Tutorial: 16 really useful modeling tools

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MeshWeaver just put his new modeling tutorial on-line. The tutorial will cover 16 must-known Blender 2.5 commands and shortcuts, starting from grabbing, rotating and scaling objects then get into the edit mode to modify the mesh data. The tutorial also covers linked duplication, normal shading, splitting, etc. Suitable for beginners and those who don’t want to miss any necessary basic command.

MeshWeaver wrote:

Hey there fellow Blenderheads!

So I have a new tutorial online, covering 16 modelling tools I use the most often when working.  Each tool/function has its own intro and they’re separated into individual parts…though not with the “P” shortcut.  It’s my best tutorial so far, if I say so myself :D

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    • VIBrunazo

      “This I don’t know what it is. And that… uhmmm, that I have no idea what it does.”

      Could have done some little research before doing the tutorial, it takes 5 minutes of googling to find what most of those tools do.

      But of course, some tutorial is better than no tutorial. Thanks a lot for taking your time to put this up! :)

    • Blending BriGuy

      The link to the video has gone dead somehow, about an hour after I got it to work the first time. There is also an article called “Syntheyes” that’s coming up blank. Can anyone else confirm either of these glitches?

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      @Blending BriGuy: looking into it now. We had a server crash earlier today and some weird stuff is happening.

    • http://meshweaver.blogspot.com/ MeshWeaver

      woah…the video has been viewed 1040 times in one day! wow…thank you very very much everyone, I was not expecting that many views, not at all :D I was shocked when I saw the number, not one of my videos has ever had that many views… :D

    • http://www.byronsdesigns.com ByronK

      MeshWeaver, this was amazing to see so many tools taught in such a ahort time. You are a natural teacher. I wish I had seen this when I first started learning Blender. Of course at that time lots of the tools did not exist. Organizing how to teach Blender is something I have spent a lot of time working on. It seems you have a good handle on it. Thanks for this gift.

    • Blending BriGuy

      Looks like Bart fixed it, everything is working again! What did it take to track down and fix things? I know next to nothing about website recovery and I may need to by the end of the year.

    • Jessy

      List ALL of the tools and split it up into 16 videos. One video is a very bad idea for people who already know SOME of the tools.

    • Brian Lockett

      Thanks, dude! I will definitely recommend this to my friends who are just now picking up Blender. Great tutorial!

    • http://meshweaver.blogspot.com/ MeshWeaver

      @ByronK – wow…I don’t really know what to say, except : Thank you very, very much! :D

      about organizing, I did proceed very differently for this tutorial, a lot more planning went into it, and since I recorded each tool individually I had much more control over how it turned out…I usually record a video in one shot.

      @Jessy – Actually, there’s a 6-part version on my YouTube channel…it’s not split up into the different tools, though. And anyway, I can only upload 1 HD video per week on Vimeo, so it would have been only on YouTube, which I don’t really want.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phqC7_e4RDI&feature=PlayList&p=03A670AE4B85F9D4&index=0&playnext=1

      I’ll think about re-uploading them individually though, as I still have the individual video files, and it might be a good idea :D

      @Brian Lockett – thanks! :D

    • Ray

      Good tutorial. With clear pronunciation and all.

      About the extrude > scale reflex of the author:
      This proves that it was so much handier when we could extrude and scale directly without having to click to validate NOR cancel the extrusion… This was a feature. I hope it will be back one day just like the full screen toggle came back.

    • Vladimir

      Nice tutorial. Didn’t think 2.5 is so nic. Going to switch now. Also you have a nice tutorial with the mushroom. You should make a blender DVD or book with tutorials, I like it, and try and sell it:). But yeah u’d have to know all the possibilities of Blender then :).

    • http://meshweaver.blogspot.com/ MeshWeaver

      @Ray – well, actually, it does work…most of the time. it’s just a bit inconsistent, and I haven’t figured out why it didn’t work then. :( I used it last night when working on a project, and it worked very well.

      @Vladimir – thanks! :D

    • speedmonkey

      Wow, I learned a lot of things I didn’t know (and probably never would have guessed, like how pressing a key a second time often activates a different function). Also, I may have just missed it, but it seemed like a little shortcut I use a lot wasn’t mentioned: pressing the middle mouse button during grab/rotate/scale to constrain the axes (similar to pressing x, y,or z). The keys are still better if you need local movement though, as the MMB method doesn’t seem to allow that.

