# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Procedural Eyeball

|previous=Creating Pixar-looking eyes in Blender
}}
```
Level: intermediate\
**Building a better (procedural) eyeball!**\
Originally created by Jon McKay (Ammusionist) and posted on
blenderartists.org/forum\
1
The end result of this tutorial is an eyeball that fulfills the
following requirements:

1.  Single mesh
    -   I wanted to be able to append a single object into any project.
2.  Procedural Textures
    -   I didn\'t want to have to rely on image maps that could get
        lost.
3.  Versatile
    -   One single model to be used for any type of character, be it
        human, alien or whatever.
4.  Easy
    -   Any effects needed to be quickly accessible. I don\'t want to be
        wasting time faffing around with colour-band settings at the
        texture level
5.  Impressive
    -   This sucker needs to look good any way it goes.
6.  One other thing I really wanted was the iris musculature to follow
    the pupil dilation!

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_rendered.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_rendered.jpg")\
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An old and different Tutorial:

1.  Very old video for making deep-looking eyes
    <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKmHUZroaBA>

## Creating the Mesh

The objective here is to make a great looking eyeball. That means it may
not be anatomically perfect, but there are some things we need to take
into account: The eye should consist of a white (white bit with veins);
an iris (coloured bit); a pupil (black but in the centre of the iris)
and a cornea (clear bit surrounding the whole eye). These may not be
absolutely correct, but these are how I\'m referring to the pieces of
the eye.

1.  Start with a ball: Go to a front view
    () and create a UV sphere. 32 Rings
    and 32 segments should be sufficient. It\'ll give us plenty of
    smoothness and enough verts to work with when we create shapes.
2.  Click on \"Align to view\"
3.  This sphere will become the coloured parts of the eye, but we also
    need a second sphere for the cornea. Use the
     key to switch to a wireframe view (if
    you\'re not already there). Hit the
    key a couple of times to ensure all points are selected then
     to duplicate the sphere.
4.  Press  key to scale and scale the
    second sphere to slightly larger than the first. (Hint: Hold
     while scaling for fine
    adjustment) or you could also enter a value, 1.01.
5.  Now that we have a nice confusing mesh, we\'re going to make our
    life easier. We\'re going to hide the outer bit for the moment. Hit
    the  key.
6.  **Noob Note:** Don\'t panic like I did the first time I accidentally
    hit , you can bring it all back with
    . (Note: In blender
     + some key often reverses the
    effect of pressing the key in the first place!)

-   OK Now to create the basic mesh for the inner part. Basically, we
    need to make a concave iris/pupil section.

1.  Make sure you're in Orthographic view.
2.  Switch to a side view and use the Border Select
    () to select the first 4 rings and the
    tip. Now we\'re going to flatten these. Press
     for scale
     for Y axis only and
     for scale-to zero.

For more realistic eyes you can also grab the inner 3 rings + the tip a
bit inwards the eye.

**Noob Note:** It is also possible to flatten the rings in a way that
leaves the last ring in place and moving the rings later is not
necessary. Before you flatten those 4 rings and the tip of the sphere
place your 3D cursor in the plane where the last ring involved in
scaling operation lies (use border select to select *only* the fourth
ring, press , and select \"Cursor to
Selected\"). Then set the pivot point to \"3D Cursor\". Finally proceed
like instructed above by selecting all rings to be flattened and scaling
them to 0 in Y direction. This time the outermost ring will stay in
place. Do not forget to set the pivot point back to the default option
\"Median Point\". You may return the 3D cursor to the center by pressing
.
![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_1.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_1.jpg")\
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1.  Last, grab them along the Y-axis to the eye till it\'s round again.

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_1-2.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_1-2.jpg")\
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\* Now for the cornea. It\'s not perfectly spherical; it bulges slightly
at the front. We\'re going to use the Proportional Editing tool.

1.  First, we need to un-hide the cornea. Hit Alt-H to make it visible.
2.  Click the O-Key, this will activate proportional editing, click on
    \"Connected\" in the 3D view header at the settings for Proportional
    editing.
3.  Select the type of falloff: "Sphere Falloff"
4.  Press A-Key a couple of times again to make sure no points are
    selected, switch to a side view (Keypad-3) and right click just to
    the left of the front-most point. We just want to select the tip
    vertex.
5.  Now comes some fun. We want to drag that point away from the eye in
    the y axis, so press "G" for grab and "Y" for Y axis. As you move
    the vertex, you\'ll see a circle that defines the influence of the
    proportional editing. Adjust it so it is as the height of the whole
    iris and drag it out until it looks right.

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_2.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_2.jpg")\
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\# First, switch off Proportional editing.

1.  Select from center the tip and the first 4 Loops.

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_2-2.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_2-2.jpg")\
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\# Then Hit Ekey and Ykey then drag out a bit \'till it\'s good.
![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_3.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_3.jpg")\
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\* To clean the model up, we\'re going to apply a subdivision surface
modifier and some smoothing.

1.  Go to Modifiers in the Properties Header and hit new and choose
    \"Subdivision Surface\" choose view: 2.
2.  Hit Tab to switch to Object mode and hit the \"Set Smooth\" button
    in the Link and Materials panel.

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_4.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_4.jpg")\
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![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_5.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_5.jpg")\
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-   Now would be a good time to save your work before we go on to
    textures.

## Adding the Textures

You\'re going to need multiple materials on this mesh. It\'s possible to
apply materials to selected faces.

1.  Press A a couple of times to ensure nothing is selected.
2.  Press Z to switch off wireframe; this will be easier without it.
3.  Place the mouse pointer in the centre of one of the faces on the
    outside layer of the eye and press "L" to select linked faces. If
    you get a message saying "Nothing Indicated" try positioning the
    pointer on a different face and try again.

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_6.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_6.jpg")\
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\# Once the outside section is selected, go to "Materials" in the
Properties Header, click "+". Click "Assign" to assign the outside faces
to Material.001.
![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_7.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_7.jpg")\
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\* Now the inside.

1.  Hide the outside faces (H-Key). We\'ll assign the rest from the eye.
    If a face is already assigned to a material and you assign it to
    another, it just switches material.

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_8.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_8.jpg")\
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\# Press A to select all and, as above, click "+" then click "Assign" so
it is assigned to Material.002.
![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_9.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_9.jpg")\
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\* Now for the iris and pupil.

1.  Hit A to deselect all.
2.  Switch to a front view and zoom in. Hit "C" to enable circle select
    and select the central faces plus one ring out. You can control the
    size of the selector by rotating your mouse wheel.
3.  Again, create a "+" material index and "Assign" the pupil faces to
    it.

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_10.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_10.jpg")\
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\# Finally, click Akey to deselect all and use circle select again to
select the remaining faces on the iris. Assign them to a new material.
![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_11.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_11.jpg")\
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\* Now we\'re ready to make the materials.

### Cornea Material

1.  Switch to object mode (Tab). Go to Material.001.

We\'ll start with the simplest texture first. The cornea is basically
just colourless and transparent. This is because some lighting
conditions make the eye under the cornea difficult to see. Go to the
shading buttons (F5)

1.  Locate the "Transparency" control. Set this on. This means as we go
    we\'ll be able to see through the cornea. Note that we\'re using
    Z-Transparency instead of Raytrace. And set Alpha to \".2\"
2.  Diffuse at white and intensity is 0.1.
3.  Under Specular CookTor is used 1 and Hardness is 333.
4.  Under Mirror, Click on, and set to 0.4, Depth is 3
5.  Unclick the \'Traceable\' setting under Options
6.  And Under Shadow unclick \"Cast\"

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_13-1.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_13-1.jpg")\
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![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_13-2.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_13-2.jpg")\
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### White Material

The white of the eye\'s a little trickier. The material here includes
some red veins that can be seen at the side of the eye, but not from the
front. This can be done with two textures, but there\'s a cheat we can
use.

First, the veins:

Switch to Material.002.

Go to the texture Properties aside of the from the Material:

Make a new texture.

Use a marble texture, and copy these settings.

1.  Under color choose Ramp.
2.  The first point is \"0\": Pos=0; R=1, G=0.0, B=0.0; A=1;
3.  Click on the second point, The second point is \"1\": Pos=0.340;
    R=1, G=1, B=1; A=1;
4.  Under the Marble tab: Sharper, Sin, and under \"noise\", hard are
    clicked;
5.  Size=2; NoiseDepth=10; Turbulence=26.04;
6.  And set under mapping \"Coordinates\" to \"Generated\". And
    \"projection\" to \"sphere\" or \"Flat\".

The two colour band items are shown here separately. This makes a nice
marble texture that will evenly cover the eyeball. So how to hide it
from the front of the ball? Another colour band trick, but this time in
the material itself.

Here they are in all their glory.

1.  Under the material tab, Diffuse is white and intensity is 1;
2.  Check Ramp, 0: Pos=0.533; R=1, G=1, B=1; A=0; Input is Shader;

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
