About Blender

Blender is the open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. Available for all major operating systems under the GNU Public License.

You can download Blender free of charge on www.blender.org. On the Blender site you will also find a gallery with cool Blender art.

Introduction

In this tutorial, I'll explain how you can create a die in Blender using only meshes.

I expect you've already done the dolphin and heart tutorials, so I'll be skipping some steps like how to switch view, how to bring up the toolbox and things like that.

Anyway, here goes.

Start a new Blender and remove the standard plane in the middle (KEYX). Bring up the toolbox (SPACE) and add a cube to the scene (ADD/MESH/CUBE). We'll want the die to have rounded edges. A quick and dirty way of achieving this is by increasing the resolution of the cube (or subdividing it if you like), and then smoothing off the edges. Go to the EditButtons screen (F9) and select the 'subdirive' button five times. Next, select the Smooth button about five times. This will round off the edges of the cube.

Next, I'll remove the interior from the cube, leaving only a 'skeleton' of the rounded edges. Deselect everything (right-click outside the cube), so that all vertices turn pink. Next, use the box-selection tool (KEYB) and select the inner vertices of the cube. The top view of the cube will now look like this:

Now, delete those vertices with KEYX, and repeat these steps in the front and side view, until your cube skeleton looks like this:

While still in the EditButtons screen and still in Edit mode , select all the vertices with KEYA and select the 'Set Smooth' button.

Setting a mesh to 'smooth' will make it, when rendered, look smoother than it really is. I don't want to make the entire die smooth - this would introduce some rendering artifacts on large planes. Remember, this is a tool to use selectively.

Now, let's move on to the 'eyes' of the die.

I will make these out of a partial sphere. To start off, leave the edit mode of the cube (TAB), go to top view, place the 3d cursor outside of the cube and create a UVSphere. I used 32 segments and 32 rings in this case. Go to front view and, using the box-selection tool again, chop off the top side of the sphere. When you're done, your sphere should look like this:

While all vertices are still selected, select the 'set smooth' button in the EditButtons screen again. Scale down the half-sphere to a reasonable size and align it with the top of the cube.

I will now only explain how to create the top plane of the cube, but the rest uses the same process.

Before you start, create a copy of the half-sphere (SHIFT-D). You will need it later when you start working on the other sides of the cube.Duplicate as many half-spheres as you'll need for this side of the cube. In my case, I've made 2 duplicates.The next step will be to fill up the remaining space in the top-plane of the die. To do this, I first join the meshes of the die and the half-spheres (CTRL-J). Now comes the tricky part. Go to front view, enter Edit-mode (TAB), and using the box-selection tool, select the top vertices of the die.This is the selection that you MUST have before you can continue:Now for the easy part: fill up the selected space using SHIFT-F. Select 'set solid' for the selected faces. If you render an image now, it will look like this:Of course, the half-spheres need to have a different color than the rest of the die. While the cube is still selected, go to the materials section of the EditButtons screen and hit the 'New' button twice. This will generate two indies for two different materials on the object. This is indicated by the big button in the middle which will now show: 2 Mat: 2. The first digit indicates the number of available material indies while the second digit is the currently selected index. Click on the left size of the button to set the current material index to 1. Later on, we will select separate faces and assign them a different index (and thus, a different material).Now, assign a material to the entiry die. Then, return to the EditButtons screen. Click on the right side of the Material Index selection button. It will now show: '2 Mat: 2'.Return to the top view, enter edit mode, select one of the half-spheres using the box-selection tool and select the 'Assign' button in the materials section of the EditButtons screen. Repeat these steps for all half-spheres on the current side of the die.When you think you're done, hit the 'Select' button. This will select all faces with the currently selecter material index. If you've missed a spot, it will immediately become clear.After hitting the 'Select' button, these vertices should be selected:

While Material Index 2 is still selected, go to the MaterialButtons screen and create a new material with a different color. A rendered image should now look something like this: (depending on the colors you chose ;-)

Okay, now the boring and repetitive work starts. Using the duplicate half-sphere you created earlier, work on the rest of the sides of the die. When rotating the sphere, hold down the CTRL key to limit the rotation to multiples of 5 degrees.

