Blender 3.5 Beginner Tutorial - Part 1

the biggest mistake most blender beginners make is not learning the three most important objects first the series will start you as a complete beginner as if you have never used blender 3D before in part one we will build an easy to follow Minecraft Project that will quickly help you feel less intimidated and more confident while working inside a blender in part two we will build a fantasy sword model as you continue to rapidly level up your blender skills I remember how difficult it was as a beginner which is why I build tutorials like this one and if you have struggled in the past I encourage you to stick it out with me to discover the three most important objects to learn first right after the trailer foreign [Music] [Music] our goal with chapter one is to get to know the three most important objects inside a blender and the problem when we first start is that blender feels like an alien spaceship there are a million and one buttons so many different tabs and all of these tiny panels and eventually blender will just crash and it can be easy just to give up entirely and this is why we as cgfasttrack.com put in the effort to simplify the process and build the courses that we wish we had when we first started the first of the three objects and by far the most important one is the default Cube the default cube is a mesh object and in this series we're going to learn how to change its shape we're going to create details within the shape and completely transform it into an entirely customized model the second of the most important objects is this very weird looking triangular shaped object over here which is our camera what we will learn in this series is how to animate the camera and how to take our 3D models and turn them into animated movies the third most important object and by far the most underrated one is this weird circular shape thing over here which is our light with the light we can do very basic things like boosting up and down the intensity but we can also transform our seams from very flat looking models to very cinematic 3D renders throughout this entire series to keep it as simple and easy to follow as possible we're going to be hyper focused on getting to know these three objects and we're going to get Hands-On with these three objects in the next chapter so let's get going [Music] just ice now we need to start making our objects do some stuff and the goal with chapter two is to get to know the three most important tools to modify objects you'll notice as we click on our objects we'll see an orange highlight around the most recent selection step number one is to select our default Cube then we will go to the upper left side of the 3D view where we can find our toolbar any one of these buttons can be used to manipulate our blender scenes in some way sub number two is to select our move tool which is the third tool from the top shaped with a four arrow icon after we select our Cube and our move tool we can see that we have a red green and blue handle which is our move tool on our object now we can click hold and drag on any one of these handles we can move this horizontally with the red and green handles we can move it downwards and vertically with the blue handle the move tool is by far the most frequently used tool inside a blender and this is the only option on our toolbar that we'll be using on all of part one of the series making it super easy for us step number three is the second most important tool which is our rotation tool directly under our move tool on our toolbar once we activate our rotation tool we can now see that we have another red green and blue handle on our Cube and now we can rotate our object in any direction very simple simply click hold and drag any of the red green or blue Handles in a circular motion to rotate our object around sub number four is our third most important tool which is our scale tool it's directly under our rotation tool on our toolbar once we activate the scale tool we'll notice that we have a white handle on the outside of our scale tool along with our red green and blue handles the white handle is a uniform scale meaning it's going to scale the object evenly the white handle is the one I use the most on the scale tool alright that's a wrap for our move rotate and scale tools which is our three most important tools to use the sided blender a common issue that we all experience when first starting blender is that the icons and the text is actually really small and hard to see to solve this problem step number one we'll go to our edit menu and then we'll go all the way down to our preferences and the very first parameter is our resolution scale and by default blender senses value very small which makes it very difficult for us if you're on a smaller monitor a smaller value of one might be okay but if you're on a higher res 4k monitor somewhere between 1.25 and a value of 1.5 should be comfortable and for trackpad users your next step is to go to the input Tab and now we're going to turn on emulate three button Mouse this is a requirement if you're using a trackpad instead of a traditional three button Mouse we'll cover the three button Mouse and trackpad controls as we move forward and then that brings us to our goal for this chapter which is to get to know our three navigation controls step number two is our Zoom tool using the middle Mouse scroll up and down just like we're scrolling up and down a web page we can zoom in and out of our scene and for track pads you either use two finger scroll to to zoom or pinch to zoom in and out depending on what laptop you're on either one may work try them both and whichever one Zooms in and out that's the one you want to use moving forward sub number two is our orbit tool simply hold down the middle Mouse button to orbit around your scene that is the middle Mouse button hold it down to orbit around your scene and for trackpad users hold down alt then click and drag to orbit around you can think of orbiting the same way the moon orbits around the earth we're just moving and rotating around the scene at the same time if we want to choose different objects to orbit around we can do so with step number three which is our frame selected tool to