Blender question and answer thread

[cwbolton]

Hello people im fairly new here i am a 3d modler using blender and i notched there are hardly any blender threads and most of them are poeple asking for help

Hence the making of this thread if anyone has any blender problems or needs help or just wants to ask a question such as "what is the best rendering engine" or even "what will your next project be cwbolton" im here to help and will give you a fast answer so anything no matter how noobish your question maybe you will recieve no criticism from me as i rememer what it wasl iek being a noob asking a question such as "what the heck is RMB" right mouse button obviously so anything at all dont hesitate to ask

Happy to help
Chris

[tom120934]

Welcome to SMCars, I hope you'll enjoy your stay here.

It's nice to see yet another Blender user here. Don't forget to post your projects to the WIP section as soon as possible !

About your idea of dedicating a thread to Blender questions & answers, there is already a whole section for Blender related discussion : Q&A, tips, iinteresting ressources or whatever one can think about something worth posting.

So you should stay tuned on the "New posts" links to keep tracking all the posts incoming about Blender. I'm sure you'll soon discover the traffic about it is not that huge

[bobi_chen]

Hi,

I'm fairly new in blender, I usually use Max at the office. can you tell me where can i find extrude edge tool(Max) in Blender. These Tool can accelerate my Modeling Speed I'll be so ready in production if I can find these tool in Blender.
extrude.jpg

[tom120934]

Use EKEY when you have some vertices / edges / faces selected, in Edit Mode.

[cwbolton]

yes simply select your vertices and press the e key and extrude region then move your mouse button also hold the ctrl button so snap it to a grid and also if your push e then extrude region you can then push x, y or z to move it along tthat axis

[tom120934]

And to be almost complete, once you entered X or Y or Z using keyboard to specify along which direction the selection should be extruded, you can enter the length of the extrusion with the numpad. E.g. : type "3", ".", "0" and "4" to extrude by 3.04 Blender units.

Pressing once X (or Y or Z) will extrude along global X axis. Pressing twice will extrude along local axis. Pressing a third time will cancel axis selection.

I hope we were clear

[cwbolton]

ah yes thank you for pointing that out also 1 blender unit is you know that grid when your in top front or side view well 1 box is 1 blender unit so putting extrude along the X axis then put 1 it will extrude it along the x axis 1 blender unit you can go into real detail and extrude objects to like 1.3521 along the x axis for precise detailed models also ive heared somehwere that 1 blender unit is 512px x 512px

hope we could help

[tom120934]

For precision modeling, the shortest advice is : define yourself the scale you'll be using for your model. For example, I've always used "1 Blender unit stands for 1 meter". So any precision like, e.g., a 5 mm gap between 2 body parts on a car is reachable : it's just, for that example, a matter of 0.005 Blender unit.

For a longer advice, one top level reading is the book from Robert Burke. He was published in BlenderArt some issues ago, and the book is a longer version of his works. There was a new on Blendernation about it : Precision Modelling PDF Guide at BlenderNation. The guide is available on his site : rab3D Home

About the native pixel resolution of Blender, it's (as far as I know) only used for background texture, and the resolution is 512 pixels for 2 blender units (with a zoom factor of 1.0) Such background textures may be used for blueprints, however I always used a different way of handling them : please see my website about it, as I've wrote a tutorial about it, Pixels or Atoms ?.

Why ? Because I don't like to resize the blueprint with Gimp (or any other software) and I also want to use, as a modeling canvas, the actual dimensions of the car I'm working on. Length / width / height of course, but also wheelbase, tracks and tires dimensions like width, rim radius, sidewall height.

[cwbolton]

ahh i see well i hope we answerd your question with our extensive answers

also tom check your pm's

[bobi_chen]

well, thanks for your explanation, really explained a lot of things in Blender . but I'm afraid its still don't answer my question :? . Does anyone here have experience using Max edge extrude tool?
I'll show you why i need this tool.