155 Comments

  1. a die - i'm having trouble. first i select the vertices of the half spheres and assign them to the second material (i do click assign), then i try to assign a different color to the still selected vertices of the half spheres and it assigns the color to the whole die.
    in other words i have successfully assigned a selection of half sphere vertices to the second indice, but cannot get that selection to be assigned it's own color

    what is going on here?

    thank you

  2. Hey, I came across this tutorial when I needed to draw a die for a website. I was going to do that in Photoshop with its 3D transform tool. That is much easier for me. But I think I'll try to that with Blender. Thanks for coming my way :)

  3. In response to Franke's question, you need to make the textures you assign the vetices to independent from the original texture. To do this, with the die selected, go to the texture panel. Change the material selection from '1 of 2' to '2 of two'. Then click the number next to the overall texture name. This will make it a new material, independent from the original cube material. Now any changes you make to either '1 of 2' or '2 of 2' will only affect the vertices assigned to them.

  4. Good tutorial but some parts are confusing.

    Like the other posters, I can't seem to get the material part correct.

    I dun understand Mike's reply on Mar 16th either.

    :(

  5. hey thanks for the great tutorial man!!!! it taught me a lot....i 've battled with the colour problem for a long time myself, i think its due to some kind of counter-intuitive approach by blender.......trick is to select the vertices, go to EDITING, select the material number, then assign. Then go to MATERIALS and mess the material up......i think the confusion is that you can also select materials from the MATERIAL panel, while the choice for particular vertices should really be done in EDITING, like the tutorial says - its this part that is easily overlooked i found....anyway thanks a lot for the good tutorial!

  6. Maybe you can pu french tutorial too 'cause i speek french and i have somme difficulties to fallow the instructions.
    im 14 years old and my english is not perfect so i need french tutorial; please:)

  7. good tut

    after 2 years of blendering there are still new things...

    but there are too much triangles for my taste...

    thx

  8. hey, good tutorial. this is really easy to follow, even me who cant understand n talk good english understanded it, but i still ave problem on one place, u sayd select the box thing with keyb now i selected next if i do shift+f then my blender 3d will freeze. i did wait 10 mins but it still was freezed and everytime so on. i didnt join the circles, maybe was that the problem?

  9. Great tutorial, everything's been working for me except for one thing:

    At the "tricky part", I can only select the half sphere and not the die. What do I do?

    Thanks for your help
    ~Alex

  10. Nevermind, I solved that problem. Of course, another problem popped up three seconds later. Every time I press shift f, the half spheres are covered up as the space is filled in. Why does this happen?

    Thanks,
    Alex

  11. Hey

    The instruction on how to make a die have been very clear but im stuck.
    Im still noob at this so bear with me. When you go to create eye of the die how do you change the centre point to focus onto the sphere. Also once this is done what is the box selection tool.

    Thanks

  12. Thank you very much for the tutorial. Finally managed to complete the die and assign materials to the flat parts and the dimples as required. This was pretty good and I have learnt a lot. There is another simple tutorial on Materials that some of the others who have been having problem may wish to look at. Is titled Material indice.
    http://feeblemind.tuxfamily.org/dotclear/index.php/2004/12/21/5-blender-indices-materiau---material-indice

    Now I needs to animate that dice!

  13. this tut is from the blender 1.8 book that I bought several years ago ...
    The book that makes me come into 3d graphics ...
    I still use it sometimes !

    Nice to see thats still usefull yet ...

    Yeeeeeaaaah !

  14. okay, nowadayz it's probably faster to bever the startup-cube,
    and BOOLEAN the spheres into it,
    but i was very surprised to see the Fkey function in this example.
    whenever i tried making faces between more than 2 edges or 4 verts, i get 'make fgon?' and when i said okay it didn't do anything..

    can someone point me to some clear explanation of how & when the Fkey works ?

  15. Yup !
    if you have blender2.42 go into editmode with the cube you startup with, and press WKEY, choose recursion 2 (orlittle more like 3) for the edgesmooth-ness.
    tab out of editmode and add a uvsphere, downsize it so its smaller than the cube (Skey, 0key .key 2key (you can use the numberkeys ABOVE the letter-keys to scale objects exactly x or 0.x times(GREAT!)))
    move it up(its now inside the cube)using Gkey,Zkey 1key(the 1 above the Qkey)so the small sphere is half above & half inside the cube.
    Now go into objectmode and hit Akey to unselect the sphere.
    select the cube ,then SHIFTRMB the sphere as well.
    if the cube is dark-pink around it and the sphere light-pink, you've selected them the right way.
    Now press Wkey and choose difference from the 'Boolean Tools' menu that should appear under your cursor.
    Gkey your selection away from the center of creation, and Tadaah !
    a rounded cube with a spherical dent in it should appear.

    if you give the objects a diffrent material/color, the color of the removed sphere remains the same as the newly made dent in the cube.
    Enjoy !

