+ B0005 - Vital Functions in Blender+
Instructor - Pradeep Mamgain
+ Vital Functions +
In this multi-part tutorial we will learn about some crucial fuctions in Blender. We will talk about 3D Cursor, Adding Mesh to the scene, Draw Types, Object Modes, Selection Mode, Object Duplication and Edge Loops.
+ 3D Cursor and Adding Meshes+
3D cursor is used to place new objects in the scene. You can place this object around by clicking with right mouse button. Press the space bar to activate the menu or you can place objects from Add main menu item or press Shift+A or press and hold LMB. Go to Add > Mesh > UV Sphere. A small window will pop up that contains the parameters of the sphere, as shown in Fig-5.1.
There are three ways to change the parameters. First, you can directly type in the values from the keyboard. Second, you can click on the arrow heads on the either side of the parameters or you can drag mouse on the parameter strip to change the values. Use CTRL key while dragging to make large changes. Use default values in this case.
+ Draw Types +
You can view object in differnet shading in the viewport. These options are found in header area. Shortcut D key.
Tetured :- This tries to draw everything as complete as possible. It is however not an alternative to rendering. If you do not have lighting in your scene, everything will turn black.
Shaded :- Shaded is also similar to the textured. It draws solid surfaces. It renders your scene using the lights you place in your scene.
Solid :- It draw solid but the display works even without lights. It renders your scene using default scene lights. Default lights can be found under System and OpenGL tab in preferences window. Three Light buttons on the top activate or deactivate the lights. Drag on the spheres to change the light direction. Click on the color swatches to change the light colors.
Draw modes on per object basis can be controlled from the button widow. Create a cube and a UV shpere and press F7 to enter to object mode. Select the sphere and enable Wire button from Draw panel. Now the UVSphere is rendered in wire mode while cube is still in solid mode.
Even if you change the scene mode to shaded mode, sphere will be rendered in wireframe mode.
The preference over scene draw mode starts from the bottom in Draw panel. Bounds > Wire > Solid > Shaded. For example now if you change the mode to Bounding box in the scene window both objects will be drawn in the bouding box mode.
There are more buttons in the Draw Panel under Draw Extra sub panel. These buttons will draw some additional features regardless of the scene or Draw panel draw settings.
Name draws the name of the object in the scene. It is drawn at the origin point of the object. Axis draws the axis name in the scene window. It make life easy when we turn off the manipulator. Wire buttons lets you draw the wireframe of the object over shaded or solid mode. X-Ray button forces blender to show the selected object over any object. Object will be rendered at the top even if it is behind other objects.
To toggle wireframe and solid modes press Z key, and to toggle between wireframe and shaded display press Shift+Z. Hit TAB key to toggle between the Edit Mode and Object Mode. In object mode last selected object is called Active Object and is outlined in Pink, others are outlined in Purple. Lasso selection is made by CTRL+RMB. To de-select use Shift+CTRL+RMB drag. You can select vertices and move them in 3D space. You can also pick it up from the header area, as shown in Fig – 5.2.
+ Selection Mode and Editing Objects +
Once you hit TAB key in Object Mode, blender will jump to Edit Mode. Vertices are the control points that you can connect to create edges and faces. To select a single vertex click with left mouse button. To select all the linked vertices, hover mouse over a vertex and press L key, blender will select all th vertices connected to the selected vertex. Likewise you can also select the faces. Hover mouse over a face and press L key. Vertices showup pink dots when they are not selected and yellow dots when they are selected, as shown in Figure 5.3.
Vertices :- A vertex is a single point or position in 3d space. To create a new vertex, goto edit mode and CTRL+Right Click to add a new vertex. A vertices selected previuously is connect to the new vertex with an edge.
Edges :- Edges are straight lines connecting vertices. They are used to construct the faces. To create an edge, select two vertices and press the F key.
Faces :- Face is the highest level of structure in the Mesh, they are used to build the actual surface of the mesh. A face is defined by an area between either three (triangles) or four (quads) vertices.
To select more then one vertex, shift+left click on the other vertices. To drag a window around the vertices, press B (Border Select) and drag a marquee selection. Border Select adds to the previous selection. Use MMB while you drag to select the object within the rectangle. Press B key twice to get the circular selection, circular area can be sized using + and – keys on the keyboard or by scrolling the mouse wheel or by pressing Page Up and Page Down keys on the keyboard. Press ESC to get out of circular tool. To select or deselect all the vertices press A key.
When edit mode, you can select edges and faces also. MMB drag the header area to the left and expose the selection options, as shown in Fig – 5.4.
Shortcut key for vertex is CTRL+TAB+1, for Edge CTRL+TAB+2, and for Faces CTRL+TAB+3. The last button in the group is for occluding the background geometry. It hides the geometry that is not facigng the camera directly, as shown in Fig – 5.5. In face select mode, faces can be selected based on whether they are triangles, quads or non triangle/quad faces.
