Intro to BOX CUTTER for Blender - EASY HOLES AND RECESSES - Getting Started Tutorial

guys Justin here with the CG essentials come back with another blender add-on tutorial for you so in today's video we're gonna check out an add-on that's amazing for creating different kinds of cuts into shapes inside of your models so today's add-on is called box cutter and I'm gonna give you an introduction of how to use this in order to start creating amazing shapes inside of blender now let's go ahead and just jump into it alright so box cutter is a tool that's specifically made for creating cuts in different objects inside of blender and so you can find this on the blender market I will link to this in the notes down below you can either get box cutter by itself is this a paid add-on you can either get box cutter by itself for $20 or you can get it bundled with hard opps which is another modeling add-on as well for a little bit less you can get a little bit of savings by getting them both together these are both really cool tools I'm gonna talk about hard opps in a future video but for now I want to give you an introduction to box cutter one thing I want to note about box cutter is it has its own online manual so it's got like a complete searchable manual in here that'll talk you through exactly what this tool can do so if you ever get lost you're looking for a little bit more instruction that kind of thing you can check that out on this page I will be linking to all of this in the notes below the video and so once you get this add-on the first thing you need to do is make sure that it's enabled so just go up to edit preferences and just make sure that box cutter has been installed so you can just click the install button and install it if you haven't done that already and so what that's gonna do is that's gonna enable this add-on inside a blender and so once that's enabled you can tap the in key and then if you go into the box cutter settings it's gonna give you instructions on what to do and so the very first thing you need to do in order to get box cutter working is you need to type in alt W so alt W is going to enable this tool you can see how this gives you a number of additional tools at the top of the page as well as a lot more options over here in the menu on the right-hand side and then if you want to close this all you have to do is the W key again and what that's going to do is that's going to turn this back off so if you ever want to enable or disable box cutter you can that using alt W and W so when you type in alt W you can see how you're gonna get a number of different options in here of different things that you can do so things like the different modes shapes of the things like that you can use this menu on the right hand side in order to do this notice that this is gonna have a Help section that will give you information about what you can do with the currently active tool in addition you can also tap the D key on your keyboard in order to open up a window in your screen that gives you most of the options that you have over here in the menu so if you like working with a less cluttered workspace you can just tap the D key in order to activate all of this but the icons are gonna be the same you can find everything in here in either place all right so basically what this tool does is it is designed for creating different cuts and objects so at its simplest if we tap the N key and go into box cutter at its very simplest if you select an object and then drag a box like this you're gonna notice that this is going to bring in a live box inside of your model and so that box once I let up on my mouse button then I move my mouse is going to allow me to basically create a cut inside of an object and notice how when we do this this box is a certain color so this color is going to indicate the mode that we have active because there's multiple different modes in here for different things that we can do from now let's focus on the cut tools so notice how I haven't led up on my mouse button yet so I can actually move this wherever I want to and then once I've created the cut that I want I can click in order to finalize that cut so basically what that did is that came in and that created a boolean operator that's cutting this shape and so what that means is that means that this is created a cut in here but it hasn't actually applied it and so what that means is that means if I was to tab into edit mode notice how none of these cuts are going to show up because they're in here as modifiers so the power of this is this gives you the ability to create and edit all of these different cuts so what that allows you to do is that allows you to do all of this in a way that's adjustable meaning if you don't like the way this looks you can go back and make changes to it we'll talk more about that in a little bit and so let's start by taking a look at some of the options that we have inside of this tool and specifically because you might run into some issues depending on your settings I want to start by actually focusing on the way that these cuts are brought into our model so if you go down to the surface option there's a few different options on here for the way that the cuts that you create are going to be aligned so there's an option for a line to surface there's an option for a line to view there's an option for a line to cursor and there's an option for a line to world and we're gonna focus specifically at the moment for the object and the view and so right now notice that when I have this box selected whenever I drag across a face like this it's going to automatically align with whatever face my mouse is over so if I click and drag a box right here it's going to align it with this front face if I click and drag a box up here it's gonna align it to this top face and notice how this is all live and these interact with each other so the cuts will actually interact because they're live bullying's in here but notice how we can use the align to surface in order to align this two different shapes alternatively and let's jump over to one of our spheres here instead of doing that if we want to we could pick like a front view like this one so instead of aligning to a