COMPLETE non-destructive workflow in Blender tutorial

what's up guys so this is going to be a video on the non-destructive workflow in blender so i kind of want this video to be more educational and kind of discussing when you should and shouldn't use non-destructive modeling techniques i think this will answer a lot of your questions so someone in my comment section i completely forget who i couldn't find the comment so if it was you i apologize but uh one of you guys will link to me this guy's page right here frank access if i pronounce that right but he has a phenomenal overview of different modeling techniques for a simple piece uh like this i'm not going to go over that we're just going to use this piece as a reference i just want to make sure you know i give credit where do so check this guy's page out here's a really really good article on different modeling types for the same piece so the goal here is to create this piece completely from scratch using only non-destructive boolean so meaning once this piece is finished i can still revert back to the base cube real quick guys we also have a patreon if you guys want to sign up for that we have all sorts of cool stuff including monthly tutorials monthly decals art and model critiques and also project files so if you want to support us definitely sign up on our patreon and you'll get to learn a lot that way as well so here we are in blender and here's the reference image down here in the corner i just pulled out the uv image editor to open it up so there's a bunch of different techniques to approach this guy but if we want to work completely non-destructively it means we have to use booleans everywhere usually what i do for a piece like this is get the general block out done destructively so you know i'd go in here maybe bevel this edge with ctrl b right and then you know do whatever else i need to do but the issue with this is it's not completely non-destructive now this is not a cube we have a you know destructive wedge in here the goal of this video is to show you how to work completely non-destructively and also manage modifiers in the modifier stack this is going to help you learn a lot it's a really good exercise so first thing i'm going to do is just start with a basic cube here nothing else i want to be able to revert back to this cube once this piece is finished so what i'm going to do is go into the front view of the one on the numpad i'm going to grab it on the x and hold ctrl until it's basically aligned right with the axis here and what i want to do to make this little wedge cut like i said you could do it destructively but we're working non-destructively so to do this non-destructively we need to duplicate this rotate it 45 degrees and then we'll just position it somewhere up here and basically we're going to make the cut with this piece so i'm going to go ahead and shift click on this guy make sure you have the bull tool turned on we'll press ctrl minus and now we have a simple wedge cut which is still basically a cube as you can see and the nice thing about this is because had we done this destructively we wouldn't really be able to adjust the width of this bevel after it's applied so if we ever want to adjust how far this thing goes oh we can't of course you could use like mesh machine or do it manually right but for something more complex not so easy but basically if we work non-destructively i can just call this a cube this cutter right here at any point in time and just reposition it like this okay so i'm going to go ahead and hide this cutter and i'm just going to drop a mirror modifier over the x-axis but let's um actually just apply it now that's fine we're going to do a mirror modifier but we want to make sure the origin point is set to the 3d cursor so right click set origin origin to 3d cursor and there we go and i'm also going to move this cube up just a bit more on the z-axis just to make it a little bit more apparent and then what i'm going to do is simply add in another cube and we're going to make this little wedge here that's right in the center so let's scale this on the x and then scale it a bit on the y so that way it's a bit longer like that and all we're going to do is move this piece up and make it just about as deep as this recess right here we'll go ahead and run a boolean difference modifier on this one and there we go we basically have the same exact effect so let's go ahead and hide this piece and you can see this thing is still a cube right i mean it has a mirror modifier on it but it's still non-destructive we could turn the mirror modifier off if we wanted to so everything is still working as intended the next thing we need to do is make this little cutout in the middle so this is where it's going to get kind of tricky once we use little circular cuts like this and try to run bevels you'll see in a little bit what i mean but as for the actual you know indent right here it's really easy to make i'm going to add in a cylinder maybe do like 64 vertices to make it nice and smooth we're going to scale this guy down and then let's go ahead and right click shade it smooth and then turn on the auto smooth function here and of course we're just going to run another difference boolean nice thing about this is we can move this up or down whenever we want i'm going to move this down maybe scale it down a bit more scale it up and you're going to see a problem here now usually this can be a variety of things it could be non-manifold geometry it could be an issue with hotlining it could be all sorts of different things but the first thing i would suggest if you get an issue where it's not actually solid as you can see we can see inside the piece the first thing i'd try doing is simply scaling this up or maybe moving this across one of the axes a bit in this case simply moving it a little bit to the left to fix that problem we can go ahead and hide it now you're going to see the shading is pretty bad but we just need to make sure we shade this whole thing smooth and then turn on the auto smooth option and that should basically fix it so there we go and of course since we're working non-destructively we can simply recall these cutters at any point in time and move them scale them do whatever we