The purpose of this guide is to teach you how to use Blender in 2020 and how can you make 3D models by using Blender Animation Software. Let’s take a look at the basics of modeling and exploration in Blender.
How to Use Blender Software 2021
Installation
There are several ways to install Blender. The most common way is to install a current stable release. You can find it here. This is the official Blender Foundation page. However, Blender is still in development and you can get a new version every day. You can taste new features here.
This version of Blender can crash, so don’t use it for important tasks. The experimental Blender installation procedure is different. You need to download the ZIP file and then unzip it. Go to the extracted folder and click on the “Blender.exe” executable to start Blender.
In this way, you can use different versions of Blender on your computer and do not interfere with each other. If you are playing games, you will be familiar with the Steam platform. You can also get Blender. The benefits are updated automatically.
Click here to download Blender Software free for Windows
Interface
The new computer interface is difficult. One or more written articles are required to describe all parts of the interface, but you can distinguish important parts from this image. The good news is that you don’t need to know what everything is to get started. Much fun can be right! Following is a description of the main parts of the interface.
This is where the Viewport-3D model is displayed. Blenders always start with a “base cube,” which most people press X to select and delete. However, you can convert this cube to your liking. The viewport is where you manually add details to the model and transform the object (transform means to move, rotate, or resize the object).
This is where you can add materials to the Properties tab-object, manipulate them with “modifiers” (discussed later in detail), and choose a render output path. Press the timeline-space bar and the blue play head starts moving from left to right.
If the scene has animation, you can see it now. Press the space bar again to stop playback. It’s where you can find all the objects, including the outliner cameras and lights that may be on the scene. By default, Blender provides one camera and one light in addition to the basic cube.
Viewport Navigation
Press the middle mouse button and move the mouse. You can see the viewport rotate around the model. Scrolling the middle mouse button zooms in and out.
No 3-button mouse or is it on a laptop? Don’t worry, go to Edit> Preferences> Input and enable “Enable 3-button mouse“. Close the Preferences window. Now you can rotate while holding down Alt and left mouse button.
Ctrl + Alt and left mouse button moves to zoom in and out. I have a 3 button mouse and it works mainly on desktop computers, but I prefer to navigate the viewport. Click the left mouse button to select something like the default cube. Left-click on a space in the viewport to deselect it.
How to use a blender to make 3d models
Enough boring interface story! Let’s make a 3D model already! Yes, here are the basics of modeling.
Edit Mode and Object Mode-Pressing the Tab key toggles between these two important modes. In edit mode, you can manipulate the vertices, edges, and faces of the model (detailed below). Manipulating these things is the most basic form, “3D modeling”. It should be in object mode for other things like adding modifiers to the model (more on that later).
The model consists of:
- Vertices-points in 3D space. Probably the most important thing in 3D modeling! The building block of all 3D objects.
- Edge-This point is the line that “connects the points” or connects the vertices.
Also known as “polygon” in face-other software, it fills the space between the corners and vertices. The noodles are what you can see in the render. The vertices and edges themselves are invisible without faces.
Press Tab to enter edit mode. Left-click on a vertex to select it. Press “G”. Now we are changing the shape of the default cube. Congratulations. You created your first 3D model. It is a kind of cube!
Let’s know about:
1. Edge Loops
2. Beveling
3. Extruding
The best way to learn is to build a model.
In edit mode, press 3 to go to face selection mode (3 other than 3 on the number pad). Click the left mouse button to select the top side.
Now press Ctrl + i. If nothing happens, you need to do this while the mouse cursor is over the 3D viewport. Blender depends on the situation. In other words, if you hover over another menu, you will hear another keyboard shortcut that matches that menu.
Normally Ctrl + I invert the selection. Now only the top face is not selected. Press X to bring up the Delete menu and select a face. Now only the top side is left. Left-click to select the face again and press E to extrude. Move the mouse up to extrude.
Well done! Press 2 to go to Edge Select mode. Now press Ctrl + R. This is another shortcut that I use constantly during 3D modeling. When you press Ctrl + R, “Edge Loop” is created in the center on the left or right depending on the position of the mouse cursor.
Click the left mouse button to confirm the creation of the corner loop, then right-click to cancel the move. In this way, it stays in the middle of what we want. Do this again, but when you place the mouse cursor on the other side, you’ll have two corner rings that go straight through the middle.
The position of the mouse cursor depends on where you want to create another “edge loop”. Now we will select both Edge Loops. Just alt + left click on the edge. The entire loop is selected. Hold Shift and select another loop. Note: When using “Enable 3-button mouse”, double-clicking the edge selects the loop instead.
With both corner loops selected, press Ctrl + B to “til”. Move the mouse to increase the slope size until you get something. Click the left mouse button to check the level. Now press 3 to go back to face selection mode. Please select the side.
