Lesson video

Hi, I'm Rebecca, your computing teacher for this Blender unit.

Are you enjoying it? I'm really enjoying this one.

And I'm really, really looking forward to what we're going to get up to in this lesson.

Now make sure that you've already installed Blender from blender.

org, which you should have already done in lesson one with your parent or carers permission.

You should also make sure that you've got a pen and paper handy to make any notes that you might need to, and to remove as many distractions as possible so that you can really focus in this lesson.

Once you've got all of that ready, we can begin.

In this lesson, you will use proportional editing, use the knife tool and use subdivision.

Let's start then with a quick recap on what those three key terms actually are.

So we've got faces, edges and vertices.

What I want you to do is see if you can count how many of each of those are on that picture on the right hand side.

So pause your video while you do that.

Excellent, let's take a look at the answers then.

So faces was seven and if you remember the faces are those, all those bits around the edges that you can see.

So the seven faces on that picture and then you've got the edges and then we're at 12 edges.

It took me a while to count all 12, because there's so many lines there it can get a little bit confusing when you're trying to count them all.

So maybe you missed a few when you were doing it, but the edges are basically those lines that you can see in that drawing.

You've then got vertices, which is quite a tricky one to remember, but it's where one or two more edges meet.

So all those little, I can see them on the video.

There's tiny little black dots, right on the corners of each of those things.

And those are the vertices, so well done if you've got those right.

And hopefully if you didn't get them right now, you know what these things mean.

So what is realistic? And symmetry is considered by some, to be a sign of beauty, but often symmetrical things can look very unnatural.

Symmetrical things in nature often have differences, both tiny and large.

So if you look at that image there on the right hand side, is this head symmetrical? If you look at that first one on the left hand side, it looks symmetrical because you've got the eyes both sides and then down the middle, you've got the nose and the mouth so at first glance, it looks quite symmetrical, but when you actually put a mirror there, you can see that it's not symmetrical at all.

It looks quite odd, in fact, when you put a mirror there, so it's not symmetrical.

So to create natural, organic looking objects, you need to make them look less symmetrical, and everything we've done so far has been quite blocky, hasn't it? We haven't sort of added curves and things to make things look a bit more organic looking so far.

And that's what we're going to do in this lesson.

So we're going to use loop cut, which we've already used and proportional editing to make a tree trunk.

So let's go into Blender and have a look at how we do that.

Let's build this tree trunk then, so I don't want my cubes.

So I click on it and X delete, and I'm going to start with a cylinder.

So I do Add, Mesh and Cylinder, and then it brings me the standard-sized cylinder.

And then in last lesson, we learn about doing S and Z so that we could stretch things.

So we need to do that now for this one.

So S, Z, and now I can stretch it tall.

Now don't worry, you can go taller.

Cause if you keep going off the page, then it will just keep going.

Now I think I'm going to have about to around there.

So that's where I'm going to stop.

Now, we need to put it into Edit Mode so that we can start editing this cylinder rather than just having it as the standard object.

So we go to edit mode and then it changes to look like this.

And we're going to do a series of loop cuts so that we can start separating the cylinder so that it looks a bit more realistic.

So off we go with loop cut so we do Control + R, and then our loop cut, our yellow sort of circle around it there appears, and then we can click and hold.

And then when we're happy we can click again.

We need to do about 10 cuts, but I mean, really it's your tree, you can do as many as you like.

I always try and get it to 10, but it never quite gets there.

So I'll see what I can do at 10 this time.

So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.

Oh gosh, I actually did it.

Oh, no, I didn't.

Let me go make sure I click, okay.

So now I've got 10 loop cuts there so that I can start editing this to make it a little bit more realistic now.

Now the first thing I want to do is make the trunk at the bottom thicker because normally if you look at a tree, you'll notice that it is slightly thicker at the bottom.

Now I want to edit all the vertices around this bottom part.

So I need to make sure, first of all, that I've got Vertex select on there.

Now to select all of them, I click on it once, then a hold on Alt.

And then I click on it again.

Now this happens every so often where it goes the wrong way.

So you just have to click it again a couple of times, and then eventually you'll get the ones that you want.

So now you can see that I've selected all those vertices, all around that bottom part.

And I want to stretch it out.

So I'm going to choose scales or press S on my keyboard, and then I can stretch it out a little bit.

