Welcome to balls in this video you'll learn how to add a metal ball.
Use them quickly to build up a base framework.
See that they're great for modelling organic objects and understand they need converting afterwards
to a mesh so we can add further detail so that hop straight on over into blender.
Right so back over in blender.
Let's go and play with metal balls.
So first of all make sure your file is saved and then go ahead and open a new file.
Right so we've got the default keep on going to get rid of that and we're going to add a metal ball
so you can go through the ADD menu here.
And we see if we go up we have met a ball and we've got five different types of metal ball and a great
thing is we can switch between those at a later point as well so they're not solidified at this point
in time.
You can also use the shortcut menu with shift in A and select the one you want.
So I'm going to add a ball to our scene.
Now if you glance over at the right hand side are just expand mine out a little.
We've got a metal ball type object.
And notice this symbol here the same symbol has now appeared in the Properties window just here out
in edit mode.
If we go into that now you'll see that we've got a few more options under active elements.
We'll deal with the top part of this in the moments just hide that away under active element.
It gives you a chance to change the type so we can set to cube we can go down to plain captial ball
etc. so you can switch between them.
Now let's add a nother met a ball to our scene.
So I'm just going to duplicate the capsule that we've got here and I'm just going to lift it up and
I'm going to change it.
Type in edit mode to a ball.
Now we can see what it's done here and it's really cool.
As we move it closer and closer as the boundary's come together.
They start to join one end of her which as you can imagine is incredibly powerful when it comes to modelling.
I'm going to add another one to our sea and pop it underneath and scale it up so you can do all the
usual things you would do scaling rotating obviously a metal ball if it's just a ball shape it's just
gonna well remain a ball shape if you rotate it.
But if we go ahead and select this middle one here which is our first starting one and rotate it we
can of course twist our model around.
Brilliant.
So the resolution let's have a look at these settings here the view is what we're going to see now and
the render is what's going to happen if we render it out.
And it's counterintuitive initially but the higher the resolution setting the lower resolution the model
will be.
So if we increase this number here you can see it's getting more and more blocky as we go.
Until eventually it just disappears.
If we lower that number there is a finite resolution it will go to but it ends up much smoother.
But it will slow down the actual view ports a little so when you're rotating You may depending on the
speed of your computer get a little bit of judder which is why they've got these two options here.
So you can have the view resolution higher than that of the render and the render.
As you can see there goes much further down.
Now in order to do anything with the curves themselves not curve sorry the metal balls they're kind
of three dimensional curves.
But to do anything with these metal supply we'd need to solidify them in from a metter ball to a mesh
and we can do that as we've done before I can use the shortcut keys out and see and we get the convert
to.
We've got mesh here and.
Mesh From met her.
That's the one there are lots see.
You can also do it under the object menu.
Right at the top they're under convert.
So it's hidden under there as well.
Now before we do any converting and seeing how that comes out the final thing I want to show you is
quite cool.
While I think it's cool.
Anyway so if we hop over into edit mode we've got a few other options here.
So we're working on this middle one at the moment I don't want to do if I want to work on this top one.
Let's do that and let's hop into edit mode again because come out now we've got a couple of options
down here under active elements.
Not only can we change what type it is but we can also set its stiffness and that determines the inner
area of that circle.
So if we set that quite small we can get a quite stretched out version of it going on there and then
set them back to to where it was before and lower it back down a little.
The next one negative is quite cool as we take that.
It now subtracts from the other metal balls it comes into contact with rather then adds to them which
is a great way of putting a dent in that and of course if it was smaller we could even put a hole in
the object just like that.
Brilliant.
So let's convert the shape we've got here to a mesh.
So in object mode with all of the metal balls selected staff selected them in the outline and just a
quick note and make sure you are happy with the resolution you've got set.
Now when we do make this net and mesh object in a few moments it's going to use the view resolution
that we had set over on the met ball on the right hand side a moment ago and then oltz and see.
And that will then give us the convert menu and we can select mesh from curve.
Okay.
Now we can start editing it we can do lots of things.
So let's have a look at what it's generated when we hop into edit mode.
Wow.
There's lots of detail going on there.
And it kind of looks nice but it's also quite messy in places as well.
Blender does its best to keep things organized but that is a bit of a mess you'd never build a mesh
looking like that.
But it's a good starting point.
Now there's a thing called reid's apology which were not going to do at the moment since our bunnies
are going to be covered up with fur so we can leave this as our base mesh and then build upon it.
Okay guys it's Challenge time.
I'd like you to make a basic rabbits.
So create the head and body leaving the ears for the moment.
