Welcome to a profile based modelling using mesh objects in this video.
You use the array modifier to repeat a mesh objects along the length of a curve will then deform the
array using the same curve data and hopefully end up with some pretty awesome results.
So let's go hop on over in a blender.
Hello everybody and welcome back over into blender.
The first thing you might notice here is I'm back on my p.c SO is me Michael from the future.
And the other thing to mention here is that this particular door that we're about to work on doesn't
have the curve profile that we set up in the last lecture.
But that doesn't matter because we can do everything we need to do with what I've got in front of me
here.
Or you could even use your curved profile to work office as well a little mini challenge if you want
to go off and do that later on.
So the first thing we need to do is think about what we're going to do in terms of duplicating the information
we have in front of us here because I could just go ahead duplicate the entire mesh objects in front
of me and then go and delete the geometry.
I don't want or I could go into that mesh object itself by going into edit mode find the bit of geometry
I want to select in this case it will be this bottom face here although there is something odd going
on the bottom face I'm not sure what is going on there.
It seems a bit crooked.
In fact it looks like there's still sivers doubles over there you know.
Yes it's it's done something very weird with that profile.
I'm going to delete that bottom face at the moment and then sort that out.
Now this will obviously didn't want to do that I just to delete the face itself's X and then delete
the face.
So there is some rule.
And so you'd lose geometry and here perhaps there might be.
I'm not entirely sure thing I'm trying to select the main axis there.
So we can select the age group running around.
There seems to be a break in edge loops around there when to select everything here remove doubles.
Nothing there no increase the merge distance.
Not that much but ever so slightly and just make sure that the profile remains intact which I think
it has done.
Yes I think there might have been some geometry that was very close to itself anyway.
I'm happy with that now.
And what I really want is this bottom edge running ran and we see excellence being selected all at once
there.
So at some point a duplicate a bit of geometry moved it to one side.
But now I've got that bottom edge loopier I can both fill it in and we can see that one of the issues
that it makes there's with the subdivisions surface model the fire as she brings it all together.
So finally I'm going to increase the mean crease so doesn't do that.
Now that that's done I can grab this bottom face and duplicate it will shift and day and then press
the P key to separate it by selection and it will generate a new mesh object with the same name as before.
That's fine.
Only change that name to door profile.
So this is going to be a mesh profile that we're going to use before we do anything else.
There are a couple of modifiers attached to it so let's go ahead and remove those and then hide.
Profile one.
So we've got our starting point here that we're going to build up a bit of a an example with.
So let's go ahead into edit mode and select that face and extrude it up almost flip around to the front
view I mean orthographic mode here so I can extrude that up by let's say that amount.
Now we can see straightaway that this isn't going to work as I intended because the normals are flip
so let's go select everything and then control an N to flip those normal so that's a great start.
The next thing I'm going to do is background to the front view with the number pad number pad number
one in this case.
And I am going to duplicate this mesh that I've generated.
Fix it to the x axis and then just lift it up with enough space for two hours of fake mortar or a gap
in the brick work that's going to add a bit of shadowing and then I'm going to zoom around or not zoom
Let's move around here select a couple of these faces that I want to pull out.
Now I'm not just going to pull them out.
Actually that might work in home.
I can just pull it out like that and be done with it.
Yeah.
Okay.
That will do for the purposes of this exercise.
I was thinking of extruding rather than just moving but that looks all right there.
Now a couple of options we've got with these corners here because we've got some odd shadowing going
on top.
Now the odd shadowing of course is is caused by the fact that there these are in ons here and it's not
what is trying to smooth it the best it can but it doesn't really know how.
So we can bevel this edge around the top.
We could make some loop cuts closer to it.
It's entirely up to you this very top face here.
We're not going to see any way any shading artefacts around.
We'll deal with that later.
If there is indeed an issue.
So we've got our meche object.
Let's go back into object mode and add in an array modifier because we want this to repeat itself.
So the array modifier is under the generate column so it's right at the very top array.
And it's going the wrong way.
Of course we can increase the counts and that's great and looks like a brick wall it's going the wrong
way.
So let's turn relative offsets on the x direction to zero and we probably want it on the z direction.
Excellent.
And I'm going to zoom in here because one of the issues will be is that it butts one object up against
the other and we don't want that we want a little gap between the two.
So this is going to need to be something like 1 point.
No that's too much too little I'm going to hold down Shift to move this in a much more controlled manner.
Let's say about there sir.
Oh port o points.
Not the rry of a blender unit up.
So there we go.
Perfect.
Now if we increase the account number.
Oh dear that's that's no good is it it's going in a random direction.
Now we want to control this.
