Should be simple - Rectangle horizontal to camera

Support Modeling
1

Hi,

I am very new to blender, but I have read many tutorials and have decent (but not great) understanding/command of Blender’s UI and basic techniques.

I have been trying for hours to do something which I thought would be easy but for me thus far is not; which is, building a rectangle that is completely horizontal to the camera and has a rounded front edge.

The problems:

  • When I create a cube and scale four verticies to resize the cube to greater than the width of the camera view, I can not get the rectangle to align on all sides to the grid.
  • The camera seems to have a horizontal view of the rectangle but the grid seams to schewe - I want the rectangle horizontal to the camera and grid.

Can you provide any steps to create a cube, size it so its’ width is larger than the screen but its’ height is scaled to about 1/2 an inch in the Camera view and is aligned to the grid?

Any of your thoughts, recommendations are welcomed.

Regards,
ServerStorm

2

Hi I solved this.

It ended up being easy, I just needed to find the correct techniques. In a nut shell:

  • Place cube on aligned to grid in top view
  • delete default camera (or move it) and then create a new camera that you align to the front of the cube using the transform (N Key) window
  • split the 3d interfaces into at least top and camera view; I used top, side and camera as well as a Outliner view
  • In camera view slied the cube to the left so that it is aligned to the grid lines just outside the outer camera’s view
  • Select the 4 vertices on the right side (In edit mode), hold down shift and select G (grab) and then resize the cube to the right until you line up with the grid just to the outside of the camera’s right view
  • Now you have an extended cube that faces the camera exactly horizontal. Next we set the rounded edges.
  • Go to edit mode and select all vertices using A. Hit the W key and choose subdivide 6 times (You may have to do it more if your rectangle is really big - 6 worked great for me.
  • Then hit F9 aand under Mesh Tools hit Smooth 3 to 4 times, you should notice the cube edges starting to round. Continue doing this - I did it 3 times - until you are happy. Try rendering every couple of smooths to see the true effect.
  • Thats it… hope this helps someone else :slight_smile:

Regards,
ServerStorm