You need at least two metal balls keep the metal ball resolution around Oak Point too so it's not too
high.
Use reference material for an accurate shape.
Now if you don't have any reference material at the moment there some provided in the asset packs so
go ahead and download that.
Now if you haven't done already.
Remember you can scale and rotate the metal balls.
Then finally once you're happy with the shape convert it into a mesh object.
So go ahead pause a video and give that a go.
You guys welcome back.
Let's go ahead and make a basic rabbit over in blender.
All right so we're back over in blender and I've opened up my fluffy bunny file.
So I want to go to layer one which is the rabbit layer and at the moment it's just got a cube on it.
So the first thing I'm going to do is flip around to the left hand side.
And yes that's with the y direction facing to the left so you can see there with the Arab I'm going
to delete that cube and I'm going to bring in some reference material.
So I've opened up the 3D propertys.
Let's term background images on.
Let's open and go fine.
So here we go.
Your section assets.
I could actually use my bunny sketch we did earlier on but I think I use a real rabbit as reference
material.
So I've got three rabbits here to choose from I can pick any of them.
I'm going to probably pick this one here is more upright than the others is showing more yes more side
on.
So that's perfect start point.
I want to lift that up a little so let's do that now.
Or.
Yeah opacity per 50 percent want in front of whatever I'm working on maybe a little lower on opacity
there.
Let's lift it up.
If ATLAS I'm going to make it a bit bigger to work on so I know we're not working with anything too
small.
And then let's lift it up scale in this instance.
I'm not too bothered about because.
We can always alter the rabbit's scale at any point as one solid objects.
I don't want to flip it does me why but I want the rabbit's head on the left hand side rather than right.
Flip that round.
So I'm going to the 3D cursor smack bang in the middle of the head and add ourselves a metal ball which
is roughly the right size which is kind of cool.
So I want to scale that so I will squish it in both x and z but not white scale shift and why.
And that should bring it down a little Ragna rotate around the x axis which we can't see at the moment
and then just move it up slightly.
That has worked out really well actually and then we've got a body here so let's go ahead masood we
can get away with only to plop back roughly in the middle of duplicated that I'm going to rotate it
round the x axis.
And under this you just can scale that up and need to move it a little more down.
Pace that's a good starting shape going on there.
In fact let's just hop around to see what it's looking like.
AB That's a pretty good start point actually doesn't look too rough around the neck and places like
that as hop over into the metal ball options view resolution is relatively low at the moment.
So let's up that resolution a little.
Case to point not point to five not point two yet.
That's looking pretty good there.
Okay so let's hop back in to the left hand view here and just see if there's any other tweaking we can
do at this front bit of the rabbit.
Here's pretty much all fluff and no good at puffing their chests out there.
Nick comes in a little here but we can deal with that later on.
But it does come up a little here some schooling too.
I don't know if this is going to work.
So bear with me.
Trying out a few different things here.
And I'm going to give that a new one.
Yes there is a new one as we can see there.
That's not what a rabbit looks like.
I'm just going to scale that right down.
And then move it back towards here.
Produce that extra bump and see how that looks.
Looks like there's like a bit of a lump on the back.
But let's ascared it out in the x-axis Whilst looking around here.
A scale in the x axis is bringing it out.
I'm not sure whether I like that or not.
Push in a little to blend out and then scale it up again.
That's a that is much better in terms of underly Remember that are it's going to be covered in fluff
as well.
Then no one telling you that I should remember that.
And that's a much better shape now as well.
I'm just going to duplicate that and add a bit more of a bump.
Down at the bottom here.
I'm going to rotate round to make sure it's absolutely fine for one to push that into the body.
Just a little bit more.
Pull it back using the transform will just.
Excellent.
I'm quite happy with that.
I'd love to see how yours came out before I actually finished this lecture.
Of course I haven't converted it to a mesh.
Tut tut tut nociolo it's all of our curves and not cursory metal balls the 3D curves and I'm going to
go Olsen see and convert that to a mesh which is right and I'm just going to quickly investigate what
that mesh looks like.
That doesn't look like it's too over the top is very very bitty.
But again we are.
We could go round this and trace it called a with a method called reet apology which will visit later
Ron in the course.
But for the moment because were covered up with fur I'm quite happy with that not happening.
Okay.
So there's our base rabbit shape I'd love to see what you guys come up perhaps you've got your rabbit
in a slightly different pose perhaps you've added more detail or less detail.
It's entirely up to you how you make your rabbits of course.
So please share what you've come up with in the discussions and I will see you guys in the next lecture.