We need to fit to something else at the moment it's being fitted to a fixed count to ten of them.
If I change it to fit courval Fit a length Well we dont have a length for it to fit because I dont know
the length of this curve.
But what we can do is select fit curve and we need a curve for it to follow.
Do we have a curve at the moment.
Unfortunately we dont.
So were going to have to generate one.
And of course following along from the last lecture you would have actually had a curve.
Im going to generate one very quickly by going to my elodie BE front door going into edit mode selecting
the mesh that runs around here or rather the edge that runs all the way up and down.
Thats selected it first time brilliantly.
Im going to duplicate it presses scapes So its definitely not moved anywhere.
Then Oulton see I of course silly me Oulton see it needs to be object mode that we do this is not going
to work whilst we in edit mode of that particular object.
We try it and see in there.
It's an object mode operation easily done say.
So we're going to convert this to a mesh from our curve.
I dont need to convert the array.
No we need to do the other way sorry for a curve.
Our mesh and we dont need to keep the original.
Okay.
So now we've got all that sorted the next thing to do is go back to our door profile that we've created
these bricks and fitted to the curve and bang.
Hopefully it will now shoot up into the sky.
Why is it not doing that so let's have a look at the door.
Curve it follows round that's absolutely fine.
Let's have a look at our scale factors have I scale this.
No that's absolutely fine as well.
Door curve.
Have we go object mode in edit mode again.
This is now as tall as that length is long.
Okay brilliant.
The next thing we need to do here is actually have it follow the curve going round.
So we go to our ad modifier again and this time we're going to deform.
So it's in the form it's the fourth one down with a curve.
And again if we scroll down here I'm just going to minimize the array modify our curve here the object
we're going to follow is the door curve and it's gone off in a random direction.
So this is one of the problem solving parts of this.
Now we've got to figure out why it's going off in that direction what the defamation access is probably
what's going on.
It goes up and over in the z axis.
So we go to set up.
It seems to fit but it's been offset.
How annoying is that.
Well it's been offset because of the difference between the objects origins.
So we have a look at the door curve the origins all the way over here.
We have a look at the door profile the objects origin's all the way over here.
So I'm going to move my cursor my 3-d cursor first to the objects origin that we're using so the door
profile in this case so shift and s cursor to selected so that's in the right place.
Now we can go ahead to the door curve and in object mode go in the tool shelf itself go to set origin
to the 3-d cursor.
Now it should be in the right place but it's not.
Why is it not.
I bet it's the same issue we have before it's not in the right place at the moment because we probably
need tab in and out.
And in fact there we go if we hop in and out of edit mode and back into object mode it fits things imperfectly.
Now I'm not sure of this smooth shading actually when it comes to this brick work so I'm going to turn
smooth shedding back.
Ah yes that's much better.
Let's go into a rendered mode.
The lighting is not too great in this scene but that is coming along really nicely.
And in fact I'm just going to shove in a lamp into our scene.
Let's go to a lamp.
Make sure an object married yes.
Sunlamp and Im going to press the ah key twice.
So it's got a track ball rotation it's a lot easier to try to align things when you do that.
And here we go really and that's followed around perfectly exactly how we expected.
So a couple of things to remember there sometimes when you make a change youre going to have to tap
in an out object mode to edit mode for Brenda for Blender to reset itself there and theres something
else Ive just noticed and were going to have to rotate our curve.
By the looks of it because this is not will it look like when I was creating it.
So lets go back to our door curve going to go into edit mode on the tilt.
I'm going to try ninety degrees.
Oh that is pretty cool.
It's not my intention.
Yeah that is pretty cool.
That's because I'm not monitoring what I'm doing if I go back into solid mode.
We'll see.
I've only selected this bottom vertex down here so want to set that tilt back to zero and I'm going
to select everything and then I mean tilt maybe minus 90 instead.
And hopefully that would have twisted everything back round how I would want it to sticks out.
That way wasn't it.
Oh it is minus 90.
There we go.
Tab in and out.
Perfect.
That was the intention as it goes around and that has worked really really well and it's not too bad
at the top here even occasionally you have to fill about especially on this mirror point here at a mirror
point.
So what we could do is have it going half the length of this arch arch way itself so we can do that
itself with the door curve.
We come in here we select the points that we want to delete which is going to be all the way to the
top one here and delete them.
Now when we tab in and out it will come to this point and stop there.
And then finally on the door profile we add in a mirror modify.
Now this is going to be a bit different from before we can use the same mirror points that we had.
We've now got this empty gap at the top.
Now that's an ideal place for you guys to go in and put in a I think is called a cornerstone at the
top or something like that I can't remember what it's called.