  16. OOPS !!!!
    when you press WKEY, choose BEVEL, then 2or3 to round the edges of the cube !
    i forgot to specify sorry !
    good luck

  17. I'm struggling to get the selection right in the start of the texturing part. It may be a problem with joining the indentations to the cube. I select the top layer of points and it looks wrong: The correct points are selected but the vector lines running between all the selected vertices at the top and the unselected vertices they connect to are shaded, fading between yellow and black. I can't seem to just select the vertices without tinting the ends of the lines that join to them yellow.

    It's maybe because it skips a stage when it says to join the meshes with CTRl+J, persumably you have to highlight the set of shapes first... with SHIFT+RMB?

    If you know what I'm talking about please help!

  18. i was thinking... and i am pretty sure boolean difference won't work in this case - it would be good but since it's more than one deformation (it'll work for one UVspehere and cube, but for more than two spheres it certainly will leave some holes in the final result).

    it's obius that one should join all the spheres first, then select the cube and joined_spheres_object as magnet, then WKEY for boolean difference... but there still will be holes. to avoid holes it have to be done one sphere by one - without joining them into one object first. no holes but messy mesh... any other ideas?

    and i think SHIFT+F is also wrong in this case since it will create triangle over triangle near those rounded edges - wouldn't that mess normals a lot? there would be some undesired shadows... it's even visible over included screenshots.

    and one hint: you can mirror (half)spheres via cursor (duplicate sphere with SHIFT+DKEY, then dot [.] for cursor as a reference point, then CTRL+ZKEY for mirror, then choose local axis - Zaxis to mirror sphere to the opposite wall of the dice, Yaxis or Xaxis to mirror it lower or higher on the same wall)

    p.s.
    if someone solves the boolean problem please let me know ;) cythrus -at- o2 -dot- pl

  19. i know how to do everything but i just dont know how to do the part where you have to select the outside of the half spheres. please help

  20. I'm returning to Blender, but still a noob. I had a hard time with the materials, as some others. I was adding and assigning under the materials section, but finally learned that I was failing to select the dropdown list and choose "ADD NEW", then pick the new color, at the Shading controls. There is a little button to the left of the current material name at the top of the first section of controls that produces the dropdown of existing materials and the "ADD NEW" option.

  21. There's something I don't understand. First I aligned the half spheres to the top edge of the cube. But when I want to fill the selection of the top cube plane it doesn't work. Oddly enough, I have noticed that it seemed to be impossible to select the cube frame vertices !! The cube frame has turned into a black dotted line frame, and I can't select the vertices from that. Which is very odd because when I orbit around to see the object from all angles, the half spheres and the cube frame turn around like one single object. But it seems somehow that the cubeframe isn't a real object anymore, because I can't edit or select the vertices from the cubeframe separately ?! Can somebody tell me what the hell am I doing wrong ?

  22. well i cant figure out how to fill in the surfaces. when i go to front view and highlight the very top vertices, it still selects the outside of the top. i cant figure out how to select only the vertices that he has highlighted in his screenshot b4 he fills in the top. can someone help me plz. thx.

  23. Having same problem,can't selct the vers like in the picture..I end up getting them all on the top,and when i go to fill in the space,the half circle ends up filling in,lol

    any help here plz ? thxs

  24. well someone ask me on another forum,if i pressed smooth 5 times or set smooth 5 times..WTF? wheres a button that just says smooth,all i see is a set smooth..I guess thats what im dong wrong lol

  25. the kid, don't grab ( which is GKEY) it, just erase it with the delete key and click erase, vertices. this will chap off the top of your uvsphere

  26. How can i move just one object ( i jave to spheres and i want to select one and move it to the right )
    Can you tell me how i can do it ?
    plz

  27. For selecting the half spheres, try
    a) Alt-right-click an outside edge - easy!
    b) try Select - Non Manifold, this is really handy for selecting edges, then deselect the parts of the cube you don't want (don't forget to look underneath!). You can deselect with the boder select in 'paint' mode (KEYB, KEYB) by holding ALT down. Use the keypad +/- to make the paint circle bigger/smaller.
    c) later on in life, you might want to play around with the Edge Loop and Edge Ring selects

    Christoph - die is singular, dice is plural, but most people say dice for both -wrong but sounds less academic :-)

    vapourmile - I know what you mean - don't worry I think the faded selections are a new feature! They seem to help your eye track where the edges go in more complex meshes.