1.  1: Pos=0.544; R=1, G=1, B=1; A=1; Input is Normal;

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_14-1.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_14-1.jpg")\
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![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_14-2.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_14-2.jpg")\
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![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_15.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_15.jpg")\
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The colour band items are both white with one alpha 0.0 and one alpha
1.0. As you can see they are very close together to give a fairly clear
line that the veins will stop at. The input setting for the band is set
to "Normal" this means the left hand side of the band refers to faces
that are parallel to the camera view and the right is faces that are
facing directly towards the camera.

There\'s also some colour band fun to be had with the pupil material.

### Pupil Material

I wanted a nice black texture, but I also wanted to get a red-eye effect
if a light is shone directly at it from behind the camera. Why? I guess
just because I can, and now so can you!

As before move to Material.003.

There are no textures in this one. It\'s basically black and a little
reflective with a nice hard specular.

1.  Diffuse is Black, presumably with an Intensity of 1
2.  Specular is white with an Intensity of 0.6 and a Hardness of 300;
3.  Under Mirror reflectivity is 0.1;

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_16-A2.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_16-A2.jpg")\
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If you want to have the red-eye effect, have a good look at the colour
band settings though! (Not Necessary, and maybe not wanted by everyone)

1.  Check Ramp.
2.  0: Pos=0.970; R=0, G=0, B=0, A=0;
3.  The second is fully red (with no blue or green). We want the red-eye
    to respond to light not angle like the white of the eye.
4.  1: Pos=1; R=1, G=0, B=0, A=1; Input: Energy;

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_16-B.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_16-B.jpg")\
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Now the bit you\'ve all been waiting for -- the iris!

### Iris UV Map

Save your work and grab a cup of coffee for this part. It\'s a little
involved.

We need the texture to stay glued to the mesh irrespective of the shape
of the mesh. This gives the effect of the muscles in the iris expanding
and contracting. In a nutshell, we\'re going to UV map a procedural
texture to a single part of the mesh.

OK, here we go. Switch material.004. You\'ll need to be able to see both
3D view and UV/Image editor. This can be achieved by splitting windows,
if you don\'t know anymore how to do this read
 again. Noob
note: If you rendered the image of the eye you will see the rendered
image, we want an empty grid. So click the \"X\" in the Datablock
(Image) choose-section in the UV/Image editor Header.

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_if_rendered.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_if_rendered.jpg"){width="810"
height="10"}\
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![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_17.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_17.jpg")\
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Make sure the window is displaying a front view (Keypad-1) this will be
important when we unwrap the bit we\'re going to use.

Change the 3D view to edit mode en Face select mode.

1.  Hide the outside (cornea) as done before.
2.  Go to Material.004 and click on \"Select\" right of \"Assign\", this
    will select the to the material assigned faces. We will unwrap the
    faces to place our texture.

-   You can use these properties for the iris material:

1.  Diffuse: black but with an intensity of 1
2.  Specular: Intensity: 0

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_16,5.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_16,5.jpg")\
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![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_18.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_18.jpg")\
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\# Now search in the tool shelf for the Shading/UV\'s tab, you will find
there the \"Unwrap\" button under \"UVs\".

1.  Click it and select \"Unwrap\". The unwrap tool, is a tool which you
    can position a texture. You can allocate the places in the texture
    to the mesh by positioning the unwrapped faces in a grid. The
    texture can be an image or another texture and will be used at the
    places, that are described in the unwrapped image in the \"UV/Image
    editor\"
2.  Zoom in \'till it\'s placed exactly to the outer edge the \"UV/image
    editor\" window.

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_19.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_19.jpg")\
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\# The image window should now contain a nice even circle of dots. If
they aren\'t selected anymore, put the cursor in the \"UV/Image editor\"
and press "A" to select all the points. Now select each ring in turn
using Alt-Shift, starting from the innermost, and scale them until they
cover from the centre to the outside of the image grid as shown. (This
won\'t affect the mesh)

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_20-2.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_20-2.jpg")\
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Now we\'ve got a map, lets get a texture. In the 3D view \"Tab\" to
object mode for the next part. If the UV/Image editor is in your way you
can merge the two windows. If you don\'t know anymore how to do this
read  again.

### Iris Texture

Firstly, a texture to control the colour blend across the iris.
Generally it starts on the outer edge dark and gets lighter as it moves
to the centre. Sounds like a job for the blend texture.

1.  Create a new texture for Material.004 at the Texture Properties in
    the Properties Header. It will be called \"Texture.001\".
2.  Change Type to Blend.
3.  create a second texture with type: Clouds

The texture itself is fairly straight forward, but again, the colour
band is where the magic happens.

There are two stops in the colour band. Note the alpha values. This
blend texture is meant to tint the iris texture so it\'s lighter in the
centre and darker in the outside.

We make a Blend texture and a clouds texture (yes clouds)

Now for that iris texture:

Blend texture:

The blend texture is applied to the UV map input. The green colour is
used as a lighten mix to tint the iris near the centre.

1.  Select Ramp,
2.  (Blue) 0: pos: 0, play with the color settings and set alpha to 1
3.  (Green) 1: pos: 0.009, play with the color settings and set alpha to
    0.89
4.  set progression to Spherical
5.  Set mapping to Coordinates: UV, Projection: Flat

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_21-1.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_21-1.jpg")\
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![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_21-2.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_21-2.jpg")\
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Now you\'ve got color

Clouds texture:

The colour band points are black with alpha 0 and white with alpha 1.

1.  0: pos: 0, black with alpha: 0
2.  1: pos: 0.737, black with alpha: 1
3.  Under Clouds: Grayscale, Noise: Hard
4.  size: 0.4, depth: 2
5.  here is (together with the UV mapping) the magic of the lines:
    Mapping Coordinates: UV, Projection: Flat
6.  **Important:** Size X: 0.01, Y: 5
7.  Under influence - Geometry - Normal: 1

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_22-1.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_22-1.jpg")\
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![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_22-2.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_22-2.jpg")\
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This texture is applied to UV again and. This makes some small shadows
in the iris when the light is from the side. Add some lights and have a
look at your eyeball so far.

## Pupil Dilation

We\'re going to use shape keys to create the pupil effects.

We\'re going to create a normal eye and a cat\'s eye. Fortunately, the
fully dilated eye is the same in both cases so that\'s going to be our
shape key basis.

**Noob Note:** note that you can only set a \"Shape key\" in object
mode.

1.  Go to Object Mode and go to the \"Shape Keys\" properties in the
    \"Object data\" (The triangle one) context in the \"properties\"
    header.
2.  Click "Add Shape Key" to create the \"basis\".
3.  Make 3 extra Shape keys. (Don\'t make a shape key after editing,
    because you will change the previous keyframe and that is not the
    intention)

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_23.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_23.jpg")\
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\# Go to \"edit mode\" and click on Shape Key 1.

1.  Use circle select, Alt+Shift of de Select button in Material to
    select just the first 2 loops en the tip (pupil) in vertex select
    mode.
2.  Now scale this to the next loop, select the latter and scale to just
    before the edge of the iris (This gives a very wide pupil). It has
    to be as wide as possible because you can adjust how wide you want
    it in the shape key section. It is just a maximum so you can simply
    make an animation.
3.  Change the name to "Wide Pupil Contract"

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_24.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_24.jpg")\
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\# Just because you may also need it make a very little pupil (with
shape key 2). Call it (Little Pupil).
![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_25.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_25.jpg")\
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Use the value slider in \"Object mode\", also set Viewport shading to
Rendered (so you can see how it will be when rendered), To increase the
shape of the pupil with \"Wide pupil Contract\" and make it smaller with
\"Little pupil\" you can use them at the same time also (and much more
if preferred).

Now switch back to object mode and try the shape key sliders out. Pretty
neat huh?

1.  Let\'s make a cat\'s eye now. Change the name of Shape Key 3 to
    -"Cat Pupil".
2.  Use the same method as before to scale the edge loops. As you scale,
    restrict your scaling to the X axis (That is "S" then "X"). You
    should end up with a shape key tiny but medium long.

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_26.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_26.jpg")\
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That\'s pretty much it. Try some other things to practise with this.

Set the Camera and lightning.

Note: Due to the settings you\'ve done in the material of the white of
the eye, you have to position the camera in front of the eye. Because
the white of the eye that overrules the vein-texture is a white spot in
the middle of the camera and that has to be placed in the middle of the
eye around the iris.

Don\'t forget to save -- and enjoy!

![](Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_rendered.jpg "Procedural_eyeball_blender2.75_rendered.jpg")\
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# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Putting It All Together: A Dragon!

|next=Image Editor
|nextText=The UV/Image Editor
}}
```
# Putting it all Together: A Dragon!

