Vertices, Edges, and Faces!
In this video we're going to learn about Object Mode and Edit
Mode, naming your meshes, manipulating
vertices, edges, and faces, and understanding
their relationship to one another. So let's head straight
on over into Blender!
We've opened up a brand new Blender file. The first thing I'm
going to do is just move that cube up a little. We're going to be working
with this cube, so I'm just wanting to make sure it's above
this plane here. OK, so Object
Mode and Edit Mode, what's the deal there?
Well this cube is an object,
so is this camera, and so is this lamp.
If we have a look on the right-hand side here, I'm just going
to expand the Outliner. So this Editor here is
called the Outliner, and it lists here the
objects in our world. Now if we have a
look at the Cube, we see it has this
triangle next to it, and that triangle means that this cube is a
mesh. Now currently the Lamp is selected.
If we go down to the 3D Header Bar and
click on Object Mode, we can see there's nothing else to do. However,
if we select the Cube, either in the Outliner or in the
3D Editor itself, we then get some more options.
At the moment, we only want Edit Mode. If we click
on Edit Mode, it goes into that mesh and
enables us to Edit it. Finally,
you can toggle between Edit Mode and Object Mode,
using the Tab key.
With only three objects in our world, at the moment, it's
quite easy to distinguish
them from one another, however, as you build
more and more complex meshes, you'll want to name them to make sure
you can find them again, select them, and manipulate them.
So if we have a look on the right-hand side, we can
see that our mesh is called Cube. That's an accurate description
of what it is on the screen. You can also see the name of that mesh,
if I enable the Properties
Pane in the 3D Editor or press the N key. um, Mid-
way down on here there is, here we go, under the Item
dropdown you see it says Cube. So you can either change the name
here in the Outliner or in the Properties Pane
of the 3D Editor itself. So if we change that one here to
Cube1
we can see it changes in two places. I couldn't think
of a better name for it. So that's how you name
your meshes. Let's go and edit that Cube
and make it into something else.
So I'm just going to do a bit of tidying up, because I'm
quite lacking space here. Right let's
zoom into this cube, so we can have a closer look!
So on the 3D Header Bar
you have three buttons next to one another, Vertex Select,
Edge Select, and Face Select. Now when
Vertex Select is selected, we're able to select
each one of these vertices individually. The same is
true when Edge Select is, we can select all the edges,
and finally faces, you've guessed it, you can select
faces! Now the really cool thing about this is, if I select a face, like this one
on top, and then click Edge Select, it changes now
to selecting all of the edges that made up that face. And
similarly, if I now click on Vertex Select, we've now selected all the
vertices that make up those edges, which make up that face.
Now we can start manipulating our model!
So how do we do that? Well over here,
on the left-hand side, we have some options,
Translate, and if we hover over...
Ooh I'm already doing it, I'm just going to escape out of that. With Translate,
if we hover over it, you can see it's got the shortcut G. Rotate
has the shortcut R, Scale has the shortcut
S, etc. So if you ever want to know what a shortcut
key is, and it's not apparent straight away, if you hover over any of these
buttons, if there is a shortcut you can see what it is.
So now, if I press G I can move all of those vertices up
and down, or indeed, we're moving that face at the same
time, it's the same thing. If we press the R key to rotate,
we can rotate that face around. At the moment, it's
around an arbitrary point in space, and scale
with S, we can make the top much much smaller.
Excellent! So we've got some sort of funky pyramid going on there!
Now what happens if we don't want that shape, if we want to actually
edit the shape itself? Well we can start going in and deleting
stuff. So let's select edge, click this
edge, and then go to the menu Mesh,
and we can see Delete and we've got an X there, so we can hit
X and select Edges. Now that's deleted that
edge there. Now because these two faces
relied on the edge existing, it's now
gone. So with this we could make a brand new
shape. Let's delete this vertex down
here. I'm going to press X and delete the vertices.
Now I'm going to join up
this vertex here and this one here, by holding down Shift,
while selecting. I'm going to go to Mesh,
Edges, Make Edge or
Face, and it's got the shortcut key F.
So that has made an edge there. If I now
highlight these two vertices and press F,
it will make an edge there, and if I highlight these two
and press F but there's no faces left.
Well we can simply select the third.
Remember a face must exist of at least three
vertices and three edges.
And press F, it actually fills that space in with a
face. I would do it there
and we'll do it here as well.
So there we go, we've filled in all of those. Ah no,
we haven't, we've forgotten the bottom!
There we go, so we've now got a completely solid
and new shape from our cube!
It's challenge time! I'd like you to create a wedge!
So starting with a cube, create a wedge. Make
sure you name your mesh Wedge, and finally,
it should look something like that.
Variations on the theme are accepted. So pause the video now, go off,
and try and make your first wedge!
Welcome back! How did you get on? Well in
the next lecture, we'll show you the process for making that wedge!