Book Image

Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines

Book Image

Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines

Overview of this book

Blender 3D provides all the features you need to create super-realistic 3D models of machines for use in artwork, movies, and computer games. Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines gives you step-by-step instructions for building weapons, vehicles, robots, and more. This book will show you how to use Blender 3D for mechanical modeling and product visualization. Through the pages of the book, you will find a step-by-step guide to create three different projects: a fantasy weapon, a spacecraft, and a giant robot. Even though these machines are not realistic, you will be able to build your own sensible and incredible machines with the techniques that you will learn in this book along with the exercises and examples. All the three sections of this book, which cover three projects, are planned to have an increasing learning curve. The first project is about a hand weapon, and with that we can image a small-sized object with tiny details. This first part of the book will show you how to deal with these details and model them in Blender 3D. In the second project, we will create a spacecraft, adding a bit of scale to the project, and new materials and textures as well. With this project, we will be working with metal, glass, and other elements that make the spacecraft. Along with the object, a new space environment will be created in the book too. At the end we have a big and complex object, which is the transforming robot. This last part of the book will cover the modeling of two objects and show how you can make one transform into the other. The scale and number of objects in this project are quite big, but the same principles as in the other projects are applied here with a step-by-step guide on how to go through the workflow of the project.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

Using the unwrap tool


With smart projections, we have a quick way to work with UV textures. This tool allows us to do all the processing with only a few mouse clicks. If we want to take full control over the process, however, we will have to use special controls to change the UV mapping layout. To unwrap using those tools, we have to plan the unwrap creation before anything else.

Planning the unwrap

For a good unwrap, we must first create groups of vertices that will be unfolded together in the process. As the unwrapping will end up with a flat model, we can split the spacecraft in small parts, which will be marked by seams. These seams work like a knife that cuts the model and creates a flat model separated by marks. Keep the following two tips in mind when cutting the model with seams:

  • Group the faces in similar textures

  • Make the unwrapped surface easy to edit in GIMP or Photoshop by identifying each part

A great way to start is by creating a test cut by adding a new UV layout. In Blender...