I downloaded Blender without knowing much about how to use it, probably
like you. I hunted around for a good tutorial and found this one. It is
teaching me wonderful things! I have diligently followed every lesson
from the beginning, as I hope you have. Every lesson seems to contain
some valuable technique. So now it is time to put it all together into a
single project.

Hopefully, you now know

-   How to add objects, move and rotate them, scale them in various
    dimensions, and change their shape.
-   How to use proportional editing to change them even more.
-   How to parent, join and separate objects.
-   How to use materials and textures.
-   How to use images in materials.
-   How to use basic lights.
-   How to use modifiers including subsurf and array.
-   Basic use of curves
-   It will help if you know how to use a photo editor such as GIMP to
    produce seamless textures

This project will build on all that background. Since all those things
have been covered before, this will not be a key-by-key tutorial but
rather a description of the general steps to take to make the finished
scene. \_\_TOC\_\_

## Modeling from the Image

!300 px\|left\|Komodo
Dragon.jpg "300 px|left|Komodo Dragon") !Using
cubes to model the
dragon{width="300"}
!200 px\|left\|The basic body
smoothed. It
happens that the Komodo Dragon is one of my favorite creatures. Let us
start with that and let our imagination run wild. In the lesson on
**Modeling a Fox from Guide
Images**
we learned how to make a beautiful 3 dimensional wolf from an image.
(Yes, I know. The fox turned into a wolf. If you did that lesson you
understand.) Here is a nice picture of a Komodo Dragon by wallygrom from
Creative Commons with a
proper license. We can then set that picture as a background image and
apply the technique of starting with a cube and scaling it, extruding
it, scaling again and so on. We only have one view, so our imagination
and application of other pictures has to help with the top and end
views, and we have to add a nice long tail. As you build your cubes keep
in mind that you will have to create faces and extrude the legs so place
a well sized face at the proper spot.

We will use the techniques we learned to split faces and add the legs.
Be sure to provide a nice mouth to put teeth in later, and pay
particular attention to modeling the claws. I modeled one entire foot
and then duplicated it three times to have them all, and joined each one
to the body at the appropriate spot.

Once you have outlined the dragon with the cubes, remember what we
learned in **Smoothing Your Simple
Person**
and apply subsurf modifier and smooth the entire thing. You can then
push and pull on vertices to help make it look as good as possible. I
wanted to try to maintain the look of an ordinary creature and stay
close to my Komodo Dragon, rather than a huge fierce beast to take on
St. George.

## Setting the Body Materials and Textures

Use what we learned in **Image
Textures** to give
the dragon his scales. The most used technique in this tutorial is:

-   Search Flicker Creative
    Commons for a
    properly licensed picture that has a good material in it. If you use
    Google or some other search, be sure that the picture you get is
    properly licensed if you plan to share the image.
-   If your image is NOT a single seamless texture, use photo editing
    software (such as GIMP) to produce a usable seamless file.
    -   Load the image into GIMP. Crop it to a reasonable size showing a
        relatively uniform texture.
    -   Choose *Filters \> Map \> Make Seamless*. Other photo editors
        will usually have a similar operation.
    -   Save the image with a suitable file name.
-   Add a material and a texture using the image. Adjust the settings as
    needed to look good.
-   If you are following my steps, I have put all the textures in this
    article for you to copy if you wish. Click on the thumbnail image
    and go to the Wiki page from which you can download.

!266 px\|Fantasy Dragon Skin seamless
textureYou
can just select a rectangular swatch of skin from the picture and use
GIMP to make it seamless. But Komodo Dragons are a depressing color. For
a fantasy creature we need a brighter skin! So you can play with GIMP
Colorizer until you have a suitably colored swatch. I used red and gold,
but use your imagination! This becomes the first material and texture
for the dragon\'s body. It will probably be necessary to repeat the
image several times in both the X and Y directions. I used X:6 and Y:2
in this particular case.

## Adding the Eyes

thumb\|300 px\|left\|The first
rendering.The dragon needs suitably
scary eyes. Hopefully you have already modeled eyes for the
**Procedural
Eyeball**
tutorial. I chose the cat\'s eye. In **Some Assembly
Required**
we learned how to append a file. Append the Cat\'s Eye, and then work on
the color textures until you have a suitably scary dragon eye. Then
duplicate it and put one eye on each side of the dragon\'s head. I
joined the eyes to the body, but you can also just parent them if you
are careful. You will notice in later renderings that I kept playing
with the eye color and position.

## A Dragon Needs Teeth and Claws

thumb\|300 px\|left\|Assigning texture to the
clawsthumb\|100 px\|right\|Four rows
of Teeth Using the technique from
**Multiple Materials per
Object**
, isolate the claws and give them a nice shiny black material. Too much
Specularity will make the claws look like plastic, too little will make
them dull and uninteresting. I added just a little bit of Mirror also.
It will be something to experiment with until you get the look you like.
Click on the picture to enlarge it and see the setting I settled on.
Remember that you have to select the area of the mesh and ASSIGN it to
the material or you will wind up with a dragon that is black all over!
(That is the voice of sad experience speaking).

A dragon needs teeth. A lot of teeth! Modeling all those teeth would be
a big job. Fortunately we learned how to use array modifiers in
**Building a
House**. Add a
cone, scale it down very small, and extrude some more parts so you can
shape it into a nice curve. When you have a beautifully sharp tooth, add
the Array modifier and make it into a whole row of sharp teeth. Then
duplicate the whole thing three times, rotate it around as needed, and
you will have four rows of teeth, enough for both jaws. This is why we
left the mouth open when we made the original model.

## Horns, a Crest, and Nostrils

thumb\|left\|300 px\|Using the Curve
Modifierthumb\|right\|200 px\|The
color settings for the
hornsthumb\|left\|100
px\|NostrilsLets give the beast some
horns. Here we can use what we learned in **Deforming Meshes using the
Curve
Modifier**
to make some gracefully curved horns. Just as in that lesson, add a cone
and extrude segments to give a lot of vertices. Then create your Bézier
Curve and set it as a modifier to the horn mesh. Properly done your horn
will mold itself to the shape of the curve. Duplicate it and rotate it
to fit the other side of the head and put them in place.

Animal horns are some of the most beautiful structures in nature. We
should make a particularly pretty material for them. We can use the
blending colorband as in the tutorial **Basic Carpet
Texture**,
updating it a bit for 2.69, to give the horns a nice color appearance.
Then add **Subsurface
Scattering**
as taught in that tutorial, with a lot of experimenting, until you get a
really beautiful appearance. The settings I used are in the picture but
it is fun to try different things.

