WEBVTT 00:00.360 --> 00:02.820 Welcome to empties in blender. 00:02.820 --> 00:10.290 In this video we'll be introducing the concept of an NPC essentially an embassy is a null object that 00:10.290 --> 00:12.230 has no geometry. 00:12.390 --> 00:18.710 They can be used as a hand or to control other objects used as a parent object. 00:18.720 --> 00:24.570 For a group of objects who are we dealing with that very shortly they also have many other uses that 00:24.570 --> 00:29.430 we won't dive into right at this moment but will when we need them in the course. 00:29.490 --> 00:31.790 So let's hop over into blender. 00:32.110 --> 00:36.470 So let's open up a new file in blender and we get the default cube in the scene now. 00:36.480 --> 00:40.500 I'm just going to get rid of that because I'm not confused that's so. 00:40.910 --> 00:43.530 And let's create our first empty. 00:43.530 --> 00:50.030 So you add an empty Much like you would do a mesh object so you could use the add menu on the 3d edita 00:50.030 --> 00:55.120 head or just go shift and a and well that's fortunate. 00:55.130 --> 01:00.180 My mouse was direct there it's an empty and you can see there are eight different types of empty. 01:00.630 --> 01:05.220 Now essentially they all do a very similar thing but depending on the application that you're doing 01:05.220 --> 01:08.840 you may want a different shape or a different type of empty. 01:08.860 --> 01:13.110 So it's more descriptive of the type of control you're going to have. 01:13.110 --> 01:20.100 So for instance if you wanted a single arrow if it was a directional control you were using. 01:20.160 --> 01:25.950 You can see here that this single arrow is great and we can scale it up rotate it round and we could 01:25.950 --> 01:31.920 say the object is pointing that way and then when we move the arrow around we can control an object 01:31.920 --> 01:33.700 based upon its direction. 01:33.720 --> 01:35.140 Very very powerful. 01:35.160 --> 01:41.880 So there are lots of different options for your empty but essentially you go into the ADD menu and go 01:41.880 --> 01:43.830 ahead and add an empty. 01:43.920 --> 01:47.320 Now you cannot create any geometry from that. 01:47.330 --> 01:50.800 They there's no editing them in that sense. 01:50.910 --> 01:54.470 But you can use them later on to control lots of different things. 01:54.600 --> 01:57.600 And we'll be doing that very soon with our chess set. 01:57.630 --> 01:57.930 Right. 01:57.930 --> 02:03.690 So in the spirit of keeping it lean we need to do some things now we need to append the bishop into 02:03.690 --> 02:09.810 our chess scene to see what it looks like as a whole check everything is in the right proportion and 02:09.810 --> 02:11.730 then start filling up our board. 02:11.730 --> 02:18.120 We're going to create the white porn's link duplicates our bishops and pause that's important rather 02:18.120 --> 02:24.570 than just duplicating because we want it to apply across any changes we make we wanted them to apply 02:24.570 --> 02:26.670 across the bishops that we made and the porn. 02:26.670 --> 02:31.400 So we don't have to repeat ourselves and then we'll get on to managing our models. 02:31.410 --> 02:34.840 In this scene let's hop over a blender. 02:35.540 --> 02:36.100 Right. 02:36.140 --> 02:43.600 So we're done with this for the moment let's go and open up our chess scene so it should be in my recent. 02:43.870 --> 02:44.760 Chess scene. 02:44.900 --> 02:49.880 And this is where we left it before so go ahead and open up your chest scene. 02:50.180 --> 02:53.490 Now where we brought our primary whites pawn in. 02:53.750 --> 02:57.790 Right let's go and upend our bishop. 02:58.160 --> 03:06.980 So we're going to go file a pend and go find your low poly bishop in an object we want to select the 03:07.040 --> 03:09.020 low poly Bishop. 