Modeling with precise measurements in Blender. Top tips. No addons.

in this video we're going to look at a few tips and tools which might help us to work with precise measurements concrete numbers in blender uh this is especially helpful if you use blender for architectural projects or mechanical or engineering projects uh where you always need precise numbers and concrete measurements uh to make your model right so let's go I'd like to mention one thing before we start this video this uh lesson is not uh for complete beginners uh this is for someone who already knows how to use blender and uh those who need some uh help with uh working with precise numbers so let's go so how do we work with precise numbers or measurements in blender I I would highlight or outline the main important topics that we're going to cover in this video and then we will move into blender and and kind of practice uh those things right inside of blender so the first thing we need to uh talk about is the grid system we need to understand the grid system well some people understand some people not and some people think they understand but actually they don't so we will learn how to uh snap to the grid and some uh coordinate systems and then uh we'll look at measurement tools and units and then uh we will look we will learn how to precisely put any vertex in any location in the global uh orientation uh Global coordinate system and then uh we will talk about a little about uh snapping tools more snapping tools and also if you're using multiple uh programs alongside blender you might want to make something in blender and Export and import and in this case uh the there will be there might be differences for example you made something which is 4 M long in blender and when you import it into another software another uh piece of another program and suddenly your model is not 4 M but it's 4 cm or maybe 4 kilomet this is why you need to know uh exactly what kind of uh difference you have between blender and uh your program so I can't help you here uh I can just uh remind you that this might happen but uh you must ex uh you must make uh do your research and find what kind of difference you have now let's go and go into blender uh talk about grid system now I'm I'm inside blender and uh look at this floor uh and squares right this is called the grid and uh we need to know the measurement here the length of each uh Square each side of the square right this is 1 M Square it uh you might already know this so and this cube is 2 m Cub so the length height the width all 2 m and uh you you also need to know the axis you probably know this X Y you can turn them on and off or you can even turn Z axis on and you can turn off floor if you don't need in perspective View and you can change the scale which we are not going to do so and the next thing you need to know is the grid is different in perspective view which is the view uh that the human eye usually sees the world and there is another view uh I assume that you already know uh this is orographic view again I this video is not for complete beginners this for someone who already use blender uh why am I mentioning this because in orthographic view you might see more uh squares inside these larger squares so as I said this is 1 M right and this is uh 2 m right so this is 1 M and if you look there are more squares inside so there are actually 10 uh squares inside so uh 10 uh 1 M divided 10 it's 10 cm e square is 10 cm let's get rid of this and in orthographic view you know uh 1 3 7 and if you press them you go into orthographic View and you see more of the grid and if you go closer you will see even smaller squares inside each of these small squares so these are now 1 cm and if you go even closer uh we have even smaller squares and these are 1 mm why uh why am I uh reminding this or why am I talking about this because in blender we can snap to grit so which means we can uh increase the scale or extrude something by 1 mm at a time by by snapping to the grid now let's look at how we can snap the vertices of the model to the grid so let's go into edit mode by pressing tab shift Z to look in wireframe view you can select everything and put it somewhere around here so now uh you want to put uh this precisely in this uh big square right you eyeball it and you put it right here right you think that it's exactly in the correct place but if you press shift plus b and go closer here you can see it's not precisely in the correct place right so you need to uh you can snap this to here so you can turn on snapping for this turn on snapping and select these vertices and try to snap but if you try it doesn't want to snap exactly on this uh uh here right it doesn't want to snap for this you need to turn on one more thing open snapping options and uh turn on absolute great snapping so now select these two vertices and come here as you can see it automatically snap SS in the correct place so you can snap this here snap this one there and this one here so that's it now we snapped now this way you can do a lot of things if you understand that this is for example 4 M right and this is let's say 3 m right if you know this and with this knowledge and with the knowledge of absolute git snapping you can already work more precisely than before right gy you can snap here gy you can snap here g y no X and snap this here and now you can be sure that uh this room is let's say 4 M long 3 m wide and 2 m high now the next thing that we that I'd like to show you is uh measurement tools now uh the next thing uh that we will learn is come here to edit mode overlays as you can see here and we have measurement tools here you can turn on edge length and you can see it is 3.2 3.2 and M if you don't see it very well we can change the theme of our of blender themes uh in dark gray or deep gray it it is more visible and now if you select these you can go uh closer and you can gz and here if you look carefully here you can see the number right so 32 325 and 3 let's say 40 let's do it 340 so 3 m 40 cm if we go even closer and GZ you can see even smaller detail so 342 now what if you want to show this in not in meters but in in centimeters or even millimeters right you can do this you can come here to scene properties and just expand this units options and here you have unit system metric for American units Imperial for British and here you have have length and if you look carefully this is in meters you can change it to centim now as you can see it's uh 343 CM so in cenm or you can even use uh you can show this in millimeters or in even in micromet M micrometers right or you can come even closer and as you can see in millimeters you can see this in millimeters right so it's uh 3,530 uh 40 let's say millim now uh you have uh precise numbers here right in millimeters now what I'd like to show you is the next thing which is vertex location what if I want this to be not 356 CM but 356 cm and 3 mm or 4 mm right what I need to do I should go even closer and uh gz and I should do that right like let's say millimet gz like that 64 M for example so this is not very uh it's it's good it's not the best thing right you need to go closer and closer if you want to increase so one thing is just to just to input numbers right how can we do this well that's easy now I'm going to show that let's turn off edge length H by the way you have other uh things here you can for example one of the most useful one is this face area you can see the area of the face and not in millimeters let's say in meters for example 12 M square m here 12 square m 14.3 square m so you can check check that too let's turn this off now I'd like to uh make the height of my wall 3 m and 56 cm and 4 mm let's say right so we can do this for that you you hit n and you can see this item and here you can see everything let's go to vertices let's select this vert for example uh the next thing was vertex location as I mentioned so now we are going to talk about vertex location if I select this vertex uh and L about coordinate system too so select this vertex this vertex location if you know a little math the location in 3D space is uh calculated like that X Y and Z right in Z in x it is standing at zero right because from above this is zero this is let's say one 2 3 and so on right and this is x-axis by the way this is y axis I'm sorry and this is zero in y- AIS this point is zero right uh one 2 3 and so on and this is z Z axis and this is zero this is 1 2 3 and so on right so if you understand this coordinate system you can tell where this vertex is staying in 3D space so this vertex is uh it is zero in X it is 3 m in y and it is 3 m and uh 56 cm and 4 mm as you can see if you change this meters to millimeters you will see everything in millimeters so let's change it back to let's say CM 356 cm and 4 mm so the height right now we can change this uh for example let's put everything uh just like that for example let's say I want this to be uh 400 C let's say 420 cm and 4 mm let's say as you can see I have just changed it and all of these vertices are exactly at that position as as you can see so this way we can uh kind of uh tell blender where to put any vertex uh exactly in 3D space select these Vertes and in X this is let's say length in X I'll put them in 600 cm M and the height will be let's say 320 cm and 6 mm let's say what if you want to build a kind of wall let's turn this off for now the width of the wall let's say will be 42 mm no 42 cm and 4 mm let's say uh uh along this x we will put that 42.4 let's say right millimet so this is the width of the wall of course blender and any other software might be imprecise especially with a really big numbers so be careful with this if you want uh model something uh I don't know maybe Mo molecule or something very small I just wanted to mention this and also I'd like to mention that there are some add-ons which might help you to work precisely like in CAD CAD programs right so uh a little math and a little uh knowledge of these tools and you will be able to create anything another bonus tip for you uh let's create something here and I'd like to make it 1 M uh 25 cm and 5 mm let's say uh 1 M 25 cm and uh uh 5 mm let's say if you are in meters you can do this look 125.5 cm and boom you have this I mean you don't have to calculate it in meters and write the number in meters you can write whatever number you can calculate and put centimeters if you're if you calculated it in your mind in centimeters or you can put mm for millimeters if you calculate that in millimeters that's even helpful and this will give you even better Precision so it's a really good way to to kind of uh input exact numbers if you want and one thing I almost forgot uh to mention is uh these two options remember we are in local but the calculations are should be in global usually now if I change this to Global nothing changes because local means all the measurements are based on uh or calculated from or in relation to the object's origin now the object's origin is exactly in the center of the world which is the world origin right so if you move GX this uh building somewhere and the object origin moved now if I come here and if I select for for example this vertex in x in x direction right it's 1 2 3 it should be somewhere in 13 M right but look at this it is 6 M it's not 13 M because it is calculating uh from the origin of the object which is here so if you change it to Global and then you will see that it's 13 M away from the origin so if you move your object in object mode and you you have origin somewhere that you don't want you can easily right click and set origin to the 3D cursor right if your 3D cursor is there if the your 3D cursor is somewhere else you can press shift C to bring the 3D cursor to the center of the world and then right click set origin to 3D cursor this way uh even if you are in uh local you can see that it is in 13 cm because now the origin point and the world origin are in the one in in one place so now let's talk a little about snapping because snapping is a really big topic and by the way if you want to learn everything about snapping and everything about everything in blender you can check out my full course on udemy or in blender Market on udemy you you will have a big discount uh if you follow the link below the video or if you want to support this Channel and not only this channel but also blender you can buy my course on blender market and this way you will support blender too so go ahead and check them out this way you will support me and this channel so thank you and let's continue I will tell you a little about this for example we can change from increment and absolute grid snap to vertic snapping so it's important for example if you ever want if you ever made a mistake and kind of messed things up you can fix them for example example these are in uh in correct place but these are kind of moved you moved it them by accident or you don't know what you did but when you see it's moved it happens a lot so you can do this so select this vertex and turn on snapping vertex snapping and you press GX and select this vertex gz and select this vertex and uh you snapped it in a really good place now select this vertex G X and but uh do not just do not simply move for example if you turn on vertex spping and simply move onto this vertex uh it will be a mistake because these two vertices now will be on the same spot so you'll just uh do GX gz gy and stuff like that gz for example and this GX and this I put it in the correct place so yeah vertex snapping is also are really cool really uh useful I mean so yeah again if you want to check out the full course you can go on UD on blender Market other than that thank you for watching please follow us and I provide you with more useful videos every week

Channel: Unreal Blender

Views: 50,596

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Id: JjL7iKR4gQs

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024