Hi again,
Hopefully just a quickie from me, I’m working on a bezel that is too wide at the base…
I’d like to keep the overall shape but just make the the base plane thinner.
If someone could give me a keyword to google, I think ‘blender width scale’ is too generic.
Thanks.
I don’t think any kind of scaling or shrink/fatten will help with this, given the geometry of the bezel. If it’s part of the surface of the full object shown, then I think you’ll have to add some loops between the base & crest of the bezel and move them down flush with the existing base.
Posting a wire shot would make suggesting a solution a bit easier, I think.
Thanks chipmasque,
The good news is the bezel is a seperate mesh, I’m just in the middle of a test render so will post a wireframe soon.
Because it has a roughly triangular cross-section, if you just drag the separate bezel mesh down some, the base will thin out. Then drag the crest back up to its previous height. In fact, scaling the bezel mesh in its height (Z?) and then dragging it down may suffice.
I’ve tried a few things but all of them changed the overall size, I need it to have the same laydown, just a bit thinner.
So there isn’t a ‘relevant scale’ function or something similar that I haven’t made up? 
Yeah, I’d go with my first idea. Use Edge Ring Select to select the sides of the bezel (just the edge ring not the entire face(s)) and subdivide to pop a loop between the base and the crest. Select the new loops and drag them down flush to the current base level and it will be thinner but the same height. If you need to adjust the thinness more delicately, use Edge Slide to drag the new loops into place before dragging down to the base level. You can enter a normalized numeric parameter for Edge Slide that will make sure both loops move the same amount.
thanks again, I ended up using a combination of ideas, I selected the inner and outer base loop (edge ring) and scaled them seperately. I also sunk the whole mesh into the face/panel beneath it…
Been having a think about this and I think it would be neater and more flexible to try and do it the same way I did those side handles, with a nurbs path.
The trouble is I’ve drawn the path…
…but it seems the only thing I can assign to the path is a nurbs circle.
So do I need to use a different path type or push a nurb circle into shape?
Half filled, bevel set more than 0 bezier, all selected points could be rotated by Ctrl-T to orient as needed. Use that in one go.
It took me a long time to work out that ctrl t in object mode doesn’t mean it isn’t working.
The picture helped alot btw.
So I tried bevelling the path I’d drawn and it worked but it was at the wrong angle, no problem I thought. ctrl t… didn’t work.
Ok, I’ll use a bezier curve like in eppo’s example… can’t mirror that, no problem, I can add points with a subdivide so I’ll postion it by hand… looked rubbish.
Like I said I eventually worked out you could rotate/transform the path (when you’re in the right mode) and then bevelled and you can even extrude to give it a flat edge on top, that’s pretty much all the control you could need and it’s flexible too so you can easily tweak it later on, which is great.
Got there in the end, thanks eppo
A bit like 60ties 70ties, nice project overall. I like the upper one. Wish i had a means to something like this for my ancient electronics projects.
Texture to centre black panel, slight Noise bump maybe?
Glad you figured it out with bezier curves, they actually could be mirrored in edit mode. You just need to select points, Shift-D and Ctrl-M on x or y axis.
Anyhow, it’s nice to see such a technical projects around.
Good luck!
Hey eppo,
About the mirroring a circle thing, mirror worked the issue was it was a closed circle and I couldn’t break it into an open path. The bezier path was the way to go once I figured out why it wasn’t rotating 
I agree about the noise bump, are you talking about the big middle panel? (with all the controls on it)
It is simply a case of making a noise texture in photoshop and using the texture section of Blender or is there a better way to do it.
Thanks for the feedback, glad you like it 
Btw I did try and search out the answer to the question about the noise but didn’t turn up anything. If I don’t hear back I’ll stick a post in the rendering section.
That link helped thanks, so it’s a case of adding a musgrave texture node and mixing it in with the output?
Text is photoshop, I was going for a recessed lit effect, not good?
.lol. first time for a long had to reach for a dictionary… “An indentation or small hollow”. Not exactly what could be seen. More looks like silk traffaret paint right now, if you know what i mean.
Musgrave is handy as a built in one- you could tweak a bunch of parameters. Generally any greyscale will do, even self-portrait ;). Higher resolution and bit depth - better, less blocky.
Anyhow, here’s some test file, hope helps get some ideas.
Sorry, I forget. Your english is really good.
Man, every time you reply to one of my questions/queries it makes me realize how much more I have to learn about blender! Dammit!
Thanks for the blend file too 
So, getting back to the noise thing. I’m having a mess around and i couldn’t find ‘multiply’ from your example so I tried this…
){kind=small}
It’s a bit ‘ghetto’ but it works, what do you think?
Need a big list… 
One more… 
Thanks, I would never have found that
Here’s the new noise in practice…
I prefer it to using noise in photoshop, seems a bit more genuine to me.
Drag to a new window to view or rightclick ‘view image’
Fashionable. You’re buying me with lowered glow on OMNISPHERE too ;).
One question/concern (raises hand). Isn’t it so that you’re trading a lot of user’s screen’s real estate if this is meant to be software interface (is it?)?