surface because if we click and select this object and then try to draw a box based on our sphere right here notice how this comes in a kind of a weird angle which isn't necessarily what we want what we can do instead is we could pick a straight on view and then in our alignment we could align this with our view rather than a surface and so what that means is that means that now if I drag a box over this cube instead of it trying to align with the surface my mouse is over it's going to align with my camera view so what that means is that means I can use this to quickly add a cut to this object notice how I can rotate out of this once I set my original shape but notice how that is aligned with where my camera was when I first started using the tool and so what that means is that means that not only can you make this align to certain shapes it's also going to line to your camera view one thing to note about this is the object that you have selected is important because this is applying boolean's so for example if you look at this right now I have this sphere selected well even if I was to come in here and select a line the surface if I was to try to draw a box over here aligned with Maya my box on the left hand side notice how this isn't actually cutting this object and the reason it's not cutting this object is because I didn't have this object selected I had the sphere selected so when you're selecting objects what you're doing is you're telling it which object to apply your modifier to so make sure that whatever you want to modify you have the correct object selected so that you're not creating boolean's that don't actually do anything inside of this sub inside this tool and so now let's talk a little bit about the shapes options that you have in here so we talked about how we can get this to a line to your surfaces or your camera view so you can also use the shapes function in order to adjust the kind of shapes that are being used as boolean z' so let's say for example on this object that I wanted to cut a hole all the way across so instead of using this box shape which is what we have in here by default what we can do is we could use this circle shape instead and so with the circle shape what that's going to do is when I click and drag in here and this aligns of the face notice how now instead of creating a square what this is doing is creating a circle and so if I let up on this after I click and drag and then move my mouse notice how this is coming in here and this is cutting a hole using that circular shape rather than the other shape and so you can use this in order to create those circular shapes instead like this so not only can you use these preset shapes you can also come in here and draw an in gone so what that means is that means let's say you had a custom profile that you wanted to add to the front of your box so let's say that we were to go to our front view so let's go to our front view right here and let's say we wanted to add a custom profile well what we can do is we could go in here and we could select this in gone option what the end gun option does is it allows you to actually draw a shape by clicking and dragging so notice how I can click and drag and then let up on my mouse in order to start drawing an end gone well now I can come in here and I can click to set multiple different points for a profile that I want to create so then I can click the left so then I can click the right mouse button then kind of rotate out of this and notice how in this situation what this did is this gives me a pair of dots well I can use those dots in order to extrude this out so notice how as I do this what this is doing is this is removing material based on that custom profile so you can use this in order to create custom profiles in order to create different kinds of extrusions inside a blender and so one thing I want to know while we're talking about this is not only when you have tools active so let's go back to our box for a second so not only can you click and drag in order to create this and then move your mouse you can also tap the tab key with a tool active and so what that does is that and that puts you into this mode or you can adjust these dots and what these dots do is these dots allow you to adjust the extrusion of your shape live by clicking and dragging them so notice how I can set how far this is extruding by clicking and dragging those dots and notice how another thing that this does is this also lets me adjust the bevel of the shape so I can click and drag on this and this allows me to bevel off the edges of the cut that I'm creating we'll talk more about doing this or the keyboard shortcut in a second but notice how what this does is this allows me to live adjust this so if you want more control over what you're doing then tap the tab key with the tool active and that's gonna allow you to come in here and adjust these cuts just like this notice how you can also use like the move tool for example so if I tap the G key I can actually move this around you can also scale and rotate it as well so these are actually live objects inside of a blender that you can adjust so you can use this to adjust these so that you can get the result that you're looking for let's so let's talk a little bit about the modes as well so we've talked about the first mode which is the cut mode that one's pretty self-explanatory what it does is it just removes material so cut mode is basically going to cut material out of your object so the second option in here puts you in slice mode and what this is going to do is this is going to slice this using a boolean modifier so what that does is that creates a slice inside of your inside of your shape using a boolean modifier what that means is that means that you can adjust this slice I'm using tools like the scale tool or whatever so but that one notice how that's being done with a boolean meaning if I was to tab into the shape none of that's actually in here which so this is gonna slice our mesh using the boolean modifier this third option is really interesting to me it's the inset tool so the inset tool is interesting to me because that actually creates an inset inside of your shape so notice how what