I think I'm going to go about there and then click.

And then I want to select this next one as well.

So it can make this one a little bit wider too.

So can you remember what I did? I had to click there and then what did I hold down on my keyboard? Can you remember? It was the Alt key on pressing Alt key, and then I'm going to click it again and it's done it the wrong way, so I click it again.

Eventually it will work.

Come on, there we go.

I got there in the end.

I had to keep taking Alt off and pressing it again and then it worked.

So now I've got all of these around here and I'm going to scale it again.

So I'm going to press S on my keyboard, like, so, and I'm going to just pull it out a little bit more maybe to about there, that'll do.

Now what I want to do is I want to take this middle part and I wanted to sort of push it out so that the trunk has got a bit of a curve to it.

So again, I've got to select all the vertices here.

So I click on it.

I hold down Alt and I click on it again.

There we go, got it.

Now it's going all the way around there.

And now we're going to start introducing something called proportional editing.

If I go up to this bit here, we've got proportional editing, and I click on there when you've got proportional editing selected.

It's when you're moving things and you're editing things, it tries to keep the proportions within a circle and you'll see what I mean in a second.

So what I need to do now is something we haven't done before, which is move.

And in order to do move, we have to press G on our keyboard.

That's quite an odd one to remember, 'cause you would think, well, surely it's M, but it's not.

So it's G, G, G, G, G, G makes you remember so G.

And then you can see that I've got this circle now because I've got proportional editing selected, I've got this circle that appears.

And at the moment, the circle's quite small.

So it's just keeping that bit there in proportion.

But if I make this circle larger by scrolling down on my mouse, like so, then I can actually move more of it like this.

So now I'm going to do it to about here.

And I'm going to click the button when I'm happy.

Cause I think that looks about right, and I'm going to click and there we go.

So now I've got a nice curve on my palm tree.

And then the last bit to do is just rotate this top part of the trunk.

So I can click on here and I can choose Alt or I can choose the face and just select click on the phase.

In fact, that's what I'm going to do.

Cause it's a little bit quicker.

There we go and now I'm going to rotate it.

So I'm going to press the R on my keyboard and I'm going to rotate it.

Now my proportional editing circle is quite large still.

Gosh, just only takes a little flick of the mouse to get it looking very twisted and strange.

So if I wanted to change those proportions, oh, and I can just scroll back, there we go.

I might have it this way actually.

There we go.

So I can have it this big, trying to think what looks the best now, I think, oh, I think I might go for that one and then stop there.

So that's quite a lot of steps to remember there.

So you might want to do this along with me while doing the video.

Cause there's a few keys that you've got to remember and that proportional editor, there's quite a lot of steps in this one.

So when you're having a go yourself, you might want to just rewind that video and just do it along with me and keep pausing so that you can remember.

Pause the video now, or rewind it and have a go at doing that trunk yourself.

And you've got your skills checklist there so that you can remind yourself of those steps that we were taking.

So pause the video now, while you have a go at that.

Awesome, right.

So what we're going to do next then? So we're going to be using the knife tool next.

Use the knife tool and proportional editing to make palm leaves and add them to your tree.

Sounds exciting, that's how we go.

So this is where we got to before and now I'm going to start adding my leaves to the palm tree.

So I need to make sure I am in object mode.

So I'm just going to change that to object mode.

And then I want to add in a plane, which is a bit like I imagine it as a flat metal sheet that you have to cut out and turn it into that palm leaf.

So when I'm putting it, it always goes to that one spot in the centre.

That's not going to be easy for editing, so I'm just going to move it.

So it's out of the way, like, so, and then I'm going to Zoom into it so I can actually press the decimal point on my number part.

And it takes me straight there.

This time, I want to scale it on the X axis.

So I'm going to press S then I'm going to press X afterwards.

So S, X and now when I drag it, it only drags those two edges out like so, and it gives me a sheet and I want it to be about sort of that big a thing.

And then I can just move around again so that I can get into the right position so that I can start editing it, compress that decimal point again.

And now I just want to make sure that I'm about there.

That's about a good place for you to start editing your palm leaf.

So you want it sort of around that sort of angle.

Go back to edit mode so that I can start using the knife tool to cut out this palm leaf.

So I'm going to find my knife tool, which is there.

