Christmas Tree 🎄 Part 2 (Blender Tutorial)

hello everyone and welcome to part two of this tutorial series where we're creating this christmas tree in blender so this is where we left off in part one so we created the christmas tree and we added the lights and we also added some texture to the christmas tree so in this part we're going to be creating the lights and we're going to be decorating the christmas tree and then we're also going to be adding the star on top of the christmas tree before we do that though i do want to add the background to just kind of give a nice dark blue background behind our tree so i'm going to press shift c and that will center the 3d cursor so i can now press shift a and i'm going to go right down here to mesh and then i'm going to add a plane i'm now going to press s to scale and i'm going to scale this plane up quite a bit so something like that and then i'm going to press tab to go into edit mode so i now want to select this vertex and then shift select this vertex and i'll press e to extrude and z press z to bring it up on the z-axis and just bring it up a little bit and then place that now right here i do want to make this much more smooth so i'm going to select this vertex shift select this vertex and then i can press ctrl b and ctrl b is going to add a manual bevel and then i can scroll my mouse wheel and that's going to add more cuts and i want to add quite a lot of cut so that it's very smooth and then i'm just going to click to place that so i can now tab back into object mode and then using the object context menu i can shade this smooth so now if we go into the camera view and go into rendered mode by pressing z and moving my mouse up you can see that looks pretty nice so i'm going to click right over here on the material properties and then i can just click on a new and i can just call this background and then right down here on on the base color i'm going to make this a blue color and i'm going to make it pretty dark so pretty dark something like that now you can see that it's kind of reflecting the light right here and so what i can do to make it less reflective is i can turn the specular down so i'm actually going to turn the specular all the way down to zero so it's quite dark and then also i think i want this to be a bit darker but i don't want to turn it all the way down to black because if i turn it all the way down to black it's just going to be fully black um and i won't be able to see any lighting so i'm just going to make it kind of a dark blue maybe a little bit less saturated and a little bit darker but just something like that so you can see there's just a little bit of a shadow there on the ground um that does look kind of nice and it really brings the tree out because it's just a nice dark color in the background so now let's go ahead and model the christmas lights so i'm going to press z and move my mouse over to go back into solid view i'm now going to press shift c again to center my 3d cursor to the very center of the scene so i can now press shift a and i'm going to go right over here and i'm going to add a circle and then right behind me on the add circle settings if you just open that up um you can see right here there is an amount of vertices so i want to change this count here to 12. and that way there just aren't quite as many vertices because we are going to be seeing these really small and so we don't actually need to add that much detail so i can now just click on this to close it so i want to be able to see this a little bit better so i'll press g to grab click and hold and then let go with my mouse wheel and i'm just going to bring it right over here and then i'll press period on the numpad and that's going to jump me over to the object so i can now tab and edit mode and we can start to model this so i'm first going to press f and that will just fill a face um in the light there and then i can press e to extrude and we can extrude this up on the z-axis and just kind of bring it up a little bit and then i'll press s to scale and we're just going to scale that up a little bit so now what i want to do is i want to press i and i is going to inset the face so it's going to put a face inside a face and i'm just going to make it a bit smaller something like that and then i can also press one on the numpad to go over to side view just so that i can see how that looks like inside view so i'll now press e to extrude up the light and this is actually going to be the little part that is lit up and then this down here this will just be the base of the light so i can just bring that up and then i can press e to extrude again and then s2 scale and we're going to bring that down maybe press g and z and bring that down and scale that down a little bit more then i can press e to extrude again and s to scale and we're just going to scale that down just like that all right so that is looking pretty good although i do want to press z and move my mouse over to go into wireframe and i'm going to box select this right here and i'll press a g and z and just move it up a little bit more all right so now right down here i want to press 3 on the top of my keyboard or just click right here to go to the face select and then i can go back into solid view so i want to select this face right here and i want to press i to inset this again and just kind of bring it down like that and then i'll press e to extrude and i'll extrude it down on the z-axis and i want to just bring this down just like that so this part right here that is the part that's going to go into the cord of the lights now we are going to be using a particle system to put this all over