Blender 3D By Example

A project-based guide to learning the latest Blender 3D, EEVEE rendering engine, and Grease Pencil, 2nd Edition

Oscar Baechler, Xury Greer

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781789617993
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Desktop Applications
• Index: Computer Science

Get up and running with Blender 3D through a series of practical projects that will help you learn core concepts of 3D design like modeling, sculpting, materials, textures, lighting, and rigging using the latest features of Blender 2.83

Key Features

• Learn the basics of 3D design and navigate your way around the Blender interface
• Understand how 3D components work and how to create 3D content for your games
• Familiarize yourself with 3D Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering and Sculpting with Blender

Book Description

Blender is a powerful 3D creation package that supports every aspect of the 3D pipeline. With this book, you'll learn about modeling, rigging, animation, rendering, and much more with the help of some interesting projects.

This practical guide, based on the Blender 2.83 LTS version, starts by helping you brush up on your basic Blender skills and getting you acquainted with the software toolset. You'll use basic modeling tools to understand the simplest 3D workflow by customizing a Viking themed scene. You'll get a chance to see the 3D modeling process from start to finish by building a time machine based on provided concept art. You will design your first 2D character while exploring the capabilities of the new Grease Pencil tools. The book then guides you in creating a sleek modern kitchen scene using EEVEE, Blender's new state-of-the-art rendering engine. As you advance, you'll explore a variety of 3D design techniques, such as sculpting, retopologizing, unwrapping, baking, painting, rigging, and animating to bring a baby dragon to life.

By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to work with Blender to create impressive computer graphics, art, design, and architecture, and you'll be able to use robust Blender tools for your design projects and video games.

What you will learn

• Explore core 3D modeling tools in Blender such as extrude, bevel, and loop cut
• Understand Blender's Outliner hierarchy, collections, and modifiers
• Find solutions to common problems in modeling 3D characters and designs
• Implement lighting and probes to liven up an architectural scene using EEVEE
• Produce a final rendered image complete with lighting and post-processing effects
• Learn character concept art workflows and how to use the basics of Grease Pencil
• Learn how to use Blender's built-in texture painting tools

Who this book is for

Whether you're completely new to Blender, or an animation veteran enticed by Blender's newest features, this book will have something for you.

Modeling a Time Machine - Part 1

In this chapter, we are going to begin building a time machine! So far, we've seen a little bit of the 3D workflow by editing an existing model, but now it's time to use some of those skills to build a model from scratch. This first part of the project will introduce you to the main modeling methods we will be using to build the time machine: box modeling and modeling with modifiers.

Box modeling is one of the oldest methods of modeling in the 3D industry; it uses primitives and extrusions to build up the major forms of a model before refining them into the final form. Primitives are standard geometrical shapes that we can use as a starting point for our models— a plane, cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, and torus.

Modeling with modifiers is somewhat unique to Blender. Modifiers are a very powerful set of non-destructive tools that let us generate new geometry, deform existing geometry, and perform other complex edits to our models without damaging the underlying mesh.

Throughout this chapter, we will be expanding on the things you have already learned and developing skills to make you a more effective modeler. And of course, we'll sprinkle in some other tips and tricks along the way. We will use repetition and common workflows to learn how to build the chair for the time machine, and when we're finished with the chair, we will put those skills to use in the next chapter and finish off the rest of the time machine.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Using transformation hotkeys
• Setting up the reference images for the time machine
• Box modeling the main section of the chair
• Destructive editing versus non-destructive editing
• Modeling the cushions of the chair
• Modeling the sci-fi rings with modifiers
• Modeling the armrests

Using transformation hotkeys

Unlike the previous chapter, we're going to start this project from scratch, so open Blender, and if you don't already have a fresh scene, go to File | New | General. The default scene has a default cube, a point light, and a camera.

Before we get started on the time machine, let's introduce a few important hotkeys. As stated in the previous chapter, Blender is full of hotkeys. To take full advantage of the software, you'll want to memorize several of them.

Hotkeys are especially useful for things that you will be doing over and over again, in particular, switching between the three transformation tools (move, scale, and rotate), so let's go over how to use these hotkeys so we can work faster:

• G: Grab (Translate / Move)
• R: Rotate
• S: Scale

As always, remember to hover your mouse inside the 3D Viewport before pressing any of these hotkeys.

Blender takes a different approach to the majority of 3D software when it comes to these transformation hotkeys; unlike the buttons in the Toolbar, which activate manipulation widgets, these three transformation hotkeys immediately begin transforming the selected objects the moment you press the hotkey. No widget required!

Give it a try:

1. Select the cube.
2. Press the G hotkey to grab it.
3. Move the mouse to translate the cube around the screen.

When you're done moving the cube, you need to either confirm the transformation by left-clicking or pressing the Enter key, or cancel the transformation by right-clicking or pressing the Esc key. This is true of all of Blender's hotkey operations, so take a moment to practice.

Blender includes a handy feature called Continuous Grab; if you move the mouse outside of the 3D Viewport while performing an operation, the cursor will wrap back around to the other side of the screen so that you can keep going.

Next, try rotating the cube:

1. Make sure the cube is still selected.
2. Press the R hotkey to begin rotating it.
3. Move the mouse to rotate the cube around its origin point.
4. Confirm or cancel the rotation with the left or right mouse button, respectively.

Using the rotation hotkey will draw a line from your mouse to the origin of the object you are manipulating. Rather than dragging the mouse left and right or up and down, you need to rotate your mouse around the object's origin point in a circular motion to achieve the desired rotation.

It's pretty easy, right? Now, let's try scaling the cube:

1. Make sure the cube is still selected.
2. Press the S hotkey to begin scaling it.
3. Move the mouse toward or away from the cube's origin point.
4. Confirm or cancel the rotation with the left or right mouse button respectively.

You need to move your mouse outward or inward to scale up or down, respectively. The sensitivity and precision of this motion are based on how close your mouse was to the origin of t...