I can also press K on my keyboard and it'll do the same thing.

So I've got my knife and don't worry.

It's going to look a little bit blocky and odd, but we are going to make it a bit more realistic as we go along.

So when I go around and start adding in these leaves, like so.

Okay, and then when you're happy, it's still attaches it like that to the mouse.

So what you have to do is you have to say, "Right, I'm happy with that." And you press the Enter key.

If you weren't happy, you could press the Escape key.

And that will clear everything you've done so you can start again.

So now I've got my basic shape.

I need to cut out these pieces, so their faces.

So I need to make sure faces is selected and that I've got the select tool selected as well.

And I'm going to select these faces, so I want to do them all in one go.

So I'm going to hold down the Shift key on my keyboard.

Like so, and then when I've selected them all, I go to X and I want to delete the faces.

So I click on faces and now I'm left with a really rough palm leaf, which we now are going to turn into.

So give it a bit of a curve now, in order to give it a bit of a curve, I have to add more phases to it.

So I need the knife tool again, and you kind of crisscross across over the leaf.

So I'll show you what I mean by that, so you kind of do this so up and down, like so, just one more, don't worry about being ridiculously neat, you don't need to be.

Doesn't need to be straight lines either.

Just rough, straight lines is fine and then when you happy, again, you just press the Enter key.

So that is going to help me do my leaf.

I might just do one more cut there.

That's it, press Enter key.

Now I want to look at the side of it because I'm now going to use the move tool to add a curve, just like we did the curve with the tree trunk.

So I'm going to go back to select mode.

I'm going to select just the centre, one of the centre ones, wherever it is, it doesn't have to be perfectly centre and then I want to move, so I'm going to press G.

Now you'll see, I've still got proportional editing there selected and you might find that you press it and you can't even see that circle.

And you'll be like, "Whatever's going on? That's not doing what I need it to do." So what you need to do is you need to make sure that you have your circle around here, ish, again, tip to you.

It doesn't have to be perfect and then maybe down so that you're adding a bit of a curve to that palm trees I think I'm just going to do I want to do about there, I think, and I'm happy, so I click and now this is where the fun starts because we've got to move it around and try and get it onto our palm trees.

I'm going to go back to object mode so that I can just select that palm tree.

And I make sure that I'm in the select one too.

And I could start looking around to see where my actual palm tree is, I might have to zoom out a bit.

Oh gosh, I've gone from way over there, haven't I?.

So now I want to move this palm tree, so I'm going to to go to the move tool and I'm going to move it part, sorry, the leaf.

And I'm going to try and get it so that it goes up by my tree trunk.

So I'm going to go all the way up here and it's going to take ages to get it actually perfect so that it's on there.

So it's a matter of moving it around until you're happy.

That's not too bad, but what I'm not happy about is the size of my palm leaf.

I want it to be a little bit larger.

So I'm going to press S and I'm going to make it larger so now, it's not quite in the right place, again.

And then I'm going to move it around.

So this is just all trial and error now, you'll have to keep moving it around, changing the angle that you're looking at it like so.

To be fair, I'm quite impressed that I managed to do that fairly straight away.

It can take quite a while to get this exactly right.

So that isn't too bad.

So once you're happy with your one palm leaf you can zoom out and zoom in so that you can really see what it looks like.

Once you're happy with that one palm leaf, what you can do is you can then duplicate it.

So I'm going to duplicate this one.

I'm going to right click and I'm going to go to duplicate, or I could do Shift and D.

And now I've got another one.

So I'm going to put my other one just over here, 'cause then I know it's going to be roughly in the right place.

And this time I'm going to go over to here and I'm going to press the rotate here and I get all these extra options and you can see you've got those familiar colours again.

You've got this one and you've got that one.

And you've got that one and you can pull it so that it stays exactly on the right angle, which is really useful, especially when you're doing this one, 'cause you want to try and make sure that you putting it in the right place.

So once you're sort of roughly in the right place, you can then start to push it in and just hope fingers crossed it's got to the right place.

Not quite, I just need to rotate it a little bit more.

So I'm going to use that one and it needs to rotate here.

Okay, so that's not too bad that one.

So when you're happy with your second leaf, you can then do your third leaf so I'm going to now, do duplicate again, so right click duplicate.

And I'm going to put it here and again, I need to rotate it.

