Welcome to Bridging Edge Loops!
So in this video we're going to be learning the power of bridging edge loops,
and then, oops, our pawn is lovely but has
too many polygons.
So just going back to our pawn
being lovely but has too many polygons, taking the lean principle I
pass my pawn straight on to Ben, so he can include it in a chess thing he's working
on. He's says oh, Mike, that's great, but I want it low
poly in style, not just in the polygon count itself.
So we're going to have to bring down our polygon count of our pawn, and a great
way of doing that is with bridging edge loops. So without further ado,
let's hop straight on over into Blender!
So the first thing I'm going to do here is just make our screen space a bit
bigger. I've noticed that, despite working with a tiny space, I'm making it even smaller
for myself. We don't need the timeline along the bottom, and I'm just going to drag that down
and out of the way. And I'm just going to get rid of the Tool Shelf and Properties Pane, so
we've got our pawn nice and big in the scene here,
on the screen. So this is a lovely pawn,
but Ben wants it lower poly. Now, I've already saved us the
pain of going through trying to decimate it, so we could use the Decimate
Modifier in here, and it doesn't matter which
one you do, eventually you get around and, I guess you want the Tool Shelf at this
point just to put flat shading on, so we can see what's happening to the
underlying geometry here. You can see quite
clearly that, either one of these you pick... I mean, Un-subdivide at least
tries to keep the over all thing. And yes, we do get kind of
low poly but the base starts becoming a bit weird and in
places, when we get down to a much lower level, and I
didn't like any of... That's kind of cool, I did kind of like that,
but at the same time, it's not going to be in keeping with any of the rest of
our pieces. So one of the best things we can do is bridging
edge loops. The first thing we need to do is hop on over into Edit Mode, so I'm just going to
undo that modifier I've got going there. So the way that this
works is, we can select each series of edge loops. So let's
do that now! I'm going to, basically, if we look at this one here we've got
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 edge loops, 7 in
total, but we're going to leave the top and bottoms ones because we need them, and
simply select those 5. So 1,
2, 3, 4, 5, and that's using
Alt and holding down Shift to add them. Alright,
and we simply go X and delete all of the vertices associated with
those edge loops, so it's nice and clean. Nothing at that top
and nothing at the bottom, which is great! So
now, we have a slight problem, it looks
like I selected an additional edge loop. Oh, that one was
already selected on our model! Be careful about that! So
let's just go in and reselect those 5.
So when I hopped into Edit Mode, that was actually the last edge that was there. So
X to delete and Vertices. Brilliant! So we've got this
great bit hole in our model. Now, I can't remember how many
segments there were here, but I think it's about 32, but there will be 32
vertices running around that circle and 32 running around this one. It
simply means that we can hold down Alt and select that
edge loop. Do the same with this top one, so holding down Shift
at the same time, so we select them both. Then, under the
Mesh menu, Edges and Bridge Edge
Loops, it will do that for us. Now, the great
thing about this, and this is really cool, so if we go down to this next section here
and go, well I don't want those two there and
just get rid of those. And this is going to leave some holes in our model but
bear with me. I don't want that one, so I'm literally picking,
kind of, control points, I suppose. I do want this edge here and I do want
the one underneath it, so I'm just going to delete that one off. Now, let's move
a bit further down on our model and zoom in. I want to keep that one
but I don't want those, so I'll get rid of those
to that point there, so I want to keep that. So I'll get rid of those,
as well, and then finally, I won't go any
further than that, I think you get the point here. Now, if I select the edge loops that are
remaining, so those four there, and
then, go Mesh, Edges, Bridge
Edge Loops, you'll see that it automatically bridges all of those loops,
so I don't have to do them individually. Now, arguably, looking at that, I can
almost get rid of that, but I think we need that to get the shape right.
It's challenge time! OK, I'd like you to
lower the base polygon count! So open up the base .blend
file and save it as a new file, base Low Polygon,
baseLP, something along those lines. Make sure you are
working on the new .blend file, before you continue, and cut
down the amount of geometry, all the way down to around 100 triangles.
