How to make circular arrays on Blender - Beginner level tutorial

there are several ways to arrange objects on a circular path we will focus on three of them and when and why we should use one over another the first method that we will use combines two different modifiers array and curve create a circle for your object array to follow let's say we want to create a watch at an array with account value of 12 you then add a curve modifier and pick the circle as the object you the problem in this case is that this method is not too precise and it also bends the object it is useful in other cases that we will see a bit later to make it more obvious I reduced the number in the array and also scaled up the object as you can see the object is stretched you can also place items manually on a circular path just create a circle with the number of sides equal to the number of item copies that you want this method is useful if you want to put different objects or objects with different rotations on each step you make sure you place the circle where you need your object to be you change the snapping to vertex and the target to center then activate snapping duplicate the object by pressing shift D and move the cursor over the vertex where you want to place the object then press left mouse button repeat the process for each copy you the next method is probably the most suited for this situation since it is precise and it doesn't bend or deform the original object in any way it is also non-destructive meaning that we can come back later and change the number of copies or the angle between them by just changing a few values place the object where you want the first step of the circular array then we need to change the origin so it rotates around the center of the watch instead of rotating on itself the fastest way to do this is to apply all transformations if you want more information on how apply transformations work you can check my tutorial on that topic now add an array modifier with account value of 12 and deactivate relative offset since we will use another object to determine the angle separating each copy you in this case we will use an empty now go back to the array modifier of your original object and add the empty as the offset object the only thing we need to do now is to rotate the empty on z-axis the same number of degrees that we want between each of our copies you now I want to show you two examples to explain a bit better when each method can be more useful over the other on the watch exercise we saw that the array with the offset object method was better because the object shape was not affected and the location of each copy was precise now I will show you one case where the method with the curve modifier is better since this method bends the object it is useful on continuous shapes like this example you on the last example I will show you a case using both methods combined to create the main part of a water well you I hope you like this tutorial and learn something new with it to support my work if you find it useful with a like comment or subscribe to my channel it will help me dedicate more time to create more and better content thanks for watching

Channel: Sanctus - Blender Procedural

Views: 24,366

Keywords: Blender, Blender 3D, B3D, Blender 2.8, Array, Array Modifier, Circular, Circular Array, Object along a path, object along a circle, blender tutorials, learn blender, blender tips, blender beginner, Blender Courses, 3D modeling, Learn 3D

Id: pS_972OgoDc

Length: 8min 3sec (483 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019