So I'm going to go to rotate and I'm going to go over here and this is a very strange angle.

So again, it's going to take trial and error to get it in the right place.

So you'll find that you have to move the viewpoint around quite a lot in order to get it to the right place.

So if I go from the side view, I think it's too high at the moment.

Whoa, I'm getting into right pickle.

There we go there we go.

Right, yeah it's definitely too high, isn't it? I just need to make it a bit lower.

Maybe push it in a little bit, maybe a little bit higher again.

So then look at it from the angle, okay.

I think that one's done.

All right, we're nearly there.

We're nearly there.

So now I just got to do one more.

So I'm going to duplicate again.

I'm going to move it over this side and then I'm going to rotate.

I'm going to rotate with the blue one like, so, and then I'm going to move up and down a little bit and then I can just double check and see, go all around it just to see what it's looking like.

Okay funny but that's not too bad for my palm tree.

I'm quite impressed with that.

It's probably a little bit too perfect in terms of going across I probably should have put a bit more of an angle on it, but I think that'll do.

And now I've got my palm tree, I can start colouring it in.

So in order to just be able to see the colours, I need to make sure I've got that rendered selected.

It always takes a little while.

And then we can see that our light position is over here, and if I want to move the light, I can use the move tool and I can just move it, might have it higher up actually.

So it's above the tree trunk, there we go and now I can see the colours.

When I start changing the colours, I'll be able to see them a little bit better now.

So I want to do that first one, I'm going to do that first palm leaf, and I go to materials down here and you probably remember all of this.

So if you're happy now and you want to just carry on, you can do that.

But I'm going to show you how to do it anyway.

So I've gone to the material.

I'm going to call it leaf and I'm going to change it to green.

There we go, so now one of them is green.

So now all I have to do is go to the next one and then choose that green and that leaf from the dropdown this time.

So drop down green and then drop down and green, then I just need to do my trunk colour.

So I have to add a new one this time.

So I want trunk and I can change it to brown.

There we go and now we've got the brown trunk and the green leaves.

And then the final thing that's quite a good idea to do 'cause if you wanted to do more trees, it'd be sensible to link all of these objects together.

So if you remember that from before, we need to find the object properties, sorry.

So I go to object properties and at the moment the trunk is called the cylinder, but I can call it, but give it a proper name so I can call it the trunk and I can call this leaf leaf one and then leaf two, leaf three, and leaf four, And then I can join these all together by making the trunk the parent.

So I'm going to go to leaf one, I'm going to hold down Shift and I'm going to drag it down and same with that one, whoops.

And now the trunk is the parent and the leaves are part of it so when I want to move it now, oops.

Not that one, now when I want to move the object around is one thing I can do it like that.

And now I can move the whole palm tree in one go.

So that's a lot to take in, isn't it? So again, you might want to watch along, with me just keep pausing while you have a go that yourself.

Your turn to have a go then by yourself now, and feel free to rewind and pause that video, if you need to, you've got a skills checklist there to help prompt you with what you had to do as well.

So have a go at that, pause the video and then come back when you do.

Excellent.

So final one then.

So subdivision now is what we're going to be looking at.

I'm going to convert planes into oceans and islands using subdivision, and then we're going to add our palm tree.

So let's see how we do that, right? So I've got my palm tree and now I want to start adding in my island and my sea.

So in order to start drawing now, I'm going to have to hide this whole object.

So if I go over here, you can see you've got into the eyeball icons.

If you press those, then it will hide the palm tree, just so that we can focus on doing the sea and the island.

Now, in order to do it, we need to be an object mode.

And we want to go to add mesh and plane and we want to scale it to 40, so in order to do that, all we have to do is type S 40 and then the Enter key.

And then that will give me a new plane and it will scale it to 40, which is roughly the size that we want for our sea.

So this is, if I scroll up, I can see it's now quite large.

And what we're going to do is we're going to use the tool called subdivide to slice up this plane and add lots more faces to it.

So we can start manipulating it.

Now, in order to do that, I need to go to edit and I want to choose edge and go to subdivide.

And then down here, you get a little menu pop up.

So if you click on it, you can choose to subdivide it by 10 and then press the Enter key.

And you'll see what I mean what's going to happen in a second.

If I come off it, you can see that it has been divided into sections and now I need to do it again, but this time for the island.