    Alex - I had that, and my spheres were slightly too low and the new face went over them. Go to side view and move them up to align with the very top of the cube before. Zoom in to check. Also hit keypad5 to check you're in isometric mode to remove perspective from the preview.

  28. for some reason i can not manage to set the first section to solid using 'set solid' by selecting the top vertices in front view but if i do it in top view it makes all the sides solid except the one i need :/

    i'm totally new to this whole 3d model thing... been a programmer for 21 years and still can't figure it out

    but i'm using version 2.43a

    if anyone could help i'd appreciate it...

    I'll be checking back here to see if anyone has offered any advice; i can also make a screen shot of the results i've been getting...

    --leroi--

  29. Noob here.

    Anyway, I can produce the first face of the die just fine. On the second face, when I use the box selection tool, the area between the "die pips" gets selected as well and so the material doesn't just apply to only the "pips".

    AArg! What's the tip to get around this?

    Thanks.

    Bill

  30. Bill D.: Try switching to face-select mode using Ctrl+TAB - that will give you better control over which faces are selected.

    Alternatively, you can assign the material for each sphere separately. That will also make selection less complicated.

    leroi: You may also want to try face-select mode & painting select. Switch to face selection, then press B twice to get paint mode. That may be easier to make the selection. When in paint mode, click & drag the left-mouse button to select faces under the mouse. Use can use the scroll wheel to select the select of the "paint front". The middle mouse button will un-select faces, and the right mouse button exits the paint mouse.

    Separate vertex/edge/face modes are relative new in blender. They make selecting specific faces / edges easier than it used to be without the added specificity.

    Hope that helps.

  31. Its a decent tutorial but I'm aa complete novice and it wasn't indepth enough. I shall have to seek out simpler tutorials to get me through the first steps.

  32. I was going through the tutorial fine when i accidentally hit "z"+"7" and every thing disappeared, anyone know how i can get back when i do this... The reason i did this is im on a Laptop and z and Function button are right next to each other. I wanted to hit num pad 7, but i hit z and 7.

  33. Not a good tutorial for a complete novice. For example, when starting to make the pips on the die, the instructions say to select top view and move the 3D cursor outside of the cube. How is this done? Up to this point, instuctions include required keystrokes, but then stop.

  34. I agree with Mikey, i sorta gave up on the whole blender thing cause i didnt get it, which isnt the attitude, but still, clearer instruction at this stage would be heaps helpful

  35. Hi again,
    To clarify, I can select the half-circle vertices but not the die edge vertices. Help?

    Thanks again,
    october

  36. To Mikey and George: the author assumes you already did the heart and dolphin tutorials, which means the reader should not be 100% noob. It would be very boring if every tutorial kept repeating the detailed steps, don't you agree?

    To october: that's because they're separated objects. Right-click the spheres, then shift right-click the cube and hit CTRL+J to join them.

    My problem: Appearently, I did everything right, but the cube does not look good, like if the cube had manufacturing defects. Any ideas?
    http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/9462/badcubejr8.jpg

  37. I have a problem with making the top plane of the die solid. it seems that when i press CTRL-F it makes the half spheres solid and not the plane , If anyone could give me a tip on how to make the top die plane solid i would really appriciate it

  38. Great toot, noobie too. I as well having problems even with the initial face creation with the half circles. re-did the tutorial using a cube and it worked fine....I'll keep trying, maybe figure it out.
    Thanks for posting!

  39. Thanks for the tutorial man! I got along pretty good except when you get up to the SHIFT F step. I selected the top verticies but then i press SHIFT F and then select set solid but nothing happens when i render it! Maybe you could help!?
    Thanks alot for the tutorials though. Peace.

  40. Nice tutorial! Although I'm still such a noob, I managed to do this in no time ;) OK, I had some problems initially, but then I resolved to follow everything exactly to the letter - and surprisingly, it worked! ;D Thank you.