03:09.380 --> 03:10.030 There we go. 03:10.040 --> 03:10.970 That's in our scene. 03:10.970 --> 03:15.620 Let's just move that's about I'm going to constrain it to the x y axis so it doesn't disappear through 03:15.620 --> 03:20.560 the floor by holding down a shift and said it's going to pop it next to our pawn. 03:20.600 --> 03:23.460 Zoom in a little Have a look at it in context. 03:23.740 --> 03:24.610 Excellent. 03:24.620 --> 03:26.170 That looks really good. 03:26.600 --> 03:27.340 Okay. 03:27.440 --> 03:32.180 So now we've got four in there we need to start where we need a duplicate of this and we need another 03:32.180 --> 03:34.600 seven duplicates of our porn. 03:34.880 --> 03:42.020 Now before we go ahead and start messing around with our porn's and duplicating them lots on show you 03:42.110 --> 03:44.720 a really neat trick was not really trick. 03:44.720 --> 03:51.350 It's an operation that'll save you a shitload of time later on when you're doing very repetitive tasks 03:51.680 --> 03:55.250 where an array modifier might not be of use to you. 03:55.250 --> 04:01.280 So for instance if we wanted to duplicate this porn and it was a linked duplicate of course we'd do 04:01.360 --> 04:05.130 Oulton Dee and we have our porn here. 04:05.280 --> 04:12.920 Now if I just lock that to the x y axis and just place it down there for instance if I was more accurate 04:12.920 --> 04:23.480 it would be better so I can look down here on the vector where it is and probably six and minus 6 there 04:23.540 --> 04:27.010 go smack bang in the middle of that square now. 04:27.200 --> 04:36.050 If I simply hold down Shift at the same time as are it repeats the last operation to shift Anar will 04:36.050 --> 04:43.910 lay down another linked porn and again will do another link to porn and you can do that as many times 04:43.940 --> 04:44.390 as you like. 04:44.390 --> 04:46.730 It's a very powerful operation. 04:48.110 --> 04:50.390 Okay guys it's Challenge time. 04:50.390 --> 04:52.970 I'd like you to fill out the board. 04:52.970 --> 05:00.620 So remember to link duplicate the porn's and to bishops only making the white pieces at the moment will 05:00.650 --> 05:03.380 do something later on to create all of the black ones. 05:03.500 --> 05:06.870 Now place them in the right starting position on the board. 05:06.860 --> 05:12.140 Now you may have to refer to reference material in order to make sure the boards at the right orientation 05:12.140 --> 05:17.670 for us and then finally create an empty called white pieces. 05:18.140 --> 05:20.420 Pause video now and give that a go. 05:22.180 --> 05:22.820 Okay guys. 05:22.840 --> 05:23.630 Welcome back. 05:23.770 --> 05:26.160 Let's hop straight back over into blender. 05:27.930 --> 05:33.360 Right so I've duplicated down here and I don't want to do that in this case so fortunately I've got 05:33.360 --> 05:35.680 some undo buffer I can exploit. 05:35.790 --> 05:40.440 Now I know that this pawn was placed exactly in the right place. 05:40.440 --> 05:41.870 Were mucking about with. 05:41.870 --> 05:44.570 I think this just go up here. 05:44.880 --> 05:52.650 No not quite it's but I can set it back to zero and zero here and then it's right bang in the middle 05:52.650 --> 05:53.490 of the board. 05:53.650 --> 05:58.470 Then I can turn on snappin because we are using whole units and I can move it to the right position 05:58.500 --> 06:04.150 here and down a little around here before I go any further though. 06:04.380 --> 06:10.380 I know that's from reference material that a the whites white side of the board has the black square 06:10.380 --> 06:14.490 in the left corner and the right and a white square in the right corner. 06:14.490 --> 06:18.300 So that would be this way round or that way round. 06:18.300 --> 06:23.110 So at the moment I'm about set up playing across the wrong way on the board. 