Getting Started with SNAPPING in Blender! Snapping Tools Tutorial

what's up guys Justin here with BCG essentials Compaq with another blender quick tutorial for you so in today's video I wanted to talk about the snap functions contained inside a blender so I think when a lot of people start with blender they don't realize there's actually functions you can turn on to help you move things more precisely and make things snap to different lengths inside of your blender models so I wanted to talk about how to use those functions in order to add precision to your models now let's go ahead and jump into it alright so what are the things that people especially that come from CAD software backgrounds find a little bit disconcerting about blender is when you move objects around so if I was to move this object for example and you move it like this it doesn't really snap to anything or anything like that meaning it just kind of like moves around in space I mean you can obviously use keyboard shortcuts like X Y shift Y Z things like that to lock to different axes but in general by default it isn't really set up to snap objects to different lengths and other things like that I think a lot of people assume that just because it doesn't do it by default it can't do it and that's not accurate at all so if you go up to the top of your page you can look at this little menu right here and there's actually an option in here called snapping and so what snapping does is snapping allows you to set this so the objects you select snap to different things so instead of for example um if I take this object and I move it around instead of it just kind of moving around in space what it's gonna do instead is it's gonna snap to different increments and so the first thing is how you turn it on so you turn on snapping either by clicking on this little button right here or by doing a shift tab so if you do a shift tab notice how this turns on and so once this is turned on this will do a number of different kinds of snapping so for example the first option in here is snap to increment and so what snap to increment is going to do it this is this going to actually snap your object to different increments inside of your model and so notice how now that I have the snapping turned on and I have snap to increment turned on this is now going to snap to different increments as associated with your units that you have in here so for example if you look and I'm gonna do a shift Z in order to lock this lock this to the x and y-axes if you move your mouse in here and you look at the values in the upper left hand corner of the screen notice this is moving based on the increment that you've set inside of your units on the left hand side so basically what that means is since my unit is set to feet this object is automatically snapping to foot increments so if you look in the corner notice how this is only moving by negative 1 negative 2 it's it's not doing anything in between right it's not doing like a half inch or anything like that and so you can set this to snap T units you can also down below notice there's an option in here for absolute grid snap so you can also check the box for absolute grid's grid snap and what that means is that means when you move this object around it's going to snap to the grid this is snapping based on our object origin what we could do is we could tab an edit mode real quick and select this vertex and then we could do a shift s and we can set this so that our 3d cursor goes to our selected point so notice how now my 3d cursor is on this corner point what that means is now if I tab out of edit mode and I go to my object and I set my origin I could set my origin point to my 3d cursor so basically what that does is that moves that little box or that little dot over here well now if I do snapping when I move this object around notice how this is gonna do an absolute grid snap based on the corner of the object base instead of the center so if you change your object origin to the corner you can use this in order to snap to those corners if you want to also notice that if you go to top down view you also get a number of subdivisions in here so then you can use this grid snap in order to snap to different subdivisions so I set my subdivisions for example to be 12 in my viewport overlays well what this means is this means that when I'm moving around in this mode right here this is going to snap to my grid which is basically made up of 1 foot increments well if I go to top down it's going to give me the subdivided view can snap to each one of these well notice how the ones that I'm selecting in here or notice how since there's 12 of these that means that every one of these snaps too has an increment of one inch and if you use millimeters and centimeters you could do the same thing but you can use this in order to snap to increments and your grid inside your model and so in addition to this not only can you use this to snap to a grid you can also use this to snap objects to other objects so let's say for example that I was to come in here and we're gonna turn increment off we're gonna turn absolute grid snap off and we're gonna select snap to vertex and so when I select snap to vertex what this is gonna do is this is gonna use a vertex inside of your model and it's gonna snap it so that it's aligned with another vertex so notice how when I drag this around for example so let's say I had this off to the side somewhere so just somewhere in space it doesn't really matter but notice how now if I move this it's going to take your closest vertex and it's gonna snap it to a vertex on an object so notice how this is jumping and it's giving me a little circle over this well this can be really great for aligning different things really quickly inside your object one of the cool things about this is not only does this work when the objects are touching let's say that you were to tap the G key in order to activate the move tool and tap Z to lock this to an axis you can mouse over the different vertices in order to align this from an up-down or left-right standpoint with this locked to an axis so notice how this is allowing me to align this with a high it without these objects actually touching and so when you use the vertex snapping it's going to give you four different options for different kinds of snaps that you can do so the snap or a snap with closest is going to snap the closest point onto the target so if I move this for example you can see how this is going to move your closest vertex and it's gonna snap it to a vertex on this object so notice how we have different corner snapping when we have closest selected it's going to find that closest so snap what's sinner what that's gonna do is that's gonna snap the sinner of an object rather than the edges so if I was to select snap with sinner and then move this around notice how this is snapping this central point to align it with a corner so instead of using vertices in here and snapping the center of my object to the vertices of the other object so median is going to act in a very similar way to the center option and active is going to use the pivot point of the object