Welcome to the edge splits modifier.
So in this video we're going to be focussing on creating our free for model the body of our web night.
We're going to be insuring the faces are not triangulated when being created to keep with our style
so we don't we can have a render window open just so we can spot if that's happening.
We're going to be introducing the edge split modifier and that's going to help us with the issue.
We're going to suffer when modelling this night.
And essentially what we're going to do here this is the basis of organic modelling.
So is a great introduction to more organic forms a horse being an animal.
So let's hop straight on over into blender.
Right so we have the bass that we've just created and let's hop over to a side view.
Let's grab the right view.
Excellent.
So we need to do a bit of modifying the bass here we can see that the night itself is much chunkier
than the other the other pieces on our board so I didn't mean to move away I wasn't holding down the
right key.
So we're going to select these couple of edged loops at the top and just pull them out slightly.
But before we do that if I move our model around now that we've got selected if I'm just scale that's
you can see on our model that it separates on the mirror modifier or it pushes through and creates horrible
geometry.
So before we do that it's escape out of it and just turn on under the options on the mirror modifier
clipping.
And this is a great example of what it does is it doesn't allow it to go through itself.
Great.
So let's hop over into the right hand view again and just scale that out ever so slightly.
So it's a good starting point for the rest of our night.
This top edge loop in fact I'm going to remove I don't think I need it in this case.
I'm going to delete it.
I'm going to delete the vertices so the edge is coming down from it as well or so get removed and the
select this.
Loop around the top.
Make sure it is selected because it doesn't go all the way around because that it's over there does
not exist.
Flip back over into the right view and I'm simply going to extrude upwards.
It doesn't really matter if we slight slant going forwards and back.
I'm just going to put in a basic I'm going to place it.
Every time there's a change in direction just helps with the model itself because I don't want too much
detail but I do want to keep enough for it to go.
Now has in place in this I'm going to have to do some scaling or rotating or doing something with it
in a moment in order to make it go round the horse's head.
So on this next one that we extrude up and then to place it roughly.
Think about there.
But this time I press the archey to move it round.
No we don't do it too quickly otherwise it will screw the horse's head into itself and we don't want
to do that.
I'm just going to move this one round as well.
Okay.
So that's starting to look quite good moving around there before we carry on.
Let's just have a look at our model already.
I'm going to turn on the meche analysis we had a look at earlier and I'm going to turn it on to distortion.
Set it at just one degree there and zero over here.
Now there's no collars on our model yet.
And that's because our mirror modify is turned on.
So if I click with a thought I will see that.
Well we've got some planer quads but also some non-paying quads going on.
So if we hop over insoo rendered mode on the viewport shading here we can see was starting to get some
triangulation going on and that's not what I want.
Now we could go through and we can try and correct this.
But there's a great tool that will solve this for us.
First of all what we do need to do is just make this window do windows so we can see what goes on on
one side.
Okay.
So in object mode on the tool shelf you can enable smooth shading and it makes it look a bit odd.
Being so low poly However in our modifiers we can add a modifier another one.
So where it says add modifier we can have a drop down drop up depending on your size of screen and we
can enable if I can see it the edge split so it's the fifth one down on it's probably further down than
that.
It's the sixth seventh one down.
One two three four five six is the second that on the generate column.
Now when we put the edge split modifier on what that does with a smooth model is when the angle between
two faces is more or two edges rather is greater than a certain amount in this case we see lower down
our edge split modifier the split angle is 30 degrees.
Now if I decrease that it becomes more and more blocky and obviously if I increase that all the way
up to 180 it goes smooth everywhere.
It's a great way of making a model with angles it's not the only way but it is one of the easiest ways.
And if I set that zero lo and behold it's managed to make our triangles go away very very useful indeed.
Okay it's challenged time.
I'd like you to create the night.
So we started.
And so we will finish.
Finishing off the knight's body focussing on quads now because we've started from quads and we've extruded
from quads we will end up with quads.
If you continue creating the rest of your model like that I suggest creating the main and the.
Is using a loop cut rather than subdividing because this will enable you to carry on looping around
your model and be able to divide it when necessary.
Now just before you go and do this challenge there are a couple things I want to reassure you basically
with.
So first of all making it your all your quads planer is going to be a challenge if your model is already
quite skewed.
Amanda edged split modifier might not actually work.