An impressive crest should dominate the dragon\'s back. I found a
picture of a basilisk lizard and used it as a background model for the
crest. The Crest texture was produced in GIMP exactly the same way as
the dragon skin texture.

Reptile nostrils are sort of nondescript, so lets make some nice
nostrils like a snorting bull might have. You can use the technique from
**Spin a goblet** to
model one nostril, then duplicate it, rotate the pair until they look
fierce, and give them a nice color like the dark red brown I picked.
Then put them in place and parent them to the body.

Now you can render your dragon and see the basic body shape, but
something is missing. What is it?!400 px\|Teeth, Claws, Crest and
Horns

## Giving the Dragon Wings

!200 px\|An attempt at
wings.

The wings were the hardest part, because we have not had many tutorials
in this series that dealt with the problems involved. I started with a
cylinder object and went from there, joining other cylinders to it, and
then selecting edges and using to
create faces. There may be other better ways to do it. I wanted the wing
sail parts to be semi transparent and give an appearance of shimmering
colors. Experimenting with the transparency and the materials as seen in
the screenshot gave me some I liked pretty well. I am not completely
satisfied with it but perhaps it is the best that can be done with the
tools we have so far learned. Joining the wings to the body seemed to
produce some distortions so I just parented both of them to the body
object.

Now there is just one more thing that a perfect dragon needs.

## FIRE!

thumb\|right\|300 px\|Settings for
flames!273 px\|Seamless flame
materialthumb\|left\|100
px\|Scaling the cylinders
thumb\|left\|100 px\|Distorting the
cylinders Everybody knows that
dragons breathe fire. It seems that there are many different ways to do
flames in Blender. However, I am attempting to use methods covered so
far in this tutorial series, so I wanted to experiment and see what
could be done with just what we have learned. I came up with something
reasonably close to flame breath using basic techniques. I started with
a series of cylinder objects, scaled at one end until they are almost
cones, and then stacking them inside each other. I used the proportional
editing that we learned about in **Mountains Out Of
Molehills**
to pull and stretch into some more or less random shapes. I found the
flame picture and turned it into a seamless material swatch. Then I
wrapped it around my cones and began playing with the settings for
transparency, and added an Emit setting just to see how it looked. (If
you want to jump ahead refer to Making
Fire in the next
section of this series.)

## Ground to Stand on

thumb\|left\|273 px\|seamless lava
texturethumb\|right\|300
px\|seamless grass textureNow it
is time to complete the scene by giving him something to stand on. Since
his front feet are raised, put in a sort of lava flow for him. That
seems appropriate for a dragon. Try Adding a series of cubes. Stack them
up and pull them out of shape with proportional editing. Add a subsurf
modifier, and then the set the lava rock as an image texture. Again I
made a seamless material out of a photo.

Then create a plane and again use the proportional editor to make some
nice hills. A seamless green grass texture repeated multiple times
completed the ground.

## Lighting

!100 px\|The No Shadow
settingSo far the
lighting has just been the default point light. I think it is a bit more
dramatic to use the Sun style of lamp. As we learned in **Light a
Silver
Goblet** go
to *Add\>Lamp\>Sun* and place a sun type lamp rather high in the sky.
You will notice that now you get two overlapping shadows, one from the
Sun and one from the default point lamp. You could just delete the point
lamp, but, to advance beyond what has already been covered, it is useful
as fill lighting. You can select the point lamp, go to the properties
panel and click on the light
icon![](Blender-2.5_lamp_radio_button.png "Blender-2.5_lamp_radio_button.png").
Scroll down to Shadow and click No Shadow and the point light becomes a
fill light. Setting the horizon color in the world panel
![](Blender268TextureIconWorld.png "Blender268TextureIconWorld.png") is
the last step to produce this scene.

# THE FINAL RESULT

thumb\|center\|700 px\|The Final
Result

I think it nicely combines pretty much all I have learned about Blender
so far in the tutorial! If you want to try your hand at a project, it is
not as hard as you might think. You and I have really learned a lot by
going through the first two sections of**Blender 3D:Noob to Pro**. I
thank all the authors who have worked hard to bring us to this point.

I challenge you to show off what you can do with your newly acquired
knowledge and put your finished work up here. It will probably be a lot
better than mine.

# Noob Project No.02 - Space Dragon in Space

First off, thanks for creating this page! What a wonderful idea to
include all the good readers in a final project! This is what openness
is all about, and this wiki platform is the perfect place to be doing
it. Also, huge thanks to whoever originally wrote this tutorial. Whoever
you are, nameless stranger, you\'re doing excellent work.
thumb\|right\|300 px\|A Quick
Sketch

Moving on, I knew I wanted my dragon to live in space and shoot lasers,
so the first thing I did was sketch him out so I had some sort of plan
before beginning the tedious busy-work.

I think this is technically called a \"wyvern.\" Anyway, with this
general idea in mind, I began extruding a cube to bound out the basic
shape, keeping in mind how it\'s internal skeleton would look and behave
(if dragons were real of course) The wing hand and knuckle bits were
kind of tricky. For those, I extruded a long rectangle for the arm, and
added a few loop-cuts at the end, which i extruded into fingers. Tricky
and finicky. thumb\|left\|250 px\|He looks like a chestburster with
wings. There\'s probably a better
way to do this. While editing, I recommend using a mirror modifier, but
be careful of vertices on the negative side of your mirror. Best thing
to do would be cut your model in half along its axis of symmetry and
then apply the mirror. Otherwise, vertices can show up on the positive
side where you don\'t notice them until you\'re almost done modeling.
Have fun cleaning that up\... I did. **Select \> Select All by Trait
\>** helps a lot with this, and as always, remember to remove doubles
every now and then! After several hours, here\'s the basic, blocky model
of a wyvern I made.

Next I made some teeth. Cone with 3 verts \> Curve modifier \> Array x
37 thumb\|left\|200 px \|What a pretty
smile! Now, those teeth look a
little small, and I suppose 37 rows of teeth is a little much for
anyone, even if their mouth is 4.76 meters long. Next time, I\'ll
probably give him less teeth, and just make them all a little bigger.

I wanted to make a U/V map and draw some real nice textures on this
thing, but we hadn\'t gotten there in the tutorial yet, and I figured
I\'d follow the precedent. Besides, I don\'t properly know how to do one
anyway. So I opened up the GIMP and drew some neat looking scale
textures. Actually, first, I looked up scales on Wikipedia (and learned
that scales grow from the epidermis and are weaker than *scutes*, which
grow from the deeper dermis, and so are more durable, among other
differences. It\'s cool stuff, for sure.) So I pulled up some images of
scutes from the internet, and I got to work. I made my textures super
low resolution (32x32 I think) cause I wanted that retro/late-90s
rendering look. Haven\'t you heard? It\'s all the rage these days! It
also helps with rendering times on my craptop computer. Just check out
this YouTube
playlist
I was listening to while I made it. thumb\|left\|350 px\|Now with
textures and materials! \...and 90% less
sugar

Of course that strange position he\'s in looks uncomfortable, not to
mention it would probably make for a unexciting rendering. So I gave him
some bones for him to orient into a more natural position with. The
toughest thing about making an armature has got to be symmetry. At its
very best, it\'s tedious. At its worst, it\'s torture. I know there\'s a
way to edit armatures with a mirror modifier in blender, but I couldn\'t
find it, and anyway, I finished up alright. A thing to note: If you\'ve
gotten pretty far along and you find you need to delete a bone in the
middle of your armature, you can rejoin the ends by selecting them and
hitting **Ctrl + P \> Connected** To keep your armature in the same
position, reposition the ends with cursor to selected then selected to
cursor. thumb\|right\|250 px\|Now he\'s got some bones on that
meat!

