3D Animation: Mouse

This animation was created following Neal Hirsig’s video’s on basic keyframe animation and the timeline window.

Hourglass

I got bored and decided to try making an hourglass in Blender since I heard about a similar task from a couple of the 3rd year students. I got the glass part done quite easily by using the same techniques used to create the pill model. I extruded a small part out from the bottom of each half of the hourglass pieces and scaled the edges of each piece outwards slightly. Next I rotated the pieces towards each other to form the hourglass shape and added a material with the “Blend” effect and had them emit light.

After completing the glass part of the hourglass I formed the base and top pieces by using a circle mesh and scaling one side slightly larger than the other. I used a yellow/gold coloured material on these pieces again using the “Blend” texture effect. Then I duplicated the circular base and aligned them above and below the glass parts.

The next parts of the model I worked on were the poles around the glass piece to hold it in place. At first I designed them as simple poles with the same material as the top and base pieces of the hourglass but I found this appeared to simple for my tastes so I decided to create another pole and shape it using several cylinders and scaling them into different shapes. I also added a couple of UVspheres and tried to make them appear as cystals attached to the pole. Once I had the first one completed I duplicated it 3 times and spread them around the hour glass. After the hourglass was done I placed the lotus model inside it. This was done by naming the lotus as an object previously and importing it into the hourglass file however the lighting I used only showed the outline of the lotus. To fix this problem I used 3 point lighting which lit up the hourglass and lotus in the way I desired.

Lotus: 3 Point Lighting

After viewing a 3 Point Lighting video tutorial by Neal Hirsig I tried this lighting type on the lotus model I made to improve its rendered apprearance.

I am quite satisfied with how this model turned out but I think it could be improved if the petals were slightly thicker.

Lotus Flower

I’ve decided to summarise the techiniques I have gained so far in creating models in blender by attempting to make a model of a lotus flower. I had a bit of trouble just trying to get this started with the first petal since I tried to create it with a cube which seemed like a good idea at the time. After mentioning it to a friend she advised that a sphere would probably be a better choice…

I got the first petal done by deleting any unwanted vertices and scaling the top of the shape to make it pointy like a flower petal I smoothed the object and added a material to it. The material I used was a dark pink with a “Blend” texture added with a light pink colour. Once this was complete I duplicated the petal nine times and rotated them into a shape of a flower.

After I completed the outer petals I created a slimmer shaped petal for the inside of the flower and added a pale pink material to it. Then, like with the outter petals, I duplicated it nine times and rotated them to form a smaller flower shape. Next I positioned these petals in the centre of the larger ones and added a Cylinder Mesh to form the core of the lotus. I chose a yellow material for this part of the lotus and scaled it so that it formed a more narrow shape at the top.

 

Materials and Light part 1

I have began the “Materials and Light” section of the tutorial starting with changing the colour of an object by editing it’s RGB values. First I added a UVsphere and smoothed it then I added a new material and changed the RGB values to create a purple colour for the object. Afterwards I duplicated the object and created a blue transparent sphere by adjusting the Alpha value to 0.500 and clicking the ”ZTransp” button.

By clicking on the Wire button in the Links and Pipeline panel of the Blender interface the sphere takes on a wireframe appearance when it has been rendered. Next I added a new texture using the texture type “Marble.” Then in the Map To Panel I changed the default colour from pink to a lighter shade. Also from the Map To Panel I clicked on the “Emit” button which, once the object is rendered, will emit light. Once I rendered the object the pink parts of the sphere emitted light from them.

Rose Tutorial

From viewing the Organic Extrusion video I have attempted to create a rose in blender. Once I had the rose flower complete I extruded a stem from it and learned from the Multiple Materials video how to add more than one material to a model.

3D Fruits Model

Following the task on the 3D Modelling and Animation blog I have made an attempt in creating some 3D apples in Blender. The first model of the apple was made using an Icosphere Mesh and then using the proportional editing tool to reshape the Icosphere. I then used Set Smooth and Subsurf to make it resemble an apple. I found this to be more tricky than the other tutorials I’ve done previously however I am fairly please with the result. Once I had created the shape of an apple I added a stalk using a cylinder shape and added material to the apple.

After creating the first apple I moved onto creating another using a NURBS Sphere instead of an Icosphere. Creating an apple with this sphere was much easier than the previous one however the shape of the apple just didn’t seem as natural to the one achieved by using an Icosphere. Once I finished with the apples I followed the tutorial to create a dish for the apples with use of the Spin tool.

Mountain Tutorial

Continuing learning from the Blender Basics Tutorial I began the mountain tutorial. This tutorial is very useful for creating a landscape in 3D.

The steps to follow in this tutorial were quite simple and showed how to make use of the proportional editing tool which I have not used previously.

Salt Cellar

Here is my attempt at making a model of a salt cellar with techniques I have learned from the pill tutorial. It hasn’t turned out quite like I expected it and could still use some work.

Drug Tutorial

This tutorial involved creating a pill in Blender using a UVsphere object as the base to work with. This tutorial was quite informative as I have learned about how to edit/erase vertices, extrude objects, and use the Material Panel to edit colours and other settings such as smoothness.