the cord so wherever the origin point is that's where it's going to come out of so what i want to do is double tap the a key to select everything and then i can press g to grab and z on the z axis and i just want to bring this up and then click to place that so now the origin point is right down there you can see that little orange dot is right down there and that way when we use a particle system these are going to be coming up from the origin point now another thing i want to do is shade this smooth so using the object context menu i can shade the smooth but you can see when i do that these edges look really weird and that's because there aren't enough vertices so what i'm gonna do is press one on the top of my keyboard or click right over here to go to the vertex select i can now hold down the alt key and i'm just going to alt select this ring of vertices right here and then what i want to do is add more geometry so i'm going to press ctrl b and ctrl b is going to add a manual bevel now right now there's way too many vertices so i'm going to use my scroll wheel and i'm going to scroll down so that there's just maybe four or five just like that so i'm just going to click to place that and now if i tap back into object mode you can see the shading is a lot better and then you can see the shading is also a little bit weird kind of up here so i'm going to alt and select this ring of vertices and then i can press ctrl b and i'm just going to scroll my mouse wheel down just so there's a few and just click to place that okay that is better and then also right up here i'm going to alt select this ring of vertices and i can press ctrl b and just make a tiny little one right there and i don't want this to be too high poly because we are going to be using this in a particle system so i do want this to be pretty low poly just kind of like this so then right over here i need to do the same thing because you can see the shading is looking really weird so i'm going to alt and select this ring of vertices and i can press ctrl b and i'm going to scroll my mouse wheel down so that there's just one cut and then i'll bring my mouse in and click to place that and that way you can see it sharpens that up and it looks much nicer so then i'll alt select this alt and select that ring of vertices and again i'll press ctrl b and then click to place that let's navigate right down here and i want to do the same thing for all these so i'm going to alt select this loop of vertices and i'll press ctrl b click to place that and then i can alt select this and i'll press control b again control b click to place that and then again alt and select this ring of vertices and i'll press ctrl b and then click to place that all right so that is looking pretty good and you can see now those edges are much sharper and then i do want to also scale this down because it's really big so i'll scale it down quite a bit and then i can press ctrl s to save our project alright so now we're going to be creating the cord and we're going to put the cord all around the tree just kind of spin it up along the tree and then we'll be using this as a particle system on the chord so i'm going to press shift c to center the 3d cursor and then i can press shift a and to make the chord for the christmas lights i'm going to go over here to curve and then i'm going to add the bezier curve and it's added it right down here so i'll just kind of bring it over so we can see it a little bit better all right so this cord is not very thick it doesn't have any thickness right now so i'm going to click right over here on the object data properties and i'm going to scroll down and i'm going to open up the geometry tab and then right down here under the bevel we want to turn the depth up so i'm just going to turn the depth up but i will keep it pretty small because this is just a little cord um for our christmas lights so i do want it to be pretty thin so probably something like that maybe just slightly thinner um something like that and then also i want to click on this button right here which is fill caps and that way it'll fill those caps on the edges so i can now just press g to grab and we're just going to stick it kind of right there and then i can tab into edit mode so i'm just going to select these handles right here and i can press g to grab and r to rotate and we're just going to kind of stick these around and i'm just really going to hand place them now it's a little bit hard to see right now where the chords are so i'm actually going to tab back into object mode and then with this selected i am going to shift and select this object right here just the wooden part of the tree so now what i want to do is i want to hide everything else from our view so that we can't see it so i'm going to press shift h and what shift h will do is it will hide everything else which is not selected so i can now select the chord and i can press tab to go back into edit mode so these curves here have handles so i can press s to scale and g to grab and r to rotate and i'm just going to start to rotate this around so for the starting i want to just kind of stick it kind of in the center maybe even stick it into the trunk just like that so we can't really see it and then i'll select the second handle and i'll press g to grab and r to rotate and i'll also press s to scale and i'll scale that down a little bit alright and i just want to bring it over here something like that and i also want to bring it out a little bit so it's a bit farther out alright so i can now press e and e is going to extrude out the curve so now we have a longer cord so i'm just going to bring this around