Welcome to using curves to create a geometry.
So in this video we're going to be using curves and this makes it infinitely editable.
Now that basically means because a curve is a vector object it's not really it has a beginning point
an end point but it's an infinitely calculable object.
In our scene it also means that our mesh when we generate it using this method is infinitely ball too.
Now this is only going to a tie apply to certain types of modelling but it is incredibly powerful.
Now we're going to be changing the Bezier handle type as well.
We haven't done that before but that will allow us to create sharp edges in our models and also generate
a 3D object.
By defining these curves.
So let's hop over into blender.
Okay.
So over in blender I've opened up a brand new blend file.
And I have noticed that for some reason in the past tub's saved my brandley blender file with the 3D
kerson nowhere near the centre.
Some are going to sort that out.
Now I'm going to send to the 3-d cursor.
There we go.
And I'm just going to go and save my start-up file and go file new reload start off.
Brilliant.
That's been causing me a few headaches recently and I didn't realize what I'd done.
Anyway back to the task at hand so let's get rid of the cube that's there.
So that's the lead That's And we're going to need to add two curves to our scene.
So first of all let's add a curve that's a type circle over in the outlying.
I know it's one in radius but that's fine for this purpose in the radius.
I'm going to call this a path because that's going to be the path at which our next curve is going to
follow.
So let's generate our other curve by adding another car but just the busier curve and that's going to
add it right on top but that's okay.
We're just going to shift that out of the way over here.
Excellent.
Now the next thing I'm going to do is unschooling to literally rotate it by 90 degrees on the x axis
so that it rotates by 90 degrees on the x axis as constrained to X and 90.
And the reason we're doing that would become quite apparent in a moments.
In fact I've moved it along the wrong axis here.
I actually just want to move it to one side of the circle.
Now I'm going to view everything from the front.
So I want to be in perspective.
You know I don't I want to be an offer graphic view and looking at it from the front so we could see
our circles just here and our curve our outline so we would just call that outline now.
Of course you can choose to group these together if you want.
So our curve and our outline are there and we're going to flip around again to the front of you because
I've just moved away from it and zoom in a little.
I'm going to hide tool shelf and the properties panes I can see what's going on.
So we're going to introduce a new section now in blender and that's the data properties.
So we've got all of the options along here in the properties panel and next to the spanner is a what
looks like a path really and that's the data we hover over it is says object data.
So we're going to hop into that and have a look at some of the options there.
Now we're interested in is bevell object.
So what we're going to do is select the path and select the bevel object as this curve over here the
outline.
So if we select that well we've got something straight away.
And what we've got is this outline going around our circle.
Now when we're in objet mode it doesn't matter where we put this.
We can move it and it doesn't adjust our model over here at all.
What's happening.
Well if we go and grab in edit mode and start doing the same thing it does make a difference.
Do bear that in mind when you're editing now because it's following this path around a circle of course
the distance between the first point and the other point here.
If we go beyond that it will the model itself will go through itself.
So we go and extrude this point here you can see it's creating a nice vase like shape.
But what's happening is the geometry is passing through itself and we don't want that to happen.
However what we can do is drag this other bit as far out as we want without that being a problem.
So if we lift this area up here and just do a bit of manipulation on our model we can make sure that
the model itself is not going through itself.
So if we move in we can now see because there's a hole in the top.
We can definitely see that it's starting to work.
Now I'm going to hop back over to the front view to see how it's looking.
Well that's rather good.
In fact that's kind of like a lamp isn't it.
You could just imagine the bulbs sitting on top there.
That may be useful later on of course.
So vector's Now these can be a bit of a tricky one to see sometimes but when you make these handles
the bit that you move the direction of your curve around with when you move those about They've got
different properties and over in the tool shelf or when you press the V key.
So the area down here is under handles or when you press the V key you can actually change the handle
type and Vector means you get a straight and flat edge.
Now theres not enough detail basically in the curves so we can see this really working well.
But if I now go to here you see there theres a sharp edge before it curves back round again.
We may need a few additional curves to make.
Thats a really defined flat edge.
So thats really powerful for making no end of things.
It now looks like the beginnings of a jetfighter engine or something along those lines.
I make that really pointy.
What's it called a MIG or something along those lines and pull this handle here pull it right down.
It looks like a MIG make me 17 or something along those lines or lightning.
A British British lightning.
Yes definitely.
I'm going to pull up an image of one of those now.
