Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Fire up Blender and let’s start! If you saved your project from the last issue, open that, if not, grab the previous issue and quickly make our basic shape. With any cartoon character, the eyes are very important. They convey a lot more than you realize. In blender, if the eyes are the same, we can simply make two from one, by mirroring. We will use the same recipe from the last issue to make an eye (one - Because we will mirror it). Make sure you are in object mode (top-left) before continuing. Tip: If you see points with lines between them, you are in edit mode. So, add > mesh > uvsphere. The sphere is created inside our body-shape. Oh no! (you know it is there, because of the orange circle that appeared - shown bottom left). Last issue, I told you the ‘four arrows’ symbol to the left is move, if you hover your mouse over it, you will see the shortcut key is G.
Tip: if you want to move the selected object in one of the planes, you press G, followed by the direction, X, Y, Z, and it will move only on that plane. I moved mine on the X-axis, but it does not matter as we have an all-round same shape. Move the sphere out and resize it by right-clicking. Erm. No resize. You need to look at the bar on the left and use scale to resize. Click inside the sphere and drag. Until it is more-or-less eyeball size. I say this as cartoons have varying sized eyes. Now for the magic. Position the eye outside of your body object, and, on the bottom-right, find the spanner. “Modifiers” and click add modifier. Find mirror and click on that. You should see something like the image shown bottom right. Now I know this looks confusing, but soon it won’t. You may say, but I clicked “mirror” and it did not mirror? Tip: Any time you make a mistake on an object, go to the scene collection in the top-right and delete it.
It did not seem to have mirrored, as it mirrors around that center point inside your object. The origin or pivot point should be outside of the object for you to get a physical mirror of the shape. So, how does one move an object without moving the origin? Simply, you don’t – again pay attention to the terminology used. You need to move the mesh, not the object. So change from object-mode to edit-mode and move your mesh. Now repeat the mirror. Tip: If you have moved the mesh, and mirrored it, and you still do not see the second mesh, mirror it on another axis. If you moved your mesh on green, which is the Y-axis, you need to mirror it on the same axis. If you moved it on red, which is the X-Axis, you need to mirror it on that. Change to move (G), and move the eyes into place (more-or-less). So you know they are eyeballs later.
You can also use the scale now again, and notice how the scale works from the spot between the two meshes. You can also, for instance, grab the blue – Z-axis line and elongate both eyes at once, if you do not want them round. These are all things you can try on your own. I want you to move the eyes into the body and position them so that just the right amount sticks out that makes it look good to you. If at any point you are unsure, use the middle mouse button to rotate your camera and use the arrows to slide the eyes inwards. (Remember we just slid them (it) out, so they can just slide back nicely). Now for the beak, we can also stick to a simple shape, a cone. Or I could teach you a bit about shaping meshes. Let’s go with the latter. (If I go over my allotted space in the magazine, please send the editor a message saying you like this and we should not cut it – misc@fullcirclemagazine.org) [What alloted space? We don't have a limit! He's trying to stitch me up readers - Ronnie]. You are welcome to use the cone for a beak, if it pleases you; nothing is set in stone. The fist method you can use to make a beak-shape, is to select the front-facing square on the cube and simply resize it really small. This creates a pyramid-like shape. You simply go into edit mode, select the four dots on each of the corners of the cube, whilst holding down shift and resize it once you have selected all four. Actually go ahead and try that now. Hold down shift, select the four black dots, they will turn orange. Once done, click on scale and drag your mouse inside the shape.
You can then select the whole mesh and resize it to be a beak. OR… We can select the front four dots on the mesh, and zip them down to the center point on the mesh. When I say center point, I mean the orange dot you can see in the middle of the cube. Now the merge command will be new to you. It is easy to remember, you press the M-key. Hover your mouse over the very first option, it says “merge selected vertices at center”. Click that and you will be left with a pyramid. Hold it right there. If you have seen the angry birds movie, or seen the adverts for it, you will know what I am talking about; if not, find it on the interwebs. The red bird in the poster has a diamond-shaped beak. A diamond is simply a pyramid at 45 degrees. We can split it in two later. To rotate a mesh, we press the R-key, but here is where you need to pay attention. You need to assess which axis you need to rotate it around. In our case it is simple, if you rotate it around the wrong axis, simply press undo and try again. However, try to learn to pay attention to the color of the lines in your mesh.
Back to the tutorial. You need to change modes – click on the little mouse pointer on the left-hand side bar and click on your mesh. Now press the A-key. The whole mesh should change color. Press the R-key for rotate and type in 45 and press enter. The pyramid should have turned into a diamond shape. Now here is that catch I was talking about. If you were looking head-on like me, the rotation will be correct, if not, you need to press X, Y, Z before typing in the angle. You can also make your view like mine, simply by clicking on the color of the axis you are working on in the top-right view sphere. If this is too difficult for you, use a cone for a beak - it works just as well. I just want you to be creating, having fun and learning at the same time.
Now, let’s scale this sucker and plonk it on its nose. Now, because my body is egg-shaped and not quite pear-shaped, I will have to push these shapes into the body a little further, so I may need to scale them up a bit to have just the amount sticking out that I want. I am going to leave you here, as I am over my space and I want to leave space for others in the magazine. (Though this is so much fun, I could go on for days!). Join us in the next issue for more blender shenanigans. Complaints? Compliments? Let us know: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org UPDATE: This series was done during Q2 of 2020, and Blender has jumped a few versions, but I put it to the test and it is still 100% valid.