start I'll just select the camera and then I'll go to my view menu I'm going to scroll down to the fifth button from the top and then select frame selected what frame selected is going to do is snap you to an object so that your zoom and orbit tools now reset and attached to a specific space in 3D which makes it much much easier for us to move around our scene then we can just practice our frame select a tool one more time we'll select the light go to the view menu choose frame selected which will snap as to the light and then we'll practice orbiting around and zooming around once more and then we'll do it one more time going back to our Cube using the view menu go to frame selected use that to snap to the cube and then we'll just orbit and zoom around once more and this brings us to our new Pro navigation exercise you want to practice going around to each object three different times and this is going to help you build some muscle memory the more muscle memory you build right now the easier the rest of part one is going to be so you want to practice and practice and practice as you practice we'll also integrate step number four which is our final navigation tool which is our pan tool hold down shift and then while holding shift hold down the middle button on your mouse then we can move up and down and left and right which is panning around our scene and for trackpad users hold down shift and ALT then click and drag to pan around your scene alright that's a wrap for our navigation tools and this is your chance to practice a few more times at this point you're probably thinking wow this is this is kind of awkward and kind of difficult and that's totally normal we all experienced that when we first start it takes some time and it takes some practice getting that muscle memory built and as we build our Minecraft Project we're going to continue to practice and continue to get better with these tools our goal next is to build out the first pillar of our Minecraft scene and to pull this off in chapter 4 we will get to know our snap and duplicate tools so right now most likely your 3D scene is all messed up like mine is right now so to prevent any issues moving forward step one is to reset your blender file using the file menu and then go to new and then General this one button will save you a ton of stress I know this from reading the comments in the original release hit the file new general button after we reset our scene it's super important that we do not move our default Cube just yet and step number two is we want to enable our snapping tool and the reason why we need our snapping tools because it makes lining up our cubes nice and easy and we can find this in the center of our 3D view all the way at the top and it's going to be this little very small magnet shaped icon click on that magnet icon to turn it blue if you can find the button that says Global it's just two buttons to the right of that once you turn that magnet shaped icon blue and we are ready to start moving around our Cube now to test our snapped tool we can select our Cube and then select our move tool and then and as we move our Cube around we can see that our cube is snapping incrementally making it very easy for us to line up our cubes and for step number three we're going to work on duplication duplicator cubes can be a bit tricky so be sure to keep your eyes on the video for this one and then I'll do it twice and repeat it with you so it's a bit easier for you to follow along to duplicate the cube we'll start by selecting our Cube and then going to the right click menu here we have a ton of useful tools to modify our objects we want the duplicate objects button then we will notice our Cube turns white and then begins to move around lining up our cubes this way can be really difficult as you can see here the solution to this however is you just hit the Escape key while you're in this duplicate mode and what that's going to do is tell blender to drop the cube back to its original position then all we have to do is simply just move it up and line it up to the next object okay so let's try this again and this time you can follow along first of all select our default Cube and then we'll just hit the right click menu with our right Mouse button and then we'll just go down to towards the middle of the menu here and then we'll just go to duplicate object the cube is going to turn white and it's going to start moving around we just simply hit escape and then we're going to drop our Cube back into the original position then all we have to do is simply move it up and line it up to the other Cube now we just repeat this process until we get seven different cubes simply right click duplicate object hit the Escape key to drop it and then move it up and line it up to the next object again that's right click duplicate object hit Escape then move it up continue to do this as you move forward as you practice you'll notice that you're going to get a little bit faster you're going to build up that muscle memory it's going to become a little bit easier and a bonus tip and a friendly reminder using your pan navigation tool with shift middle Mouse button or for track pads that shift alt and left click and drag to move up and down is going to help us be able to work with our cubes just a little bit easier as we start to continue duplicating upwards okay so if you're still duplicating and working that's totally fine I encourage you to bring your eyes back over to the video while I show you how to scale the bottom of our pillar first we just need to select the bottom Cube then instead of scaling with our scale tool we're going to scale with our object properties panel over here on the right side of our scene if your blender file doesn't look like mine no worries just go ahead and click this little orange icon and that's going to go ahead and activate your object properties panel if you still do not see the orange icon be sure to have the bottom Cube selected so what is the properties panel all this is is another way for us to move rotate and scale our object very similar to the viewport tools that we have already been using moving around our cubes and the reason why we are not using this scale viewport tool is simply because we need