tgj2o_modeling_blender

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Modeling
When most people open Blender they are barraged by a complex looking series of panes and options. So much of Blender is shortcut-based that it pays to know your shortcuts. Here is a fantastic resource for you 
 * [|an interactive shortcut keyboard]
 * [|printable keyboard shortcut]

Assignment #8 - follow this tutorial over the next several pages to create a series of flying saucers invading earth
=Invasion!!!!!= If you need the latest version of Blender, you can get it from [|Blender's Website]

Start up Blender and you begin modeling in ** OBJECT mode **.

This it like a "virtual fabrication workshop" where you can construct props for your animated movies. In this exercise, we're making flying saucers similar to those found in "Mars Attacks"

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=Step 1 - creating the sphere=

One of the most common errors in Blender is to accidentally use the left mouse button and move the 3D cursor around in the space. The 3D cursor is used to determine placement and positioning of objects in 3D blender space. To get it to go back to the origin (or frankly to snap it to anywhere) simply press SHIFT-S which allows you to choose snap the CURSOR TO CENTER.

You may at this point press A to deselect anything you have selected and now press RMB (right mouse button) to select the square at the center of the space. Delete it.

1. **Create a SPHERE** By pressing SHIFT-A you bring up the ADD menu. We're going to add a MESH>UV SPHERE. We can see it's been added by looking to the top right in the layers panel (technically called the Outliners Panel)

2. **BEFORE YOU CLICK ANYTHING ELSE** you can edit the raw construction of the sphere. * its size to 5 * its segments to 24 (we're reducing the number of polygons or "poly's" to reduce the size footprint of the file and render time of the final output) * drop the number of rings to 10 (we're going to squish the sphere so we don't need a lot of fidelity on the Z axis)
 * Change the following: **

You've created a sphere. Whee! Let's name this object in the Outliners panel as //**Saucer_disk**//

**Step 2 - Scaling the sphere** We're now going to turn this sphere into a disc. To do so we will do the following:

1. Let's go to the side-view of the object. To do so we will press 1 on the keypad. (1 is Front View, 3 is Side View, 7 is Top view. You can toggle between Perspective View and Orthographic View by pressing 5)

2. Make sure the sphere is selected (that is, it has the orange bounding box around it). Press SCALE. You can either use the panels on the left OR simply just type in the information you want. By pressing Z the scale will only affect the Z axis, then by typing in 0.2 and ENTER you will commit a reduction in the size along the Z axis. Alternatively you can use the panels as seen below. The final numbers should be X: 1.0, Y: 1.0, Z: 0.2.

Let's preview what our sphere will look like in the camera by pressing 0 on the numberpad. This gives us the camera preview of the object. Press 0 again to go back to model space.

=Step 3 - Creating the dome= We are now going to create the dome of the spaceship. In order to do this we are going to first deselect everything we're working on by pressing A until nothing is highlight:

1. We want to hide the saucer part of the UFO. Go up to the Outliners panel and press on the eyeball icon next to SAUCER DISK. We want to hide the saucer while we design the cockpit of the UFO.

2. Create another UV SPHERE centered at 0,0,0 Use the following characteristics on the dome

3. We now want to get rid of the bottom half of the dome. To do so we will go into EDIT MODE. We get there by either pressing TAB or clicking on the dropdown menu

4. We're going to select the bottom half of the MESH and delete those VERTICES. All shapes are made from points in space and lines connecting them. When you have 3 lines connecting or more then you can have a surface. Notice on the edit panel at the bottom there are the three toggles (Vertex, Edge, Face). We want to delete the actual points in space (Vertices) that make up the bottom half of the sphere.

We want to select the bottom half of the vertices. To do so we want to press A (to deselect anything active). We're then going to either **press 'C'** circle-select (think of it as a brush you highlight the vertices you want) **or press B** - border select (think of it drawing a box around the area). Before committing to deleting the vertices - notice that only 1/2 the vertices are selected if you middle-mouse-click and rotate your view around to the side. That is because we're on the bounding box view of our object. In order to see through the object we need to go into WIREFRAME mode. We get that by either pressing Z or select the wireframe option instead of bounding box (though frankly learning the keyboard shortcut Z is WELL worth remembering). This lets us see through the model and select ALL of the vertices.

Now - go back to Front view (keypad 1) and either circle-select or border-select all those vertices.

On your keyboard press delete. When the delete menu comes up delete the vertices.

Go back to object mode. Go to your layer panel and rename this 1/2 sphere you made as Saucer_cockpit. You can unhide the saucer_disc and view your masterpiece.

5. One last thing to do to ensure we parent the two objects together so they can be move together. Select both objects (right-click the saucer press SHIFT THEN select the cockpit) and press CTRL+P. You can now grab the dome of the saucer and when you hit G (translate) you can move around both the saucer both and the saucer cockpit. If you grab the rim of the ship itself and move that, only the rim will move.



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