Triangles :- Shift + Ctrl + Alt + 3
Quads :- Shift + Ctrl + Alt + 4
Non Tri/Quads :- Shift + Ctrl + Alt + 5
Most simple transformations from from the object mode work identically on vertices as they do on objects. The only difference is scaling options, hotkey is ALT+S which scales the selected vertices along the directions of the normals. To see this in action, create a UVSphere, switch to face mode, select few faces and to show normals in the viewport, select Draw Normals in button window under Mesh Tools More mini window, as shown in Fig – 5.5a.
To see the difference, first Press S key to scale and then ALT+S to scale along the direction of the normals.
There are many edit operation which you can access by pressing the Edit Button or pressing F9 on the keyborad.
Nsize (Normal Size) :- Determines the length, in Blender Units, of the normals to the faces. To see this in action first press Draw Normals button and then change the length of the normals.
Draw Normals :- Toggle drawing of Normals. If this is ON, face normals are drawn as cyan segments.
Draw Faces :- If this is ON, faces are drawn as semi-transparent blue, or as semi-transparent purple if they are selected. If this is OFF, faces are invisible.
Draw Edges :- Edges are always drawn black, but if this button is ON, selected edges are drawn in yellow.
Draw Creases :- If this is selected the edges, with creasing other than zero, a part of the edge will be drawn with a thicker line.
Draw Seams :- If this is selected the edges, with a marked seam, will be drawn with an orange color.
All Edges :- Only those edges strictly necessary to show an object's shape are shown in Object mode. You can force Blender to draw all edges with this button.
Edge Length :- If this is selected the length, in Blender units, will be drawn near the center of the selected edge.
Edge Angles :- If this is selected the angle, in degrees, will drawn near the corner of two selected edges. The edges must be connected to same corner.
Face Area :- If this is selected the area, in Blender units, will be drawn near the center of the selected face.
Select Swap button lets you invert the selection, hotkey is CTRL+I. Hide and Reveal buttons lets you hide the elements (Hotkey H) or reveal the hidden elements (Hotkey ALT+H). X-Axis Mirror button lets you mirror the transformation while using transforms. As shown in Fig. – 5.5c. For hiding de-selected object press Shift+H.
+ Edge Loops +
Edge and face loops are sets of faces or edges that forms continuous loops. Edge Loops connect vertices so that each on the loop has exactly two neighbours that are not on the loop and placed on both sides of the loops. Exception is at the start and end vertex in case of poles. Select an edge and press CTRL+E to activate the edge special menu, from that menu choose Edge Loop Select or press CTRL+E+7 on the keyboard.
Edge Ring selects the edges in a ring.
You can also select the edge loops using the mouse. Alt+Left click on a vertex or an edge to select the loop. Likewise we can select a face ring.
+ Loop/Cut Menu +
Create a plane and switch to the top view. Press TAB to enter into edit mode and select all the vertices. Press K to bring up the Loop/Cut menu. Select Knife (Midpoints) from the menu. Draw a line as shown in the image below. Use left mouse button to draw, if you hold CTRL key while drawing you can snap to the vertices. Press Enter to accept the cut and now you have a edge in the absoulte middle of the plane. You can press ESC key to abort the operation.
Now undo couple of times to get back to the original plane and this time select Knife (Multicut) from the menu. Set number of cuts to 2 and draw lines as shown. Press Enter to cut and now you have equally spaced edges added to the plane.
Again press K and select Loopcut or you can also press CTRL+R shortcut key. Unlike Knife Cut, Loop Cut doesn’t need any edges to be selected but loop cut can only cut when it can create a clean loop. When you activate loop cut and hover your mouse over the geometry a pink line indicates the postion of the new edge that will be created when cut operation is completed. Once you press enter to accept the changes or left click, blender allows you to place the newly created edge by activating the edge move mode.
You can also use MMB button to add multiple loops in single operation while using Loopcut operation. Create a cylinder and switch to front view. Press CTRL+R to activate the Loopcut tool, pink line appears at the center of the cylinder. Do not click yet. Scroll the mouse wheel, blender will place more pink lines for you. Press Eneter to cut and there you are a very time saving technique.
You can also use Subdivide-Multi command from the special menu to achieve the same result. Press CTRL+Z couple of times to switch back to the original cylinder. Select the front edges as shown below. Press W to activate the special menu and choose subdivide multi. Enter 5 for number of cuts and press OK.
+ Duplicating the Objects +
To duplicate the object press Shift+D. It will create a identical copy of the selected objects. This is a new object except that it shares Material, Texture and the IPO with the original. These attributes are linked to each other and changing material of one object will cause change in the material of another object as well.
If you want to create a linked duplicate press ALT+D. This will create a new object with all its data linked to the original object. If you modify one of the linked objects in edit mode, all lined copies are also modified.
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