an exact value for our cubes to line up perfectly then we're going to change the scale X and scale y values and we're going to set them both to a value of 2. so select the one value and scale X hit 2 on your keyboard then hit enter and there we go we should now see that our cube is scaled in our 3D view then we just repeat this process for scale y so select the 1 and scale y hit 2 hit enter to confirm and there we go now we should see that the bottom is now all officially scaled and ready to go and then we do not want to set scale Z that will be the default value of one great now we repeat this process for the second to the bottom Cube select the cube go over to our object properties panel then select scale X and this time we don't want a value of 2 we want a value of 1.5 so in scale X do 1.5 and then scale y as well we want a value of 1.5 and then there we go we should we should now that we see that our base is now all good to go great and all we need to do next is do duplicate these two cubes to the top so we'll grab the second one to the bottom right click on it duplicate objects click to confirm and then we'll just use our move tool to bring it all the way up to the top and then we're just going to have one last Cube left at the very bottom right click duplicate and then we're just going to bring it all the way up for me I'm going to have a total of nine different cubes yours does not have to be perfect it doesn't have to be exactly nine but that's how many cubes I'm going to leave off with and if we need to delete again we just right click on the object and then go down to delete and if we accidentally delete a cube you can always bring it back with our edit menu and then our trusty undo button and as we're making some good progress now would be a good time to save your file blender like any 3D application can crash unexpectedly so be sure to save your file and save often our goal for this chapter is to duplicate the rest of our pillars and build out the rest of her scene step number one is our multi-selection tool instead of duplicating these cubes one by one we can do so with the help of our multi-selection tools the first way we can multi-select is simply by holding down the shift key and then left click on our objects as we hold shift and then select we can now see that we have multiple objects highlighted in Orange which means we can modify and duplicate multiple objects together very easy so after we shift-click the entire pillar to select all the cubes we can now right click and duplicate objects and then move them over directly next to it and we're going to duplicate the pillars six different times again yours does not have to be identical to mine and now you can see how much faster we're starting to move with multi-selection now if you feel like I'm making this look easy and it's hard for you to do all this that is perfectly normal so your goal right now is not necessarily to be super efficient your goal right now is to build muscle memory in the muscle memory you build is going to make you efficient while working in the 3D view part step number two is to delete our camera object in our light object and that's just going to help us from accidentally duplicating those so we can do so just by right clicking on them go all the way down to delete and then right click on on the other one and then right going down to delete step number three is our box drag selection tool and if you're still follow along I encourage you to bring your eyes back over to the video for this one and to create the entire other side of our scene we can simply click and hold the top left of our viewport and then drag down to create our selection all the way to the bottom right and there we go now we have all of our pillars selected using our box track selection tool step number four is to then duplicate the entire row after we've selected everything with box drag selection so right click duplicate objects and then what I'm going to do is move this all the way over and to help us out and make a little bit more space for us so we can easily select all of this all of these pillars later on I'm just going to go ahead and move them over a fair distance so we have some room to work quick tip here you'll notice that I moved my cubes about three times as far as I actually needed to I moved them this far because this is going to help us later on to reselect them easily using our box drag selection now step number five our side pillars just have one additional cube in between so I'm going to select one duplicate it over and then line that up and then do the same thing for the bottom so I'm going to select the base and then duplicate it over and now we just need to duplicate these two new cubes along with the entire pillar so I will shift select the entire pillar and then shift select the two new cubes as well then we will just continue duplicating and setting up the side pillars I'm going to continue duplicating this over three different times so we'll have a total of five pillars on the side that's two of them including the front and the back and then three of them with the new duplicates that we're creating right now in the middle great then all we need to do is just repeat this for the other side I'm going to select the top Cube duplicate it over then select the bottom Cube duplicate that as well and move it over and then a quick tip to help the selection process a little bit easier is just to orbit around your scene to get a better view once we got that better view we can just continue shift selecting to select the entire pillar then I'm going to duplicate these out for a total of three new duplicates to finish off this row again that is total of three duplicates and then we'll have two on each end as well now there are plenty more efficient ways to be duplicating these cubes around and I'll show you more in a bit but the crucial point of this exercise is not to be efficient right now the purpose is to get more practice and build muscle memories you slowly become more comfortable while working inside of the 3D viewport now all we have to do is connect our final row over here and if we give ourselves enough space this should be easy to connect using our box selection tool if yours is a bit closer it