06:23.160 --> 06:27.310 I'm going to move that down to there and across to here. 06:27.390 --> 06:29.520 And that should be smack bang in the middle. 06:29.520 --> 06:30.410 Whole numbers here. 06:30.410 --> 06:34.230 Exactly what I want to see over in the transform. 06:34.500 --> 06:39.060 Right so the next thing I want to do is duplicate linked this pawn here. 06:39.060 --> 06:40.650 So that's Oulton deep. 06:40.650 --> 06:47.190 And there we go is linked and I can see that the Z is changing down in the lower left so I do want to 06:47.190 --> 06:51.550 lock the z axis that's not moving and I just want to place it there. 06:51.560 --> 06:52.330 Brilliant. 06:52.350 --> 06:59.260 Now to do the next step I'm simply going to repeat that operation by holding down shift an hour ago 06:59.280 --> 07:03.860 one two three four five six perfect. 07:04.270 --> 07:08.600 Of course what we're looking at here is a couple of in the outline here. 07:08.640 --> 07:16.960 There's lots of Corrections to do so perhaps before I do the repeating I should have renamed it so fortunate 07:16.960 --> 07:20.520 they with the UNDO thing we can do that relatively quickly. 07:20.550 --> 07:23.250 I'm just going to name that white pawn for the moment. 07:23.250 --> 07:29.220 Got to rename it then I'm going to duplicate it lock it to the z axis and move it across. 07:29.430 --> 07:36.510 Then I'm going to hold down Shift and after repeat that process that's much better all the way down 07:36.510 --> 07:36.960 to them. 07:36.990 --> 07:37.460 Brilliant. 07:37.470 --> 07:39.910 And then finally we can do the bishop again. 07:39.930 --> 07:44.670 Now I'm not quite sure where the bishop is so again I'm going to scan the locket to whole numbers and 07:44.700 --> 07:48.450 type in 0 0 0 there. 07:49.650 --> 07:52.260 There's that appeared above the border of maoist type nine. 07:52.260 --> 07:54.970 That's not very clever of me it's next to zero of course. 07:55.350 --> 07:56.670 And there we go. 07:56.690 --> 07:57.740 This 007. 07:57.750 --> 08:03.750 Now with snapping turned on in increments we can move that down and all where does it go it goes there 08:03.750 --> 08:06.970 doesn't hit nights rook night Bishop. 08:07.150 --> 08:09.840 That's fine and goes back one. 08:10.290 --> 08:18.090 And then again a linked duplicate locked to the z axis move it across there and perfet so that chessboards 08:18.090 --> 08:20.790 really coming on now with the pieces on it. 08:20.940 --> 08:26.880 And we've got all of our stuff set up now this hierarchy at long here starting to get a bit messy I 08:26.880 --> 08:29.060 wonder if there's something we can do about that. 08:29.490 --> 08:33.750 And speaking about the hierarchy I have noticed that I don't have an empty yet. 08:33.840 --> 08:39.000 I almost forgot that bit of the challenge so of course I need to go and empty. 08:39.000 --> 08:43.020 Now I've got the choice of empties here and I'm not quite sure which one I'm going to pick. 08:43.050 --> 08:48.120 I think for the purpose of this I am simply going to pick a plain axis. 08:48.120 --> 08:49.710 It doesn't really matter. 08:49.710 --> 08:55.610 It's not going to be much in the way of any use to us and where it's positioned we cancel that out later. 08:55.630 --> 09:02.270 How we do need to name it though some going to rename that and I'm going to name it white pieces. 09:02.280 --> 09:03.160 There we go. 09:03.420 --> 09:06.120 So that's all ready for us later on. 09:06.120 --> 09:11.730 Now we will deal with this hierarchy and organize a in the next couple of lectures so don't worry about 09:11.760 --> 09:12.820 that for the moment. 09:12.960 --> 09:15.690 But what I would like to see is how you guys are getting on. 09:15.690 --> 09:21.450 So please share your results so far in the discussions and I will see you in the next lecture. 09:21.450 --> 09:22.200 Take care.