Number 1 is just smoothing without any bevel
Number 2 is beveled 1
Number 3 is with only adding 2 loop cut and slide the edge near to the each corner.
Number 4 is beveled 2 recursive

Number 3 is actually what i called "edge extrude tool" in Max (the height is "0"). it produced the crease shiny effect for the in game(real time) shader, with only few polygons. Number 4 Show the same effect at the edges but need more polygons to produced. the subsurfed version produced the similar result for number 3 and 4.

This techniques is often used for "Car Low Poly Modeling" for Game.

Well actually I can get the" edge extrude" manually by Loop cut/knife and edge slide, but it won't give the same width for every crease shiny effect.

right now i am trying to modify the bevel center script, to get this edge extrude tool. it will take longer time since i never learn about math process for 3D.

I'm really grateful if i can get help from programmer. Any suggestion guys?

[tom120934]

There is several ways to achieve that. Like you should already have seen, the current beveling feature is useless. The script is better, but I don't use it either.

What I do is creating the mesh first without extra work on sharp edges and in a second time, I add extra vertices along the edges with Ctrl+RKEY. And this feature allow you to control precisely where the extra vertices are added, but it's a bit unobvious :
- When you hit Ctrl+RKEY, Blender allow you to select where to place the extra vertices row.
- Move the cursor to change the location then click LMB to confirm. That's the obvious part.
- When you did click LMB, Blender show the location for each extra vertex. Each location is computed as a percentage of each edge that will be subdivided. It's not what I want, because it doesn't place every extra vertex at the same distance from the edge we want to sharpen, resulting in a non-constant curvature radius. Ugly.
- So when you're still at this step, press P to quit the "percentage" mode (pressing P again will bring you back to it) Now, Blender enters another mode, making it placing it every extra vertex at the same distance from the edge we want to sharpen.
- To confirm this mode is activated, Blender shows a pink (with the default theme) square on a vertex. If this vertex is not on the edge we want to sharpen, just press FKEY to switch. If you want another vertex of the edge we want to sharpen, use the scrolling wheel.
- Then, you can see at the bottom of the 3D view the distance (in Blender units) between the edge we want to sharpen and the new edge. Press and hold on SHIFT during mouse movement to choose more precisely the distance.

As a rule of thumb, I always use 0.005 as distance, that is, 5 mm with my modeling scale. I think it give pretty good results.

Therefore, the main issue you will be facing is to create carefully your mesh to make sure the Ctrl+RKEY feature will correctly add the vertices.

I hope this help.

[bobi_chen]

yes, your technique answers my question, thanks a lot Tom. Sounds like you already used blender for 5 years ? am I right? i'm just learning blender for 6 months, I'm newbie here, and will catch you guys soon (kidding ).
BTW i've visited your website, it's cool, good work there. I'll post my work as soon as possible. Thanks again

[tom120934]

Euh, in fact, since 1998 or 1999, I don't remember very well I discovered it with the first freeware (sic, not open source at this time) version ever released, on a gift CD packaged with a French paper magazine (maybe the 1st issue of "Programmez !" if I'm not too dumb) And I'm focused on car modeling for about 3 years now.

[cwbolton]

wow ive only been "blendering" as i call it for about 6 months but i am solid blendering 90% of my time on the pc is spent on blender so thats why i know a bit but my modlnig isnt amazing like osme of my friends and i am working on my 1st car right now

[Tea Monster]

You will find that Blender can slowly take over all your 'free' PC time . I am getting to the point where Blender is edging out Photoshop as my all-time fave App.

[cwbolton]

haha lol yeah its getting that way its just so addicive you allways want to model osmething new once you learn a new ocncept or model your 1st car etc

[celifighter]

OK Here's a question;
I can't find "UV Face Select" anymore, it isn't there, is there any other way to enter it, because I can't do anything now :?

TIA,
Fab

[tom120934]

Since the 2.46 release, the UV mapping features have been moved to Edit Mode. So keep using TABKEY to enter it, it will allow you to edit mesh and UV mapping at the same time.

[celifighter]

Always when I try to make a texture I get this when I apply it;




does anyone know why?

[tom120934]

Try to reorder the normal : Ctrl+N. It will solve issues about transparent faces (which just don't show because you're looking at the rear side of them) and black spots (continuous faces with opposed vertices, but faces visible from both faces)