might be a little bit more difficult to you so I'll just go ahead and box drag select that and then move them over to connect them okay there's a wrap for us on the tips on how to finish duplicating your scene and if you're not finished yet that's totally okay keep playing the video into the next chapter and we have some tips coming up on how to complete this even faster next we're going to get to know the second most important tab inside of blender if you're still working on duplicating your cubes and your scene looks unfinished like this one that is totally okay we're gonna have some time at the end of the video to finish duplicating and soon I will show you a super easy way to finish duplicating your scene so be sure to stick around for that along with a very easy setup to tear down our scenes with a simulation and be sure to continue to follow along and apply these next steps to your scene even if you're unfinished our goal right now is you take our scene from looking flat and gray to a fully rendered 3D environment step number one is to go from our layout tab and then move into our shading tab the shading tab is the second most important tab to get to know inside blender now at first blender starts to look very different and that brings us to our goal for this chapter which is to get to know the shading tab we can completely ignore the two panels to the right of our screen and also the two panels to the left of our scene all we need is the two panels in the center and you do not have to do this next step but for me to make it easier on you I'm going to hide both of these panels so that we can focus on the two panels in the center step number two is our 3D view in our top panel and we can just zoom out and orbit around to orient ourselves in our 3D view but we notice that the 3D view looks different why is that that is because our shading tab takes our flat gray 3D World and adds properties such as colors reflectivity it can make it look like glass it can make it look like metal these are material properties and to be able to see these properties of our materials first we need a light source without a light source our materials look flat and that's exactly what our shading tap does it takes our flat layout View and turns on the lighting and step number three for us is to customize our lighting we can do so by going all over the top right of our 3D view up here we have our viewport shading menu quick tip if you do not see this menu you can move this menu to the left by holding down middle Mouse button or for track pads that's alt click and drag you want to move this menu all the way way to the left then we will notice that we have this little drop down menu with the arrow pointing down all the way to the right click on the drop down arrow and we now have our viewport shading options now to customize our lighting all we have to do is click the reflective sphere after clicking on the reflective sphere we will get a pop-up menu these reflective spheres represent different lighting presets that blender has built in for us all we have to do is click on and select any one of these spheres to change your lighting this starts to give us some very basic creative freedom as to what our scene looks like I'm going to go ahead and select the sphere all the way to the right which is the sunset lighting preset great and step number four is our Shader editor this is where we begin to add material properties such as color reflectivity glass metallic properties these are material properties now if you don't see anything down here be sure to have one of your cubes selected if you still don't see anything no worries you may have deleted the default Cube earlier in the tutorial a very common step keep watching to the end of the chapter and I will show you a solution for that for now if you don't see anything just click the new button the first step in our Shader editor is to move around using the middle Mouse button again that's the middle Mouse button hold it down to move around and then we can use middle Mouse scroll up and down to zoom in and out again for laptop users that's just alt left click Mouse button using the preferences that we've set up earlier in the course now we just want to navigate around until we can see the top of these two Shader nodes we'll see two boxes connected with a wire next we just want to adjust the color values of our cubes and we can do so by utilizing the base color parameter and by clicking on the white box next to where it says base color once we click the white box next to base color at the top we can see here that we get a color wheel pop-up then we can just click and drag around the color wheel and move around to change the color of the cubes very exciting and if you're only seeing one Cube change I'll have a fix for you at the end of the chapter for this as well now if this area of blender feels overwhelming to you don't worry too much about that that is totally natural at this point we we have some great Choppers coming up that will really demystify this and will allow you to feel a lot more confident while working in this area of blender okay that's a wrap for the Shader editor if you have already changed your color you're all set if you do not see any of these nodes here and if you haven't been able to do this most likely this is because you've missed a step and you did not start with the default Cube which means you've also deleted your material so to fix this we need to select our Cube and then click new material after we click new material we'll change its color we'll notice that only one object is being changed to fix this we need to select all of our cubes go to our material properties and choose the pull down menu and then we want to choose copy material to selected to apply that material to all the objects again this is a bit of a stretch so if you need to rewind the video feel free to follow along with this the problem we are trying to solve here is no matter how much we change our base color it is still a flat color and right now we need to have the surface level details within our Cube and that brings us to our goal for this chapter which is to apply an image texture to our cubes to create a textured material step number one is to be sure to