Hotkey: Alt D Menu: Object  Duplicate Linked Select an object and use the hotkey to create a clone of the original. The two objects will share the same skin. This means that altering either object at the Edit Mode level (when in Edit Mode), by for example grabbing vertices, will result in the other objects being altered in the same relative way. This linking usually only works when in Edit Mode, so scaling/rotating/grabbing an object in Object Mode will not result in the other linked object being affected.

30. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 30 Parenting objects Mode: Object mode, Hotkey: Ctrl P, Menu: Object → Parent → Make Parent To parent objects, select at least two objects, and press Ctrl P. A confirmation dialog will pop up asking Make Parent. Selecting Make Parent confirms and the child/children to parent relationship are created. The last object selected will be the Active Object outlined in pink, and will also be the Parent Object. If you selected multiple objects before selecting the parent, they will all be children of the parent and will be at the same level of the hierarchy. Moving and rotating the parent will also usually move/rotate the child/children. However moving/rotating the child/children of the parent, will not result in the parent moving/rotating. The direction of influence is usually from Parent to Child/Children, not from Child/Children to Parent.

31. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 31 Remove relationship/Clear Parent You can Remove a parent-child relationship via Alt P; The menu contains: Clear Parent: If the parent in the group is selected nothing is done. If a child or children are selected they are disassociated with the parent, or freed, and they return to their original location, rotation, and size. Clear and Keep Transformation (Clear Track): Frees the children from the parent, and keeps the location, rotation, and size given to them by the parent. Clear Parent Inverse: Places the children with respect to the parent as if they were placed in the Global reference. This effectively clears the parent's transformation from the children. For example, if the parent is moved 10 units along the X axis and "Clear Parent Inverse" is invoked, any selected children are freed and moved -10 units back along the X axis. The "Inverse" only uses the last transformation; if the parent moved twice, 10 units each time for a total of 20 units, then the "Inverse" will only move the child back 10 units not 20.

32. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 32 Parenting Examples The Active Object, in light pink (Cube A), will be made the parent of all the other object(s) in the group (darker pink/purple Cube B). The center(s) of all children object(s) are now linked to the center of the parent by a dashed line; see image (Parenting Example). The parent object is cube "A" and the child object is cube "B". The link is labelled "L". At this point, grabbing, rotating, and scaling transformations to the parent will do the same to the children. Parenting is a very important tool with many advanced applications. it is used extensively with advanced animations. There is another way to see the parent-child relationship in groups and that is to use the Outliner view which is described in The Outliner window.

33. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 33 Grouping objects Mode: Object mode, Panel: Object → Object and Links Hotkey: Ctrl G, Menu: Object → Parent → Add to New Group Group objects together without any kind of transformation relationship. Use groups to just logically organize your scene, or to facilitate one-step appending or linking between files or across scenes. Objects that are part of a group always shows as light green when selected; see image (Grouped objects).

34. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 34 Adding to or Creating Group: Ctrl G pops up a dialog for adding to existing groups or creating a new group; see image (Groups pop-up). Alternatively, with the object selected or in Edit Mode, click the Add to Group button shown above in image (Naming a Group). The popup list allows you to click on an existing group, or create a new one. You can also ostracize, or banish, the selected object from all groups by selecting the Remove option. There are many ways to create a Group. The simplest is to shift-select all the objects you want to be grouped together, and then, in Object Mode, find Object→Group→Add to New Group in the menu of the 3D area or use the Ctrl G shortcut. The selected objects will now have a green outline indicating that they are part of one or more groups. Then, among the Buttons Window Object (F7) context, in the Object and Links panel, in the GR: field shift click and type DiningSet. save and close the file. To name groups in the Outliner window, select Groups as the outliner display from the header combo box, and Ctrl LMB click on the group name. The name will change to an editable field; make your changes and press Enter.

35. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 35 Select Grouped Mode: Object mode, Hotkey: Shift G, Menu: Select → Grouped Selected Grouped pop-up: Shift G pops up a dialog for selecting objects based on parenting and grouping characteristics;

36. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 36 Children: Selects all the active object's children, and the children's children, up to the last generation. Immediate Children: Selects all the active object's children but not those of the selected object's parent. Parent: Selects the parent of the active object and deselects the active object. Siblings (Shared Parent): Selects all the siblings of the Active Object. Objects of Same Type: Select objects based on the current object type. Objects on Shared Layers: This actually has nothing to do with parents. It selects all objects on the same layer(s) of the active object. Objects in Same Group: Select objects that belong to the same group as the selected object(s).

37. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 37 Duplicate Mode: Edit mode/Object mode, Hotkey: Shift D, Menu: Object → Duplicate This will create a visually identical copy of the selected object(s). The copy is created at the same position as the original object and you are automatically placed in Grab mode. Reference (Duplicate Example) for the discussions below. This is a new object and it "shares" all the Material(s), and Texture(s) from the original object; this is sometimes called a shallow link because the object's mesh information and transform properties are separate copies.

38. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 38 Examples The cone labeled "C" is a Duplicate of cone "A". The vertex at "P1" has been moved but the same vertex on cone "A" is unchanged. This means the mesh data are copies not links. Cone "C"'s color is red because cone "A"'s color is red. This means the material properties are linked not copied. If you rotate cone "C" cone "A" remains unchanged. This means the transform properties are copies not links. If you want separate copies, you need to manually create them, one for each corresponding property. You can make separate materials for each, as described in the Materials Chapter.

39. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 39 Linked Duplicates Mode: Edit mode / Object mode, Hotkey: Alt D Menu: Object → Duplicate Linked You also have the choice of creating a Linked Duplicate rather than a Duplicate; this is called a deep link. This will create a new object with all of its data linked to the original object. If you modify one of the linked objects in EditMode, all linked copies are modified. Transform properties still remain copies not links so you still can rotate, scale, and move freely without affecting the other copy. Reference (Duplicate Example) for the discussions below.

40. Sahar Mosleh & Ahmad R. Hadaegh California State University San Marcos Page 40 For example, the cone labeled "D" is a Linked Duplicate of cone "B" using Alt D. The vertex at "P2" has moved and the same vertex on cone "B" has moved as well. This means the mesh data are links not copies. Cone "D"'s color is green because cone "B"'s color is green. This means the material properties are also linked and not copied. If you rotate cone "D" cone "B" remains unchanged. This means the transform properties are copies not links. A common table has a top and four legs. Model one leg, and then make linked duplicates three times for each of the remaining legs. If you later make a change to the mesh, all the legs will still match. Linked duplicates also apply to a set of drinking glasses, wheels on a car; anywhere there is repetition or symmetry.