Blender Tutorial - Modeling the guitar step by step - Part 1

in this lecture we'll go over setting up background images to use as a reference when building our guitar model and we're starting with a blank scene here with everything deleted already now blender has something called background objects which you can attach an image to and this image will always be behind everything else so these are great for adding in blueprints or reference photos to help you model now by default adding a new object in will align it with the world's z-axis no matter what view you're in but when adding background objects in they'll always be added in aligned with whatever view you're currently in which makes it easier to set up front side and top views for example so let's press numpad 1 to make sure we're in front view and we'll load in the front view of the guitar first so now let's press shift and a and from the add menu go down to image and add in a background image and this dialog pops up and we can select the first background image we want to load in from here so navigate to wherever you saved the references folder and let's load in guitarblueprintsfront.png and there we go so this photo is now a background object and blender so it will always remain behind everything and we can use this for a reference when modeling it will also only be visible in front view since we added it in front view so if i rotate the view it disappears if i press numpad 3 for side view it's not showing there either i have to press numpad 1 for front view in order to actually see it fully now it's often good practice to build your model centered with the blender world especially on the vertical z-axis right here keeping things centered will make it a little easier later on if we want to use things like mirroring where we can model half of the object and then mirror it to the other side in this case i already made sure that the reference images themselves have the guitar centered at least mostly you can see that the middle of the guitar lines up pretty well with the vertical z axis alright so now our front view blueprints are finished now let's add in the side view the same way i'll press numpad 3 for side view then i'll press shift and a and from the image menu i'll add in a background image and we'll navigate to the references folder again and this time we'll load in guitar blueprints side and there we go that's all done now and now i'll press control and numpad 1 for back view and i'll press shift a and from the image menu again add in a background image and this time load in guitar blueprints back and there we go so now if i press numpad 1 for front view i get that view numpad 3 for side view and control and numpad 1 for back view and no other view shows up in any other view but its own and we're all good to go now the next thing we need to do is make sure we build this model to scale i want this guitar to be about 37 inches tall or about 0.95 meters so let's press shift and a and i'm going to add in a mesh cube to get the scaling right and now i'm going to press shift and z to toggle wireframe view and then i'll press the n key for the right side toolbar and let's go up to the item tab here where we have dimensions for the cube and i'll change the z dimensions to 0.95 so right here is what we want the height of the guitars in the reference picture to be so we just need to scale all the reference pictures down until they fit within the height of the cube so let's press control and i to invert our selection so now we have all the reference images selected and now i'll just press s and i'll scale that down and then zoom in and scale it down until it fits within the height of the cube now it's not exactly centered there's a little bit of space at the top and a little bit of space at the bottom but that's generally the right height for the guitar right there if you wanted to double check you can select the cube press g and move it down a little bit and it should line up with the top of the headstock and the bottom of the guitar so we're good to go now we can get rid of the cube by pressing x and deleting it and now we can press n to get rid of the right side toolbar and what we're going to do now is create a new collection with just these background objects in it that way we can hide this collection easily when we no longer want to or need to look at these photos so let's press a to select everything and then i'll press the m key to move them to a new collection i'll select new collection here and let's rename this to background images and then click on ok and now let's go over to the outliner and let's minimize that collection just to clean up how the outliner looks and now we can use the eye icon here to turn on and off visibility for these background objects and finally let's make it so that we can't select the background images because i don't want them to be able to be selected and accidentally moved around so let's go up into the filter menu in the outliner here and we'll enable the mouse cursor icon here which is for selectability and let's mouse away from that and now all objects and collections within the outliner have this extra icon here for selection and if we disable selection for the background images now none of the objects within this collection will be able to be selected you can see i'm left clicking on it but it's not being selected if i left click and press g nothing happens because nothing selected so now we can't accidentally move these out of place and they don't get in the way when we're trying to select something else either