want so that way we have complete control over our objects okay so the next thing is making these little cutouts here in the front so what we could do is um is come in here and try to trace it out right we could come to the side and maybe come in here with i don't know a plane or a cube scale it down and attempt to kind of trace this out with a cutter you know we could come in here and then [Applause] bevel this edge and just try to you know cut out the general formation of that piece in the side and you know in this case it would probably be okay but this is largely guessing and it's not going to be super accurate if you want to be 100 accurate with these cuts what we can actually do is steal the geometry on this piece so to do that what we're going to do is duplicate this piece and then i'm just going to press forward slash on the numpad to isolate it and i'm going to go ahead and apply all the booleans in here including the mirror and now we're going to have access to the geometry here so all i want to do in this case as a matter of fact what i might do let me undo this for the center boolean instead of applying it i think i'm just going to remove it and i'll apply the rest so now we can do is basically tab into face mode take this face press i to inset it and now we have a completely even and accurate piece to use as a cutout so i'm just going to duplicate this piece or as a matter of fact i can just press ctrl i to invert the selection and then delete out all the faces and now if we go back into global view with forward slash on the numpad you're going to see we have an exact replica of the piece we need to use to cut so this is a cool trick i like to call stealing geometry i use it all the time in my modeling now you can also be non-destructive with your cutters although i don't really do that as much but if you wanted to have even more control over your cutters as well instead of maybe extruding this piece in and then running a difference boolean what i can do instead is do a less destructive form of extrusion by using a solidify modifier so then i could come in here and increase the thickness right maybe to about here or so and now you're going to see at any point in time if i just run a difference boolean here at any point in time i can simply go to the cutter and adjust the thickness if i ever want to change it up so this is another way you can kind of stack on non-destructive workflows with both your cutters and your main objects okay so we actually do want to do here is make a little bevel on the inside see how there's kind of a bevel around the edges here this is very easy to do but this can be confusing for some people so you might think okay i want to go in here and bevel these edges and if i try to do that you're going to see it's not actually going to let me because i can't select these edges and that's because we're still working non-destructively with the solidify modifier so this is technically still just a single plane so instead what we need to do is simply bevel the vertices not the edges because um it's not you know the solidified modifier is not applied yet now if we applied the solidify then we'd have access to the edges because this geo is now real but it's really no big deal we can just simply keep the solidify modifier on and just bevel the vertices here and we have an extra vertex right here we don't really need so i'm going to press ctrl x to dissolve that out and all i'm going to do is come around here to all these vertices ctrl shift b to bevel them which in turn is basically going to bevel the edges from the solidified modifier that's extruding it out but i'll take this a step further so if we bevel these vertices it's basically going to get us the result we want but we're actually going destructive on the cutter if we wanted even more control more non-destructive control what we could actually do is do this via a bevel modifier so i'm going to go in here and add a bevel modifier and this is going to allow us to have a lot more control so i'm going to go ahead and change the bevel option here to vertices only let me go actually no it wouldn't make a difference let's put the bevel above the solidify so that way it's beveling and then doing the solidification so now what i'm going to do is go over to where's the option in this new version vertices only oh right here i'm still used to the 2.83 bevel modifier still kind of getting used to it anyways i'm going to increase the segment count make this have a lot and now we can do is adjust the offset at any point in time whenever we want so the goal here is to simply get the bevel just like the reference photo so we're going to make this one you know a bit less maybe around here and we also need a bevel around the edges on the inside so in this case what we could do is add on an additional bevel modifier for the inside and we're going to make sure this one is below the solidify and let me explain why this is why non-destructive workflow can be confusing for some people because it relies a lot on the understanding of the modifier stack and how it works so let me explain exactly what's happening here so first thing that's happening i'm just going to disable all these first thing we're doing is applying a bevel to this plane right here so we're applying a bevel which is beveling all the vertices for us as you can see next thing we're doing is a non-destructive form of extruding by using the solidify modifier which basically pushes that out after we executed the beveling of the vertices now that the extrusion has commenced that operation is basically terminated and the final operation is to bevel the additional edges that are around the inside here and we're doing this using an additional bevel modifier so if we turn this on you're going to see we get a nice bevel on the inside only issue is this thing on the edge we need to make sure this is kind of moved back a bit or what we could do is actually no this should be fine we'll just pull this back a bit what was happening is this bevel was kind of going on to the inside and causing this weird like overlap or whatever just make sure the bevel is a bit outside so that way the only area getting beveled is at the inside here so now as you can see we have a fully