and really i'm just going to hand place this um i think it does work the best if you just hand place it so i'm just going to start to rotate it around the tree so i'll press e to extrude and i just extrude that out and then i can kind of rotate it around rotate the cord there and i want to make the cord so it's kind of resting on these branches right here so i'll extrude that out kind of rotate it over bring it over there and then i'll extrude that out again and bring it over and as i'm extruding this out i want to very slowly have it going up so you can see if i just select everything you can see the starting is down here and slowly gradually i am bringing this up so it's just going to go along the tree and slowly go up on the branches and i can have it go down every now and then just to have it go a little bit more down to just make it a little bit more random but generally i do want it to be going up so this one is going out too far so i'll kind of bring this one back and just kind of bring this one up and over okay i can press e to extrude again and r to rotate and i'm just going to rotate that one maybe scale it down a little bit and now you can see that we're starting to overlap our other one so here's the first one and now we're a little bit higher so i'm just going to continue to do this and go around the tree um but there actually is a way that we can speed this up we can actually duplicate our cord and then just kind of place it where we want so i'll just keep on extruding this and just kind of bringing it around and then later on we will duplicate the cord um just to speed up the process a little bit so let's just select this one kind of bring it down now if this is a little bit hard to tell apart the branches from the cord you can press z and then move your mouse down and let go to go into the material preview and this way you can clearly tell the difference because the cord is white and the branches have the texture so this will just make it a little bit easier so i'm just going to extrude that and rotate it maybe scale that up a little bit so let's just go a little bit farther and then i will duplicate the cord so that we don't have to do quite as much manual work extrude that out bring it over okay so i think that's about far enough maybe i'll just rotate that over a little bit and maybe rotate that over a little bit all right so you can see we already have the cord just kind of coming up it's kind of rotating around twice so what i can do now is i can press shift d to duplicate and then i'll press z and just kind of bring it up just like that and then also to just make it look a little bit random i can press r to rotate and z on the z-axis and i can just kind of rotate this around so it's a bit more random maybe bring it over there and then also i do want this to fit the shape of the tree so you can see that there's a lot of the tree right here so i can just kind of bring the handles over maybe bring this handle out a little bit and i do want to make sure that they look like they're kind of placed on the tree branches so you can see this one is kind of going through the tree branches so i'll just bring that up and just make it look like it's going on the tree branches kind of resting on the tree branches um to just kind of go around here and make sure that's looking all good and also something that i noticed is that um this cord does look a little bit too thick so right over here on the depth i'm going to change this down so i'll change the cord depth to a point zero zero three just so that it's pretty small because i don't want it to be too big all right so just kind of look around here let's see what we need to do maybe bring that down a little bit this one that looks pretty good maybe just bring it up a little bit and this one right here rotate that one okay oh right here this one is kind of going through the tree branch so i'll just kind of pull it up and maybe scale it down a little bit so now what i need to do is i need to connect these two cords because if you remember earlier we duplicated these so they're actually separate pieces so what i'm gonna do is i'm going to hit the forward slash button and that is going to take us into local view and you can also click right over here on view and then you can go right down here to local view and then you can click on toggle local view or just click the forward slash on your keyboard and this is going to take us to local view so basically this is just kind of hiding everything else so we can only see this object so now what i can do is i can connect these two pieces so you can see that right here this is where the first one ends and this is where the second one starts because if i hover my mouse over this and press l that'll select all of the linked pieces and you can see we need to connect this to this so what i can do is i can actually just click on this and then shift click on this and then i can press f and f is going to fill those together and then i just need to kind of rotate these and kind of move them around and then i want this to go farther out because right now you can see that it's kind of stretched so i can shift select both of these and then using the object context menu i can click on subdivide and that is going to subdivide this so now if i click right here you can see there is now a curve in between those two curves and i can press g to grab and just kind of move this curve out and maybe scale it up a little bit all right so there we go that was looking pretty good and i need to kind of bring this down a little bit and bring this up a little bit because i don't want these two cords to be right next to each