Next, I wanted him to shoot lasers out of his mouth instead of fire,
cause ya know\... He\'s in space. So I opened up the GIMP again and made
a texture to wrap around a tube that would be the beam.
thumb\|left\|250 px\|That didn\'t come out
right\... Lots
of lightning and sparks everywhere\... It was cool. The beam itself was
a tube with a blue material on it---full emit, can\'t receive shadows,
slightly transparent, and full translucency. I slapped my texture on and
put the tube in the beast\'s mouth. I duplicated that tube with **Alt +
D** and shrunk it a little on its local !Z axis (**Shift + D**) so it
would shine through. Inside the dragon\'s mouth and down the length of
the tube i stuck a few point lights with the energy turned up to 11.

Actually it only goes to 10. Maybe those guys at blender should fix
that.

To get the beautiful starfield you see in the background I went into the
GIMP, filters \> noise \> hurl (what a great name for this thing btw),
and desaturated the picture with colors \> desaturate. Yep. Simple as
that. There\'s probably something you can do right from Blender with
procedural textures, but either way, sky texture! getting it to show up
in the view took me some searching. I didn\'t remember how we\'d done it
from earlier in the tutorial. Anyway that sort of repetition helps the
memory.

center\|AAAAAAHHHHH!!
**`<big>`{=html}`<big>`{=html}`<big>`{=html}`<big>`{=html}`<big>`{=html}AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!`</big>`{=html}`</big>`{=html}`</big>`{=html}`</big>`{=html}`</big>`{=html}**

### Add your project below this line


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Image Editor

Blender's UV/Image Editor window serves a number of related purposes:

-   It is a place to view rendered images, and save them to files.
-   It is a place to view and edit images being used as textures.
-   It is a place to perform *UV mapping* of meshes to texture images.

In the window header, you will see "View" and "Image" menus, followed by
a menu for choosing which image to view. The rest of the window header
varies depending on your choice from this last menu.

## Viewing Render Results

![](Blender268ImageEditorRenderResultMenus.png "Blender268ImageEditorRenderResultMenus.png")

Here is what the variable part of the window header looks like when you
choose the special "Render Result" entry in the image-selection menu.
The next menu, showing the word "View", serves no useful purpose in this
case (it is only applicable to editable images, not the render result).
Next to that is a Slot menu, allowing you to select from any of 8
numbered slots. Each slot can hold a separate Render Result image. This
is handy for trying out different render settings (e.g. quality etc),
and quickly flip between them for comparison. You can also use the
keyboard shortcuts  ..
 to switch slots. When you perform a
render, the generated image is put into the slot you are currently
viewing in the UV/Image Editor.

The next two menus, showing "RenderLayer" and "Combined" in the above
screenshot, allow you to view different render layers and render passes,
if you have more than one of these configured in the render settings, as
well as the final compositor result.

The rightmost group of four icons make a further breakdown of the image
into RGB channels with/without alpha transparency layer, alpha on its
own, and Z (depth) buffer on its own. Alpha transparency only matters if
you are rendering a transparent background in place of the sky, as
discussed later.

## Viewing/Editing Texture Images

![](Blender268ImageEditorImageMenus.png "Blender268ImageEditorImageMenus.png")

Here is what the variable part of the window header looks like when you
select some other image, or create a new one. Now the editing-context
menu
![](Blender268ImageEditorEditingMenu.png "Blender268ImageEditorEditingMenu.png")
becomes useful: selecting the "Paint" item lets you paint on the image.

Note the rightmost group of icons in the header has shrunk slightly:
there is no more Z-buffer option, though the alpha-related options still
exist.

## UV Mapping

![](Blender268ImageEditorUVMenus.png "Blender268ImageEditorUVMenus.png")

Here is what the variable part of the window header looks like when you
select a texture image, and go into Edit mode on a mesh in the 3D View
window.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/UV Map Basics

|previous=Image Editor
|previousText=The UV/Image Editor
}}
```
UV mapping is a technique used to \"wrap\" a 2D image texture onto a 3D
mesh. \"U\" and \"V\" are the names of the axes of a plane, since \"X\",
\"Y\" and \"Z\" are used for the coordinates in the 3D space. For
example: increasing your \"V\" on a sphere might move you along a
longitude line (north or south), while increasing your \"U\" might move
you along a line of latitude (east or west).

Another explanation can be gleaned from the Blender manual. Imagine a
paper 3D model of an object, e.g. a sphere, that is to be laid flat on a
table. Each of the 3D coordinates of the sphere can be mapped to the 2D
coordinate on the flat piece of paper. Blender provides another view of
the vertices (coordinates) in the UV/Image Editor. You can select and
edit these 2D vertices just like in the 3D Editor window. The purpose of
this unwrapping of the coordinates is just to map these coordinates to
images/pictures so that the 3D image can have a realistic looking
surface with textures derived from these images.

## The Basics of UV Mapping

##### Add a sphere

We\'ll use a sphere for this demonstration. Delete the initial cube
( + X ). Then, create a new model, a
sphere (**** → Add → Mesh → UV
Sphere). Leave the settings at default for now.

![](UV_sphere.png "UV_sphere.png"){width="300"}

##### Mark a UV seam

In edit mode, select a ring of vertices around the widest part of the
sphere (the equator, if you will). This can be done easily by holding
down  and left-clicking on the
\'equator\'.

Press  and select *Mark Seam*, or
select *Mesh* → *Edges* → *Mark Seam*. This tells the UV unwrapper to
cut the mesh along these edges.

![](Sphere_with_marked_seams.png "Sphere_with_marked_seams.png"){width="300"}

##### Unwrap the mesh

Next, create a window for the UV mapping: click and drag left the small
lined area in the top right corner of the 3D window, a new window will
be created. Set its window type to \"UV/Image Editor\" with the drop
down box at the bottom left corner of the new window or with
.

![](Blender_icosphere_and_UV_Image_Editor.png "Blender_icosphere_and_UV_Image_Editor.png"){width="600"}

In the 3D View window, select all your vertices by pressing
, and press
 → *Unwrap*. In the UV/Image editor you
should see all the vertices/faces/edges of the model represented, or
\'mapped\', in 2D space.

If you don\'t see anything, you need to select UV Editing from the
Screen Layout dropdown in the UV/Image editor window.

![](UV_unwrapped_sphere.png "UV_unwrapped_sphere.png"){width="400"}

##### Apply an image

Now we\'re going to actually use this UV map. Save the following image
(click to view in full high resolution (4,096 × 2,048 pixels)):

![](BlueMarble-2001-2002.jpg "BlueMarble-2001-2002.jpg"){width="500"}

Load it in the UV/Image Editor window by clicking *Image* → *Open Image*
or by pressing . Then with the grab,
rotate and scale tools, adjust the UV islands (the UV groups that
aren\'t connected to each other) so that it fits nicely on top of the
image as shown. To select a UV island, hover the mouse over the island
and press a vertex and .

*Note: Since the aspect ratio of the image will warp the UV\'s, it may
be easier to simply re-unwrap the mesh exactly the same way you did
before. You can then adjust the UV\'s as needed.*

If you have issues fitting to the image use X and Y letters after
pressing S. This will adjust the shape to fit the image.

\[S\]cale, \[R\]otate, \[G\]rab, \[B\]order selection, \[A\]
Select/Deselect all

![](Blender_icosphere_textured.png "Blender_icosphere_textured.png"){width="600"}

##### Admire your new creation

Back in the 3D View window, go into Object mode. The next drop-down menu
to the right of the mode menu is the Viewport Shading (Draw Type) menu;
use it to set the Viewport Shading to Texture. Note that parts of the
model will be shadowed and other parts illuminated based on the location
of the lights in your scene. Try adding more lights and moving them
around so you see the model more clearly, and try to use this lighting
preview to \'Rough\' your lights. (you can add more lights Shift-A-Lamp
and right click lamp to move to where light is needed)

To make the texture visible in renderings, you also need to add the
texture to the sphere as a new material. In the Properties window,
switch to the Material context by clicking the small shaded-sphere
button. Create a new material by pressing the *New* button, leave the
settings as they are for now; then switch to the Texture context. Create
a new texture and select the type to be \'Image or Movie\'. Select the
globe texture from the dropdown menu.

![](Texture_select2.jpg "Texture_select2.jpg"){width="150"}\
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Then go to the mapping menu and set the Coordinates to \'UV\' and the
\'Map\' to \'UVMap\', leave the projection at \'Flat\'. This will make
use of the UV\'s we unwrapped earlier. To make the globe a bit smoother,
switch to the Modifier context in the Properties window and add a
subsurf modifier; set the number of subdivisions to 2. Then press
, if you had no Tool-shelf, in the 3D
viewport and select \'Smooth\' under the shading options. This will make
the globe far smoother and more realistic.

Now, simply press  to render your scene!

![](Blender_Blue_Marble.jpg "Blender_Blue_Marble.jpg")

Note that in the above render I\'ve changed the lighting and the camera
position to make the image more interesting. I also added a star
background, you can find the settings for this in the World context (a
pretty relevant coincidence) in the Properties window and the texture
settings for the World.

Go to the **World** properties and check both **Blend Sky** and **Real
Sky**, set all 3 colours (Horizon, Zenith, Ambient) to **black**. Go to
**Texture** settings and if you weren\'t already there, click on the
**World** texture settings (upper left globe icon) and set the type to
**Voronoi**. Scroll down to **Colors** panel and check **Ramp** and give
Color Stop 0 a white color and an alpha of 1 and Color Stop 1 a black
color and alpha of 0. Now some will happen magic: set **Distance
Metric** to **Minkowski 1/2**, in **Noise** section set size to **.002**
and set 2 of Feature Weights at around .5. Finally, in **Influence**
panel, check **Horizon**, **Zenith Up** and **Zenith Down**. That will
do the trick. In some older versions there was a standard option for
this but it has \"disappeared\".

![](World_star_settings_1.jpg "World_star_settings_1.jpg"){width="150"}\
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## Alternative method

If you looked around the textured globe we just made, you would have
noticed that around the \'equator\' there were lines, or \'seams\',
where the two UV islands met. This is a common problem with UV mapping
and there are a couple of ways to avoid it. In our case, since we\'re
using a sphere, the best way to remove the seams is to use spherical
mapping.

First download one of the textures from this link:
<http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/BlueMarble_2002.php>.
Then use this texture for your globe instead of the one we first
downloaded.

Go into edit mode, and select all the vertices of sphere. Press
 → *Sphere Projection*. If you\'ve got the
UV/Image editor open you should see a very different UV map, as shown
below. Note that only the \'Unwrap\' option will use the seams we just
made, all of the other options completely ignore it.

You can also try, especially handy when you use a more detailed map in
the place of the seam: First unwrap with cube projection and then with
sphere projection. It\'s now a square like UV.

![](Sphere_projection.png "Sphere_projection.png"){width="450"}

Now lets make the UVs fit more evenly over the texture. In the UV/Image
editor, press *UVs* → *Constrain to Image Bounds*. This will make sure
that during editing none of the UVs will go over the bounds of the
texture; if they did, it would cause the texture to repeat itself in the
area of the UVs outside the bounds.

Now select all the UVs with  and scale
them up till it is stopped by the image bounds. In my case, there is one
vertex in the top-right corner, and a few in the bottom-right corner
that are quite distant from the rest of the UVs; to fix this, I simply
selected those vertices and moved them closer to the rest of the UVs.

![](Sphere_UVs_edited.png "Sphere_UVs_edited.png"){width="400"}

Now simply scale all the UVs by the X axis until the UVs stretch over
all of the image. Doing this is exactly the same as scaling in the 3D
viewport, press  and
, then drag the mouse.

Now rerender your model, and you will see that there are no seams! You
can also use an image with clouds. if you render this you will see
seams. you can fake this away a bit by making the diffuse at material
sea-blue by using the color picker after rendering the first render (If
it looks good it is good).

![](_Sphere_spherical_mapped_render.png "_Sphere_spherical_mapped_render.png"){width="450"}


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Realistic Eyes In Blender

|previous=UV Map Basics
}}
```
Note: Some pictures are outdated.

