Book Image

Blender 3D Incredible Models

By : Arijan Belec
Book Image

Blender 3D Incredible Models

By: Arijan Belec

Overview of this book

Blender is a massively popular and powerful 3D program, with versatile modeling abilities that make it a great way to enter the 3D modelling world. Blender 3D Incredible Models is an extensive guide for those new to hard-surface modeling with Blender, helping you understand the complete range of tools and features it offers and how to employ those efficiently to create realistic models. You’ll be led through progressively more challenging modeling projects— from an assault rifle and an army tank to a sci-fi spaceship model—giving you a glimpse of all the skills you’d need in Blender’s vast ecosystem of features and functionality, ranging from textures, rendering, and UV mapping to lighting, rigging, and beyond. Each engaging project builds upon the last until you’re equipped with everything you need to tackle your own modeling challenges, whatever they may be. By the end of this Blender book, you won’t just know how to create the models covered here, but you’ll be able to turn your own concepts and references into 3D Blender models too!
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Introduction to Hard Surface Modeling
3
Part 2: Modeling an Assault Rifle
7
Part 3: Modeling a Sci-Fi Race Ship
10
Part 4: Modeling a T-72 Tank

UV unwrapping

In this section, we will learn how to UV unwrap an object for texturing. This technique can be used to seamlessly texture any object.

We must first understand what UV unwrapping is and how it works. When we UV unwrap an object, we turn it into a 2D surface. You can think of it as reverse papercraft. We then place the 2D version of the object on an image texture to tell Blender how we want the texture to appear on the surface of the object. If we try to unwrap a simple cube, the result will look like in Figure 6.14:

Figure 6.14 – Unwrapped cube

An object can be UV unwrapped in two simple steps:

  1. Select the edges that need to be cut to unwrap the object. In Edit Mode, press U to open the UV Mapping menu and select Mark Seam. After marking the seams, select Unwrap in the same menu.

Figure 6.15 – UV Mapping

  1. In the Shading Editor, switch from Image Editor to UV Editor. When you select the cube...