other i want there to be a little bit more space in between them maybe bring that down a little bit so i now want to go back out of local view so i can click on the forward slash or you can just click on view and go to local view and you can toggle the local view so now these are all joined together and so i can now press shift d and z and we're going to bring this up and just kind of rotate it again kind of give it a random rotation you can also press 7 on the numpad for top view if you just want to kind of rotate that around and then again we need to go back into a local view and we need to just kind of join these together so i'm going to click on this one shift click on this one and then i can press f to fill a face and then also using the object context menu i can subdivide this and then that way there's going to be a curve right here and i can just kind of bring this curve out maybe select this one kind of bring it out like that and you can just kind of bring some of these pieces down if you need to fill some of these areas you can also box select everything and just kind of bring it down a little bit if you need to bring that down so just like that okay let's uh toggle the local view and then let's go into the material preview just so we can see that so now we just kind of need to adjust this more because you can see some of these pieces are kind of coming out too far so i just need to adjust these pieces so i'll bring this one down and remember i want the pieces of the cord to kind of look like they're resting on the branches so like this one i need to kind of bring it over and down kind of like that so it's resting on that branch let's take a look at this one so this one i need to bring it up a little bit maybe i'll just have it going through these two branches and kind of resting on that branch and then this one this one probably needs to come in a little bit and maybe a little bit more down and bring this one up a little bit and then another thing that i want to do is i want to make the cord kind of out bigger when it's more on the bottom of the tree and then as it goes up i want it to be a bit smaller so something that i can do to do this is i can just press b for the box select i'm just going to box select these bottom chords then i can press o or i can click right here and that's going to turn on the proportional editing and when i now press s to scale because we have the proportional editing on everything which is in this circle is going to be pulled along with it and then you can also use your scroll wheel to scroll the proportional editing so you can make it a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller so i'm just going to bring that up make it a little bit bigger and then i can press a to deselect everything and i'm going to press b for the box select and just box select um these top pieces and i'll press s to scale and just scale them down a little bit i can also press g and z and just bring it up a little bit if it's a little bit too squished down there so i can now just press o or click on this button to turn off the proportional editing all right so i'm going to finish this off by hand so i'm just going to select this and then i'll press e to extrude r to rotate and just kind of bring that up e to extrude just kind of extrude that out rotate it over and keep on extruding that and rotating it we're just going to keep on doing that until it's all the way at the top of the christmas tree so that way we will have lights all around the tree i'll just extrude that one out kind of rotate it and you can see i'm slowly gradually having the cord go up so it's going upwards towards the top of the tree okay let's extrude that out again maybe scale this handle down a little bit bring that over extrude that one out again bring it over extrude it out again all right and i'm getting towards the end so you can see this is how it's looking it's looking pretty nice um i do need to go and just kind of fiddle around with these because some of these i think are a little bit too low um but i'll just finish this off up here so i'm just gonna press e to extrude r to rotate and g to grab and again as i'm uh modeling this and extruding this i'm just making sure that they're not like going through the branches so they just kind of are resting on the top of the branches you can also look at this from top view that's pretty helpful just to kind of see the spiral shape maybe move that in a little bit i do want it to be pretty small at this point because it is kind of the top of the tree bring that over extrude that up press seven on the numpad to go to top view just kind of bring that over okay extrude that up again and we are almost done here i just want to kind of stick it up at the very top just kind of bring that around the top of the tree extrude that again and then for the last little bit right up here on the top i can just extrude it and i can just kind of scale the handle down and i'm just gonna stick it kind of right in the very base of the tree just kind of stick it right in there so that was looking pretty good um i do just want to go back here though and just look over everything and just kind of adjust anything that might need a little bit of adjusting of course you're not going to be able to see everything in lots of detail because there are going to be all of the pine needles over the top of this so it doesn't need to be exact but i'm just going to go around here just make sure everything is looking nice i think that is looking good um maybe rotate this over bring it up a little bit but yeah just kind of go over and make sure everything looks good to you and right here at