## Overview

**NOTE: this tutorial is incomplete!**

This tutorial will teach you how to effectively utilize textures and
materials in Blender to create realistic eyes for characters. This
tutorial will not teach you how to finish the eye. Because you did
already learn that in previous tutorials. This tutorial was inspired by
a great Maya tutorial in the Gnomon Workshop series by Alex Alvarez. My
goal with this tutorial is to teach you how to get those same stunning
results using Blender. Please check out Alex\' tutorial as well, as it
is very informative and covers more detail than I will be covering here.
This tutorial assumes you know your way around the Blender interface and
so I will not explain each key command as I go, but will instruct you in
what steps to take and point out details such as key commands only when
it seems relevant to do so. In addition, you will need some sort of
image manipulation software, as this tutorial relies heavily on
image-based textures, which we will be preparing outside of Blender. I
will be using GIMP, but feel free to use Photoshop or whatever you\'re
comfortable with.

1.  The 4 original Maya tutorials in video format
    <http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/category/167/Free-Maya-Tutorials>

OK, let\'s dig in\...

------------------------------------------------------------------------

## Reference Material

Let\'s Take a moment to familiarize ourselves with the anatomy of the
human eye. Do a Google image search and examine whichever diagram is to
your liking. Now, you don\'t have to pay attention to every single
feature, but do take note of the **cornea**, the **iris**, the
**pupil**, and the **sclera**. These are the only parts that are visible
to us when we look at a person\'s eyes, and therefore the only parts we
will actually need to create. Many of the diagrams you find out there
will be disproportionate, and so in order to know how large to make our
features in relation to one another, it is best to view a large number
of diagrams, a large number of eye photos, and also photos of plastic
models of the eye, as plastic models tend to be truer to scale than 2D
drawings. I also found a photo of a guy popping his eyes half-way out of
his head. All of these together gave me a good feel for what the
appropriate proportions are for a human eyeball. To some extent though,
cornea size and sclera shape will vary on a person-to-person basis, so
there is no precisely correct size, per se.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

## Building The Eye

Creating a UV sphere. 24 segments, 24 rings, and a radius of 1 is
recommended. The top of the UV sphere will become the cornea of the eye.
So now let\'s go into **side view**, in the **orthographic** view, and
with the topmost vertex selected and **proportional falloff** enabled,
**grab** and raise this vertex along the **Z axis**. Don\'t click to
finalize the edit just yet - first we will use the **mouse wheel** to
control how much falloff is going to be applied. This process can
require some finesse and multiple adjustments until the bump of the
cornea is anatomically correct. You will want to set the falloff shape
to \"**sphere**\". You can also make 2 balls, like in the Pocedural
eyeball tutorial, and let the iris bend inwards of the inner ball.

If you like you can use a Torus for the iris, this is difficult but fun
to play with.

![](Falloff_Edit.jpg "Falloff_Edit.jpg")

Below is a render of the curve I ended up going with. You can use it as
a guide when modeling if it helps you. *This is with a SubSurf of 3
applied*, so keep that in mind.

![](Cornea_Curve.jpg "Cornea_Curve.jpg")

Now, some people may prefer to use a NURBS sphere for the geometry of
their eyeball. If you are comfortable with NURBS modeling, and texturing
NURBS models, go right ahead. It will give you a smoother and more
rounded eyeball. I prefer not to complicate things with NURBS when polys
will do just fine, and am guessing most of you feel the same, so I\'m
sticking with polys. This does however bring us to the topic of the
SubSurface modifier and how it will affect your eyeball. When SubSurf is
applied to a UV sphere such as our own, it causes the previously
spherical shape to become slightly oblong. In other words, the eye will
become nearsighted. This is barely noticeable, but it does happen, as a
result of the way SubSurfing affects a UV sphere. You could create a UV
sphere with more rings to ease this if it bothers you. It looks fine for
our purposes though, to be honest. See the comparison in the animated
GIF below.

