tgj2o_3d-space_blender

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Setting up space UV-style
We'll largely be working from [|this guide].

Step 1: Creating UV Sphere
First things first - we need to grab [|this picture] to use as our space background. Save it to your folder.

Ensure your 3D cursor is at the center of space. Shift-S and CURSOR TO CENTER.

Next we are going to create a VERY LARGE sphere. Add a UV-Sphere. SEGMENTS: 50 RINGS: 50 SIZE: 200

By opening the properties shelf (N) you're going to make sure it has the following:

SCALE: 2,2,2

Rename the object __**sphere.Space**__ in the outliner area at the top right

Step 2: Moving layers
We are going to move the sphere to layer 2 so that it's easier to work with. To do so press A a couple times so that ONLY the sphere is selected. Next press M (or go to the bottom under OBJECT>MOVE TO LAYER). You'll see a pile of boxes (a blown up view of the layers section at the bottom of the screen). Click on the 2nd box. Or alternatively just press M then the number 2 which also moves the object to layer 2. Look at the bottom of the screen in the layers section. You'll notice that layer 1 has a small gold circle in it (it always did since that indicates there's content in that layer and when you first start blender there's a cube, camera and a light in the layer - so from the get-go there's always content in the layer unless you delete everything in it. However, you'll notice there's now a small gold circle in box (layer) two. That means our sphere has successfully moved to layer 2. To prove it, click on layer 2 (or press 2 on the top of your keyboard). You are only looking at the sphere now.

Step 3:Smoothing the sphere
In layer 2, select the sphere if, for whatever reason, you deselected it. Click on the SMOOTH button on the left.

Step 4: Prepping the UV sphere
Select the sphere.Space object. Tab into EDIT MODE. Make sure you're in EDGE SELECT. Select a ring of vertices around the widest part of the sphere (the equator, if you like). This can be done easily by holding down SHIFT + ALT and right-clicking on the 'equator'.

Press CTRL+E and select Mark Seam (or select Mesh → Edges → Mark Seam). This tells the UV un-wrapper to cut the mesh along these edges.



We're now going to open a UV panel. Opening and closing panels in Blender can be confusing and frustrating. The simplest explanation of how they work is that in the BOTTOM LEFT of any panel is the indicator of which panel it is. For example, in the bottom left of the panel with our objects showing in it is the 3D View (see below - the bottom entry is the one being displayed in the window). For the most part we're not going to deal with many of the types in grade 10, but by grade 12 there are a variety of useful tools hidden in the editors. If you screw up things too badly, you can always revert back to factory settings WARNING: BY RESETTING TO FACTORY DEFAULT YOU WILL LOSE UNSAVED WORK.

Go to the bottom of the screen at the __**bottom left**__ of the Timeline editor. We're going to turn it into a UV/Image Editor for now. We'll make it a Timeline editor later on when we start animating. To allow us a bit more room we'll expand that bottom panel up a bit by grabbing where the red arrow points in the middle of the screen-capture below and dragging up.

Still in edit mode switch to vertex select. Press A to get all points, then press U for unwrap (or go to MESH>UV/UNWRAP>UNWRAP).

If you had your VERTICES selected and you marked your seam properly your UV panel should show the following in it now.



Step 5: Applying the image to the UV sphere
So we're ready to apply the space image to the sphere. Load it in the UV/Image Editor window by clicking Image>Open Image or by pressing ALT+O. Navigate to our space image and press OPEN IMAGE. Then with the grab, rotate and scale tools, adjust the UV islands (the UV groups that aren't connected to each other) so that it fits nicely on top of the image as shown. To select a UV island, hover the mouse over the island and press L. To move each island around press G (or translate) and move it to someplace you think won't leave weird stitches along the equator. __**PROBLEM**__ - notice the spheres are now skewed? Since the aspect ratio of the image will warp the UV's, it may be easier to simply **re-unwrap the mesh exactly the same way you did before to create perfect spheres again (U for unwrap)** You can then adjust the UV's position as needed. Your final unwap should look like the spheres below.

Switch the main 3D editor to TEXTURE viewport shading (instead of solid or wireframe that we've been using prior to now). See your beautiful space now?



Tabbing back to OBJECT mode you can see the result.

Step 6 - Preview render & materials
We're done right? Nope. By pressing F12 (or clicking the camera tab then RENDER) we see.....grey. Why? Simply put, we have a UV texture on the sphere, but it doesn't count as a texture for rendering. Make sure the sphere (our space) is selected and do the following. Our next step is to create a new material called **space.Material**

We then click on the world Textures (left globe) and create a new texture called **space.Texture**.

Next click on material textures (the circle next to it) and use the drop-down to pick our world-texture.

Use the dropdown menu under image to select the galaxy-picture we already have loaded for a UV texture.

Finally, we want to use the UV-mapped image to wrap on the sphere. Go down to the MAPPING section, use the drop-down menu and select UV and under map choose UVMAP.

Finally - we don't want light having anything to do with our space picture. No light WHATSOEVER. For that reason we're going to switch back to: material mode and then look down under Shading and make sure that the sky is SHADELESS.




 * Shift-Click both layers ** (we want our spaceship in our picture) and let's F12 for a render. See how it looks all pretty?

NOPE. Why? We applied our materials to the sphere. We wrapped the sky properly - yet we still don't have it appearing in the camera.

Simply put - ** it is only shooting objects within a certain range and our "space" isn't in range to be shown **.

We know it actually worked because if you look carefully at our glass in the cockpit - you see the stars reflection off of it. In the next section we'll examine how the camera works.