the bottom i think maybe some of these are a little bit too low so i'll bring that one up a little bit let's see how that is um this one right here i think i'll bring it up over these lower branches maybe bring it in a little bit and then maybe bring this one up a little bit as well all right so just press ctrl s again to save and i do think that looks very good um that'll be very good for the lights on our tree so i will press alt h and alt h is going to unhide everything and now you can just see there's a little bit of a cord kind of there inside the tree so i'm going to select the cord and i need to add a material to the cord because right now it's white and that doesn't look very good it would kind of stand out too much and cords for christmas lights are usually green and i think they're usually green so that if you put them in a tree they'll be harder to see because they'll blend in with the needles so i'm just going to select the chord object and then i'm going to go right over here to the material properties and then i can click on new and i can just call this chord and then i want to make the base color a very very dark color and i also want to make it green so it's going to be a very very dark green and then i also want to change the roughness value to a 0.4 and that way it'll be a little bit more shiny and look a little bit more like plastic so i'm just going to press z and move my mouse up to go into rendered view just to see how that's looking so you can see the chord is pretty invisible but there's just a little bit of a chord here and there you can kind of see it right there and you can kind of see it over there so that'll just make it look pretty realistic because you can't see the chord but it's pretty hard to see alright so now we can add the material for the lights and then we'll use the particle system to put the lights around the cord so i'm just going to go right over here to the light and i'm just going to select the light and then i'll press period on the numpad to zoom over to it so first i'm going to click on the drop down here on the materials on the material panel and i'm going to first add the cord material now right now everything is the cord material but i want to make the lights right here so i'm going to tab into edit mode and i will press 3 on the top of my keyboard or click right up here to the face select i'm now going to hold down the alt key and just select this ring of vertices and then i'll hold down the shift and alt key and just select these rings of vertices or you can also use the box select and just kind of box select all of those faces all right so that is what i want to be the light material so i'm going to click on the plus right here to add a new material in the slot and then i'm going to click on new and we can just rename this to lights okay lights and then let's click over on the shading tab so we can work with the nodes so here's the nodes and i'm also going to press period on the numpad to zoom over to it now this still is the chord material so i'm going to click right over here on the material properties and i want to assign these faces to the lights material so just make sure this is selected and make sure that the lights is selected and then you can click on the assign button and now you can see that it is now the light material now i don't want to use the principle because i want it to be emitting light so i'm going to click on the principle and i'll press x to delete it i'm now going to press shift a and i'm going to click on the search and i'm going to search for an emission so let's just drop the emission down here and then i can plug the emission into the surface and then i want to change the emission strength to a 20 so that it is very bright now when we add this to the particle system i want each light to be a different color so to make each light a different color i'm going to press shift a and i'm going to search for the object info node and i'll just drop it down here so the object info node has this random value so if i control shift and click on the object info that is using the feature from the node wrangler to control shift and click on nodes to preview them i'm going to control shift and click on this and just continue to control shift and click on this and i'm going to go down to the random value so now if i take this and just press shifty to duplicate it you can see that every object has a slightly different color from black to white so i'm just going to delete these go back to the original one so what we can do is we can take the random value and we can put that into the color on the emission and then i can control shift and click on the emission so now if we duplicate this every light is going to be a slightly different color now i don't want it to be just black and white i actually want to change the colors that are in between here so to do that i'll press shift a and i'm going to search for a color ramp node and let's just drop the color amp node right here so now i can change all of the colors in here and that's going to make all of the different colors for the lights now also i don't want the colors to have any blending between two colors so i'm gonna click on this linear right here and i'm gonna change it to consistent so that way now if i drag this out you can see it's just very consistent between the different colors and so there isn't any blending between the colors so now we can go ahead and make all the colors that we want for the lights so you can just create whatever colors you want but i'm going to click on the black one and i'm going to make it a bright green color maybe like that maybe just make it a little