Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
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%)
I will TRY to answer all your questions in this issue, as I think it is important not to just blunder ahead but understand what and why you are doing it. I must stress that our egg shaped penguin or character project is a basic one. I work with metadata all day and only touch blender when I have a chance. It gives me joy when I do and I want to pass that on. For those who reached out and said I was going too fast, I’m sorry you feel that way, but I just want you to have something to say is your own. We can delve deeper into sculpting at another stage, those that asked I’ll dedicate a few issues to it, though I am by no means a master. The few of you that asked for more explanation, we will get there, as I said, I just want you to get something out of the door as hands-on experience is king.
Right, thanks to Tom, I will point out the “n” key. When you click within the viewport and press “N” a menu will slide out from the left. This menu corresponds to the place your object is, in the “world” relative to the centre.
You will see an X, Y and Z in Location. If you move your mouse over any of the bars, you can press the primary mouse button and slide it left to right and as the values change, so will the position of your object, and if you don’t have an object yet, it will move the default cube. You may also note the locks beside the sliders (that don’t look like sliders) that will lock the object in place on that axis. Then there are the tabs down the right side and this is where things may look a little different, depending on installed add-ons or vanilla blender. I will keep everything vanilla as I explain.
Jaydeen & Co, we can cover the settings menu at the end, I do not want to confuse people now. You CAN use blender at stock defaults. I understand there are ways of setting up blender to speed up your work flow, but I really just want to get newbies to make something, as crooked and broken as it may be . Once they find their feet, they can get comfortable. I will address the “industry compatible” toggle you guys are on about. As a newbie to Ubuntu and possibly Blender, you probably have never worked with other drawing/sculpting packages, and even if you have, is it really a necessity for grandpa Sebs who retired long ago? Keeping the keys standard, means everyone who has a go at it, will get the same result. See key above.
To answer Miroslav’s question, on how to change the value of the vertices?(smoothness) once the sphere is moved - there is no way to change the smoothness of our ball once created and moved, you need to delete the object with the ‘X’ key and recreate it and play with the sliders again as far as I know, I did try to find something in the documentation, but I could not, so let’s assume my statement is fact. This is the reason I said to play with it when you were creating, it is literally the first step you do, so deleting and recreating is not too much time lost.
As to the questions about plug-in’s, I really cannot comment as I am not a professional user making money from Blender, so I would not spend lots of money on them. Places like Gumroad list their pricing in USD and I need to pay 20x more, so I just don’t. I enjoy using blender as is and I do realise they can make the quality of life a lot easier, I am a simple home user who has other priorities with my hard-earned cash. It was only when looking up the plug-in’s mentioned, and the messages on Telegram that I found out you can put in $0 for some of them. Though I will look into it in the future, we won’t need any to continue making, this series is for Joe Bloggs at home wanting to play some.
For those of you who are now wondering about plug-in’s, you can get a look at the plug-in’s that Blender ships with, (Yes, it comes with quite a few) by simply clicking on the menu, Edit → Preferences → Add-ons. To install any of them, simply click the tick boxes of those you wish to install and click on the install button in the top right. What you need to be aware of is the icons on the right, they indicate Blender foundation plug-in’s or community plug-in’s. The other icon you need to keep an eye open for, is the warning triangle. To see what the warning is, you need to click the expand point on the left of the name and you will see. Usually those found in Blender by default are not destructive, but beware of ones you find on shady websites, the warnings you will most likely encounter will be software that is still in development, but do think twice.
This tip from Roland, I would like to pass on; When you deselect an object, like an eye that is embedded in another object, like a body, when you have multiple objects selected, the SHIFT+double click, will start at the object that is the furthest away. In other words, it will deselect the body behind the eye, instead of the eye. To get away from this behaviour, you need to rotate your object so you cannot see anything behind it and then SHIFT+double click.
As I am writing this I am nowhere near home, so I cannot confirm, but I really thought I explained it. The difference between the X,Y,Z tool at the top right we talked about and the “Rotate” tool is that the X,Y,Z tool in the top right, rotates the “camera” or your viewport, if that makes it easier for you. The Rotate tool, see when an object is selected, and you press ‘R’ or click on the rotate button on the left, rotates the object within your viewport. Thank you for that Terry. Please, if this is confusing for you guys, play with it. Mangle a cube and rotate it with the different options.
If more of you feel I left something out, or I did not explain something clearly, feel free to reach out to me on Telegram, or drop us a line at: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org.