click the link in the description label downloads to get your blender starter kit after you've downloaded the blender starter kit right click extract the files then extract to confirm then as we navigate inside that folder we will see another folder called textures jump inside of that textures folder and there we'll see our Minecraft image textures these are the image texture files we'll be using to finish our Minecraft scene so first I'll just move my Explorer so that I can easily see the left side of my Shader editor and our image textures then I will drag and drop the white texture the white image texture file into the Shader editor directly to the left of the other Shader nodes very easy again this is just a quick drag and drop into the bottom panel which is our Shader editor then we just repeat this process for the green drag and drop the green into our Shader editor and then we'll do the same thing for the brown dragging and dropping the brown image texture into the Shader editor and the next step is to put them on the left side of our Shader nodes putting them on the left side is going to help us stay a bit more organized and help us create the connections that we need and then for step number three we'll see that we now have three new Shader nodes one called white.jpeg one called Green Dot JPEG and one called brown.jpg and next we just find the white jpeg node next we just drag our white jpeg color you drag the color out and then you will see we get a new wire all we have to do is take this wire and drag and drop it into the base color parameter of our Shader node and then boom there we go we can now see that we have an image texture applied to our cubes now one tricky tip before you get started as you drag out the wire if you accidentally let go you will notice you get this weird pop-up menu just go ahead and ignore this by clicking anywhere to exit this menu and if you go ahead and drag out the color parameter again continue to hold until you drop it into the base color parameter you will be all set great that's it and then for step number four we just need to create two more materials the grass and the dirt using the green and the brown to do so we need an object first to create the material so first we'll just select any of the base cubes any one of the base cubes is fine for now we will select our Cube and then right where the Shader editor panel in the 3D view connect inside of the Shader editor we will notice that we have a parameter that currently says material this text says material because this is our current name for our Shader Network this is the default name that blender gives it let's rename this to White so that we know that this material Shader network is set up for the white cubes select the material text type out white hit enter and there we go great now we just need to duplicate this material so that we can modify and change the image texture connection to do so we can use the button that looks like two papers stacked on top of each other this is our duplicate material button it works very similar to the duplicate object spot it's just two buttons from where we rename the material to White once we click that we will notice that we have a new name for our material blender tags .001 at the end of it this is how we know we're working with a new material duplicate now we can just rename this to Green select the text enter green hit enter and then all we need to do is simply drag and drop our Green Dot jpeg out color into the base color parameter of our Shader and then boom there we go a green material setup is all done again all of these nodes and connections can feel weird at first this is totally normal after you get some practice it will slowly start to click and make a bit more sense and we have some great chapters coming along to help out with this as well finally our Brown texture we just repeat this process select another bass Cube then we just go back down to our Shader editor and we hit the duplicate Shader button one more time once we click that duplicate Shader button we just rename it to Brown and then we go down we find our Brown image texture and then simply drag and drop the color into the base color parameter there we go not too bad but of course these are not where the grass and dirt are supposed to go so in the next chapter I'm going to share with you an easy way for us to wrap duplicate out the green and brown cubes our goal for this chapter is you duplicate our ground using the array modifier the next step is to move our newly created green Cube under our pillars but if you notice our move rotate and scale toolbar is gone whereas whenever we're in the shading tab it's not really designed for layouts but we can get our toolbar back if we just simply go up to the view menu then at the very top of the view menu we have our toolbar option click on the toolbar and you will see that the toolbar menu comes back up and we can now continue our layout in our shading tab then to finish step one we'll grab our move tool and then select our green Cube and go ahead and start to move it down underneath our pillars yours does not need to match mine exactly but somewhere under the pillars is fine for step number two we'll go back to our properties panel and we will select the wrench icon the wrench icon is our modifiers panel and if your modifiers panel is small you can expand it by clicking on the edge of the panel and dragging it to the left modifiers are an entirely new area for us to get to know inside of blender and we'll be spending a lot of time in here in the coming chapter the first step to creating modifiers is to select the add modifier drop down list here we have access to almost all of blender's modifiers in the second column at the very top we will find our array modifier now this list looks intimidating but honestly I only used a couple of these very regularly for most things that I do so I will show you the most common ones as we move forward select the array modifier and as soon as we do so we'll see that we now get two cubes this is because our array modifier is currently set to two I'm going to change this count to 13. 