![](UV_SubSurf.gif "UV_SubSurf.gif")

There is one last issue to address with regard to using a polygon-based
eyeball. That is the small triangles that persist on the poles of the
eyeball. These stubborn tris will remain and you will find that they
result in an ugly and unnatural pinched effect when a specular highlight
appears over the center of the cornea. Adding a SubSurface modifier will
not make them go away. This didn\'t become apparent until after I did
some texturing work and test renders, but I want to point it out to you
now, before we get into all that. (See examples below)

![](Cornea_Triangles.jpg "Cornea_Triangles.jpg")

![](SubDivide_Smooth.jpg "SubDivide_Smooth.jpg")

Now repeat this process at the opposite pole of the eye (the optic nerve
area).

We are now ready to begin texturing the eyeball.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

## UV Mapping

In **Edit Mode**, we will define the seams for our eye. Select the edges
you want to mark as seams and type **Ctrl E**, then choose **Mark Seam**
from the menu.

![](UV_Seams.jpg "UV_Seams.jpg")

With all of your mesh selected, type **U** to unwrap. We can now see our
unwrapped UV layout in the **UV/Image Editor** window. (For older
versions of Blender, you might need to select **UV Face Select** mode to
unwrap, but it\'s better if you download the latest.)

![](UV_Unwrap.jpg "UV_Unwrap.jpg")

We will make the iris on another mesh so don\'t spent time on the cornea
UV island.

Those two islands we see are the cornea and optic nerve area. We can
move them out of our way by selecting any vertex on them and typing
**L** to select all linked vertices. Then **G** to grab as usual.

![](UV_Layout_Edit_A.jpg "UV_Layout_Edit_A.jpg")

![](UV_Layout_Edit_B.jpg "UV_Layout_Edit_B.jpg")

**Grab** and move your straightened column of verts over to the left.

Constraining to the X axis, by typing the \"**X**\" key after you grab,
is a good habit to get into while straightening these out.

![](UV_Untangling.jpg "UV_Untangling.jpg")

Straightening out all of these vertices into a usable grid shape will
take you some time so we won\'t do it that way. Having a rectangular
grid will prove very helpful when we are texturing our eyeball. so we
will use an Add-on for blender. You\'ll want to use Blender\'s grid as a
reference and just align the rows and columns to it exactly. Yes, you
can get it *exactly* aligned, since there is a snap-to-pixels feature,
Click on snap-to-pixels in the drop-up menu in the uv/image editor
header. (Don\'t move the 2 circles when snap to pixels is on cause that
will ruin them.) You can scale the whole thing up later, once each row
and column is evenly spaced. If you can, leave some space between your
UV layout and the border of the layout area, if you \"bleed\" it to the
edge, you may have texturing problems later. But you can scale it down
later, so no problem. we will download the UV Tool from Daniel Banasik.
A wonderfull free tool which can smooth an align the vertex loops to a
beautiful grid with a little effort. The old method was aligning every
single vertex 1 by 1 :(. Page of the tool
<http://blenderaddonlist.blogspot.nl/2013/11/addon-smooth-selected-uv.html?showComment=1442661338961#c2078699794934513533>

Installing an Addon is very simple. If you\'ve like me not installed
blender but use a standalone version it\'s done in no time. All you have
to do is put a folder or file in a folder blender is reading for
add-ons.

Just download it and Unpack it. What you\'ve unpacked is, most of the
time, precisely what you have to put in the add-on folder. In the
blender standalone version folder (if you don\'t use a standalone
version of blender, it\'s Operating system specific how to place an
Add-on.): go to the folder with the name of the Version Number (at my
version it is 2.75)-\> scripts -\> add-ons. then put it here. Save your
work and quit blender. Then restart blender and open your work. Go to
User Preferences under File in the blender program header (the
uppermost) and go to addons. Go completely down and open the details of:
UV: uv_tool. Then click the checkbox: most right and you\'re able to use
it.

Noob Note: Don\'t forget to save the user preferences.

![](Install_a_addon.jpg "Install_a_addon.jpg")\
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If you, like me, love Disney-Pixar Movies you can recently download an
Uncommercial (you\'re not allowed to earn money with it) free version of
Renderman, the program Disney Pixar uses to render their movies. You can
install it and use a third-party add-on (PR-man) to implement it in
blender. But that will come in later tutorials.

How to use:

select the loop on the right side and click on align, do the same for
the left. You can\'t do more than 1 loop at a time otherwise you\'ll go
out of Edit Mode in the 3D View. Then go to 3D view put back in Edit
Mode and go back to UV/Image Editor. You\'ll Also notice nothing has
aligned. so do them loop for loop. Just select the loop and click on
Align. It will be automatically placed correctly. Just move on till
they\'re all done.

![](Uv_tool_Daniel_Banasik.jpg "Uv_tool_Daniel_Banasik.jpg")\
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![](UV_Finished.jpg "UV_Finished.jpg")

It\'s important to pay attention to which way the UV layout is facing.
Chances are the top of the sclera region is actually what you will want
to be the bottom. It doesn\'t technically matter which way it\'s facing,
but you will probably want it to look intuitive when you are painting
the textures.

You can check this by going to the 3D view (or having split windows so
you can see the 3D and UV views at the same time) and making sure
everything is selected, then deselect 1 vertex close to the optic nerve
or the cornea. Back in the UV/image editor the vertex will disappear all
connected edges and maybe more from your UV map, so you can work out how
the map corresponds to the actual mesh surface.

Once you\'re done, **save your .blend file** and then **save your UV
Face Layout**. This is done in the **UV\'s: Export UV Layout**.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

## Preparing A Template For Texturing

Now launch your image editor and open the UV face layout you just saved.
(You probably saved it as a .png file, since that is Blender\'s default
format for UV layouts) So we are now looking at a UV grid with the
square and the 2 islands.

Open gimp and rescale the image to 4092 by 4092.

One other element that will be useful to have in our template is a layer
of markers that denote where the equator of the eye is, because what
looks like the middle on the UV layout is not actually the middle. To
find the middle, go back into Blender and count the rings of your eye
mesh, starting at the seam of the cornea. Once you get to the equator,
take note of how many rings it took to get there. Go back to your image
editor and mark that area. You can mark it with a guide, or mark it with
a coloring of some sort - as long as it\'s clear to you that it
indicates the equator of the eye mesh. It may also be useful to mark the
point where the transparency of the cornea should begin.

![](Marking_The_Middle.jpg "Marking_The_Middle.jpg")

Now we will make the texture. To begin make the inside of UV square and
islands white, a neutral colour.

Do this by selecting (round or square) the UV island or square and then
clicking 2 times on the bucket and set the Affected area to Fill whole
selection then switch the black and the white colour by clicking on the
arrows in the toolbox (If you\'ve no toolbox click on tools in the
program header and click: new toolbox) and click with the bucket on the
selected area and do this for every part of the eye.

an eye is reddish at the back so make the back point directly reddish, I
use FB2F05.

Select the back point so you can fill it with this beautiful colour.

Select the square so you cannot \"Spill\" over the corners. We will
paint the back with the same colour of the back point \'till over the
middle of the eye. click the airbrush tool and increase the value of the
size and also the flow if its a very transparent at the end it has to be
very transparent.

Noob Note: make the selection a little bit bigger then the square or the
UV island to prevent seams.

Search for a nice iris texture:

1.  Google: iris texture
    <https://www.google.nl/search?q=eye+texture&client=ubuntu&hs=Nf0&channel=fs&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMInOGCgKmDyAIVBw8aCh1gdQ4_&biw=1215&bih=897#channel=fs&tbm=isch&q=iris+texture>

Make sure you have around 1024 by 1024 pixels.

Open with gimp and crop it out by pressing image -\> Crop to selection
save it as .png and use it later. If it\'s a little bit to small, don\'t
worry you won\'t render it that big.

If you like you can make blood vessels in the cornea with the pencil
tool and the colour FF0000. Make sure you shrink the to about 10. Only
don\'t try to copy my vessels cause they are to bad.

![](Eyeball_texture.jpg "Eyeball_texture.jpg")\
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You can design your own texture to apply.

Save your texture as .png.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

## Bump Map - The Sclera

If you want to use a bump map in your eye.

