I modelled in Mike’s Class several different things in Blender. The first was a Milkshake, which involved a lot of different processes, such as bevelling, extrusion, duplication, solidifying, and face deleting in creating it. The milkshake’s body was created with a cylinder whose base was shrunk to serve as the bottom of the cup, and the faces at the top were removed to serve as the inside. The very top was then given edge loops and then extruded to form the lid.  The dome on top of the cup was created using half of a sphere and the top faces were deleted to create the hole for the straw to go into.

The straw was created using a Beizer curve which was then solidified and made into a mesh. I modified certain parts of the curve so that it was posed like a straw and then taking some edges and scaling them I made a bendy part of the straw.

The second was a flower in a vase. I made the vase by fattening one end of another sphere, removing the faces of some of the top parts of it and extruding the edges of the resulting hole to create the neck of the vase, bevelling some of the faces to create smoother edges.

Like the milkshake straw, I made the stem by using a Beizer curve and then solidified it and then manipulated its curves to create a convincing stem. To make the petals I made one petal by solidifying a plate primitive and then using subdivision surface to smooth it out and modify its vertices. Then I duplicate it several times to I have enough petals to cover the face of the flower. To make the leaves, I solidified another plate and then used subdivision surface to modify its shape. Both models made use of a Beizer curve which had to be solidified and made into a mesh to complete their respective models, a straw for the milkshake and a stem for the flower in the vase.

These are the completed models.

For Mike’s class this week, I modelled a Zubat and animated it flying around in a 3d space. I made use of several different techniques, such as subdivision and mirroring, to create the model, and used a Bezier circle path and constrained the model to follow it around.

I created the main body of the model by distorting a sphere into a pea nut shape, removing half of it and then using the mirror tool to create a replica that follows any changes made to the original piece. then, I used the knife tool to cut a mouth shape in the model and then extruded the inside of the mouth.

I made the fangs using cones, which I applied a subdivision surface tool to and then mirrored on the other side.

The wings were created using a plane primitive and Beizer curves that are then turned into meshes and merged together. They are then mirrored with the rest of the model.

Here is the finished animation.

Zubat Blender Animation – YouTube

Modelling the Zubat was quite difficult, as I was still learning many of the techniques to make modelling many parts of the creature easier. I also had some trouble parenting the finished parts after modelling them, as parenting them wrong could cause the parts to move incorrectly.

Animating was also a bit difficult, as having the Zubat move its body around a set path could cause it to break dance in mid-air.

Zubat is, by some distance, a pretty easy Pokemon to model at this stage of the course. I hope to model more Pokemon in Blander in the future.

Due to having recently contracted COVID-19, I was forced to work from home for this week. I modelled using several different primitives, such as planes, cubes and cylinders, a TIE Interceptor from Star Wars, and then animated it flying around a set path by setting it to follow the path. Setting up the camera to take the full cycle was quite difficult, as the interceptor was quite big, as was its path.

I extruded parts of the sphere and then separated from the original sphere mesh to create the window for the TIE Interceptor. I then created the wings of the ship using a plane that was then solidified and its edges extruded and by moving its vertices I modified the shape of the extrusions. After joining the finished wing to some cylinders, I then mirrored the finished part on the other side.

The details of the wing were created by using the inset faces tool, and then materials were added to each part of the wing in kind, to give it colour.

There also was the issue of how much the camera can take in an image. By greatly extending the clip end distance of the camera, I was able to fix this issue. Another issue I found was that the camera motion tracked the sphere. It had been parented to the craft while I was working, so I unparented it. This is the final video I made with the Tie Interceptor.

TIE Interceptor Animation – YouTube

Next, I made a skateboard in Blender. The modelling used a lot of various features such as bevelling and extruding for the front and back parts of the skateboard as well as assigning multiple materials to certain parts of the model.

Part of the work we did for Week 2 involved creating a snowman out of primitives such as cubes, cylinders and circles. For our homework, we had to animate this snowman doing simple actions, such as lifting his hat and waving.

The task introduced us to an invaluable technique called parenting. Simply, we parented the various parts of the snowman together all the way down to the base of the snowman’s body, so that when it moved, the rest of the snowman moved with it.

By parenting each part, from the fingers to the hands and from the hands to the arms and from the arms to the body and so on, I was able to make it so that when one-part moves, the others move in tandem with it while also allowing them to move about on their own.

I made my snowman wave, hold its hat, and even fix it as he wobbled form side to side. Using knowledge on follow through and straight-ahead action, I was able to make an appealing animation for my snowman.

Snowman Blender Animation – YouTube