all right cool so we're actually all finished setting these up then so that'll do it for this lecture and i'll see you in the next one in this lecture we'll start things off by creating the sides of the guitar body and we'll do that by tracing things in front view and then we'll extrude that back so first let's select our original collection in the outliner here because whenever we add a new object in it'll be added to whatever collection is selected and now let's press shift a and we'll add in a mesh plane and now let's tab into edit mode and with all the vertices selected i'll press x and choose collapse edges this leaves me with a single vertex in the middle to work with when we start drawing the outline now let's get this vertex here to the bottom of the guitar and i want to move that straight down on the z-axis so it stays centered with the origin point for when we go to mirror one side to the other later on so let's press g to move it and then as we drag down we can middle click and that'll lock the movement to the z-axis or whatever axis you were dragging on i'll move that all the way down to the base of the guitar right there now the plan is to simply extrude this vertex all the way around the body of the guitar but i want to make sure to space things out as equally as i can for the smoothest results i also want to be careful about how spaced out the vertices are i'm planning on subserving this on level 2. over time i just found that level 2 is the perfect amount of subdivision to aim for so i make sure to model things with that in mind and i'll show you what i mean in a minute but first let's press e to extrude this and i'll extrude it over about one two three grid units and place it along the body of the guitar right there so the grid units i'm looking at are these light gray lines right here i spaced out these vertices about three grid units from each other and that's the spacing i'm going to try and aim for all the way around the guitar now to explain what i meant about the subsurf modifier for a minute when we add a subsurf modifier in on level 2 it's going to subdivide this line once and twice so this will be the amount of geometry for the final result now this spacing looks like the perfect amount of detail for the final high detail render it should be enough geometry to get really nice and smooth curves all the way around the guitar if we had less vertices the curvature around the guitar won't be as smooth and might look low poly and if we had more vertices then that might just be an unnecessary amount of detail and it would be harder to model with as well now the reason i use two subsurf levels instead of one is because subdividing this twice allows me to use less vertices while building the guitar while still getting a high detailed final result and working with less vertices is just easier plus if i render the guitar from further away i might only need one subdivision level for it to look good so we still have the option of rendering on sub surf level one in order to get faster and still decent looking renders in the end all right let me undo all that and just select that one vertex there again i know that was kind of a long explanation we're already like three minutes in and we've only placed two vertices but it's actually a really important concept to grasp and to keep in mind when you're modeling things so i just wanted to get that out of the way first before we moved on all right so now with this vertex selected i'll press e and extrude to the left about three grid units the same distance the first two vertices are from each other and i'll place it right there on the outline and i'm just eyeing this up too the spacing doesn't have to be completely perfect and we'll just continue doing this all the way around and when i get to sharper curves like around here and maybe this pocket right there i'm going to space things out just a little bit closer than those three grid units because sharper curves are going to need more geometry to look high detail in the end so i'm going to keep those vertices closer and when things mellow out like right around here i'll go back to normal spacing and then stop extruding at the top of the guitar in the middle right there and let's zoom out and let's see how it looks so there's my outline there and you can see how everything is generally consistently spaced out and things are spaced a little bit tighter around the sharper curves so now that we've got half of this created let's mirror this to the other side so that we don't have to trace the other side so let's press a to select everything then go up to the mesh menu here and select symmetrize this will mirror the left side over to the right side based on where the origin point is and as long as the vertices are close enough in the center they should merge together so it looks like they merged at the middle there and let's check the top so it looks like i didn't place this vertex close enough to the center so these two didn't merge there but to fix that we can go into the operator panel here and i'll increase the threshold to .001 and that seems to do the trick so just increasing the merge threshold a little bit like that merge those vertices together for us all right good stuff now obviously things aren't matching up perfectly with the blueprints up here anymore so what we're going to need to do is probably just redraw this area and then just adjust the vertex positions as we go down let's start off at the top so let me left click on that vertex to select it and i'm going to place it at the top of this