  41. Cherub of Death on

    I have Alex's problem. When I try to fill the top side of the die, I end up filling the half spheres and not the die it self. How do I fix this?

  42. @cherub of death

    Well, I am a beginner, too, but according to the tutorial you should

    switch to front view (seeing the spheres on top)
    choose (b) only the thin upper layer of vertices (including only the edges of the the spheres)
    and then join them (j)

    So it only joins the vertices around the 'craters' without closing them.

    I liked the tutorial, if you follow it word by word it works. I recommend to try the same tutorial again and again.

    Sunny regards from the Mediterranean.

  43. It is easier to select the vertices if you click "Limit selection to visible" (the cube icon in the bottom-right of the main window).

    Then, you can select the outter circle of the sphere with Alt + right-click (or Win + Alt + right-click, if you're using KDE). You can do the same to the cube.

    But, I have the same problem as Blitzkrieg. The filled surfaces look horrible. I don't understand why. I even zoomed a lot to align the spheres with the cube, so the face would be as flat as possible =(

  44. To whom it may concern,
    I see that there have been several postings for the same problems and I see no answer, so here we go again.

    I followed the steps in making a cube and subdiv them 5 times, etc. but when it asked to select the inner vertices in step 2, I can't seem to do what it is asking. All I get are the corner vertices selected. Can someone be kind and explain to me how it's done.

  45. Yeah, the step where it says to go to the front viewport and select the vertices, and hit SHIFT+F to fill in the space....it doesnt work, because when i go to the front view, my half-cut spheres are on the top....WHERE I WAS TOLD TO PUT THEM. and yet it doesnt come out right, can someone explain?!?!

  46. Hi, I have a question. How do I make the top of the half sphere exactly align with the top of the die? (I tried hold Ctrl when grap it)
    can someone who know write an answer?

  47. hoosierguy7669 on

    love this tutorial only been been working with blender since the first day on the year and this program is so easy even for someone like me that has no experience what so ever in any 3d modeling program thanks and keep the tutorials coming

  48. hey this is a great tutorial, but i am having trouble getting my die back in the edit mode. I can only get my half spheres to join or go bak to edit mode.. any tips?

  49. Ginger_Overlord on

    Hi,

    I've created the three dice 'eyes' for the top of the dice and have aligned them up in the side view and I'm just about to use SHIFT-J (to join them to the dice) then SHIFT-F (to fill the gap between the eyes and the dice itself).

    The problem is, although I can see the vertices's for the eyes I can no longer see the vertices's for the dice. The dice now appears as just a black wire frame.

    How do I see the vertices's for the dice once again?

    Cheers,

    GO.

  50. Ginger_Overlord on

    Hi,

    I've been following this tutorial and have become a little stuck,

    http://www.blendernation.com/tutorials/blender-3d-beginner-tutorial-a-die/

    I've created the three dice 'eyes' for the top of the dice and have aligned them up in the side view and I'm just about to use SHIFT-J (to join them to the dice) then SHIFT-F (to fill the gap between the eyes and the dice itself).

    The problem is, although I can see the vertices's for the eyes I can no longer see the vertices's for the dice. The dice now appears as just a black wire frame.

    How do I see the vertices's for the dice once again?

    Cheers,

    GO.

  51. Stuck with aligning the half spheres with the cube, need some major help! Spent 3 hours trying. My camera angle is so messed up now and made no progress :(.

    Please help! Im a newbie at this stuff, if you can be very detailed as possible, it will help alot!

  52. Hey i've got problem here. I m stuck at the point where I should fill the first wall. I duplicate the half spheres and place them at the top of the die. Then i select the halfspheres and the nearest pink lines. Then i press Shift + F in edit mode and in object mode and then 3 walls are filled but the one with halfsheres and the opposite no. Can someone help me?

  53. hello, i am very happy for this tutorial. but i have a one little problem...
    you say:"Now for the easy part: fill up the selected space using SHIFT-F. Select 'set solid' for the selected faces."

    but my shift-f is not working...
    can you show me the other way? i mean which button i must press to do the job?

    thanks a lot and congrats for the tutorial. ;)

  54. problem resolved....:D
    i had to deselect the sides by clicking B and select the sides i didnt want to be selected
    by clicking the RMB and not the LMB.

    cool tutorial,
    i did the die...
    :D

  55. To those who are having trouble following this tutorial, I would suggest following along with the "Blender Basics Series" video tutorials @ Blenderunderground.com. It's a 5 part series, but I think parts 01 - 03 (ESPECIALLY PART 03) is enough to help you tackle this die/dice project better.

