Blender
by J Sears · in Artist Corner · 12/24/2006 (4:05 pm) · 21 replies
Now I know these questions have been discussed several times before but it's tough to search through this site and find what your looking for. I'm trying to learn to 3d model well and so I started with blender since it was free and seemed to be able to make really nice looking models. But blender is turning out to be very hard to learn how to work well in it, even the tutorials are hard to find most of the sites other sites link to are no longer there, and most tutorials I can find have huge gaps in the images showing how it's done, one for example was to teach how to make a dolphin it showed a deformed sphere and then it showed a dolphin making it pretty tough to follow along.
So does anyone know a better package that is at least cheap to learn with, or some very very good blender tutorials, I found some video blender tutorials but they were mostly only about the interface which I have a pretty decent handle on and not on an actual in depth challenging model, any modelling ones I can find are either overly simple models or ones with huge gaps in the teaching like I mentioned. Thanks for your help
So does anyone know a better package that is at least cheap to learn with, or some very very good blender tutorials, I found some video blender tutorials but they were mostly only about the interface which I have a pretty decent handle on and not on an actual in depth challenging model, any modelling ones I can find are either overly simple models or ones with huge gaps in the teaching like I mentioned. Thanks for your help
#2
This is the tutorial I started out with...
Your first animation in 30 + 30 minutes.
Main page.
I never used this one, but it might help.
Another tutorial... About penguins.
12/24/2006 (5:09 pm)
I don't know if this is any help, but try these.This is the tutorial I started out with...
Your first animation in 30 + 30 minutes.
Main page.
I never used this one, but it might help.
Another tutorial... About penguins.
#3
12/24/2006 (7:35 pm)
Every link I click on of yours ethan goes to main forum page of GG, James I've watched his tutorials on exporting, just the other day actually, but that doesn't help figure out how to make something worth exporting. 
#4
ANY tutorial you find will should help you with the "how to" and "best approach" to modeling but you have to get stuck in and find get experience. Don't underestimate the benefit of trail and error, and don't get discouraged. Just keep at it.
Start building, post your progress and get feedback from the community.
Just get stuck in :)
12/24/2006 (7:49 pm)
J, just get stuck in. Modeling in 3D is NOT easy. ANY tutorial you find will should help you with the "how to" and "best approach" to modeling but you have to get stuck in and find get experience. Don't underestimate the benefit of trail and error, and don't get discouraged. Just keep at it.
Start building, post your progress and get feedback from the community.
Just get stuck in :)
#5
12/24/2006 (9:06 pm)
Sorry, should work now...
#6
James I know it's not supposed to be easy but it seems like there should be much easier ways to do some simple things in blender. For instance let's say you have a box shape subdivided into a lot of smaller cubes and 1/3rd of the way from the top front to back and 1/3rd of the way from left to right you want all the faces in those regions to curve to form an arch from left to right that grows as it goes from front to back. How do you do that? Those are the kinds of things that I find tutorials for blender really lacking, there's a LOT of blender basic tutorials on put a sphere in deform it elongate these faces and these faces and you have a simple creature. But I can't find tutorials on the more advanced stuff of complex models.
Right now I decided to work on trying to make a sports car, so that way it would have a lot of involved shapes to make a good learning experience but not the added problems of trying to make something like a face look realistic. I'm using a background image for reference first I tried just outlining the side view of the car and got a pretty perfect match and elongated it out to make the width of the car in hopes of then adding the curves of the bumpers and hood and all that, that's where I ran into the problem I asked about above of figuring out how to take one section of faces and make them all curve without sitting there and trying to move every edge by hand. So now I'm currently trying a different approach of makign an outline in side view and then between 3 views adding vertices and faces as I move across the car to try and form the correct shape, and as you can probably guess this turns out to be an extremely long process. So I went back on the tutorial hunt to try to find more informative ones and I haven't been able to yet.
12/26/2006 (5:25 am)
Ty ethanJames I know it's not supposed to be easy but it seems like there should be much easier ways to do some simple things in blender. For instance let's say you have a box shape subdivided into a lot of smaller cubes and 1/3rd of the way from the top front to back and 1/3rd of the way from left to right you want all the faces in those regions to curve to form an arch from left to right that grows as it goes from front to back. How do you do that? Those are the kinds of things that I find tutorials for blender really lacking, there's a LOT of blender basic tutorials on put a sphere in deform it elongate these faces and these faces and you have a simple creature. But I can't find tutorials on the more advanced stuff of complex models.