slope so right about there so let me press g and i'll move it up and to the left to about right there that way it flattens out the top of the guitar there as well and again i think i'll just redraw this area so let me press alt and a to deselect everything and then i'll press b and i'll left click and drag over all those vertices there then press x and delete those vertices and now let's fix up how these vertices align with the blueprints just by selecting one then press g move it over to match the blueprints all right and that looks like it did the trick so that's all good to go now we just need to redraw this area here and i'm going to just take the top vertex there and extrude it around remembering to keep the spacing generally consistent but also make the spacing a lot tighter around the sharper curves to be able to capture that with enough detail so now i'll just press e and i'll begin extruding and now when you get to the top here in order to connect these two vertices with an edge with this vertex selected hold shift and left click on that one and then press f to create an edge between them in fact let me select this one i'll press g and move it to the right a little bit just to start straightening out this curve a little bit more all right so now let's disable visibility of the background images and let's see what we've got so far all right that's looking good so now let's reenable the background images and i'll press numpad 3 for side view and then press a to select all the vertices i'm going to zoom in to the top i'm going to move these vertices over to the left to right here now and then we're going to extrude them all the way to the right so let's press g to move them and then middle click as you drag to the left to lock the movement to the y axis and drop it right about there and make sure to leave it inside the white banding right here this banding goes on the corner of the guitar so we want the side of the guitar to be inside of those white strips now later on we'll be mirroring things like the banding from the left all the way over to the right so i want to make sure that the side of the guitar is perfectly centered with the origin point right here so that way later on when we mirror the band from the left to the right it's going to perfectly match up with the side of the guitar so in order to get that alignment later on we can mirror these vertices to the other side in order to get that symmetry along the origin so in order to do that with all the vertices selected i'll go up to the mesh menu and select symmetrize now by default it's mirroring from negative x to positive y down here in the operator panel but we want it to mirror from negative y over to positive y so let's switch the direction to negative y to positive y and there we go and for some reason my background images disappeared let me re-enable them and that's perfect and now let's minimize the operator panel and rotate the view and see what we got so far so now we have both of those outlines we just need to add faces between them so with both of these edge loops selected let's press control and e for the edge menu and select where's it at bridge edge loops and there we go let's press shift nz for solid shaded view and check it out all right now let's add in a subsurf modifier to really smooth this out so let's go over to the modifier properties right here click add modifier and add in a subdivision surface modifier and i'm going to increase the viewport levels to two same as the render levels while i'm modeling i like to keep the 3d viewport levels the same as the final render levels just to make sure everything looks good in the end and now let me tab out of edit mode real quick i just want to make sure that at render level 2 all these curves are going to be nice and smooth for the final result so essentially i'm just checking to make sure that i added in enough geometry to look perfect at a render level of two and everything actually looks great so let me tab back in now the area that's smoothed out right here is what we're going to work on next let's press numpad 3 for side view and i'll press shift and z to go back to wireframe view now on guitars with the cutaway on one side like right here there's a binding strip at the top of that cutaway that you can see right here this binding is actually flush with the guitar surface so we'll need to make some room for this in the side of the guitar so what i want to do is i want to separate this edge right here into two edges and what we'll do is slide the top edge to the left a little bit and slide the bottom edge down a little bit and that'll leave a gap there where we can put a piece of binding all right so let's press two on the number row to switch to edge select mode or you can switch the selection modes from these three icons up here choose the middle one for edge select and now go into an angled view like this and left click on that edge to select it and now in order to split this into two let's go up to the mesh menu and go down to split and choose split faces by edges so that'll split that edge apart into two so things are no longer connected there now what we'll do is left-click in that area to select just one of the edges and i'm not sure which one i have so let me press the g key to move it and i got the bottom edge so i'll right click to keep that in place and now i want to slide this down a little bit so to move it i'll press g and then press the z key to lock the movement on the z axis and i'll type in negative .006 and then press enter now the measurements in blender are