Hi all! this is my first real “project”. I have been doing different tutorials online, and we are learning blender in (one) of my computer science classes. I thought I’d make some pencils (Don’t ask me y, but for a first project, they are easy 
I’m new to blender, so anything you have to say would help! Thanks!
B.T.W. Im also new to this forum so sorry if i post this in the wrong place 
-Drummeralec
Not too bad, but try adding a bit more specularity.
It looks plastic I’d say remove spec, make it harder, set Ref to 1…
i agree wid B3D00 start by remove specular from the tip and the eraser and se how it looks. Also The tips look a little “short” you should pull the outermost vertex out a little bit.
Thanks For the help. I will try to work on it a little more this weekend., and work on the materials a little more.
B.T.W. This is a random question, but if anyone could help at all that would be great-
At my school, we used to have access to almost any site we want, but now the district has blocked any site outside of the us 
(I’m in Texas). That means we don’t have access to this site or the blender website (And a lot of other blender resources around the net that are not in the U.S.). I doubt their is a solution to this problem (Without breaking school rules), but if anyone knows some other way i can access blender.org that would be great. Thanks!
-drummeralec
no sites outside the us!? that’s insane! well the first thing you can do is complain about it to your headteachers or w/e. Failing that, use a proxy website to get past the filters.
Pretty sure that using a proxy would break the rules. I had similar problems at my school a few years back. Only a handful of pages were whitelisted, everything else was blacklisted. It was horrible. Our solution was to use the macs in the art rooms as they didn’t have the filter.
Texas… that’s too bad. But is it necessary to access blender sites during school?
(High, middle, or college?)
It’s at my high school. Its not our school that blocked it, its the entire district. (some new network or something like that idk). Its not necessary, but during my computer classes it would be nice to use the blender docs. (for help with modeling, keys, tutorials, ext.) And its not just blender sites that i want to access, other sites we might use, the main one is a radio station out of the UK we all used to listen to while we worked (Don’t ask):rolleyes:. Anyway, its not that big a deal. We are working with accessing the wiki docs offline, and even if we don’t get it working, we will be fine with out them. 
And whats so bad about Texas? :rolleyes: 
The sharpened wood part of the pencil should be smooth, not rigid. Select the faces that make up that part of the pencil and do Set Smooth
Erasers are also too shiny and perfect looking.
Ya, im working on that at this very moment. Although the Set Smooth thing does not seam to be working too well, so i’m trying to subsurf.
i’d try to make some sort of wood texture and add a ray mirror to the metal bit.to make the end smooth you might try(in edit mode) selecting those tan faces and hit p to remove them from the mesh and make a new separate mesh. then hit set smooth.
Right on, fight the political power!! The corporations have been controlling your freedom for far too long, YEAH!
On a serious note, why are the pencil’s shadows so low resolution? Is this Game Engine? It looks like it. Also, concerning the pencil’s tips, make the entire model smooth, then go into edit mode and select the wooden parts (Not the tip) and press SHIFT + E. Then pull the mouse as far away as you can, that’ll sharpen the polys. Click to apply. I’m pretty sure it only works with subsurf, though.
I had the same problem at my school. They would block any site that had the words “game”, “personal”, “blog”, and get this… “internet” (plus more). That meant almost no sites could be accessed. Well my computer programing teacher told me about the program he uses. It’s called Ultrasurf. As long as you have a flash drive you can with this program on it you can connect to different proxies automatically based on connection speed. It should get you past any blocks. http://www.ultrareach.com/