Well, today I had something of a blender revelation. I hadn’t played with blender much in the past few months due to all the new additions drowning me in too much to learn to use, and the fact that I could never make much of anything nicer than average noobly cube with a glaring light (or ao, I got that far :D) with procedural textures (which reminds me, I need to learn the new texture/shading system…) As much as I hate to admit it, even though I’ve been trawling these forums for much longer than a lot of people here, blender always kinda confused me and I never could get my head around it. It always kinda made me sad when I would see a new person show up and surpass anything I had done in their first two weeks with blender. I’m a person who likes to work with tactile stuff, like modelling in clay or drawing and something I can only manipulate with a mouse in 2 dimensions at a time always was hard for me. But…
I decided to really sit down and work on some organic modelling stuff since I really want to create some ideas I’ve had in 3d and learned some things today. Notably modelling not from primitives or box modelling or extrusion/ss but by ctrl clicking verts into place and manually filling in the faces and edges. Within 15 minutes of practice I made something (a crab type claw) better looking than prettymuch anything I had made before, it just kinda flowed out of the cursor really well and I felt like I could manipulate it better, instead of trying to push and pull things into place I could just make them where they should be. I had never really tried modelling like this before since I was always put off by the fact that it is usually considered advanced and all the tutorials are prettymuch based around box modelling and I thought it would be out of my skill range, but oh no This is probably one of the best ways for people in the “can’t model” group like me to try really get into making nice models, as it offers a different perspective/aspect to modelling that some people may find easier to wrap their heads around, especially those who are somewhat skilled with traditional media, but find themselves at a loss when trying to be creative in blender, especially due to the fact that they can’t just reach into their monitor and grab their model and form it how they would like (a fantasy I admit I had often)
This had really resparked my interest and I hope to participate more on these forums again, both with models and questions, as I have much to relearn and learn about the “new” blender (post 2.4)
Well, I hope this serves as a bit of inspiration to myself and others that enjoy 3d but find it hard to create anything rivalling their “real life” skillset, and I hope it serves a bit as a public kick in the butt to get me back into blender
Post Scriptorum: I almost forgot to tell aforesaid people how to create things point by point. To start, create a new object or an empty object, select it all in edit mode and delete it, and then ctrl-left click to create vertices. Ctrl-left clicking with a vertice selected creates a new vertice connected by and edge to the selected vertice. Ctrl-left clicking without a selected vertice makes a free vertice, but one that is still part of the same object.To make connecting edges or face, select the verts you want connected (at least 2) and press the “F” key. You can rotate the view and click to create vertice points with a sense of depth, but sometimes it can be tricky to get them on the right plane, and you may have ot resort to some vert pushing to get it how you want it. Good luck!