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

Choosing a modeling technique


For projects like this, we can choose between the following two modeling techniques that work with Blender:

  • Poly modeling

  • Subdivision modeling

The subdivision modeling is done by adding a cube or another 3D primitive and cutting and adjusting this model progressively to get to the shape of the vehicle. With poly modeling, we would add a simple plane and with that single plane, the process will go on by selecting and extruding edges of the plane until we get the shape of the model. Each process has pros and cons. Using subdivision, the model can be created much faster but with a low level of detail.

Working with details in subdivision modeling can be a hard task sometimes because we have to add edge loops and new edges to an already created topology.

On the other side, by using the poly modeling technique, we will add the topology on the fly, while we are still modeling the vehicle. So, it will be much easier to create and adjust details to the model by using...