bit darker and then this white one i'm going to drag this out and this one is going to be a bright kind of yellowish orangish color and then i'm going to hold down the ctrl key and click and that is going to add a another tab and this one i'm going to make a very bright red color and then i can control and click to add another one and this one i'm going to have kind of a pinkish purplish color just like that and then again i can control and click to add another one and this one i'm going to add a have a blue one so if i start to duplicate these you can see now they're randomly generated as different colors and you can also drag around the tabs and that is going to change how many of them are that color so if you want most of them to be red you could like drag this way out and you can see now more of them are going to be red so the bigger the color is the more chance it's going to be that color now i want it to be pretty even all around so i'm just going to make these colors pretty even and that way there's going to be a pretty even amount of all of these different colors and then i'm just going to select these and delete them because we only need one of them for now and then of course you can make as many colors as you want or you could just have them all white or all yellow or a certain color if you want to just be a certain color now if i go into rendered mode you can see this is a very very strong color and i actually don't want it to be this bright and this saturated so what i'm going to do is press shift a and i'm going to search for a hue saturation node and i'll just drop the hue saturation right here so i can now take the saturation value and click on this to change it from 1 to 0.9 so now it looks like it's fully white but there actually will be color when we add the glare in blender's compositor there's going to be color around here it's just that it's so bright that it looks like it's white but there will be color especially right down here you can see there's that red color and kind of on the edges if you kind of zoom out you can see there's a little bit of red there so it will actually look red it just looks white right now and if you wanted to you could change the saturation to like a 0.95 maybe a 0.97 if you want it to be a color like that i'm just going to change it to 0.9 alright so we can now add this as a particle system on our chord object let's just zoom over here and we're going to select the chord just right there here it is and if you can't find it it's the bezier curve right up here in the outliner uh you can just find it right there now the problem with this is that if you look right over here you can see that the particle system is missing and that is because this is still a bezier curve and so particle systems don't actually work on curve objects and so what we need to do is we need to convert this to a normal mesh object so i'm going to click right over here on the layout and then i'll just go over to this object right here now before i convert this object to a mesh object i want to create a backup of it just in case i want to go back and kind of change it so i'll press shift d to duplicate and then i'll click and let go with my mouse wheel and just kind of bring it over here and this way we have a backup of our curve object just in case we need it for some reason so i just have a backup right there but then right over here we can now convert this object to a mesh object so just make sure it's selected and then you're going to click on object and we want to go right down here to convert and i want to convert this to a mesh so if i tab into edit mode now and just kind of zoom in here you can see now this is actually a mesh object with vertices and faces so i can now tab back into object mode and you can see now right down here we now have the particle system so i'm just going to go into the camera view and then i will click on new to add a new particle system now right now it's set to emitter and i don't want that because that is going to emit particles i want to change it to hair and that way we can place the lights on the curve and then i want to turn on advanced and that way we'll have a little bit more settings to work with and then for the number here i found that 350 looks pretty good so i'm going to change the number to 350 but you can change this later if you want to now right now you can see that it just looks like there is hair coming out of the curve and i don't want that i want the light object to be coming out of it so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go right down here and i'm going to open up the render tab and then right now it is rendering as a path but i don't want to do that so i want to click on this and i want to instead render it as an object and then let's just navigate over here so that we can see our light so on the instance object i want to click on the eyedropper and then i'm going to click on this object and now you can see that the lights are a particle system on the chord now it's a little bit hard to see the chord so with the chord selected i'm going to press shift h and that will hide everything else except the chord so now we can just see the chord and we can edit the particle system so right here under the render tab i'm going to change the scale way down so i'm going to hold down the shift key and click and drag and i'm just going to make it pretty small because usually those lights are not very big so i'll make it even smaller maybe like a point zero zero five maybe that's a little bit too small maybe a point zero zero six just something like that so that they are pretty small and then also you can see