Cables and Tubes Tutorial in Blender 2.92 | Polygon Runway

[Music] hey everyone welcome to my new tutorial today we're going to explore curves in blender a little bit more how can they be used and utilized to create all sorts of tubes pipes you know cables and stuff like that and we'll explore some neat little tricks so i came up with this like a little doomsday device design uh they'll be perfect fit for something like this so i'll just quickly mock up the device so we can get into the curves and cable stuff and then as always i will just fast forward and finish up the scene with some basic materials and lighting so you can see how this can be utilized as a part of the larger scene if you're new to the channel and you'd like to see content like this in the future uh please hit that subscribe button and the bell button if you want to get notified when i release something new and if you're new in a world of 3d and blender these short tutorials of mine are specifically designed to give you as much information and shortest time amount possible which might be a little bit daunting if you're a beginner so if you're interested in more in-depth explanation and slower pace maybe check out my other commentary tutorials you can find the link in the description and you will find the link to my website polygonrunway.com2 there where you can check out my courses that are specifically designed to take you from zero to hero in shortest time possible so if you're interested go check it out and now let's get to this and let's create some cables the first thing i want to do here is to make sure you have all the add-ons active that we'll need so let's just go into the edit preferences and click add-ons and let's find some add-ons first one will be simplify curves so just start writing sim and you will see add curve simplified curves just enable this checkbox to make sure you have the add-on active and the other one is extra objects so let's just type in extra and you can add both basically this will just add more options for creating meshes in blender so these are two essential add-ons that we'll need right now so let's just close the preferences now and let's proceed and i will block out um a little bit of the device so we have the proportions in place and then i will later finish when the cables are ready so let's press shift a and we'll add a plane here because i want the origin point at the bottom and i will just scale this on the y axis a little bit so let's just tab in press s then y and scale it up and let's press e and extrude it up so we have this kind of a boxy design here and now let's just click here press i to inset and let's press s to scale this down a little bit and i will press g then x to move it up tiny bit on x-axis and maybe let's press two for it select select this edge at the bottom press g then x and move this a little bit up so there's more space around here and now let's just hit three for face select and extrude this down okay something like this and i want some cables going out i'm from the side here so let's tab out shift right click to place cursor here and let's press shift a and we'll add a circle right here and let's modify this to something like 24 segments we don't need 32 this will be pretty small and now just tab in um to the edit mode let's scale this down let's press r y90 to rotate this 90 degrees press f and e to fill this and extrude like that now press i to inset and e again to extrude so this will be kind of a socket for cable here let's press g and y and move it a little bit to the side and we'll later duplicate more of them here so first of all i want to create a really basic cable out of the curve here and i personally prefer to start with the vertex and then convert that to curves because i find the workflow with vertices much more intuitive in blender so i will now hold shift as and snap cursor to select it and let's press shift a and add mesh single word at single word and this is the object from the extra objects add-on that's why we activated it and make sure you are in the vertex select mode otherwise this won't work and now let's look from the front by pressing one and let's just press e then x and extrude one vertex here and now let's press e then z and extrude it down and we can go somewhere here doesn't really matter and now let's just select this vertex press ctrl shift b to enable vertex bevel and now increase the number of cuts with the mouse wheel so you create something like this and now this is only single vertex this doesn't have any volume anything like that um and we can easily convert this to curve so just go object convert to curve and now if you go into the edit mode these are now curved control points and you can go to the object data properties for the curve options here expand the geometry tab and basically just add some depth to your bevel and create cable very easily like this and we can do the same things for metal structures like pipes or tubes or something like that so right now i will zoom out a little bit and shift right click here and let's just press shift a mesh and place a new single word right here one for a front view and let's press e then z extrude this up then e x to extrude on the x axis and let's just eyeball this and close it somewhere here so again e then z and let's hold shift to select these two vertices and press ctrl shift b and bevel them we can use the same radius here so this will be some kind of like a protective metal pipe or something on the top of the display so