as the snapping so basically what that means is let's say that we were to tab in edit mode and select this object so let's say we were to select this vertex and do a shift S and basically move our cursor to our selected point well then we can tab out of this and we can do a period and we could set our pivot point to the 3d cursor of this object so then if we go to object set our origin to our 3d cursor now that new origin is going to become our snap object so basically what active allows you to do is it allows you to set your object origin right here and use that as what your gonna snap with so you can use this in order to quickly set which object you're gonna snap with inside a blender so one thing I use the vertex snapping for because I easily use vertex snapping the most of any of the snapping I use it a lot when I'm adding walls with like our capac so for example I've got these walls in here well a lot of the time I want to add a new wall so I'll go to our Capac and I'll add a wall but what it does is it places this wall all the way over here well instead of me trying to like click and drag this and move it and all of that because you can see how it kind of messes everything up when you do that what I like to do instead is I like to add a wall and then turn on my vertex snapping and then just tap the G key and move this so these corners align so you can use this to really quickly align different objects so another great thing you can use this for as if you're extruding objects so if I tab into this and I select this face over here and I extrude this along the z axis I can use in order to snap to the height of another object so I can use this to really quickly draw something that's the same height as something else inside of your scene so you can use this in order to quickly align or extrude and I guess that's one thing to point out cuz I haven't really talked about that too much is this works not only for moving things around but it also works in things like edit mode so for example if I was to take this cube and let's say I wanted to take this face and align it with this edge you could use it in order to move just this face if I wanted to so I could use it to move this face just like this you could also use it for some other things too so if you were to extrude this down for example let's say you wanted to extrude this down so that it was aligned right here notice how the extrusion tools work with snapping as well so snapping is not just limited to moving things around in object mode so vertex is probably the one I use the most there's also options in here for edges and faces basically what that's going to do is that's going to move an object and it's gonna lock it to an edge inside of your model so notice how when I do this if I move this object it's going to lock the closest vertex somewhere on an edge so it's not necessarily super precise but if you want to align something on an edge just anywhere you can set your edge snapping like that so face is gonna do the same thing but it's gonna move an object so that it's on a face so and this is probably a little bit more helpful if you set this with the active tool so instead of selecting closest you select active what that allows you to do is that allows you to move this so that your object origin whatever that is is going to align with the face you can use this to put the object origin on a face um I would say this is probably pretty useful especially if your origin is on the top or bottom of an object and you want to like drop it on a plane this would be a good way to do that volume I rarely if ever use I'm pretty sure that just snaps this to an object some sort of a volume inside of your model so just a 3d mesh I'm not a hundred percent clear on that one to be honest with you edge Center is going to allow you to find the central point of an edge select the midpoint so if you want to move this so that it snaps to a mid point of an object you can do that really easily so I can use this in order to snap the middle of something to something else so I can use this midpoint snapping in order to find this Center and then edge perpendicular I don't really understand it's supposed to snap something to part of an edge that's perpendicular to a selected element but I'm not a hundred percent clear on what exactly that means so if I move this around from this point right so if I have this right here it's basically snapping to the midpoint of these objects I'm not really clear on how that's perpendicular to my base point that I had right here maybe because it's going across and then looking up and that's perpendicular I'm not really clear on that one so if you understand edge perpendicular leave a comment down below and let me know what exact do you think about this and then one other cool function about this is you can also do multiple different snaps at once so let's say I want this to snap to increment vertex an edge I can just do a shift click and I can select all of these so what that allows me to do is that allows me to set no set my snap so that it's going to snap it up all of these different things right so now I can move this and it'll lock either or it'll snap either two vertices it'll snap along edges or it'll snap by increment so you can use this in order to set multiple different snaps at once inside a blender and then the last thing I want to point out is down at the bottom you can set this to affect moving rotating or scaling so for example if I turn rotation off and then I try to rotate this and I'm gonna go ahead and set this that it's snapping with the closest again but if I rotate this object and I move it around right now and I move it over an object you notice how nothing is happening however if you were to come in here and you were going to turn affect rotate on what that means is now if I rotate this object it's going to start snapping to different vertices in here so you can use this in order to snap two different things while you're rotating and you can turn that on and off for all three of these by turning the effect on and off just by clicking on these so if you want your rotations to snap you can click on this if you don't you can click on it again so that's permanent in this video leave a comment below and let me know which snapping you use how you use this function I just love having that conversation with you guys if you like this video please remember to click that like button down below if you're new around here remember to click that subscribe button for new blender content every week as always thank you so much for taking the time to watch this I really appreciate it I will catch you in the next video thanks guys

Channel: The CG Essentials

Views: 75,209

Keywords: blender, blender 2.82, blender 2.8, blender modifier tutorials, blender tool tutorial, the blender essentials, the cg essentials, thecgessentials.com, justin geis, justin geis blender, blender snapping tools, blender snapping tutorial, blender vertex snap, blender edge snap, blender snapping, snapping blender, blender snap tutorial, blender snap, blender snap vertex

Id: 0p06F1LzTjQ

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020