Blender Part 3

While in part 2 of this tutorial we touched on how to create objects in Blender, now we want to make them look exactly how we imagine in our minds eye, which means editing, sculpting, and smoothing them.

More Precise Placement

Right at the start of this Blender tutorial we mentioned how the left mouse button is used to set the 3D cursor. This is where that becomes useful because where the 3D cursor is placed is where your objects will appear.

• Left-Click to set the position of the 3D cursor
• Shift-c to center the 3D cursor
• Shift-A to bring up the object creation menu
• Set your preferred object location and properties in the panel

Editing

Once you have some objects, now we can modify them.

Right-click to select then hit Tab or select editing mode from the menu.

Ctrl-Tab to select between

• Vertex — The points
• Edge — The lines
• Face — The flat panels

Boolean Operations

To join or subtract objects to/from each other, we use Boolean Modifiers. This is found in the wrench icon.

• Difference can be used to make an object-shaped hole,
• Union is used to join objects.
• Intersect keeps the parts that overlap.

Before you can apply the change, you need to select the object being used for the operation, in my case I created a small sphere that I am going to use to take a dimple out of my box.

Just be aware using Booleans really messes up your mesh. There are other ways to get quite a sophisticated result

Proportional Editing

As you manipulate the objects you will notice they can seem quite radical changes. To smooth out the tweaks you can use proportional editing.

Hit the O key or use the icon.

There is also a menu item:

Subdivide

If you need more detail in your object then Subdivide will add more reference points by slicing up your object.

Smoothing

Smoothing is exactly what you would imagine!

Sculpting

You don’t need a dedicated package like Z-Brush if you want to sculpt organic-appearing models, and in some ways the Blender sculpt tool is more intuitive.

Export

Once you have your object how you want it, you can export as an OBJ, STL or various other formats.

If your object looks weird in your slicer, make sure you take note of your export properties, especially the scale: