Stymied By Boolean Modifier

Following the tute on creating dice. I’ve got the spheres in place (representing the dots); have them centered. I’ve added the Boolean modifier, selected Difference, and selected the “Dots”. The tutorial isn’t real clear to me at this point. Do I then select Apply? The tutorial suggests to allow ample time for the effect to complete, THEN select Apply. When I do select Apple, Blender squawks that “Modifier is disabled - skipping Apply”

In either event, I’m not able to complete the boolean operation and create the indentations in the die

I think - and this is without knowing what steps you went through - that you are trying to apply a modifier to objects that share data. Since it’s a die it’s probably the dots that you duplicated. You could try to make the meshes single user if that’s the problem. But probably you should learn to do this without using Booleans, which opinion will probably be echoed by others with even a little experience.
Post back if you want to learn why and how.

Thanks, DruBan, for the quick response. This is the tutorial I’m following: http://gryllus.net/Blender/PDFTutorials/08ADice_iTunesU/Dice.pdf Perhaps using the Array command creates shared data - not sure? In any event, I definitely would like to improve my learning curve with Blender. If there’s a better way to do this, I would appreciate learning it!

Thanks again.


Some notes:

Step 1 plain cube subdivided 15 times (use the tool, not the modifier!), no smoothing.
step 2 I used circle from the Looptools addon to circularize the selected verts in step 2 (can’t Blend anymore without Looptools!).
step 3 selected the center verts and moved them along the normal orientation.
step 4 shows the soft subdivision without any supporting loops,
step 5 shows supporting loops added by selecting the existing circle and doing ALT V (rip fill) followed by edge slide (twice, to add two loops). Remove doubles and recalculate normals should be like breathing whenever you are adding geometry.
Step 6: the loops can be edge slid out and in to sharpen or soften the edge.

After all is done you can delete 8 loops per face that are probably not going to be used (each dot only requires six loops), and you might add some loops at the outside edges to sharpen them.

Thought about using a nice transparent material for the render but I don’t have all that high powered a computer and I had already let this post slide too long so here it is. No UV unwrap and no image texture here (but I recommend their use), only face assigned materials not quite matching up to the edge of the depression.

Thanks, DruBan, for the help, but I’m afraid use of Looptools was beyond my learning curve. I’ve added them to my Blender default, but need to learn to use them now.

Perhaps I can come back later and follow your instructions. Thanks again!

You would be better off learning to use the looptools now, especially on an easy project such as this. Boolean modifiers often create very sloppy geometry when if you just spend a few extra minutes, you can do it right from the get go. I have been using blender for close to 4 years and have yet to use the boolean modifier because of the geometry problems it causes.

When a modifier has it’s visibility disabled (eye icon on the modifier header) it gives that warning.

But yeah, I agree with others who tell to avoid boolean as much as you can. It’s commonplace in solid modeling where you have objects with actual volume but not with polygonal modeling.
You could try it in more specialized cases.

You would be better off learning to use the looptools now…

Thanks, JA12. I’ve located a couple of tutorials on Looptools, so I’ll heed your (and others) advice. Thanks!

Looptools has perhaps the easiest learning curve ever. Except perhaps for the new gstretch which is still amazingly easy to absorb considering the power it gives you. Do search for discussion on this forum. Bart crouch’s website really has all the info you need to get you going.