we can just type out and hit object convert curve and let's increase the depth here as well and you can additionally modify the resolution here i think four will be enough so if we now right click and shade this smooth um this will look pretty okay so i'm alright with this and i want the same on the other side so let's just add a mirror modifier here and let's select the box as a mirror object and let's switch this to y and now we can continue and add some more of these cables so let's select this object shift click the curve let's look from the top so we have a better view of the scene and let's just hit alt d and y to duplicate on y axis like this and now let's press shift r and again to repeat and we can select them all and place them in the middle a little bit better so this will be our cables but i want to add some kind of irregularity there i don't want them to be so perfect so a few of them can but i think this one we can mess up a little bit and since we used aldi these are link duplicate so we need to separate them from the other so let's just go objects relations make single user object data and this will separate it from the rest and now we can just go into the edit mode press a to select all and right click and set spline type to nurbs this will enable that path behavior but additionally we lost the endpoints so we need to go to the active spline in the object data properties and enable endpoints and now this will behave like a bezier curve basically but following your points in the path so you can just move things around and this is too dense here so let's just select few of these points and press ctrl x to dissolve them we didn't need so many points here and now let's just mess this up a little bit move it to the side tiny bit okay something like this maybe so you can play with the shape a little bit so we kind of broke out of that rhythm here um which is more pleasing to the eye so depends on what you want to achieve so this is how easily you can modify the curves and we can just select all of these and right click and shade smooth we'll deal with the rest of the objects on the follow up section well i will just fast forward through this process this is the way how you can easily create all kind of pipes and cables by extruding vertices converting to curves you know and then maybe switching um the spline type to nurbs so you have better control and create more organic shapes like this now another great technique um to use when you want some more organic cable that's just you know all messed up around your object or around the walls or something you can use grease pencil um let's just hit shift s to reset cursor to world origin and let's press shift a and add the plane so we have some ground and let's just scale it up and now i want to create some cables they're just basically going from this side lying here around and going to the back of this device so we can press shift a and add a grease pencil object and let's add a blank so now nothing happens we are still in the object mode so to be able to actually use grease pencil you need to go into the draw mode here so let's switch there and now you are able to draw with the grease pencil but i want to be able to draw on the surfaces but i want to be able to draw on the surfaces so let's switch the origin to surface and you can additionally set offset here so let's try to draw something and you will see that offset here so this is quite a lot so let me hit ctrl z and let's set this to something like um 0.01 um that's much better now i just want some cable to go from here you know and be just lying here around like this and maybe another one okay don't worry about the precision right now and what you can do here is to go back to the object mode you can see you have a grease pencil object and you can easily convert this to curve 2 so just go to object convert 2 and you can choose if you want pad or bezier curve or polygon curve i will choose polygon curve it's always easy to convert these to nurbs so this is the default i will choose and right here you can see we have still the grease pencil object and it just created a new object with the curves here so i will just select the g pencil object press x and delete this and now if we select the new curve object and tab in you will see we made the curve pretty dense because it just followed your strokes and that's why we activated the add-on to simplify curves so right now just tap out press f3 that's quick search for functions and let's type in simplify you will see the curve simplify command let's hit enter and you can see it created a new object for us as well and here there's a little window if you don't see it expanded just click here and you can increase the error which is basically an amount of how much you want this curve to be simplified so let's increase this and you will see how it starts to break so let's try something like this okay and let's just delete the gp layer and we are left with something like this which is much less density here and additionally you can go ahead press a to select all and convert this to nerves as well and basically just enable endpoint same as before so we have nice smooth curves lying around and you can see those cables being up here where you drew on the surface so you could like draw cables on buildings on multiple surfaces and stuff like that this is very great hack for that and right now you can just increase the depth for these cables and play around with them a little bit you know so they don't