Here’s a few questions that are really easy, but I don’t know them, so can you help me?
Okay, #1)What is bumpmapping, how do you use it?
2)What’s some more ways to model animals or something? Right now I only use the method of making a UV sphere and lattice around it as a parent and form the lattice.
3)How do you use nurbs, I’m lost.
Thanks for any info.
Bumpmapping is simulating ‘height’ by using textures… it’s called normal mapping in blender… f.i. a bumpmap can be used to simulate small grooves on a rock orso…
There are many ways to start modelling … it depends on your preference… you can start alot from a cube for instance… there’s lots of tuts here on in the forum about this… actually anty modelling basic tut will do to get you started.
Well… I’d start with basic modelling before going to nurbs… nurbs are used to model organic / flowing surfaces… nurbs for instance are a good tool to model a car… but also alot of ppl do it without nurbs…
There’s alot about this in the blender documentation…
md01
/me puts hat on
Bumpmapping is the fine art of faking a change in the normal direction to a surface accordingly to the value of a texture.
You can fake a scratch, uneveness, ruggedness etc, just via a texture. The objects stays flat, but the light changes faking ‘bumps’
THis is opposed to displacement mapping (q.v.)
I usually add a plane, delete 3 vertices. I have 1 vertex. THen I start extruding around, scaling rotating moving etc.
From the sphere you are quite limited in the shapes you can attain.
I don’t use NURBS, their current implementation is not optimal.
Much better to use SubSurface.
Stefano
Thanks, I’ll be using subsurfaces a lot more.
click the modelling thread link in my signature.
Subsurf is definitely the way to go. I used to use NURBs all the time but the modelling tools are too limiting and cause a lot of frustration, especially when modelling creases - NURBs try to make everything smooth and it ends up looking fake. And not just in Blender, I’m talking about in general - I used to do it in Maya.
The advantages to NURBs are that it gives you nice UVs from the outset. All NURBs models unwrap to perfect squares and so square textures fit really easily. But, you can’t modify UVs on NURBs and the texture placement gets very limited.
NURBs sort of cut down the modelling weight on your computer too because it takes less data to draw a smooth curve but if you use low polys and use subsurf level 1 or 2 for modelling and level 3 or 4 for rendering, then you’ll be fine.
I now only ever use NURBs for simple objects that are going to be stay perfectly smooth like a ball.