In part 1 of this tutorial, I introduced you to a free 3D program called Blender that’s comparable to many of the professional programs out there. We went over the basic controls and now we’re ready to start a simple project. If you haven’t read part one yet, click here to familiarize yourself with Blender.
Let’s place other solid objects now: a cone and a sphere.
Go to “Mesh” submenu and choose “UV Sphere”. Then do the same thing with “Cone” command.
Have you noticed the colored arrows? This is usually called “gizmo.” It shows you the direction on x, y and z axis.
I can’t see the sphere I added right now, because it was placed in the center of the scene, by default. Click and drag one of these arrows. I will use the green one.
When you see the sphere, release the mouse button.
Do the same for the cone. Use the blue arrow to drag it in the top of the cube.
Let’s continue exploring the interface.
On the left side you have several basic commands. These are closely related to the MODE in which you work. For example, the following set of buttons
is strictly related to the OBJECT mode. At the bottom of your screen you find this selector:
Try to choose the “Sculpt mode”. Notice the left sided buttons.
Click that sphere and you will bring up other sculpting options.
Does something look familiar? That’s right! Some sculpting button names or descriptions are similar to the ones from Sculptris application, which you learned about in a previous article.
However, Blender works differently, so if you try to sculpt the objects in your scene now you won’t get too much of a result. Why? Because the objects must be subdivided first. Go back in “Object mode” and right click the cone to select it. On the right of your window you will find a complete menu for editing the properties of any object, scene, material and whatever else can be found in your project.
By default, the “Render” properties window is selected. We’ll get back to it later. For now, click the wrench icon. Then click “Add modifier” and pick the “Multiresolution” command.
The “Multiresolution” properties window will show up.
Clicking the “Subdivide” button 4-5 times will step-by-step transform your cone into a “tear”. Go ahead and try. You should then have something like this:
Cool, isn’t it? Now let’s try to sculpt it a little.
We’ll finish working on our object in part 3 of this tutorial.
~ Adrian