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

Modifiers


Blender has a lot of modifiers that can really improve the modeling process, and we will be using some of them to add a few details and improve the modeling. Before we use these modifiers directly, let's take a quick look at how each of the modifiers work and how they can help us. Some of them are new to Blender, so if you don't know them yet, here's a chance to learn about them.

Here are some of the modifiers that we will be using:

  • Bevel: With this modifier, we can chamfer and fillet the edges of a model. This is quite important for realism because in the real world, we don't have perfect edges. For most of the model, we will add a small level of bevel.

  • Array: The array modifier is a common tool for 3D software, and it's responsible for the creation of duplicates sometimes using a 3D matrix or curves. For our project, it will be useful to create grids and other elements that repeat themselves over the surfaces.

  • Mesh Deform: This is a relatively new modifier in Blender that...