Blender allows us to sculpt with textures to add fine detail to each brush stroke. In ZBrush this feature is called sculpting with alphas, but the principle is a little easier to understand in Blender (at least for me). Here’s how to add a texture to a sculpt brush in Blender.
The Screw Modifier in Blender is very straightforward to use – if you know how. I tried to figure it out by myself which proved impossible. I guess unintuitive is the word I’m looking for. Reading the manual gives us an explanation like this:
The profile should be properly aligned to the cardinal direction of the object rather than to the screw axis.
Yes… this means what exactly? Thick people shouldn’t use this tool? Thankfully it’s far simpler than it sounds – let me show you how.
Blender uses a Modifier for boolean operations. Those can be used to cut into an existing object or combine two objects. In this example we’ll cut a hole into our default cube. Select the object you’d like to cut into, but have another object in your scene. We’ll use a cylinder that’s slightly smaller yet …
Hexagon had a nice feature called “copy on support”. With it we can create duplicates of
an object along a path, something that comes in handy when creating a ladder or a necklace. I wondered if Blender too had such a feature, and of course it has – even though it’s perhaps a little bit unintuitive (read: impossible) to figure out. Pretty much like the rest of Blender.
So here’s what we have to do in order to duplicate an object along a path in Blender, where this technique is called DupliFrames. Don’t worry about looking it up in the plethora of menus – it’s not to be found anywhere.
Proportional Editing is what Blender calls a tool with which you can modify part of your object with an area of influence around your selection. Other apps would call this Soft Selections. The principle is the same: pick a selection, and rather than just move the selection, you have influence over an area of gradual falloff.
In the above GIF I’ve selected a single face in the middle of a grid. Without proportional editing, only the face is moved. With proportional editing, the whole area around it is moved. Let’s take a look at how to use this tool.
Here’s a list of shortcuts for use in our Blender adventures. These become second nature very quickly, but when you’ve been away from Blender for a while it’s really easy to forget them all. So while they’re in my mind, here’s what my brain currently knows and likes.
You can chamfer edges in Blender using the Bevel Tool (from the Edge menu). To do this, enter Edit Mode and select one or more edges on your object. Hit CTRL+E to bring up the Edge Menu and select Bevel. Alternatively, hit CTRL+B to enter Bevel mode immediately. Now move your mouse and the an …
On standard Mac keyboards and laptops, some of the handy Blender shortcuts are hard to find. That’s because many of them rely on us having a full-size keyboard or an additional Number Pad. While those aren’t expensive, some of us just don’t want to use another gadget that clutters our desks (be that at home or in our coffee shop).
One of the many useful shortcuts in Blender is View Selected. It frames the selected object(s) and lets us tumble the camera around them. View Selected is accessible from the View menu, and by default it’s mapped to NUMPAD + . (the period key on the number pad). I do this a lot, so I really want this as a usable shortcut on my keyboard. But the default doesn’t work, because I don’t have a Number Pad.
There is an option under File – User Preferences that lets users like me emulate one, and it works with most keyboard shortcuts – but NOT for the View Selected shortcut. I have no idea why. Fact.
So what can we do, if we don’t want to invest into more hardware? Re-mapping the keyboard shortcut to something usable springs to mind. Thankfully, Blender is endlessly customisable. Let’s see how we can assign our own shortcut to the View Selected option.
In the above screenshot, I’ve taken a cube and added some transformations to it: a bit of scaling, rotation, and I’ve moved its location too. This cube is now said to be non-uniform. This means that there are values applied to how the object is displayed (on the right hand side, under Transform): The cube doesn’t …
Every 3D object has a point around which it rotates or scales from. It’s usually the point at which the 3D manipulator gizmo shows up. In Blender this point is called the Origin. In my screenshot, that point is at the top of the selected book. But perhaps I’d like to move it to the …
Joining objects in Blender means that two different meshes can become part of the same object. This sounds like it’s related to grouping and parenting, but it’s more useful in modelling. Think of a complex object made of several primitives: rather than having a hierarchy in Object Mode, you’ll have a single object with multiple linked …
Reference images are nice if you’re modelling something from scratch: take pictures from the front, the back, the sides, and then use them to create a 3D model with all those fancy extrusion tools and what have you. Trouble is, how do we get them into Blender as a backdrop? Let me show you, before I …
Adding thickness or depth to an object is easy in Blender, thanks to its lovely Solidify Modifier. It’s as easy as adding the modifier to your object and changing the properties – you can even do this while you’re still working on the geometry. Let me show you how to do it. For this example, let’s create …
Sometimes 3D objects are created with duplicate vertices that should be in the same place. Imagine two sides of a cube: ideally they should share the same points, but when you place two planes closely next to each other, they’re just two planes and not one object.
For that we need to “weld” vertices together, an expression shared by pretty much every 3D package – except for Blender, where “being different” is just as important as “being complicated”. In Blender, welding is called “removing doubles”.
Let me show you how to do this – no matter what you want to call it.
I have previously shown you how to add thickness to an object using the ZBrush Move Tool. While that method may have had its uses in the past, it is hugely cumbersome and can’t really be used on a complex object.
So today I’ve learnt how to achieve the same thing using something called Panel Loops. It a nutshell, with this feature ZBrush splits the whole model into separate little objects, adds thickness to them and merges if all back together again. It even adds Polygroups for all those little bits too.
Panel Loops can be used to create the backside of an otherwise single sided object (for example, a dress exported from Marvelous Designer).
Let me show you how to use it briefly.
Marvelous Designer can add internal pressure to objects that are sewn together. This is great for anything that contains stuff, like satchel bags or pillows.
Let me demonstrate how to use this feature by making a simple pillow.
One way of making clothes in ZBrush is to paint a mask onto an existing model, and then extract that mask as a new sub tool for further sculpting. The possibilities are limitless for any object that needs to fit onto another one.
Here’s how to do it.
Dealing with ZIP files from 3D content marketplaces isn’t easy. I’ve been asked several times how to install such content, and thought this article may come in handy for future generations.
The principle is the same on Mac and Windows, however it’s slightly more tricky on a Mac because it wants to replace the whole folder rather than merge it. We’ll see how to deal with this peculiarity and have our content installed in no time!
Sometimes it’s necessary to have a 2D Texture Template for a 3D model. It makes texturing a lot easier in 2D painting apps.
While some programmes like Marvelous Designer can create the UVs, and quite clearly show them to us, there’s no easy way to export them as a flat file – akin to the one you see on the right here.
Photoshop to the rescue! All versions of Photoshop 3D and Photoshop CC can import OBJ files, and they can not only display the UV Map as an overlay, they can turn it into a new Layer for us as well.
Here’s how to do it.