There you go guys one of those cold war beasts the interceptors there the girls started making the nose
cone for one of those.
How does that look.
Pretty sweet.
Hey Anyway I've got a challenge for you guys.
I would like you to create the lamp base.
So go ahead now and create the lamp base using curves.
Change the handle time to vector where straight edges are required.
If you want any straight edges but there is definitely going to be one and that's where the lamp base
connects to the rest of the lamp so you're going to have a hole at the top of the base where the rest
of the lamps are going to slot into a circular hole there.
So make sure that you use vectors around there.
Everywhere else can just be curves.
Remember to fill in the bottom of the lamp as well so you are going to have to go across and do some
measurements.
Were going to be setting the base as we know to one unit across cross so it's only going to be half
a blender unit that you're going to be able to work with in.
Pause video now and give that a go.
Welcome back.
Let's go and create the base of our lamp.
So let's get rid of the lightning nose cone there and head over to our animated lamp.
Right so we've got our place holder here and I'm going to leave it in our scene for a while simply because
it's going to act as the base size so I know it's not going too far out.
I am going to turn this plane off so it's not in the way so if I zoom out I can still see things and
I'm simply going to hide this cone when it's not needed.
But first of all I'm going to add a curve that's a circle and I'm going to make it a radius of I don't
think it really matters one more set it's a point five.
And I'm going to call that the base.
I seem to have caps lock on but that's absolutely fine with me.
And now I'm going to create another curve in object mode of course.
That's a Bezier curve and I'm going to shift it to the side and rotate it I'm going to do it here.
The rotation on the x axis by 90 degrees during the creation and I'm just going to shift over to one
side so I can see what's going on.
It has also helped there can undo and get back to it that the operator panel note.
So let's just recreate that really quick curve Bezier.
I do everything all at once.
Adam Bezier of a radius of point five I can do that straight away.
So I don't have to worry about measurements.
And of course set the rotation on x axis by 90.
Brilliant.
We shift over to one side so we can see what's going on.
Popover into orthographic and front view.
I'm going to get this Bezier curve here called it outline.
And I'm just going to place my outline under.
The base itself so said parent object that's absolutely fine.
So now those two things are linked together.
So I've got some control over my hierarchy.
I might have to start cleaning up all of that in a bit.
Anyway so let's go into here.
Let's go over to the data of it.
And we need to make sure we've got the base selected.
We're going to set the bevell object to outline.
Excellent.
You can already see it's too big.
So I'm going to go over here to this and simply go into edit mode.
Now we're in edit mode.
We can have some control over this.
And I'm guessing the reason why it's too big is this is between here and here.
Happens to be one blender unit.
So I'm going to move it straight away so I've got the right depth.
I'm going to hop out of it maybe just move it across as a bit more space round to the front.
In fact what we could do with here is splitting our windows.
I'm going to split my window and hide the tool shelf hide these properties over here we're not going
to hide them it's going to push them as far away.
Again you may not have such a problem if you've got a larger monitor.
I'm a bit constrained on space so you guys can see and I'm going to hop into this curve into edit mode
and move this point here in the x-axis by point five.
Excellent.
Lift this one up.
And now I'm inside the cone Seim going to select the cone itself.
And press the H key to hide it away.
So there we go we've got our rough base going in as a couple of things that we're going to have to do
here.
We're going to have to make sure that it all joins up and there's a slot in the top.
And of course I'm nowhere near finished yet.
So let's select these two areas here and add in a subdivide which is going to add another area in the
middle that allow us to control the shape of the curve that little bit better.
Not too worried about the shape at the moment.
This one here I'm going to have to pull back now.
I'm going to have to think of the size of the slots that the rest of the lamps are going to slot into.
And whatever it is is going to be doubled because we're working on the radius.
So I'm going to be moving that one in the minus X axis by let's say point 1 so it's a point two across.
And let's see how that looks it might not work it might.
Who knows.
This is all about experimentation at this point and playing with our model.
So let's grab that which we have done and move it in minus so x y minus point 1.
Excellent so if we rotate this round we should end up with one set up dates.
We should end up with a hole in the top.
Come back to that in a few moments.
Now we're going to have to have another point so we're going to let this end one end extrude and pull
it across.
We saw there was a problem or a delay in its updating there.
Don't worry if that happens I don't want to be in front for you just in case if you're not in front
view when you start doing this you're going to end up potentially with the curve going off in the well
in the y plane in this case.
And we don't want that.
The position of this the we want it at.