they're kind of all pointed in the same direction or a similar direction and i don't want that so i'm going to go right here and i'm going to check mark the rotation and also make sure that the advanced is check marked as well so i can open up the rotation and on this rotation right here on the rotation axis i want to change this from velocity hair to normal and when i change it to normal now they're going to be going up and away from the curve but now these are all pointed kind of upwards and so i want to make it much more random so i'm going to change the randomize all the way up to 1 and i'll also change the phase all the way up to 1 and then the random phase i'll turn that all the way up to 2. so when we turn these all up now you can see they're just kind of randomly pointed in different directions and that looks very good and then you can change the number if you want to but i do think 350 looks pretty good so i can now press alt h and alt h will unhide everything and you can now see we have those little christmas lights in the christmas tree and if i go up into rendered mode we can see how that's looking so i'm just going to take a look at that and that is looking very nice so it looks really quite realistic we have just a little bit of christmas lights all around there in the christmas tree and then if you want to you can just play around with the cord a little bit just to move it around because kind of right up here for instance you can't see the lights very good because they're kind of buried underneath the needles so i'm just going to select the cord and i'll tap into edit mode and then i can go into the wireframe view and i'm just going to select a vertex and then right up here i need to click on this button to turn on the proportional editing and i can now press g to grab and just kind of bring it out so you can see that a little bit better let's go into the camera view press 0 for the camera view and see how that's looking i think they could even come out a little bit more so i'm going to just select one of these vertices and press g to grab just kind of move that out there just so we can see that a little bit better and then also like right here you can see that there aren't very many lights up here and this is just because blender just places the particles all around kind of randomly so if you want to change the randomness of the lights you can turn the seed value up so the seed value is just going to randomly generate the lights at different places so you can just go into the camera view see how this is looking and then you can just change the seed value and it's going to randomly change where the lights are so i think i'll just turn it down to four i think that looks pretty good let's just go into render mode and see how that's looking and i do think that looks quite nice and then maybe i'll just turn the number up a little bit so maybe i'll turn this to like a 375 so there's just a little bit more lights alright so we are almost done with this part of the tutorial series there's just one more thing i want to do in this part and that is i want to create the star and put the star on the top of the tree so i'm going to press shift c to make sure the 3d cursor is in the very center there and then i'm going to press shift a to add now earlier on in this tutorial series we added the add mesh extra objects add-on and it's built into blender now if for some reason you don't have that enabled you can just click on edit and then open up the preferences and then right here on the add-ons tab you can type in extra and then just check mark the add mesh extra objects so now that we have that turned on you can press shift a and if you go to mesh you can see there are a bunch of new objects now i want to go right over here to extra and then i want to go right down here and i want to add the simple star so i'll just press period on the numpad to zoom over to the simple star and there we have it so i'll press g to grab and the z on the z-axis and we just want to bring that up and then i want to press r to rotate and i want to rotate it on the y-axis and then i want to type in 9 0 and enter just to rotate that over and then i want to rotate it towards the camera so i'll press r to rotate and z on the z-axis and i can type in 9 0 and enter and now it is just facing the camera just like that so i'll press s to scale and i'll press g and z and i'm going to bring this up i'm now going to tab into edit mode and i actually want to just delete half of the star and then add the mirror modifier so i'll press z and move my mouse over and let go to go into wireframe and i'm just going to box select these right here and then i can press x to delete and i want to delete the vertices so now we just have the front part of the star so i can now on the modifiers right here i can click on add modifier and i want to go right down here and i want to add the mirror modifier and i don't want to mirror it on the x-axis i want to mirror it on the z-axis and that way when we mirror on the z-axis it's going to be right here so i now want to hold down the shift key and i'm going to click on this just to deselect the center vertex and then i also need to turn off the proportional editing so if you still have that on you can press o or just click on this button to turn it off now i want to push these two together and that way the star is going to have those sharp parts on the edges there but first i want to turn on this clipping value and that way when we bring these together they're going to be merged together so i can now press g to grab and then i'll hit y to bring it over on the y axis i'm going to push these together