There's a special name for the thing at the very top of doorways that big block you can put that in
manually or Again you can tweak the curve itself.
So if we go back to the curve and come into it it obviously comes up here and then doesn't go 90 degrees.
So what you could do is bring that curve back ever so slightly to maybe here and then extrude a new
point for it to come across like that.
Now this will because I've not turned on clipping.
Intersect itself and cause probably some rendering errors.
So this has got to be played with and made accordingly.
Now in this case I'd probably just truncate this back to around here and then add in another bit of
geometry just to make up that difference there or in this case come in and solidify these these objects
and adjust them after that there's lots of options that you could do with everything in blender.
And of course looking at this you could come in and perhaps add a bit more of a subdivision surface
modifier.
The choices here are absolutely endless.
Of course with me rambling on about curb's Now it's time for your challenge.
Okay guys it's Challenge time.
I'd like you to create curve driven mesh objects so this is incredibly powerful tool set however can
be confusing and a little frustrating so we really need to nail this.
What else do you think.
What could you use this method for.
I think I'll throw one in there straight away.
A wobbly path winding through a woodland.
Something along those lines a brick path of AC.
Maybe even the yellow brick road.
Who knows.
So go ahead and add some more detail.
See your other models using this technique.
Pause a video now and give that a go.
Okay guys.
Welcome back.
Let's hop back on over into a blender.
Hey welcome back.
So let's have a look at making this window a bit more interesting.
So I'm going to borrow the curve that we've used to generate and the profile to make a.
Brick that we can use in our model so let's go ahead and duplicate that curve down there and convert
that straightaway to a mesh.
Let's get the curve that's going on here let's duplicate.
Oh that's a different curve.
We don't want to keep duplicating it.
That's get rid of that idea.
Duplicate it in that case.
Where's the.
There we go the path itself.
All I want.
So that's duplicate that as well.
And I'm going to call that a ray.
I can do some renaming later and I'm going to call this a ray profile.
Okay now we've got those two parts enable We just need to make sure that the array isn't causing us
any problems and hide.
These other two.
So we know or working on.
So let's go to this profile itself and hop into edit mode.
Select the edge lube fill and then extrude up ever so slightly over the make these bricks quite thin
so we can have a lot of them.
And once I've done that we just need to set it following the path.
So we're going to need an array modifier and set it.
It's fit tight to fit a curve and we want it going in the z direction.
And in this particular case what I can do is the Z relative offset by one.
I could actually bevel the edge just here so that when they join together will not be but control and
B when they actually join together.
I'm not sure of a anough fine control over this at the moment and need to zoom in a bit more.
But when they join together these will actually have some.
Natural gaps between them.
Okay so now that is done let's hop back in to the modifiers and do the curved deform using the same.
Curve.
Now that's not happening at the my rent and I'm guessing it's a scale problem going on again.
So let's just have a look at the transformer properties.
Yes.
So let's apply for scale.
And would backup here.
Something still isn't working properly that's Have a look at the array and turn the curve off list do
one thing at a time.
There should be lots of those.
I haven't assigned the array itself the curve objectively array.
Now let's go back on to deform and see whether or not we need to generate R own curve.
Yes we do.
So let's go ahead and create a Bezier curve that will follow this path.
Fortunately I already have the origin in the right place.
So here I can move the cursor to the selected because that'll move it over there.
We can add ourselves a Bezier curve and start moving control points about and was done doing that.
I will fast forward the video.
I'm going to remember here to set my resolution down at 1.
And now that the curve is complete I should be able to go back to my array profile and change the properties
here in the modifiers to follow the new Bezier curve.
Okay so looking a bit.
It's looking kind of right but kind of funny as well.
I think what's going on here is something gone wrong with the curve itself.
Let's have a look at that Bezier curve in more detail.
I think it's probably these control points.
Yes it is.
Some just going to turn off a self snapping and snap it to the same point there.
That should bring it back round to looking pretty decent.
Yeah that's looking pretty sweet.
Now that's really good.
I like the way that that's come out.
I think it's probably a little thick but we can always obviously modify our.
Okay there's there's a bit of rotation going on here I can see that's not the profile I'm looking for.
So let's highlight everything and mean tilt.
Last time it was up to 70 or hundred or minus 90 and that looks spot on.
There's a couple of other things I'd want to hear there's some odd stuff going on is that a rendering
artefact or something else going on.
I might have crossed something over at some point.
Wrong.
It being a rendering artefact wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing laughing.
Looks pretty cool but I can investigate later as to what's going on there.
How are your archways and how's the rest of your building coming on.
I'd love to see your results.
Please remember to share in the discussions and I will see you guys in the next lecture.