Speaking the village split modifier I wouldn't recommend you apply it.
That will not solve your problems.
If you're still struggling to get them plainer again do focus on quad.
Try make them non triangular where possible.
Now it did take me six attempts at the night in order to make sure all the play all the faces were plainer.
So don't be afraid to restart your model if necessary.
Now this won't be a problem in general when you're modelling this is an extreme example where every
face of your model is flat and it's a quad and not a triangle or any other shape.
So this is just to highlight the problem.
In the extreme example do your best and if necessary practice and practice and you will get there.
So one of the things to watch out for with modifiers in in particular unless you have a need to apply
a modifier.
Then do not apply it.
It enables you to edit your model really quickly.
So for instance in this particular model I've got the edge split modifier that I'm going to use but
I am not going to apply it.
If I do apply the edge split modifier as the name suggests it will split all of the edges so we'll go
from our couple of hundred polygon that will have two a couple of thousand.
Because every vertex of every face will be duplicated and that's a bit crazy.
So just in general don't apply a modifier unless you need to.
The modifiers are there to speed up workflow so you don't have to repeat yourself or do an extra operation.
Okay pause the video now and give that a go.
Okay guys.
Welcome back.
Let's go finish off our night.
Welcome back over into blender so let's finish off creating our nights.
One of the things I'm going to do here is I'm happy with the rendering output for the moment and I've
got very limited screen space so I'm just going to hide that away.
And I'm also going to make this a little small.
I don't really need to at the moment but I may need it in a bit.
I'm just going to drag it away so I can pull it out again later.
But I'm not going to get rid of it because they can't to be useful.
I'm gonna hop straight back over into the right view so I can finish off creating a song and hop into
edit mode extrude a bit more here.
Place that they're rotating round.
Not too much of course I am just going to move it out in fact and we can differ and scale it in and
we can move things about a bit more in a moment and rotate around just a little bit more extrude.
And we're going to carry on working like this as we go round up sped up the video just a slightly because
I'm literally at this moment in time selecting edges extruding scaling those in rotating them as you
can see they're checking around the model now to see what's going on.
I hadn't applied the mirror modify and it looks like I pulled out slightly just undone those last few
extrudes hopped back over into this side view here and started just working on the front again.
So again emphasizing the point of lean.
Check your model regularly and thoroughly as you go forward.
So you detect these problems as you go and they don't surprise you at the end.
Now here I want to follow the natural curvature of our horse.
So switching to virtex select and I'm pulling these vertices in to follow the natural definition of
the horse itself as we go round leaving space of course for the main has we go it will be creating the
main in a few moments right.
The final thing here is just adjusting the head shape so it feels right and looks right just as a low
poly model.
As you can see.
Just want to balance out the horse as it comes around because these these loops of face loops going
around will define that shape itself.
As we go let's go tuck that in a little more give it a little more of a rounded nose and let's just
hop around and see how that's looking.
Now looks a bit odd at the moment but rest assured we it will look more like in the moment one of the
problems is it's of a almost continuous width as we go and we don't want that.
So one of things we can do here is start grabbing.
A couple of edges going around.
Not necessarily edge loops but that edge that one hold down Shift as we go round.
Those ones there but not this one here but that one there and maybe the one right next to it.
And what we can do then is once we've got these selected is we can actually just move them in slightly
making our horse a bit narrower because horses aren't so they're here gets wider base where the body
is slightly narrower at the top front and to make it even narrower.
I prefer that.
Now there's a loop going around where the neck is.
Well actually I'm going to add a loop here for a bit more definition around here.
And I'm going to scale that in.
Oh.
Looks like I'm strangling the horse.
Do I want to scale it in.
Does that just look really odd now.
I think I'm going to leave it as it is.
Had an idea of bringing the neck in ever so slightly perhaps just this bit here to give it a bit more
form as it goes around.
Now this end bit here let's think how that's going to be defined.
So one two three.
So we could have one two three four that would work.
So let's.
One two three will want a fourth one bang in the middle and then maybe one two three.
Yes so we could have quads on right on the end here.
Fact this is far too pointy for our horse anyway so let's just lift that up ever so slightly and pull
it out as well.
There we go.
That's a better shape for our horse in this pool.
This town is well because horses aren't that pointy and pretty sure K brilliant.