and then click to place that and because we have this clipping turned on these are going to be merged together as one vertex so that looks really good we have a very nice star and if you want to you could also bring this out or in just to change the thickness of the star so that's looking very good but now i want to give it a bevel modifier just so that it is a little bit more realistic because right now these edges are super sharp so i'm going to click on add modifier and i can click on bevel to add the bevel modifier now the segments here i want to turn that up so that we have four segments just like that and then i want to hold down my shift key and i want to click and drag and i want to make the bevel amount very very small so it's going to be very small but just like that so now those edges are nice and smooth and then with the object context menu i can shade the object smooth now when we shaded that smooth you can see that there is a problem right here and that is that right here this is very smooth and why this is happening is because there isn't actually a bevel right there and that is because on the bevel on default there is this limit angle turned on so i actually want to turn this limit angle right here to zero and that way it's not going to use the limit angle and so now there are bevels on all the edges so now you can see there's that little bevel right there and that looks very nice alright so now i want to actually apply these modifiers so i'm going to select this modifier just click on the mirror and i'll press ctrl a with my mouse hovered over the modifier to apply it and then i can also press ctrl a to apply the bevel so now what i want to do right down here is i want to make a little tree topper just so that we can kind of stick it down on the tree so in edit mode i'm going to press shift c and that will center the 3d cursor to the center of our scene and then i can press shift a and i want to go right down here and i want to add a circle i can press g to grab and z on the z axis and i'll just bring that up and then i can press period on the numpad to zoom into it and i can press s to scale and i want to scale that down and i'll press g and z and just kind of bring that down so i can now press e to extrude and z on the z axis and bring it up and then i'll press s to scale and i want to scale that way down just like that all right and then i think i'll also alt and select this loop of vertices and i'll press s to scale and scale that down a little bit now you can see that this doesn't have any thickness so i want to give it a little bit of thickness so i'm going to hover my mouse over this object and press l and that is going to select all of the linked vertices and then i can press e to extrude and then i'll press s to scale and we want to scale the whole thing down now i don't want to scale it down on the z axis i just want to scale it down on the x and y so i'm going to press shift z and that way it's just going to scale it in but not up and down so let's bring that down and then just click to place that all right and then i also want to double tap the a key to select everything and i'll just press shift n just to make sure the normals are recalculated correctly but that looks pretty good all right let's tab back into object mode and that is looking very nice for our star so i'm going to select the star and i'll press g to grab and just kind of bring it down and then i'll press s to scale and i'll kind of scale that down and i just want to stick it on the very top of the christmas tree so you can just change it to whatever you think looks nice if you want a bigger star or a smaller star um i think i'll make it a little bit smaller and then just kind of stick it right in there so i'll just rotate it over kind of like that all right so the last thing in this part is we're going to add a material for the star so i'm going to select the star and then i'll click right over here on the shading tab and then i can also go into rendered mode just so that we can preview the star material so i'm going to click on new here and i can call this material star and then i want this to be a metallic material because i want to look like a metal shiny star so on the metallic value i'm gonna turn that all the way up to one so it looks metallic and then on the roughness here i'm gonna change this down to like a point three and that way it is a bit more shiny and then i don't want this to be a white star you could have it white if you want to but i want this to be kind of a gold colored shiny yellow star so i'm going to click on the color here and i'm going to make it a bright yellowish orangish color and i'll turn the brightness all the way up and then i think i might even turn the roughness down to like a .25 so it's a little bit more shiny so let's just click right back over here on the layout and then i can just press ctrl s again to save and this is going to wrap it up for part two of the christmas tree tutorial series so i hope you've been enjoying this so far and thank you for watching so if you want to go ahead and watch part three i'll have it right up there on the end screen and also i'll have the link in the video description again i'll be uploading one part each day so when part three is released it'll be right up there on the end screen so thank you for watching and i hope to see you in part three [Music]

Channel: Ryan King Art

Views: 5,010

Keywords: Ryan King Art, Blender Tutorial, Blender, Ryan King, Tutorial, christmas tree, tree, christmas, holidays, blender, tutorial, part 2

Id: -ybwVTlpIus

Length: 37min 58sec (2278 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021