Right now I decided to work on trying to make a sports car, so that way it would have a lot of involved shapes to make a good learning experience but not the added problems of trying to make something like a face look realistic. I'm using a background image for reference first I tried just outlining the side view of the car and got a pretty perfect match and elongated it out to make the width of the car in hopes of then adding the curves of the bumpers and hood and all that, that's where I ran into the problem I asked about above of figuring out how to take one section of faces and make them all curve without sitting there and trying to move every edge by hand. So now I'm currently trying a different approach of makign an outline in side view and then between 3 views adding vertices and faces as I move across the car to try and form the correct shape, and as you can probably guess this turns out to be an extremely long process. So I went back on the tutorial hunt to try to find more informative ones and I haven't been able to yet.
#7
If its just the modeling aspect that your focusing on then I suggest you head over to www.NeverCenter.com and get the 3d modeling program Silo! I don't think its officially hit the U.S. yet, but its an extremely powerful professional level modeling tool. only $109, I would use this program over any other for modeling. the tools are made for a 3d modeler, and the tutorials are more detail then anything I've seen in a book or on the web. there are a varity of free simply video tutorials covering the UI, inaddition to detailed written tutorials on a varity of different things like dinosaurs and charaters. Also it exports extremely well into many other formats including .obj, .3ds, .dxf, etc. I work with a varity of different tools but Silo is by far my favorite modeler.
12/26/2006 (6:21 am)
Hey J!If its just the modeling aspect that your focusing on then I suggest you head over to www.NeverCenter.com and get the 3d modeling program Silo! I don't think its officially hit the U.S. yet, but its an extremely powerful professional level modeling tool. only $109, I would use this program over any other for modeling. the tools are made for a 3d modeler, and the tutorials are more detail then anything I've seen in a book or on the web. there are a varity of free simply video tutorials covering the UI, inaddition to detailed written tutorials on a varity of different things like dinosaurs and charaters. Also it exports extremely well into many other formats including .obj, .3ds, .dxf, etc. I work with a varity of different tools but Silo is by far my favorite modeler.
#8
12/26/2006 (6:27 am)
I believe there is a tutorial about how to get nice curves without adjusting the vertices... I think it has something to do with the "set smooth" function, although I could be wrong. If I remember right, it was also a video tutorial... I'll try to find it.
#9
12/26/2006 (7:38 am)
Set smooth just smooths over the whole object, it doesn't let you specify a region and the curver height distance etc, demone I will look at that program too thanks for the tip
#10
It's actually the subsurf feature I was remembering.
Tutorial
Edit:
I just realized, this tutorial is somewhat old... So version 2.42 may do it differently from the way he describes it.
Edit #2:
Here is how to do it 2.42.
12/26/2006 (7:54 am)
Yep here it is...It's actually the subsurf feature I was remembering.
Tutorial
Edit:
I just realized, this tutorial is somewhat old... So version 2.42 may do it differently from the way he describes it.
Edit #2:
Here is how to do it 2.42.
#12
12/28/2006 (6:32 am)
I understand tapering rotating beveling and smooth, non of those are what I want, I want to take say a group of 3 cubes wide by 2 cubes high and 6 cubes long and make the faces curve up and over the cubes along a set curve, not just a standard smooth it over curve, for instance I know you can extrude along a path where you can set up a bezeir curve and extrude an object along that as a path getting some neat effects, is there a way to do such a thing while editing the faces?
#14
So I will have to learn to work with the normal methods and blenders interface while I try to fin a modeller that's a better fit for me.
What is the best way to combine a mirrored duplicate back to the original? I've read a couple ways to do it. one said line them up and use ctrl J, but that doesn't seem to be exactly right, and one said to go through all the vertices and combine them one by one to their mirror and that seemed to be a very slow way to do it.
12/28/2006 (11:21 am)
There's no way to do what I want to do, I have a much different view of how a 3d modeller would work. Maybe one day I can influence one on the ideas I have, I think my method would be very fast modelling without losing any of it's power.So I will have to learn to work with the normal methods and blenders interface while I try to fin a modeller that's a better fit for me.
What is the best way to combine a mirrored duplicate back to the original? I've read a couple ways to do it. one said line them up and use ctrl J, but that doesn't seem to be exactly right, and one said to go through all the vertices and combine them one by one to their mirror and that seemed to be a very slow way to do it.
#16
12/28/2006 (1:19 pm)
That doesn't seem to be working for me, I select my object (half of a car) hit alt D move the double off to the side, mirror it on the local x axis, move it as close to exact on the other vertices of the other half as I can and hit w remove doubles it says 0 removed, so I go back to object mode, select both hit ctrl J, accept, then I hit w and remove doubles again and still nothing and they both still have the vertices I need removed 
#18
01/12/2007 (11:28 am)
About mirrored duplicates - why not create the duplicate with the 'mirror' modifier in the first place? Then you simply hit 'apply' when you're finished modeling. 
Torque 3D Owner James Bond
Try these. Dont give up on blender its easy once you know how.