in meters by default so moving that down negative point zero zero six meters moved it down six millimeters which is the average width for these strips of binding and now let's click on this top edge here to select that and i'm going to move this over for the thickness of the binding and for that we'll go with 1.5 millimeters or .0015 meters so let me press g and then press x to lock the movement to the x-axis and then i'll type in negative .0015 and then press enter perfect now because the subsurf modifier physically smooths the mesh if we press shift nz for solid shader view you can see how much these corners have been rounded off and we can fix that by using something called creasing to sharpen those corners you can add crease values to edges to tell the subsurf modifier to not physically smooth them so let me hold shift and let me left click on this edge and that one there to select them as well and then i'm going to select the same three down here so while still holding shift i'll left click on those three edges by creasing two connected edges like these two it will sharpen the corner between them so in order to add a crease value to all these edges let's press the n key for the right side toolbar and under edges data we'll increase the mean crease value here to 1. and there we go so all of those corners are sharp and ready to go now and now let's press n to get rid of the right side toolbar and now let's smooth out the shading on the surface so let me tab out of edit mode and then right click and choose shade smooth and that nicely smooths out the surface for us alright so with that ready to go now we just need to add thickness to it so over in the modifiers let's click on add modifier and add in a solidify modifier this simply adds some thickness to our mesh as you can see now the board is a little bit too thick by default and i think an average thickness for sideboard for an acoustic guitar is about 2.3 millimeters or .0023 meters so over here in the thickness let's type in point zero zero two three now that looks like the right amount of thickness but since we shaded the object as smooth earlier it's even trying to shade these 90 degree angles on the edges here so that's creating this weird shading effect where we're seeing some gradients and because at the moment this might be a little confusing for right now let me just right click and switch this back to shade flat so we can get a better idea of what that thickness looks like and that looks good next up i want to bevel these sharp 90 degree angles just a tiny bit just so they're not perfectly sharp and to bevel those angles let's go over to the modifiers click add modifier and add in a bevel modifier now by default the bevel modifier isn't just beveling the sharp 90 degree angles that we want to bevel it's also beveling every single edge that's going across like this for example if i hide it and then re-enable it you can see how every edge that's going across is also getting beveled and split into more edges we just want the 90 degree angles to be beveled so what we'll do is switch the limit method here to angle and now any angle above 30 degrees is going to get beveled but just to be safe let's switch the angle up to 80. that makes sure that only really sharp angles get beveled now you can see that these bevels are actually quite large i want to give these edges a really really tiny bevel mainly for close-up renders the corners are mostly sharp on the edges of guitar boards and the binding but i want at least a super tiny bevel because i think it'll look a little bit nicer so let's go over here and we'll change the bevel amount to .00005 that's four zeros and a five and then press enter so that gives me a really tiny bevel on those edges and right now these bevels only consist of one single segment but we can make that a little bit higher quality by changing the number of segments from one to two and now let's right click and choose shade smooth again and you can see we're still seeing some shading issues it's not as bad as before but we're still getting those issues so to fix these weird gradient issues we're getting all around let's go into the bevel modifier and go down to the shading panel right here and we'll expand that and enable hardened normals now when you do that you'll get an error here that says enable auto smooth in object data properties so we need to enable auto smooth in order for this to work and to do that let's go over to the object data properties here and go into the normals panel and expand that and enable auto smooth and there we go so now we have perfectly shaded sides and perfectly shaded bevels and we're good to go in fact to show you the contrast let me go back to the modifiers and toggle hardened normals on and off you can see the huge difference it makes in fixing that shading so when you add beveled corners in and you smooth shade things sometimes that smooth shading can extend into the areas around it creating that gradient type shading that you see here that's where the hard normals option comes into play this prevents that from happening and gives you perfectly shaded sides as well as perfectly shaded bevels so if you have issues with shading after adding a bevel modifier to something this option often comes in handy alright so that's actually going to do it for the sideboards let's take one last look and everything's looking great so that'll do it for this lecture and i'll see you in the next one

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Length: 21min 57sec (1317 seconds)

Published: Tue May 03 2022