That should get you a descent low poly base. Now,
keeping the circular shape, I'd like you to make sure that the
circle, looking from the top, has 8 edges, so it's essentially an octagon
around its base. OK, pause the video now,
and go and give that a go! OK guys,
welcome back! Let's hop straight on over into Blender!
OK, so we have our chess piece base open
here! Now, the first thing I'm going to do is just clean up my interface a little
around the edges here and just get rid of the Tool Shelf and properties,
just so I can see my base a little better. OK, so we
need to decide which set of edge loops we're
removing. Well, first of all, I'm going to go into Top
View. You don't have to go into Top View, it's just easier to
work with. And I want 8 of these, and I do want them to line up with
the X, Z axis, otherwise it can be a wee bit confusing. So
I want to keep that one, and 1, 2, 3, yeah!
So I want to delete every third edge loop, so I'm going to go 1,
hold down Shift and select those three, miss one and select another
three, and I'm simply going to repeat that around our entire
object. Now, this is a little tiresome, you may think, Oh, I could just go and
recreate it, but depending on the size of the model that you're working
with, that could also be a very gigantic task. At least,
now we've got all the proportions right and everything else. So I'm going to
press X now, and I'm going to delete Vertices. Now,
at this point in time, we just need to recreate it now using those.
I'm going to select everything, pressing the A Key,
and then, finally go to Mesh, Edges,
and Bridge Edge Loops. There's another really quick
way of doing this, we've covered it before. And since we're going to be doing Bridge
Edge Loops several times in a row, when we press space
if you start searching for Bridge Edge Loops, there we go,
I can just press Enter, at that point, and we can see that it leaves a gap.
So I'm just going to select that final edge loop there and this one here...
Whoah, then select the right one, that one there and that one there.
Brilliant! And this time, I can just hit Space again to bring up this search
and press Enter, straight away. Really powerful, being able to
do that, especially if you're doing a lot of repetitive tasks. OK, so
the final set of edge loops, that is 8 yeah, the final set of
edge loops is just to make sure this isn't quite so curvy. And usually,
the best way of doing that is, if we look at the profile running down
here, is to remove the ones in between the points of
inflection. So that would be this edge loop around the
top, not the very top one but that one there. Then, it's got a point here, then
these two can go, leaving that one. These two can go
here, leaving that one. Oh, I'm not holding down Shift,
for anybody watching! That was a bit silly of me! There we go, those are selected.
I want to keep that one, and these can go! Now, it's a
bit... I don't know which one of these to keep, I'm going to keep this very bottom
one, I think, and then, this and I'm going to keep
that coming out, so we've got it defined, coming back out
here. Then, get rid of these three but keeping an edge along
the bottom. OK, I think I'm happy with that! I'm going to press the
X Key and delete the Vertices. OK,
and the final thing to do is, I'm going to select everything and go
Mesh, Edges, and
Bridge Edge Loops. Of course, you could just use the Spacebar again and press Enter.
And that's looking pretty good, but I am actually going to just make
sure a couple of things are working. I'm going to fill in this top, using
the edge loop around the top and pressing F. I'm going to
rotate around to the bottom and select this
bottom one and do exactly the same there, fill in that face.
Now, the final thing I do want to do, because we've been playing about with the geometry here,
is just make sure there are no doubles. So I'm going to open up the Tool Shelf,
select everything, make sure I'm still in Edit Mode, scrolling down
and Remove Doubles. Ah, there's nothing there. And I'm also just going to
make sure the normals are correct. In that case, I'm going to use
Control and N, if you remember from earlier, and just make sure they're
outward facing for us. That's brilliant! The
final thing, that I could have done to begin with is but I decided to do at the end,
was go to File and Save
As, and I'm going to call mine LP Chess Piece Base.
Save As A Blender File. That's great! Let's just have a look at
our details we have here. So vertices, we've got
56 Edges. Faces there and Triangles, those are our
polygon counts; often, a lot of these just get divided up into
triangles anyway, is 108. So that's perfect,
that's met our specification. How did you guys get on?
Share in the discussions, and I will see you in the next lecture!