13 is exactly 4 higher than the current length of my cubes again yours do not have to be the same feel free to be creative here now we need to add another array to add another row to these cubes to do so we're going to add another array modifier go back up to the add modifier menu choose array again and now we're going to have two array modifiers working together this next step I'm going to click on the triangle arrow on the first modifier this will allow us to collapse the modifier and allow us to clearly see that we are now working with two modifiers first modifier is on the top and the second modifier that we created is on the bottom the second modifier is going to be working on top of the result of the first one in the second array modifier I'm going to adjust the XYZ coordinates setting the x value from a value of 1 to 0 and then we're going to go down to Y and set it from 0 to 1. after we set the x value to 0 and then y to 1 we will notice that we're now getting another row great now we just need to set our count for their this array to a value of 10 giving us 10 rows of these green cubes great there we go now we're all finished with the green cubes now we just need to do the same thing for the brown now we could repeat this exact process for what we just did on our Brown Cube but a much quicker way would be just to duplicate our existing setup and then reassign the brown material to it step number three is just to right click duplicate our green cubes with our duplicate objects tool and then move it down hit Escape move it down and now all we need to do is change it to material to do so we just click our browse materials drop down menu right next to where we labeled on materials after clicking the browse materials drop down menu we can now let's see all of our materials that we created are going to be within this list so now all we have to do is just go down to the brown material select the brown material and then there we go now we'll see that our Brown material is assigned next we can finish copying our Brown cues by just simply adding another array modifier to duplicate it in a downwards Direction then we will go back to our add modifier menu back to our array modifier then as soon as we create the third modifier we want to collapse the second modifier with the pull down arrow after we collapse the second monitor we'll have a bit more space to work with our third modifier then all we have to do is set the x value to zero set the Z value to negative one and what that's going to do is tell it to go down a value of negative one forcing it to go in the downward Direction and then our final count for this array will just be a value of four all right that was a wrap for the array modifier and this was a bit of an intermediate chapter so hang in there with me the next chapter is going to be much easier on us the final step is just to multi-slack both are green and are brown ground and then just moving them into place then as a quick bonus we'll notice that we have our Brown material still on our pillar and so to fix that all we need to do is Select that brown Cube and then go to our material browser and then just select white again to reassign that material and our final problem to solve within our render is our scene still feels very flat not very interesting so in the next chapter we'll begin taking our scene to the final stage our goal right now is you take our scene from looking very flat to looking more cinematic and believable by applying our render properties specifically we'll be adding a shadow effect along with a bloom effect step number one is to go to our render properties panel it's the second panel from the top in our properties panel inside we'll notice that we have our rendering engine Eevee and the second pulldown menu we have ambient occlusion and we're going to turn that on ambide occlusion is just a fancy word for Shadows where objects are closest to each other at first we will not see much but if we go into pull down menu we can adjust distance and factor for the factor I'm going to set this to a value of 4 and this will simply just amplify how much of the shadow that we can see but we don't see any changes just yet then for the distance I'm going to set this to a value of six this again will help us have more Shadows by making the Shadows longer and now we start to see we have some Shadows happening in between our pillars great next we have our Bloom properties which is the third drop down menu from the top enable Bloom and expand its parameters from here the most important parameter is the intensity I'm going to set this value to a value of one and as you can see this greatly boosts how much of the bloom effect that we can see again that's the value of 1 in the intensity from here I'm going to take the threshold and bring it up to a value of 6. and this will greatly reduce how far the bloom goes creating a nice light wrapping effect great that's a wrap for the render properties and the final step that you'll want to do is just orbit your scene around so that you can see the pillars against the sun in the background this is going to help you see the effects that we just created with our Bloom and next we have the most exciting chapter coming up her goal in this final chapter is to tear down our scene with an animated simulation step number one is to go back to our layout tab this is where we will find our time slider panel this is one way we control animations within blender to set up our animation step number two is to select the pillars by using the select linked material menu we can do this by just selecting one of our cubes and then going up to the select menu then going down to select linked and then select material go ahead and hit the linked materials button and then you will see that we now have all the pillars that all have the same material selected much easier than manually selecting with multi-suction now we need to tell blender to animate these cubes to do so step number three will go to the object menu and then we're going to go down to rigid body and then at the very top select add active so what is all this rigid body is just a fancy word for animated simulations then the add Active Body tells blender to make this an active animated object meaning it'll make it animated when we start to use our time slider later on now we need to tell the ground