A basic model with Blender-A 3D Designer

Introduction to Blender

Blender is an open source and free software which is used to create 2D and 3D models. It supports all the features of 3D modelling, animation, rendering, motion tracking, video editing and game creation. In today’s growing technological world, Blender’s API is employed in Python scripts in order to customize the application and to write some of the special tools.  Blender can run in any platform. It can have better performance if you run Blender in Linux, Windows and Mac systems. OpenGL is used by Blender in order to provide a consistent experience.

A basic model using Blender

Let us learn how to design a basic well model using blender. The steps involved in creating well model are given as follows:

1. Creating walls of well
2. Designing roof pillar
3. Creating roof tiles
4. Adding colors to the objects.

1. Creating walls of well

• Initially the cube object will be displayed.
• Select its edges by pressing edge in the below bar, CTRL+B to bevel the cube to get the stone like shape.
• Duplicate the cube by selecting All (A) and SHIFT +D
• Go to wireframe mode to select edge face and grow by(g) long x axis
• Loop cut (CTRL+R) to make fine edges for our wall.
• Now you will get the shape as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Duplicate it to get long chain shape for our last level wall. In object mode add modifier (simple deform), select bend align z axis with 360 degrees. Now we get a shape as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Set the pivot to origin of geometry by (OBJECT→SET ORIGIN →ORIGIN TO GEOMETRY). Duplicating and scaling this object will take us to the shape shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Now by changing the shape through SCULPT MODE, we can change the vertices to some irregular shape to get real look. By applying mat cap, properties we can see how our edges get correct shade as in Figure 4.

Figure 4

2. Designing roof pillar
Add a cube mesh and scale it along Z axis. S+SHIFT +Z will scale along XY axis only. Select CTRL+A to scale the pillar and bevel the cube to get the fine edged pillar. Duplicate it along x axis, by applying slight bevel and loop cuts. Now we will get the roof pillar as shown in the Figure 5.

Figure 5

3. CREATING ROOF TILE

Left click the pivot point at the base of the well. Then add mesh by SHIFT +A →plane. Add two loop cuts and edit the vertices by growing G along X axis and duplicate 2 planes along X axis. Add another loop cut horizontally and press K to knife for other planes also. Make duplicate of the 3 tiles(planes) and rotate it to get the aligned shape. Create one more line of tiles(planes) before the previous one by SHIFT+D. Make all tile ununiform by using sculpt mode or  proportional selection.

Select all the tiles and CTRL+J to become one object. In order to separate all, select all P → by loose parts. Join them by clicking CTRL+J. Set origin to geometry and place our 3 lined tiles on to the roof pillar. Do all these for the other side of the roof pillar. You will get a model as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6

4. Adding color to the object

Select the objects in object mode, in properties panel select WORLD. Under the diffuse properties, change the color by HEXCODE value for each object. Repeat the steps for other objects and change the HEXCODE VALUE.

Different types of views like top view, front view and side view are provided in Figure 7.

Figure 7

The final blender model of a well is shown in the Figure 8.

Figure 8

Conclusion

A basic model of designing a well is done using Blender-A 2D/3D modelling open source software. A lot of animation movies nowadays make use of Blender to design their 3D animated characters. Popular movies like Next Gen, Spring, Cosmos Laundromat, Agent 327, Hero, Alike, The Daily Dweebs, Darrel, Sintel and The Missing Scarf was developed using Blender.