I’m just starting with Blender and I’m completing the Introducing Character Animation With Blender 2nd Edition Book. It’s a great book so far but it can be a bit vague at times.
I guess it would be hard to describe what I have to do without the pictures in the book, but I’ll try. I have to model a hand for the Captain Blender model and the part I’m at is where the fingers will be extruded from the hand. I’m supposed to select the four topmost faces on the back of the hand in top view and cut them in a U-shape with the knife tool. The book says to do this by “pressing and holding the K key while click-dragging the mouse over the edges in the mesh you want to cut”. The problem is, that doesn’t make any sense to me in the context of what I’m supposed to be doing. I can’t get the knife tool to behave in anyway that resembles what’s going on in the pictures. The tool doesn’t interact with the selected faces at all. What am I misunderstanding here about the knife tool and cutting faces into a specific shape?
That book was written and is describing a much older version of blender. That long ago the knife tool was different so it would be describing correctly how the knife tool worked then. See it as a learning challenge to use the current tools t give the same result the book is expecting. If there was more infomation such as screenshots showing what you have and what you want someone may be able to give you a specific solution.
I’ll post a screen of what I got so far. The book wants me to cut vertices in “U” shape into these 4 highlighted faces using the knife tool. The “U” I drew myself in paint, the same way the image in the book wants me to cut. But I can’t figure out how to do that using the knife tool. What am I misunderstanding? The image:
That definitely helps but I’m wondering why or how the Knife tool was changed from being able to freely cut any shape you want to only being able to cut in straight lines? The book was revised for Blender 2.5, so it isn’t that much older than 2.6, is it?
I understand how the Knife Project works but I’m just wondering why the Knife tool (apparently) no longer can cut the faces of a mesh freehand like the tool apparently does in the book example. Was this a change from Blender 2.5 to 2.6?
I’ve done some more research and the knife tool seems pretty simple now, but I’m encountering a new problem. I can’t make any cuts on the faces themselves. And only certain edges in my model will let me cut. The box will just turn red when I put my cursor over either one. The four faces I have highlighted specifically in my screenshot above for example can’t be cut. What would prevent certain faces and edges from being able to be cut?