non-destructive cutter so at any point in time i can go in here and adjust the bevel size for the vertices adjust the solidification distance or adjust the secondary bevel here controlling the inner edges now if we did this destructively we would basically be locked in we couldn't make these changes on the fly and this is why the non-destructive workflow is so powerful here in blender so let me go ahead and hide this piece so we still need to make a bevel around these edges here which we'll do in a second just bear with me the last thing we need to do is apply a another boolean for this little circle on the inside so i'm going to go ahead and add in maybe a cylinder like i said if you wanted to keep this even more non-destructive you could use a circle and then use a solidify for the extrusion but that one's probably a bit overkill so i'm going to use a cylinder we'll shade it smooth and then turn on auto smooth and we're going to rotate this guy 90 degrees over the x-axis scale it down a bit and then move it over here towards the center like that and we're just going to make sure this is somewhere in the center roughly the same size as the piece here right and all we're going to do is move this back and then simply run a difference boolean on this piece and there we go pretty simple solution for that one and maybe make it a bit bigger we'll scale this up and now this piece is essentially finished only thing left that we need to do is apply a bevel around the entire mesh itself as you can see all of these edges are really harsh and are pretty sharp we need to make sure we have a nice rounded bevel like the image here to capture the reflections and make a nice rounded surface around the edges all right so let's go ahead and add a bevel modifier here and we're just going to go in and apply it now the bevel modifier is kind of tricky because what beveling does is it applies a bevel to every single edge in the scene so as you can see here every single edge around this cylinder cut is being beveled as well we don't want that we only want to bevel the harsher edges that are based off of a more steep angle so i'm going to go in here and change the limit method over to angle and that's going to only bevel based off of an angle now still you're going to see nothing's happening and this is because of the clamp overlap option if we go to geometry basically what clamp overlap does is it prevents the bevel from overshooting with other edges i don't usually like using this i turn this off and you're going to see the moment you turn that off it's going to go kind of crazy and it was basically preventing this type of stuff so i'm going to do is adjust the amount make this a really tiny bevel increase the segment count to around three like that and we're also going to turn on the hard and normals option under shading to make sure this shades really nicely maybe we'll increase the amount a little bit just to make it a bit bigger and only problem is this area right here is being beveled as well so to fix this problem is really easy we just need to go to the mirror modifier and make sure all of the vertices that are mirrored at this point are merged together so if we turn on the merge option here that should basically fix the problem and now this thing is looking just like the reference photo alright one final thing i want to mention is that with bevels by default you get these really harsh and pinched edges or corners rather i hate this effect and i wish it was changed by default but basically what you do is you go to the bevel modifier you go over to outer miter and change it over to arc and you're going to have a much nicer transition here at the beveling point so it's not a default setting unfortunately but it's really easy to switch up and now this piece is basically finished so all we need to do now is maybe drop a material on it just to give a more sense of balance like the results finished so let's go ahead and add a new material go to material view we'll make the base color a bit darker and then turn the metallic slider up to a value of one maybe a bit less dark maybe around here and then we'll go and drop the roughness a bit as well and then if we go into rendered view or and my hdri is turned off isn't it basically you can just grab an hri from hdrihaven.com and get a nice result for some reason this one has not been working well with me so let me go in here and find it and you're going to see we have a pretty clean and finished result not too bad maybe make this a bit darker here for cycles and there we go that is basically how you make this piece so the cool part about this is it's still a cube at the at the base level as you can see if we go into edit mode every single thing is built off of a cube in the form of modifiers here so if we were to go in here and apply all our booleans you can use the modifier tool option or simply press control a and apply a visual geo issue with that as it applies the bevel as well but basically if you apply all the booleans here you're gonna see that now all the stuff is applied so that's the gist of the non-destructive workflow and this is a very good exercise to help not only understand the workflow itself but to also understand modifier management which is really important to have a back-end understanding for vanilla workflow so hopefully this video taught you something hopefully you have a better understanding of how to work non-destructively and use boolean to your advantage so that's about it guys and real quick a lot of you guys that watch these videos are not subscribed i think you probably just see it in recommendations but if you want more stuff like this definitely subscribe and it helps boost me in the youtube algorithm and more people get to see the videos so that's about it once again patreon in the description if you want to support us further and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Josh Gambrell

Views: 30,807

Rating: 4.9657569 out of 5

Keywords: blender, hard, surface, modeling, tutorial, for, beginners, non, destructive, boolean, workflow, complete, bevel, modifier, topology, shading, artifact, render, josh, gambrell, masterxeon1001, basic, simple

Id: LdQwmfPyuw0

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020