  56. What version of Blender are the tutorial using ?
    I've have some problems with following the tutorial, and tought i should have the same version as this tutorial.

  57. good tutorial but when i followed it well but when i did the shift-f part it filled inside the half circle and not in the die

  58. Very nice tutorial, after some retries and having to admit to myself I tried skipping steps :) I finally managed to get the hang of it and it went really fast after that.
    I added a screenshot on the website URL of this comment :-)

  59. this is a great turorial i used it for a project in school and it helped a lot really appreciate it nice job on such a simple way of describing all the stuff needed

  60. Umm... little nooblet here. (LOL) but... my F buttons dont wrk (like, F9) and I cant find the menu for smoothing the edges of the die. help meh plz

  61. I'm completely stuck with the filling part. My selection looks like on the picture, but when I press SHIFT+F the entire face gets filled and I don't have those "holes" for the half spheres; they just get filled up :/

  62. I figured it out. I cut off the "wrong" side of the sphere. For those strugling with the same problem, look at the half the sphere shown on the picture in the tutorial; yours should look exactly like that; if it doesn't, you cut off the wrong side, rotate the sphere by 90 degrees and then cut.

  63. Ok so I have a question, what if my cube doesn't come out with all the little boxes its just one solid cube, It doesn't work for me and I've tried so many times. :(

  64. Thanks a lot for this tutorial! But I'm a noob, so if any of you guys now of a better tutorial for a beginner, please tell me about it. That would be very nice! :)
    (btw, I'm Norwegian, so my english is not that good. Sorry.)

  65. thespacegamer on

    I have a cool idea: As a Gamer I often use dice with digits molded into them instead of pips. I was thinking of making a model die with digits instead of pips as a way of using what I learned from this tut.

  66. death 2 all on

    is there a way to join 2 points to make a line? i made the stupid mistake of 55 faces making up a flat surface :P fixing it, but need 2 be able to join 2 points to make an edge...

  67. It's what he goes on to explain: You select the verticies using box-select (Key B), and then you delete them. No need to go to Boolean subtract. Good luck! : )

  68. There's a better way of doing the cube's smoothness in more recent versions of blender. Select the cube and, in edit mode, hit W and choose Bevel. Then just move your mouse until you're satisfied with the bevel.

    To make the "skeleton", select the 4 vertices of each side and hit X, faces.

  69. Hey, thanks for a great tutorial.
    I made in a about 2 hours and it was fun and I learned a lot.
    I am using version 4.49 and there was no problem, no bugs and all the buttons were you said they were!
    So thank you again, and please make some more good tuts :D

  70. Some Answers:

    1. HIt Tab to see the Subdivide button. It takes you from Object mode to Edit mode. Im using 2.49b.

    2. Shift-F to fill the faces between the cube and the semisphere dots will fail if you dont have the exact vert selection he shows in the photo which includes only the top verts on each semisphere and every vert on the interior border of the cube top. Things I had to do to get this selection were: A) take my semisphere and move the top layer of verts up away from the others before adding it to the cube. This way they are easier to select without accidentally selecting multiple levels of verts in the semisphere (dot) and B) I had to use Shift Left Mouse Click after KEYB to add to the selection because I missed some corners on the cube. Take a hard look at the photo and youll see. And C) you need to go to the correct View the Side view to use B to select all these. Once I got em all in one try then next go around I never could so I did the above tricks.

    3. Remember that often it is easier to delete something that got messed up and start over. I did this many many times just generating the Cube and Sphere and again when the dots were wrong.

    4. I kept a handy semisphere around that was some distance away from the cube as a source of new dots.

    5. When you hit 7 you went to layer 7. Hit 1 to return to layer 1 (For Bill Cosby - is that really you?)

    Some Questions
    1. How do I get a nice render without the vert's showing?
    2. How to align the semisphere tops with the cube top exactly?
    3. How to pan and orbit on a laptop wihtout a Numeric Keypad? (Too lazy to plug in a real kbd)

    thanks
    Greg

  71. Q:
    2. How to align the semisphere tops with the cube top exactly?

    A:
    While in edit mode, press the N-key, and this will bring up a "Transformation Properties" window. It will tell you the x,y,z location of a vert if selected, or the medium if more than one vert is selected.