overlap here and there okay and on some places you might want to you know put them in different place and last technique i want to show you is basically the curve modifier that allows you to wrap any object along the curve um it's very effective way when you want to have a little bit more complicated object you know like a coated cable or something like that and actually let's create something like this so i will just select all and press h to hide and let's create the profile first we'll need so i'll hit 1 for front view and let's press shift a and add mesh single word add single word and now let's press g then x and move this to the side tiny bit something like this and now press e then z and enter 0.1 and this is important so we actually know the value um how high this is and now select both of these right click subdivide select the middle one press g then x and move it to the side like this tab out and this is everything we need to create the cable so let's go to the modifier and add a screw modifier like this and now we'll add a screw value of 0.1 that will exactly match our profile and now you can just increase the number of iterations like this and you have yourself some nice cable so this is the first thing we'll need and the second will be curve obviously so let's press shift a and you can go and add the curve directly so go to the curve menu and you have multiple options here since we enabled that extra curves as well but here i'm just interested in the basic path uh which is a nurbs curve so let's add that one and now let's just select this and move it to the side a little bit and this curve is um important actually where it's placed so let's press g then z and move it up a little bit so the other object doesn't get in the way and let's press alt h to unhide everything and now we'll basically just wrap this object here around this curve so first of all we can go ahead and press s and shift z to scale this like that so it's not so thick and you know now just in the modifiers collapse the screw modifier and add another one and let's add a curved modifier just like this and we'll pick the curve object this nurbs pad right here and don't forget to switch the deform axis to z because our cable was pointing up and this can be a little bit messy sometimes with the curve modifier but remember basically if this object were lying along the x-axis you would want to pick the x and we have it pointing upwards so that's why we need to choose the z and actually this will place it correctly right here along this curve and the reason um this is so offset is because the original object was offset from the from the curve along which we want to wrap this so the best thing you can do here is to select the curve shift s cursor to select it and now select this cable object shift s and selection the cursor and you can see they are now aligned and if we select the curve somehow the nerves path and go into the edit mode you can see now you are able to modify this like that so the best thing we can do is basically just select this cable hold ctrl click the nerves path press ctrl p and parent to object so anytime we pick the path and move it around we move the cable object as well so now only thing left is to place it somewhere and i had something like this in mind so let me just press r y and rotate this minus 90 degrees let's place it somewhere here and down okay and now the end point i want it to go into the device from the back so somewhere here and now let's just move this few points around and actually this will not close because the cable object is too short but worry not the modifiers are still in place so let's go to the screw modifier and increase the number of iterations just like this and this can be used to create um pretty interesting effects and it's not long enough so we'll have to just select this and place g then z twice and move this along its z axis so it covers the curve a little bit better okay i will play with the placement a little bit later here so here you can see um how easy it is to kind of use just three vertices to create cable and wrap it around the curve and don't worry about the number of iterations you can always just add another modifier like an array modifier on top of this you know and create cable as long as you need so yeah these were the few tricks i wanted to show you with the curves i will just go ahead now and finish the scene and i will see you on the other side so so the doomsday device is ready i really hope this will help you to use curves and various modifiers creatively this way please don't create real doomsday devices if you're new to the channel and you'd like to see content like this in the future please hit that subscribe button and the bell button to get notified when i release something new and thank you all for watching and have a wonderful day [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Polygon Runway

Views: 38,358

Keywords: blender, 3d, tutorial, isometric, diorama, blender tutorial, low poly tutorial, illustration, low poly, 3d illustration, 3d illustration tutorial, 3d modeling, 3d modeling tutorial, blender modeling, blender modeling tutorial, modeling, modeling tutorial blender, 3d modeling software, low poly art, blender glass material, blender glass, blender gradient texture, blender 2.92, blender 2.92 tutorial, blender cable modeling, blender curves, blender curve modifier, blender pipes

Id: h_gFt4Z-nZI

Length: 26min 36sec (1596 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021