Book Image

Blender 3D Basics Beginner's Guide Second Edition

By : Gordon Fisher
Book Image

Blender 3D Basics Beginner's Guide Second Edition

By: Gordon Fisher

Overview of this book

This book teaches you how to model a nautical scene, complete with boats and water, and then add materials, lighting, and animation. It demystifies the Blender interface and explains what each tool does so that you will be left with a thorough understanding of 3D. This book starts with an introduction to Blender and some background on the principles of animation, how they are applied to computer animation, and how these principles make animation better. Furthermore, the book helps you advance through various aspects of animation design such as modeling, lighting, camera work, and animation through the Blender interface with the help of several simple projects. Each project will help you practice what you have learned and do more advanced work in all areas.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Blender 3D Basics Beginner's Guide Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
3
Controlling the Lamp, the Camera, and Animating Objects
Index

Time for action – making the circle


The circle is unseen, but important. It provides the basis on which to place all the spokes for the ship's wheel. Execute the following steps to make the circle:

  1. Press Shift + A, and then select the circle from the Mesh menu.

  2. In the Add Circle subpanel of Tool Shelf, set the Vertices to 8.

  3. Set the Radius to 0.25.

  4. Press A to deselect all objects and press 5 on the NumPad to put 3D View into Ortho mode.

What just happened?

It doesn't look like much, but you will use the circle to control the placement of the spokes of the ship's wheel. There are eight vertices in the circle, so your wheel will have eight spokes. Blender has a method called DupliVerts that lets you put a copy of the spoke at each vertex of the circle. These copies are called instances. The difference between regular objects and instances is that whatever change you make to one instance is made to all of them. This is exactly what Ivan Sutherland was talking about when he spoke about master drawings...