    • kram2301

      This tutorial is really nice and a great summary of the most important tools within blender :)
      Here is a list of hopefully constructive critizism:

      the problem, why axis locking for rotation doesn’t quite work is, because that’s how 3D rotation works:

      If you rotate stuff around one axis and at the same time around a second one, that’s just equivalent to rotating around the third one alone.

      Extrude:
      Normal x is just what you said. Normal Z would be along the Normal directly :)

      Creating Faces also works with creating quads from tris or creating edges from two vertices and you did not mention the possibility of having “no concave quad” ;)

      Fill tries to fill in faces as good as possible. – on that cube example, it obviously was a tricky case where it did no good ;)

      Rotating edge is indeed good when reworking Topology, to get rid of triangles and rearange edge flows.

      -both edge rotating and fill will be a LOT better, once bMesh is in :)

      subdivide is also sometimes very important to rework your topology. There are occations, where loop cut might mess things up because it does the whole loop and it’s better to temporarily make tris with subdivide that you then remove by reworking the topology.

      You can also do a linked duplicate of meshes, which basically means, you create instances. – that’s faster if you have millions of the same objects over and over again.

      Splitting: You forgot some important parts on that. The real power of splitting comes in if you split off edges or vertices – also an excellent way to add in details and/or rework your mesh.
      In combination with snap and/or merge it can do a lot of great stuff to make it relatively easy to add in more geometry, where neither subdivide nor edgeloops would be much of a help ;)

      It would be good to also have remove doubles, merge, snap and edge slide (Ctrl+E -> Edgeslide) in this list – those are the four I’d add. That makes for the full 20 most important features :)
      Besides that, it would be a good idea to elaborate more on selection modes (vert/edge/face), pivot centering and maybe the manipulators with their different axis options – those are things you already started on a little bit didn’t quite explain in detail.

      Many of the features you where not sure of where to use them are more useful for organic modelling, reworking the topology and edge flow or equivalently complex modelling tasks. – you don’t do much organic modelling, right? :)

      One last thing: it would be good if you grouped the tools by content. For instance, the inverse selected fits perfectly to the select linked.

    • oneshotal

      yee haw, i dont know what that does either but i’m going to mention it so i can irritate everyone. giddy up!

    • staiger

      I think ” Shift H ” / hide unselected / shorter than ” Ctrl i and H “.
      But that’s Blender, we help each other.

      Thanks 4 the tutorial!

    • http://meshweaver.blogspot.com/ MeshWeaver

      @kram2301 – lol, I read your entire comment and I found it very helpful, but it was only after I had read it that I noticed who wrote it! lol! thanks kram, a lot of good points there…I might do a revised edition some day, once I explore the tools more – I’ll make sure to copy-paste everyone’s suggestions into a document so I can improve the video some day :D and no, I haven’t done much organic modelling, mostly objects and things… I do plan on trying to model a car eventually though, so it’s going to be a mix of hard-body and organic…

      @staiger – woah, didn’t know that one! thanks! :D

      @everyone else – thank you very much for your comments! I think I will rework this tutorial to include a few more tools once I explore them a bit more, such as the Snapping tool (haven’t figured out what the Volume option is for yet) and expand on the other tools that I didn’t really explain properly :D

    • MrMowgli

      Great tutorial, great explanation style. You may want to double check tool’s before doing the tutorial so you aren’t surprised by new options. I think new users will get a lot from this. Your next tutorial perhaps should cover modifiers, as this will complete several thoughts you started in this tutorial, such as the mirror modifier and the subsurf modifier.

      Also a follow up not for people who watched it, the Mirror Modifier is useful so you can work on one half of model and see the other half updated in real time.

      Great job!
      Looking forward to the next one

    • http://www.FreezingMoon.org Dread Knight

      Tutorials for beginners are always a good thing, if done properly :-)

      Keep’em coming!

    • fox

      Thanks MeshWeaver for your great work and help!! Appreciate!!!

    • azorni

      Fill is usefull when you have a curve on a plane but with no face.

      Try it with a circle. Press Add -> Circle. Enter edit mode, select all circles, and Alt-F.

      You’ll see.

    • azorni

      erratum : ‘select all vertices’ instead of ‘select all circles’, of course

    • azorni

      nice tutorial.

      You might consider maximizing your 3D panel when you don’t talk about the other ones. That would save some screen space and increase visibilty for your viewers. Also, use a proper full screen and hide this MS Windows title bar.

    • Blending BriGuy

      @azorni How do I accomplish hiding the MS Windows title bar for the Blender window when using Blender in Vista? Already tried a googlesearch and found no definitive answer.