Quick start trouble

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hello,

I’m a total 3d rookie trying to work through the Quick Start guide (Chapter 4) in the blender 2.3 guide. I’m on Ubuntu Linux and using Blender 2.41. I’ve gone through the first 3 chapters and I’m now on the chapter 4 Quick Start section (the Gus tutorial).

First question: Given that the book is 2.3 and the program is now 2.41, is the Quick Start guide still okay to follow?

The reason I ask is that, when I try to do the first erasure of vertices (page 58 if you have the book), the vertices don’t seem to erase. I’ve tried it several times and they don’t seem to go away. I’m usually pretty good at following directions and can’t see where I’ve gone astray, yet the vertices remain after every attempt to erase them. I figure this means I’m either doing something basic wrong (very likely) or the guide’s out of date. If it’s the former, I’d appreciate any help.

On the other hand, if the Quick Start guide does happen to be out of date, is there a similar guide somewhere on line that’s more up to date? I’m a “big picture” kind of guy and would like to go through one of these simple start-to-finish tutorials to get the feel of the overall program.

Any and all help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt Jordan

2

After further experimentation, it seems that I’m not selecting all the vertices in the stack for some reason. I discovered this when I repeated the erase sequence three times. For some reason, the LMB box select is only selecting the top row of vertices, so doing it three times finally clears them all out. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks again,

Matt Jordan

3

Hi Matt,

I don’t have the 2.3 guide, and don’t know what the instructions are on ‘page 58’

I’m not sure what you mean by “stack”.

One possibility / quirk that you may be running into (or not), is that if you press ‘b’ twice in a row, it will switch from a ‘box select’ to a ‘circular region’ select. It that’s the case the circular-region-select-mode remains active until you press ESC and will ignore the DEL key (if that’s what you were using to delete the vertices) (A circular cursor remains present when you’re in that mode).

If that’s not the case, not sure what else could be happening. If you can post a screen grab, might be helpful.

Mike

4

If you’re in Solid Mode, some of the vertexes in back may be hidden and unelectable.

(Edit Mode in the 3D window header + Z key or Solid under view port shading menu Draw Types)

There’s a button with a box on the far right. (Limit Selection to Visible)
Click it and any hidden edges and vertexes should appear.
Or you can operate in Wire frame Mode.

(Toggle Z key again or select Wire frame viewport shading menu Draw Types)
I think the “Gus” Tut doesnt take this feature into account.

5

Mike,

Thanks for the reply. I’m certain it’s not the circular region problem.

Chapter 4 in the 2.3 guide, and in particular, the section I’m stuck on (page 58), corresponds roughly to this online tutorial.

“Stack” was my clumsy way of referring to the vertices behind the vertices I can see in front view mode, the ones not in the same plane.

The step I’m on in the tutorial is intended to select all 9 vertices on the left side of the cube. For some reason, only the front 3 visible ones are being selected and then (when I press X) deleted. At first, I thought no deletion at all was occurring, but then I realized that it only looked that way because I was in front view mode. If I perform the box select/delete steps 3 times, all of the vertices go away. Doing this solves the immediate problem of having to delete the nine vertices at this step in the exercise, but it leaves me so far without a way to select multiple vertices that aren’t in the same plane.

Matt Jordan

6

rwv01,

I saw your reply after posting my answer to Mike. That seems to be what the problem was. Wow, I bet that trips up a lot of first attempts. Thanks.

Matt Jordan

7

YABB ! (Yet Another Blender Button) :smiley:

Never used it, but its handy to know about.

Mike

8

Matt,

If you don’t have “tooltips” on (user preferences/View & Controls), you might want to turn it on, to get at least “brief clues” on what a button will do :slight_smile: I think tooltips defaults to on … not sure. Also pressing CTR-U (File/ Save Default Settings will save all your user preferences AND your current screen layout, … which you’ll then see anytime you do a File/New.

…And if you load any example /downloaded files, if you click off the “Load Ui” button in the OpenFile dialog, then your current Ui setup is preserved.

Mike

9

It was actually a fairly big deal when we got this feature.
Before all verts were always visible in Edit Mode, So if you had a really dense mesh you could have a hard time isolating the ones you wanted.

10

Okay, I’m starting to think that the Gus tutorial is so out of date that it’s really not the thing for a rookie walk through.

I’m basically on the very next step, making the left arm. I box select the necessary vertices and then try to follow these directions:

Pres EKEY and click the Extrude menu entry to extrude them. This will create new vertices and faces which you can move and which will follow the mouse. Move them to the right.

The problem is that, when I click EKEY, I get a menu with these choices (which I’m sure you’re all familiar with):

Extrude
Region
Individual faces
Only edges
Only vertices

The tutorial says nothing about these choices, so I’m at a bit of a loss, but I note that I’m to “create new vertices and faces.” So that would seem to eliminate all but the first option, Region. (“Extrude” in the menu seems to be only a heading; clicking it does nothing.)

The problem is that when I click on Region, I seem to be automatically constrained with respect to direction, and that doesn’t fit with the next part of the tutorial which explains how to constrain movement.

So again I’m thinking I should abandon this tutorial and find something else to do as an introductory exercise.

I’ve watched the Elephants Dream “making of” videos over at YouTube, and I gather that Blender has had some fairly major changes since the 2.3 guide was published. The Guide was written for 2.31 and only includes 2.32 info as an appendix, so it makes sense that it would be somewhat out of date for 2.41. If I were (or, to put it more hopefully, when I become :D) more knowledgeable about Blender and 3D in general, the Guide would probaly still be useful for at least some things. But as things stand it doesn’t seem to be the way to go to learn Blender from scratch.