So I'm going to click on the sections where I want the island to actually be.

So I'm going to select this part here.

I'm holding down Shift on my keyboard to make sure that I can select all of those sections like, so, and then now just sort of divide it again.

So we'll go up to H.

I go to subdivide and I'm going to do it this time with just two, so now press the Enter key.

And then I, when to click off, you'll see, I've now subdivided it even more.

And this means that when we drag up the island in a second, it's going to give us a smoother surface rather than big blocks, like these ones.

So now I'm going to go right to the middle, make sure I've got the select tool selected, which I have.

And I go right to the middle and I want to move this.

So I'm going to press G and I've still got proportional editing selected, which is what I want.

But at the moment it's very, very small.

So I want to make it larger, like so, and then when it's larger, you can see that I can now start dragging up my island, but I want it to be quite tall.

And I might just go a little bit over two like that.

And then another little bit to it as well, so I'm going to go by here, press G again.

And then my whoops, it's too large at the moment.

So I'm just going to make it a bit smaller.

So now I've got another bump on my island I can click it and now I've got my island shaped.

So if I click off can sort of see that.

And if I change it to the render view point now there we go can start to see sort of what's happened in there a little bit and make my light go a bit higher, whoops, take it out of edit mode and be in object mode.

Just move that sun up now a little bit.

Oh gosh, there we go.

But I'm going to keep it on this one 'cause I think it's a bit easier to see, keep it on that one for now.

Right, so I've got my island shape.

Now I want to add in the sea shape.

So I'm going to do exactly the same thing again.

So add mesh plane, can't see the plane because it's hidden by the other one, but I do want to scale it, so I'm going to do S 40 again, so that they're the same size.

And at the moment I've got the sea selected.

So I just want to double check that I'm going to remember which one it is.

So I'm going to double click here and I'm going to type sea here.

And then on the other one on the other plane, I'm going to type island just so that I don't get mixed up because now they're looking very similar locations.

Now we've got our sea.

And if I pull it up a little bit, you can see there now that it starts to look a little bit more like sea around an island rather than big blocks.

So it starts to look a bit more realistic now.

So that's looking a lot better.

So now I'm going to change it to the render mode and I'm going to start editing the colours this time.

So I want the sea to be blue.

So I'm going to click on the sea and I'm going to go to materials and in the materials, I want to add a new one and I'm going to call it sea and I want the sea to be blue.

So I'm going to change it to blue.

Let me go and I'll be a bit lighter than that.

There we are, then click off it.

And then I want to edit the island and make that a sandy colour.

So I'm going to click on the plus and I'm going to call it sand.

I want the sandy to be a yellowy colour, there we go.

And then, if I move it around a little bit, I can start to see my island take shape, which is pretty cool.

And if I want the sea to just go up a bit more, then I can, or if make it go down a bit more.

If I'm not happy with my island, I can go back and I can edit it and pull bits up further if I want to.

So there's lots of playing around you can do to make this look a bit more of a perfect island.

And now we've got our island ready.

We can bring our palm tree back.

So we just need to press the eye on each one of those and my palm trees sinking in the sand at the moment.

So I'm going to select that trunk and I'm going to pull it out so that it's not sunken in the sand.

And I'm going to decide where it's going to go.

So maybe here, and then now when I move around, you can see I've got a pretty cool desert island now that I can do what I want with.

I could put an animation on there, add more things add some fish in the sea, do all sorts of things.

So now it's over to you, but have a go yourself now and you've got your checklist there.

If you want to refer back to it, but there's quite a few steps there so again you might want to just rewind and pause and follow along while you're having a go yourself in Blender.

So pause the video now and come back when you're done.

Brilliant, that's everything that was quite intense again, wasn't it? But now I imagine you feel like you're getting much, much more confident with Blender and you know quite a lot of skills now you should be able to start thinking of your own designs that you might want to do yourself.

And as I said, there's lots of things that you can add to that desert island image that you've just done that animation, not animation, that model that you've just made.

So you might want to add more things to it as well if you've got some time in your day.

So have a go at that if you'd like to.

And if you'd like to as well, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging at Oak National and hashtag Learn with Oak.

Cause I'd love to see all those unique desert islands that you've been doing in this lesson.

Well done, and I'll see you again for the next lesson.