this is doing is this is basically in setting this in so instead of doing that with the slice modifier this one kind of does this automatically in here and one thing to note about that is when you're doing this you can adjust it using these keyboard shortcuts so if you tap the T key notice how what this is going to do is this is going to adjust the size of the it's going to adjust the size of the solidify that's created in this intersection so you can see how we can use this in order to make an adjustable cut inside of this object and all of these keyboard shortcuts are active while you're doing this meaning I can tap the G key to move things around I can tap the B key to create a bevel all of these things that this is showing I can create a contour bevel all the things that are shown over here in this menu are alive whenever you're creating these tools so notice I can scroll up in order to add an additional number of cuts into this object really quickly as well so the join function is gonna allow you to add geometry so notice how I can use this to add a shape to this face if I want to do that so the knife tool is actually going to cut it's more of a destructive modifier so if you use this one for example in your shape like this then tab it into edit mode notice how this actually adjusted your geometry in here so what that's done is that's actually cut this geometry and actually made a change to your geometry so if you want to come in here and actually use the knife tool in a destructive fashion you can do that just note that you can't come back and make this change later if you want to adjust anything in here so the extract mode can theoretically pull out a custom mesh as a custom cutter meaning you can use this in order to pull something out that you had in here and reuse a cut if you want to do that the last option in here is make that just allows you to create shapes there's nothing special about it it's just used for general shape creation so in addition there are also custom operations that you can use so right now we have this set to none and what this does is this basically just creates a single cut in here but these operations allow you to do multiple different things so let's say for example that we wanted to cut a sphere into this object and we need to make sure we have cut mode selected so if you single tap the V key what that's gonna do is that's gonna put you in a ray mode what a ray mode is gonna do is that's gonna allow you to copy or that's going to allow you to create multiple different it's going to basically repeat the operation multiple different times so you can see I can adjust that spacing by moving my mouse and I can adjust this by using the scroll wheel as well scrolling up and down so not only if you tap the V key once does this put you in linear array mode if you tap it again it'll put you in circular array mode so a radial array mode basically what that means is that means this will create an array in a circle so and notice how this is all very adjustable meaning I can tap the S key in order to adjust the size then I can go back and tap the V key in order to go back into a ray mode so you can adjust all of this live as you're working so I really like the bevel modifier because what the bevel modifier does is when you use this so if you were to come in here and draw a shape like this the bevel modifier is gonna bevel this off and you can actually activate that by clicking a model icon when you first start you can also tap the B key in order to adjust the bevel of your shape so you can use this to quickly add a beveled cut into your shape as well and then once you're done with that and notice how I can scroll my mouse wheel up in order to add edges to the bevel but once I'm done I can just click in order to set that and notice how it gives me the little tabs in here so that I can come back and adjust this later if I want to and then finally we've got the mirror tool and so the mirror tool is going to allow you to create multiple mirrored cuts across an axis and so if you look at this what this is doing is this is currently mirroring across an axis notice how you can tap the number keys in order to adjust the axis that this mirrors along so this is mirroring across the object axis but you can see how you can use this to create multiple cuts really easily and just tap those 1 2 & 3 keys in order to adjust the maxi's that this is mirroring across so you can see how you can use this in order to add multiple cuts to an object really easily and then one last thing about this tool that I almost forgot to talk about but it's really powerful is notice how you can actually adjust the tools that are in here by going up into your collections and looking for the cutters and so the cutters is where this stores all of the boolean cutters that are in here well notice how when I turn this on I can actually see that in here and I can select it and I can adjust it so I can move it around I can scale it so I can scale it on the X or Y axis these are all adjustable after-the-fact meaning you can come in here and you can make changes to these as you want to so if you want to move and adjust your cutters around you can do that by turning on the cutters and just editing them like you would any other object inside a blender so that's from an in this video this is another example of one of those tools as so many features it's hard to do an intro video on because there's so much to talk about but hopefully I give you a good overview of what this tool can do leave a comment below let me know if you have any questions if there's anything you'd like me to cover more in depth and just love having that conversation into you guys if you like this video please remember to click that like button down below if you're new around here member 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 not we'll catch you in the next video thanks guys

Channel: The CG Essentials

Views: 10,160

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 box cutter add on, blender box cutter tutorial, blender box cut tutorial, blender hole cutting tutorial, blender cut holes, blender box cutter

Id: ADiqhdBF-WY

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020