So let's fill in this face first of all.
Here we go.
In fact still looks like it's pinched ever so slightly.
It's not going to have to pull that one out I think.
And let's just.
Move it a z z.
Now we need to change this down here to normal.
And then we should be able to move z z.
Pull it out from its position.
That's a bit better.
We'll do the same for this one.
Move z z.
OK.
I'm not going to delve too much into the details there because I could be here for a couple of hours
modifying that.
Okay.
So I'm happy with the general shape there so let's add the main in so we're going to apply a loop current
as we've done quads.
It will run all the way around our model.
Now remember it's doubled so it doesn't need to be too thick we're going around here.
Excellent.
So you've got the loop running all the way around.
Though obviously the main doesn't start at the horse its nose but it does run all the way down its back.
Excellent.
So I'm going to from that new geometry if we hop you in two shading.
We can see that there isn't there any extra geometry now clouding our model.
I am going to change ardell Lamp type here to a Hemi So it's more evenly lit and just going around.
I'm just making sure that the extra loop cut we've put in hasn't added another layer to it.
So it has done down here you can see it's got a little bit down the front.
Well this is the back of our stand the back here.
But that's okay because that's where our main is going to be.
Has it affected the front of our horse at all.
Let's go in and have a look a little bit.
Yes it has.
So what we can do there is just twirl that around a little more.
Let's start making our main out of that so we're going to hop back into edit mode.
In solid view.
Hop back over into edit mode on our night.
Excellent.
And let's go to View right.
So we know right the main does start there.
And fortunately we can just go around here and select these.
Okay so now that those are selected we can extrude.
Excellent.
I don't think that's going to be coming out in the right.
Oh not really.
That doesn't look too great so let's just undo that extrude.
We want a global extrude just in the y axis so it's extrude that in the y axis that Polytech doesn't
need to be too far back.
I had like Fats and finally it will probably taper in naturally at the top.
Well it looks a bit horrible at the top move that in the moment.
This bottom bit here however I'm going to switch to edge mode on our snapping.
Zoom in to this area.
Make sure that it merges vertices and select this edge just here.
And I'm going to just grab it freeform and literally pop it on top of this one here.
It will snap.
Why is it not snapping.
Are we not on edge we are on it on virtex.
I do apologize because then I can snap right to that one there.
And I believe the number of vertices is currently ninety three.
If I move in Snap On top of that should be 91.
Brilliant.
So that's the main gone in and we can now we do need to just move whilst we're down here move these
two faces grab them and pull them in ever so slightly.
That's better.
Otherwise this main is a bits.
It doesn't matter if it goes too thin in places as long as it's in the right place or it was still a
snapping turned on to turn that off excellence and that's one it too wide.
But also not too narrow.
Then finally this top bit it is a bit of a mess.
Just pull it up.
And we certainly don't know certainly probably don't want it looking like that share from that.
So simple way of doing that is to grab this said here and just move it forward.
So it's the appropriate way around.
And let's have a look at that running round.
That looks good to me.
So finally am adding a couple of ears I do want to add a couple of is to our model.
And there's a couple of ways that we can do this.
But keeping the spirit of lupe's arm I will use loop cuts to add it rather than subdividing since that
will ruin our geometry.
Question is where does an ear go.
So let's head on over to the view where we can see and hear.
It looks like it's coming from somewhere around this area here.
That's great.
We can work on that.
So let's put a loop cut in either here or here.
There will do.
And I'll move that up ever so slightly brilliant So now that we've got that area there we can grab one
of these faces and can zoom in.
And move round ever so slightly.
The is going to come from this face here.
I am going to insets ever so slightly you can do this in a number of ways.
And then I'm just going to pull that out.
Let's see how that looks all looks like a very angry horse will win or mess with that and going to go
into a corner of a freefall mode here and see how that works.
A bit more friendly now that the years.
Let's make them a bit longer.
And again you can adjust these to your heart's content.
I think I might leave them there for the moment kind of stuck back ready to fight.
Well it is a night in a war game that is chess.
So that is brilliant.
Let's have a look how it looks over in rendered mode.
Yeah I'm liking that.
Brilliant.
How did you guys get on.
I hope you could spend a bit more time on the model than I can when I'm teaching you guys.
I really like to see what you've got up to please share your nights in the discussions and I will see
you in the next lecture.