In order for the surface to be seen, it is necessary that the normals point to the outside of the model. This is a perpendicular vector that indicates the direction of the polygon. We must clarify that the orientation of the faces is important for your polygon object to be illuminated. If you have played old 3D games, you've probably noticed the very angular outline of the characters it was, in fact, due to a low count of polygons. Your actors and environments will be made of polygonal objects, or more commonly called as meshes. You will have an opportunity to see this in more detail later.
It is often essential to favor four-sided polygons during modeling for a better result. In 3D software, a polygon is constituted of at least three sides. It is a geometric plane, which has several sides as its name suggests.
Connected together, the edges and the vertices form a face, also called a polygon. They could be thought of as 3D points in space and the edges connect them. The vertices are some points in the scene space that are placed at the end of the edges. You will have the control of their placement and their setup.Ī mesh is made of vertices, edges, and faces. A scene can be populated by one or more cameras, lights, models, rigs, and many other elements. These axes are color-coded, we advise you to remember them: the x axis in red, the y axis in green and the z axis in blue.Ī scene may have the scale you want and you can adjust it according to your needs. Some softwares use a different approach and reverses the y and z axes. In Blender, the x axis shows the width, y axis shows the depth, and the z axis shows the height. There is a three-dimensional space with a coordinate system composed of three axes. Some artistic notions are a plus.Īll 3D elements, which you will handle, will evolve in to a scene. Don't worry, there is no need to have special knowledge in mathematics or programming to create beautiful 3D objects it only requires curiosity. To start learning about Blender, you need to understand some basic concepts. By the end of this book, you will master a workflow that you will be able to apply to your own creations.
After that, you will create a full haunted house scene.įor the last project, you will create a short film featuring a rat cowboy shooting cheese in a rat trap! This will be a more complex project in which you learn how to rig, animate, compose advanced material, composite, and edit a full sequence.Įach project in this book will give you more practice and increase your knowledge of the Blender tools, and Blender game engine. Then, you will discover more advanced techniques such as sculpting and re-topology by creating a funny alien character. You will start by getting to know the modeling tools available in Blender as you create a 3D robot toy. Through this book, you will create many types of concert projects using a step-by-step approach.
Today, it is used in many professional products and by many companies. Moreover, Blender has an active community that contributes to expanding its functionalities.
Today, it is considered to be one of the most complete 3D packages on the market and it is free and open source! It is very efficient for many types of productions, such as 3D animated or live action films, architecture, research, or even game creation with its integrated game engine and its use of the Python language. Blender is a powerful tool, stable, with an integral workflow that will allow you to understand your learning of 3D creation with serenity.