So we're going to have to open up this and make sure the local or the global local.
That's what we do want in this case the exposition.
Is point five I believe.
Soon.
BECK out.
Yes.
That's right.
I'm going to have to change this one here to a vector that will flatten it out and probably change this
one here but not both of the handles just the bottom one to vector and that should bring it round.
So it's got a completely flat base.
Now the top here we've also got a little bit of fiddling to do.
It's getting really tight here on my screen.
It's going to pull that one back across.
So you guys can see what's going on.
So down here we've got to move it down and in by once I'm going to move it down probably not move it
sorry.
I'm going to extrude from there downwards and I have this horrible curve initially.
So let's move that one downwards by about there and we can alter the settings in here so the x coordinate
is the local x that's going to be point four because that's point five minus point one that we did earlier.
I'm going to go down by at least point two in this case so point two.
Excellent.
And then I'm going to hit V and go vector there so that straight I'm going to select this bet select
just this handle here and change that also to vector.
And we've got a straight spit going down.
And then finally we need to go in.
So I'm going to extrude here and it will remember this time that it is just a affecter which is great
and we're going to move it in.
So the X's point five The Y is point two.
And there we go.
That's perfect.
The change is handled type again to vector.
So it remains straight and let's have a look at our lamp base for the moment.
I don't want it that tool.
By the way it looks more like a a hatz at the moment than a base of our lamp.
So let's hide some stuff so we can see what's going on.
Right.
So here we're probably going to have to lift this up but I don't know for the moment let's select all
of this geometry here all of these curves vertices and just pull them down.
And that's a bit better.
And there's another point here this one here.
Let's move about and see if we can get a slightly different shape going on.
I quite I would like a little bit of a rich going round.
I don't know why.
You know it's just play.
Oh that's interesting.
I thought I'd applied them change and I hadn't.
There we go.
So let's have a look around our lamp.
That's looking pretty good.
I've got a hole in the top for the rest of it.
Now that might be a bit Big actually for the rest of the lamp.
That does look rather large so I can go out here and here.
So let those two out individually that one them that one there and move them in x axis by point one.
Oh no not.
Point one I think that we'll see.
It's up.
Let's move them back.
It's going to be half of point one.
So move it in the x axis by point nor five.
Looks like I didn't have the right thing select this let's just undo all of that.
Right.
That's going to move it.
In fact I'll do it live here.
Point five.
Yeah that does look about right.
Undo that move it's in the x axis by point 0 5.
There we go.
And for some reason it doesn't always update on here and it's worthwhile remembering that as that can
be incredibly confusing.
I've made it smaller Why hasn't it gone any smaller.
It's always a good question but it does seem to catch up the moment you move something else which is
a bit strange.
I'm going to undo that change there.
And there we go is updated now.
I quite like the base of my lamp there looks pretty sweet.
And of course we're going to take it through to the final end as we've been doing.
So I'm just going to hide this oh I've just made another 3D view.
Lovely.
So I'm going to hide that away so we've just got one big view again.
Excellent.
Let's hop back into perspective.
We get a better feeling for things.
And then well let's render it let's see what it looks like when we render our image.
Why is that going on.
Of course.
What you will find is if we change the view to camera it has a different box selected on it.
And of course when we click render that's what it does so if we go Control out and be clear that we
see the whole thing will render.
And if we go to rended image and of course it's rendering our cone now.
Why is it rendering our cone over in the outline.
We have our camera here which is what we're looking for.
And beneath we have our cone now is not visible in the 3D view probably is visible in rendering so if
we turn that off and go back to rendering the image there we go we can see our model much better.
Of course this is too far out so we can adjust our camera etc. but we do want to do that at the moment.
For the moment we literally want to go back to the 3-d view of course we need to turn on our plane so
we can see some stuff.
Excellent.
And then we can move around and this scene because it's now more complex I'm just going to let it run
out now to see how long it's taking.
Now we've got some much more geometry in it than just the simple comb we have before.
It looks like it's going to take around 14 or exactly 14 seconds 15 set 15 and a half seconds it takes
to do that basic render.
Of course if we draw that box around it will talk that we were talking about earlier it's going to take
considerably less time three seconds.
So there's a great benefit even when you're on a reasonably fast computer to rendering it in that manner.
Brilliant.
How did you guys get on.
I'd love to see your lamp base designs and how you managed to create it with the busy air curves there.
Please share in the discussions and I will see you in the next lecture.