I really like the Gus tutorial approach, i.e., working through a cookbook recipe to get my feet wet, and then moving into more depth with each of the various topics, having the Gus tutorial (or something like it) in my recent experience as reference. It’s a good strategy for learning and I’m sure that’s why it’s in the Guide that way. But again, the Gus tutorial itself is looking like it’s more of a hinderance because of the advancements in Blender since it was published.

So is there something similar online for a beginner to follow instead? I’ve been googling, but I haven’t come up with anything.

Thanks again,

Matt Jordan

11

I finally found this, after a round-about series of links. Weird that it didn’t show up earlier, but it seems to be the 2.41 version of the Gus tutorial. I’m going to start over with this version and see if I can actually get something accomplished tonight.

Matt Jordan

12

Okay, this tutorial is going a little better, but I’ve run into another road block. I give Gus arms and legs, but when I apply the mirror modifier in object mode, the vertices for the body seem to disappear. Later, when I’ve added the cube for the head and then added a subsurf modifer, only the head seems affected, not the trunk.

Backtracking a bit, when I applied the mirror modifier, I saw this dialogue:

Applying will delete mesh sticky, keys, and vertex groups.

The tutorial makes no mention of this dialogue, so again I’m wondering if I did something wrong. In any event, when I get to the subsurf step, I’m only able to subsurf the head. So far, this 30 minute first lesson is turning into hours of (mostly mild) frustration. :confused: I’m basically stuck at this step and would appreciate a way out. :smiley:

And here’s the tutorial I’m trying to follow.

Matt Jordan

13

You usually don’t want to apply a modifier, until possibly the model is completed. Even then I’m not sure when you’d “apply” the modifier.

“Applying” basically means to “bake” or make the modifier permanent, and generally will not allow you to further edit the mesh with the modifier affecting your edits.

Modelling is not my speciality, someone else can proably better explain when and how apply would be used.

Mike

14

Hmm. Then I definitely don’t understand this part of the tutorial:

We’re done with mirror modelling. In the next steps we will experiment with other techniques. We need to make the right part of our model real since nothing done with modifiers is permanent unless we apply the changes. With Gus being in ObjectMode TABKEY click on the Apply button of the Mirror modifier.

Matt Jordan

15

I’ll take a look at that part of the tutorial, and see if I can figure it out, …I actually started looking for up to date info on Extrude (menu) :slight_smile:

I don’t know why the author said “nothing done with modifiers is permanent unless we apply the changes.”

…Ok, I understand now. When you click apply, the mirror modifier will create an actual mesh… which e.g. for a left/right arm, where you probably want to be able to animate each arm seperately, then applying the mirror will create a seperate arm.

If for example, you were modelling a head or face and had no intention of animating it, you could use the mirror modifier so that you only had to model half the face. You could leave the mirror modifier “un-applied”, and still end up with a “permanent” left/right side of head, for rendering … etc other purposes.

Another example is the ‘armature’ modiifer. That is usually never “applied” AFAIK.

Mike

16

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showpost.php?p=592374&postcount=2
the behavior of the exturde tool has changed to default extruding along the normal of the selected faces

if after you start the extrude you hit the middle mouse button it will become un-constrained…

After extruding then LMB’ing to complete, the vertices are still selected, so you could also just start a g(rab)/move operation to position them where you want them.

Mike

17

That’s how I understand the intent as well, but when I do it according to the instructions (unless I’m screwing something up), I seem to actually lose the entire mesh for the trunk (both right and left side). So when I do the subsurf step that comes right after adding the head, only the head gets subsurfed (if that’s a word). I don’t seem to be able to select the trunk in any way that will allow me to use subsurf on it.

Matt Jordan

18

That one I did get figured out, but thanks.

Matt Jordan

19

Hmm, “apply” works ok for me.

Check to see that maybe you didn’t accidentally click on any of the layer-visibility buttons (the grid of 20 buttons in the header of the 3d window). That would effectively hide your object.

You can turn all the layers on/off by toggling the ‘`’ (accent grave … key next to the ‘1’ key :slight_smile: ). More than likely you are modelling on layer 1, and you can also just try pressing the 1 key (top row … NOT NUMPAD) to toggle the layer 1 … 2-9 toggle the rest of the layers, SH+{NUMBER} will toggle in additional layers. ALT{SHIFT}+{NUMBER} toggles layers 11-20.

Also, if you haven’t already, I’d recommend splitting your windows up, and making one an Outliner window, then click on the View menu within the Outliner window and toggle the view from “View Schematic”, to View Outliner. This will give you a textual listing of all the objects in your scene. You can then select an object from the list. After selecting the object, if you press NUMPAD-period, while your mouse cursor is hovering over the 3d view, the viewport will zoom to that object. (Pressing HOME will frame all objects).

You can also rename your objects in the edit buttons under the Links and Materials tab in the OB:(ject) name field.

If you have a copy of the file where your gus-body, disappeared, and want to upload it somewhere (savefile.com??), I can take a quick look and try to see what the problem is.

Mike

20

The body doesn’t disappear, only the vertices do. Then, when I add the head and do the subsurf bit, only the head gets subsurfed - not the body. I’m unable to select or manipulate the body in any way.

Two screenshots. The first is of the finished body right before the apply mirror step. The second is after the apply mirror step. Notice that there is no lattice-work of vertices visible in the second shot. That’s seems to be the problem.

http://www.mattjordan.com/images/shot01.png

http://www.mattjordan.com/images/shot02.png

Mine stops looking like the tutorial at this point,since theirs still has the lattice-work visible.

http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Image:Manual-Part-I-Quick15.png

Obviously if it’s working for you, then there’s something I’m doing wrong, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.

Matt Jordan