Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
As fate would have it, I cannot locate my previous save right now, but do not discard your egg, I will find it. The reason I chose an egg originally, was to make Dizzy, so do not fret, I will find it, as I still want us to make Dizzy. (https://yolkfolk.com/article-dizzy-returns/)
If you could NOT get the “egg” right, do not worry, this issue is your turn to shine. For the rest, you can follow along if you want, or wait until the next issue. After all, this is a beginner series and we are not serious, the goal is for you to learn something whilst having fun (for those who reached out to me on TG, you will see here my body will be everything BUT perfect, and it matters not!).
Fire up blender and let’s begin (with my PC out of action, I will be using version 3.0 on my Solus OS laptop. As long as your version is not older than 2.8, you should be able to follow along 100%).
First thing is to do a drag-select and select everything. Press delete to clear your workspace. Try to get comfortable with the key-presses and try to remember them, as they make your life so much easier. Press Shift+a to add an object. You will be choosing Mesh → ico sphere, and once you pick it, do not click away, as we want to change the ‘smoothness’ via a little button in the bottom-left. Expand the “Add Ico Sphere” and we will be increasing the subdivisions to 5 or 7. The more you add, the smoother it gets, but so does the computational power, so keep that in mind if you have a little celeron.
Notice how the Ico Sphere changes as you play with the subdivision setting. You did* play with the subdivision setting… If not, please do it now, to see how it affects your image. My screen is not the biggest on the laptop and since the move was not kind to my big monitor, I’ll adapt by switching to the sculpt tab (you still remember where that is, right?), and moving my mouse over the scroll bar on the left. Yes, the scroll bar to the right of all the “orbs”, and drag it right, so that they are all on screen. You do not have to, this is just because I don’t want to scroll looking for an “orb”. This is essentially the same as having 2 “pages” on an e-book reader instead of one. Note that it is very optional. Should screen real-estate be an issue on your side, know you can close any of the panels. I’ll let you figure out how and you can drop us a line at misc@fullcirclemagazine.org and tell us how you did it.
For those who did not try anything other than what we have been doing so far, pick the elastic deform tool (orb) and extrude your ico sphere. You may want to play with the radius in the top-right if you want a semi-decent shape. I chose100 and yanked that ball into an elongated shape. As we are still making a cartoon penguin, it doesn't really matter if it is all crooked, that is actually the idea. As I mentioned before, this is so you can see that anything goes if you are creative enough. There is no right or wrong today, the theme is “play”. I will be honest, I like to fiddle with things sometimes and the results can be fascinating! True, it may have been 6am when I started and now it is 2pm, but hey, it’s a Sunday. Pour another glass of wine and turn up the music. This time around, instead of making eyes that fit inside the head, let’s make some exaggerated ones? Also, now would be a good time to save your file.
It can be as straight or as wavy as you like, but keep it more-or-less egg or pear shaped, so we have a nice chubby body. If you want to make more than one, say a short one and a tall one, ala Pinky and the Brain, that is fine too, practice makes perfect. I know the gray on gray (or is it grey on grey?) gets on some people’s nerves, so to change it there is a hidden option right above “options” on the right. If you press the little downward arrow, the one ABOVE options, not NEXT to it, there is a panel that says “Studio”, “MatCap”, “Flat”. Chances are you are in Studio. I want you to change that to MatCap. Now please click on the sphere and choose one that you like. Now I’m probably more autistic than artistic, so I’ll choose the Zebra stripes. Lines make your depressions stand out more, but please do what makes YOU happy.
OK, so at this point I want to say something, as I got some flak from my proofreader. The reason I chose a vaguely egg shape is that it is easy for beginners like us - you can get as technical as you like in making your penguin’s body, but why complicate things? To understand where I am coming from, look here at this blender artist creating a wine bottle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtRsCLGsDHI&list=PLsGl9GczcgBtNd8e8LhfylyK80elW6sOo
I am not going to pretend I know when it is best to use a UV sphere or when to use an Icosphere, I do what is easiest, as I am lazy. This means I will show you the fastest and most fun way I know instead of heaping on terminology and telling you what you *should do, instead of exploring and finding out what YOU like – I’m not trying to make you something, I want you to have fun with your computer. That is the reason for this issue, it is OK if you have a bean instead of an egg, I want us to work with what you have and not strive to copy me 100%. (Mine is so misshapen, it is actually hollow on the side you cannot see… XD).
Right, with that out of the way, let us continue.
Moving your sculpture is done via the panel on the left if you are in ‘Layout’. Since I am sure you all know how to change from sculpting to layout, I am just going to mosey on.
When you click an action in the panel like ‘move’, rotate, or scale, you need to click on your object as blender does not know which object you intend to move, should you have multiples. So the process is click the action, then click the object, and once the ‘tool’ displays inside your object, you can do the action. Does it sound confusing? Try it. If your object is selected, the tool will appear inside your object immediately; if not, you need to click on your object again. Let me explain about the tool. When you click on say, ‘move’ (which is also grab – bonus points if you know the keyboard combination!), a red, blue and green crosshair should appear within your object. If it did not, your object was not selected. This confused the heck out of me when I tried it for the first time.
Blender is a power house, so there will be a lot to learn, but the rewards are great too. You can create moving and still wallpapers & backgrounds - that are generated FOR you with a minimum of effort. (Maybe we can look into that after this?). So don’t give up yet. Even if you think your penguin body looks like chewed bubblegum, that is fine, move back to previous issues and put some oversized eyes on your penguin and be proud. I’d love to continue chatting with you guys, but I have gone over my space in the Magazine, so be there next issue… we can make magic!