Press E for extrusion and move the mouse. Click the left mouse button to see the extrusion behavior. Move the mouse while holding down the middle mouse button or hold down the Alt key to move the mouse to navigate the viewport so you can see under the model.
Select 4 small faces from the corners. Press E again to extrude and move the extruded face down. Congratulations. you just modeled the chair.
Press Tab to exit edit mode. Good job. you created a 3D model. To be honest, these are the basics that will come back in very complex models: selection, adding edge loops, extruding, beveling. That’s why I’m teaching keyboard shortcuts instead of instructing them to use the Tools menu.
Modifier
In the perfect 3D model world, everything is sharp. Not really. Every object, no matter how perfect, has some “slope” where the edges meet. Let’s add a bevel to the chair to make it look more realistic.
In the Properties panel, click the tool icon to go to the modifier tab. (Make sure you are in object mode and chair is selected). Click “Add Modifier” and select “Bevel”. Bevel will probably be stronger, so we need to reduce the “offset” value to 0.01.
large! But now something else is starting to become clear. Our chairs are a bit gray. It would be great if we could give the material.
Materials and texture
Go to the Materials tab (old icon) and click “New”. Don’t worry about all the settings you see, let’s change the color right now.r. It looks fine. If you want, you can move on to the next step. However, you may want to be more realistic. This is where the texture works. The next step is a bit advanced, but I’ll explain all the steps.
First, you need a nice photo texture. There are many free photo textures on the textures.com website. Let’s use this tree. The “small” version is free and is large enough for our purposes. Save it in an easy to find place.
Next, drag the border between the timeline and the viewport up to expand the timeline a little. Then click the window type icon at the top left of the timeline window and select “Shader Editor” to change that timeline to the Shader editor. Now the material is visible, but it is very small, so scroll the middle mouse wheel to zoom in.
To make setup easier, go to Edit> Preferences> Add-ons and search for “Node Wrangler”. Make sure the power is on. Close the default settings. Now let’s go back to that material in the shader editor.
Left-click on “Principled BDSF” to select the material. Now press Ctrl + T to add the whole “node”. You may need to move a little to the side by pressing G, like moving an object in the viewport.
Now you can see the photo texture appearing in the 3D model, but it looks very weird! This is because the 3D model has not been “unpacked” and the UV map is not appropriate.
The “unwrapping” of the 3D model is beyond the scope of this article, so do it cleverly using cheats! Drag the output from the output to the input of the Mapping node to change the texture coordinates to “Object”.
Change the image texture projection type to “box” and set the blend value to 0.25. Change the texture’s scale to 0.5.
Basically what I’ve done now is to set the material to “box projection mapping”. That is, the tree picture is projected onto the model from all sides. The “Mixed” value blends where the photos meet at an angle. This is a trick for a static model like this chair. It should now look like this (don’t worry about the background, I’ll explain it in the next part).
You can move on to the next section, but if you want something more realistic, it’s a good idea to add more “nodes”. I’ll do it step by step. Goes! Hover the mouse over the Shader Editor window, press Shift + A, and type “color ramp” in the search field until the ColorRamp node is listed.
You can zoom in on the chair slightly and turn the viewport to see the reflection. Adjust the ColorRamp until you get something.
This seems a lot more interesting! It looks as though some of the trees are shiny and others are rougher. cool. Now let’s add the last touch. Search for it by pressing Shift + A as in the ColorRamp node to add a “bump” node. Add as shown between image texture and normal input.
The distance value should be reduced to 0.01. As you can see, “bumps” are added to the model according to the image texture.
HDRI light
When dealing with your material, let’s add some light! HDRI lighting is a great way to add realistic lighting to your scene, and it’s as easy as a “cheat”. First, you need to download the HDRI image.
Download it (1K version works fine) and save it where you can find it easily.
Then go to the World tab (planet icon) and click on the dot next to the color value. Select “Environment Texture” from the options. Don’t worry about the color. Blender says there is no image texture yet.
You can now see the Artist Workshop HDRI in the background. It also provides lighting for the main function, the model.
Image rendering and storage
After a few seconds, the rendered image appears. Go to Image> Save As and save it somewhere. If you don’t want to use HDRI as a background, you can turn on “Transparent” in the “Film” option. Render the image of the model with a transparent background.
Please save it as a PNG file with “RGBA” enabled. A represents alpha, the information in the image that determines the transparent position of the image. You can then open it in Gimp or Photoshop, for example, and add another background.
After downloading the blender interface, I got used to it, created the first 3D model with realistic photo material, and rendered the image using HDRI as lighting.
So our Blender Animation Software beginner’s guide has been complicated.