    You can now select on one of the verts of the top of the frame you are trying to align on, and from there you can get the verts location.

    Now select one of the verts from the top of your semi-sphere, and it will tell you its x/y/z location. From these two numbers, you can tell how much higher/lower you need to move your semi-sphere in a direction so it it is level. Now select the whole semi-sphere. he x/y/z numbers change naturally, as it is now the medium of the entire object, rather than just the vert you selected, but you know how far you have to move the semi-sphere to align it. You can try this with grab, or you can enter the new location straight into the tranformations properties window.

    Naturally, pressing N-Key again will get rid of the window again.

    I hope this answers your question. It is important to align the hights well before filling the face, otherwise you may get a crease line in your final render.

    Max.

    PS:. Maybe easier ways, I'm just a beginner, took me a while to figure out that the hights were the problem in the first place that were causing my creases.

  72. @Hillbillfied:

    I suppose that you have to use the box selection tool (Key B) to get the shown vertices. This part is very manual, so that is why I think he says "here's the tricky part". In this particular case, for the semispheres, a circular selection would fit nice. First I would add to the selection all the semisphere vertices, and then remove all the inside semisphere vertices. I have just started in blender, but maybe a circular selection tool already exist.

    Good luck, and keep trying.

  73. Even if "die" is the correct singular of dice, it would be nice if you would mention "dice" somewhere, specifically somewhere in the title, I followed a link here from...

    blender.org/education-help/tutorials/getting-started

    ...clicking on just "A Die" I had NO IDEA wth this tutorial would be about...even if incorrect, I would recommend the title (& incoming links) be "How to create a Dice in Blender"...or even "Creating a Die in Blender (as in Dice that you roll for a game)"...some "correct" singular English just sounds WRONG...I mean "die"...death?...die cast?...oh you mean dice!?...

  74. alright, I liked it. but this was the first one that I did. it took me over 3 days of effort to figure it out because of the assumptions that you made. it's ok, I figured it out. HOWEVER, I have lines on my die. only on 2 sides. but I have lines around the "dots"... how the hell do I get rid of those? or what is causeing them? just wondering. put alot of effort into this, and am disappointed with my results.

  75. Hi Santa,

    I believe the lines you may be referring to may be the creases I was mentioning to somebody else in my post about six messages above tis one. Check the notes in that message to see if that may be the cause (a slight difference in hight between the top of thesemisphere and the cube face)

    Max.

  76. Question : How to align the semisphere tops with the cube top exactly?

    Answer (in the case when the objects have not been joined yet) :

    First set the "center" of the hemisphere object exactly to the center of the outermost circle :
    - For one hemisphere, in edit mode, select the vertices of the outermost circle (BKEY)
    - Move the 3D cursor to the center of this selection (SHIFT-s > Cursor -> Selection)
    - In object mode, move the object center at the position of the 3D cursor (Editing > Center Cursor)

    Then move the hemisphere object to the top face of the cube :
    - For the cube, in edit mode, select vertices making a square on the top face (RMB)
    - Move the 3D cursor to the center of this selection (SHIFT-s > Cursor -> Selection)
    - In object mode, select an hemisphere and move it at the 3D cursor position (SHIFT-s > Selection -> Cursor). It is now exactly on the top surface of the cube.
    - Then you can move the hemisphere with the manipulator or with GKEY, keeping CTRL pressed.

  77. Hello,

    I am a bit lost regarding the coloring of the resulting cube with two different colors, with version 2.49. I managed something by playing with Vertex Groups, but I would enjoy more explanations.

  78. Remember: On real dice, the opposing sides add up to Seven. So Six is opposite of one, two is opposite of five, and three is opposite of four. (-:

  79. cool hack, but obviously quite inefficient, both for the number of faces it introduces, and the inelegant way of having to make selections of the semisphere to change its color later. the newer methods used in die easy 2 tutorial, and the youtube link it also provides, are much better.
    however, this tutorial is insightful in the new techniques it shares, which can be used in other sticky situations.
    thanks for those.

    also, novica89, you've got your die posted on FB. tut! tut! why make blenderheads log in to FB to view a rendered image? overkill of both software platforms, eh?

    regards
    niyam

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