to interact act with the animation to do so in Step number four select the ground cubes we'll go back to our object menu go down to rigid body menu again and then select add passive second from the top and what add passive means is that it's going to interact with the animated Cubes but it doesn't move in the process in other words the pillars are going to go down and drop onto the ground but the ground isn't going to actually move when the pillars hit them after we set the passive objects if we try to run our simulation right now our pillars will currently fall through the floor this is because the simulation does not work with modifiers so our next step is to apply the two array modifiers currently on our green cubes and we will notice that we have to the right of both of the array modifiers we have a pull down menu with an upside down triangle on the top modifier select the pull down menu and then select apply well apply does is it tells blender that we are done with the array modifier and apply the modifier permanently into the object this part is a bit tricky so bring your eyes back to the video for this one after we apply our first modifier the first modifier is gone and applied but we we have our second modifier that has now moved into the position of the first modifier this is a little confusing that is because the second modifier becomes the first modifier so I'll just repeat that step and apply modifiers the second time and then we will see our modifier stack is now blank which means we are good to go step number six is to adjust the gravity within the simulation go to our scene properties panel the fifth from the top there we will see we have a gravity option if we expand that we can see our current gravity set to negative 9.8 in the Z axis let's change that value to a negative 30. again this is a negative value so be sure to put a negative 30 in there and what this is going to do is make all of our cubes fall down faster this particular setting is more of an artistic decision I do not usually adjust the gravity parameter with other simulations now if we do our simulation right now it would look pretty boring like this one our cues wouldn't fall and so step number seven is to sabotage our scene and add some more Randomness so that our pillars can self-destruct a good spot to do so is the very corners of our pillars taking the second from the bottom and then moving it over so the pillars can collapse and fall down in on themselves if we move one of the base cubes to the side the boxes are naturally going to fall down to the other side so next up is just take a few moments and add some Randomness around the base of your pillars and then after that it's time to see our animation with the simulation and for our bonus tip before we do our simulation now is a good time to save your project simulations can crash at any time and they use a lot of computer power and we don't want to lose all of our progress thus far so be sure to save your scene sub number eight is a shorten our simulation with a timeline all the way to the right with the parameter labeled end and I'll change that to a value of 72. by default our end frame is 250 which is over 10 seconds of simulation which is actually very long I'm going to change that to a value of 72 which is about three seconds long after hitting save that brings us to step number nine which is to hit the play button which is directly in the middle of our time slider after hitting the play button we will see our time slider starts to move and we are now in animation mode and we should see our pillars are starting to move now yours may or may not be a satisfying animation at this point so here's a few more tips as the animation is playing now is a good time to orbit around your scene and make a few notes on what you would like to see changed is it falling down aggressively enough are there a few more areas that we need to sabotage a bit more all of these things we can update and if you see that your cubes are exploding uh stay to the end of the chapter video and I'll show you why now if you bring your eyes back to the video you'll see that we run into a problem if we try to update the layout and the randomness of our cubes the cubes are acting weird why is this so step number 10 we can just pause and hit the rewind button on our time slider the rewind button is three buttons to the left of the play button and after we hit that we'll see that our animation goes back to frame one we need to be on frame one to update the layout and move around our cubes if we update our layout after frame one our cubes are actually still in mid simulation which means they're going to act weird when we try to move them and after going to frame one we can now take a few moments to go back through and continue to sabotage our scene and add some more Randomness again the places that I find to do so are the very corners and if we just take the second to the bottom and move it all the ways closed captioning not available solution to this however will bring us to our last and final tip for part one of the series that is crucial for you to do immediately after completing part one and I'll share that with you in the next chapter and have one final tip before you move on to building the sword in part two but before that I encourage you to click the link in the description to learn more about our premium membership this is where you will unlock the blender track which is the ultimate beginner to Advanced transformation this is where you'll find the rest of the Fast Track Army leveling up and climbing the mountain of mastering blunder seeing everyone's progress every day is a huge motivator I hope to see your progress in the Discord one final tip before we move on to part two right here on YouTube is to rebuild your Minecraft Project rebuilding The Minecraft Project will help you build muscle memory and muscle memory is key to your success early on while learning blender and once you've done that you will hear from me again in part two right here on YouTube [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: CG Fast Track

Views: 418,747

Keywords: blender tutorial

Id: 3QAGpxV36wM

Length: 39min 28sec (2368 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022