**Create a material** for your eyeball. Then within that material
**create a texture**. Name this texture something like
\"*BumpMap(Procedural)*\". Set the texture type to **clouds**. A noise
size of **0.25** with a noise depth of **2 or 3** is fine, and you can
experiment with other values if you like. The other texture settings can
be left at their defaults.

Now we are going to bake this procedural texture to get an image-based
UV texture that we can edit in our paint program. Why? Because there is
not an even level of bumpiness around the eyeball. The sclera has bumps,
while the cornea doesn\'t. If your cornea was bumpy, your vision would
be distorted. We want our 3D eyeball to accurately convey this subtle
difference when light is reflected from the surface.

Before baking the texture, there are some parameters we must specify. In
the materials panel click the **Map To** tab. The Color button is
depressed by default, so you can leave it as is. Make sure this is the
only depressed button. Then **change the color to black**.

![](Texture_Bake_MapTo.jpg "Texture_Bake_MapTo.jpg")

Now go to the **Material** properties. Change the diffuse color to
**white** and click the **Shadeless** checkbox.

Note: In this particular case it doesn\'t actually matter which of these
colors is set to white and which is set to black. The end result is
basically the same, and you can always invert the image later.

![](Texture_Bake_Material.jpg "Texture_Bake_Material.jpg")

Check the Material Preview window to make sure it looks right.

![](Texture_Bake_Preview.jpg "Texture_Bake_Preview.jpg")

Time to bake your eye. Make sure your eyeball object is selected and go
into **UV Face Select Mode**. Then **split your screen** and set one
viewport to the **UV/Image Editor**. From the menu at the bottom of the
UV/Image Editor, choose **Image \> New**. Enter a name like
\"*ScleraBumpBake*\" and set both the Width and Height to **2048** (to
match your UV guide). Click \"OK\" and a new all-black image will appear
behind the UV grid.

![](Blender_new_image.jpg "Blender_new_image.jpg")

Go to **3D view then in the render properties to Bake and
click**Textures**at the Bake-mode drop down menu . Then set the margin
to**10**and click the**BAKE**button. You will see the black image in
the**UV/Image Editor**fill in with your bump texture. From the menu
choose**Image \> Save As Image\'\'\'.

![](Bake_And_Save.jpg "Bake_And_Save.jpg")

Now save your .blend file. You are able to make the rest of the eye
yourself and if you forgot, read to previous tutorials.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Beginning Lighting

|previous=Realistic Eyes In Blender
}}
```
Lighting, you say? Psshh. Just throw up one light source and let her
run, right?

Lighting is probably the most underestimated part of a scene by new 3D
artists. Unlike real life, it's actually quite easy to produce a
uniformly well-lit, shadowless scene in Blender. But such scenes are
usually pretty dull and boring.

Far more interesting are ones with highlights drawing attention to some
areas, and shadows in other areas, leading the viewer to wonder what
they might conceal. If a picture tells a story, and a picture is worth a
thousand words, then lighting is like the punctuation for those words,
the pauses between sentences and the sudden dramatic changes of tone.

Extremely uniform lighting can even give the picture a "photoshopped"
look, as though the artist took part of one picture and stuck it on top
of another. Whereas even a little bit of shadowing of one object by
another can reinforce the impression that they are very much
three-dimensional objects with a definite spatial relationship to each
other, located in the same scene.

The following tutorials will help you gain knowledge of the technical
use of lights in your scenes.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Understanding Real Lights

|previous=Beginning Lighting
}}
```
In order to learn how to light a scene properly it is helpful to first
learn a few things about real lights. When you add a light to your scene
you need to understand how to go about emulating the properties of the
real light source that you want your Blender light to replicate.

## The Properties of Real Lights

### Color

Every light source always has a distinctive color of its own. A
photograph taken at sunrise or sunset is very easy to distinguish from
one that is taken at noon just by looking at the color of the light.
Incandescent light bulbs emit a light of a color that is different from
that of fluorescent light bulb. So a scene lit with one of the two will
have a different color cast when compared to the other.

### Angle

Light always streams in from a particular direction. The angle or
direction of light has a particular influence on which planes of an
object receive light and the shape and direction of the shadows that are
cast by objects receiving light from that particular source.

### Brightness and Decay

As light travels through space it decays or grows dimmer with distance.
Think of a firework bursting in the night sky. When the firework first
bursts the sparks are bunched close to each other. Over a short period
of time they quickly spread out from each other. If you replace sparks
with photons of light and the firework with your light source than you
have a very rough analogy to how and why light decays. All real lights
decay with distance according to the inverse-square law. At times when
lighting a Blender scene it becomes necessary to cheat this law.

### Shadows

Real lights will always cast a shadow of some sort. Real scenes also
typically include multiple sources of light (even if these are only
*indirect lighting* as a result of light bouncing off other objects).
Thus, even in an area shadowed by one light source, there will typically
be light coming from other directions, to soften the shadow so it is not
completely inky black.

### Size

Real light sources rarely take the form of tiny points; the light
usually comes from an area of discernible size. This manifests itself in
the form of a softness to the edge of the shadows, or
*penumbra*: areas behind an object where
the light is partially obscured are less dark than the inner parts of
the shadow where the light is completely blocked.

##

These are not all the properties of real lights, but as far as CGI
lighting is concerned they are the most important. As we will see later
on, Blender offers enough controls for you to tweak and adjust each of
these key properties of light.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Understanding Blender Lights

|previous=Understanding Real Lights
}}
```
Blender provides several different kinds of lights:

-   **Point**: Single point light source. Useful to provide very
    localized light. The shadows can be sharp, or you can set its size
    to something nonzero to make the shadows fuzzy. Can represent light
    sources within the scene; e.g. if there is a lightbulb or candle or
    something in the scene, position one of these within it to give the
    impression of light coming from that object.
-   **Sun**: A light with parallel rays that will illuminate the scene
    with an even light. Because the sun is (effectively) infinitely far
    away, the position of this lamp does not matter, only its direction.
    Good to use in brightly-lit outdoor scenes (i.e. a sunny day).
-   **Spot**: Spot lights produce light constrained to a cone-shaped
    beam, and have some special features. They are the only light source
    that can be made visible with the \'halo\' option, to simulate light
    in a fog. They are also the only light source that can cast buffer
    shadows (see below).
-   **Hemi**: 180°-wide uniform, shadowless light source. Great for use
    as a fill light, or as a back light, or to represent light from the
    sky. Similar to Sun, its position does not matter, only its
    direction.
-   **Area**: These are similar to point lamps, except that they are
    rectangular. As a result they can cast accurate raytraced soft
    shadows, at the expense of additional render time.

There are two different kinds of shadows that lights may cast:
*buffered* and *ray-traced*. The main difference is that buffered
shadows are much quicker to calculate, but take more memory, and can be
of lower quality without some fiddling. Also strand-rendered materials
(as can be used for hair or fur) cannot cast ray shadows with the
Blender Internal renderer, so you have to use buffer shadows for them so
their shadows look realistic.

Only spot lamps can cast buffered shadows. Hemi lamps cannot cast
shadows at all.

+-----------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Lamp Type | Buffer Shadow   | Ray Shadow      |
+===========+=================+=================+
| Point     |


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Basic Lighting Rigs

|previous=Understanding Blender Lights
}}
```
!Blecch Open a new Blender
document. Delete the default cube, and insert the Monkey (Suzanne)
instead. Hit  to render. You should get
something like this.

See how the character's face---arguably the most important part you
usually want to look at---is in shadow? That is absolutely terrible
lighting.

In this section, we will look at how to improve the lighting of this
scene. The object of the game is not to get rid of *all* shadows,
because flat-lit scenes tend to look pretty boring, too. Instead, we
will look at how to make imaginative use of the placement and strength
of highlights and shadows, to add interest and realism to the scene.

In photography, there are basically two kinds of lighting setups:
outdoor and indoor. In the real world, outdoor lighting (at least in
daylight) is dominated by the Sun. This is a single, extremely strong
light source. But there is also indirect sunlight reflected off other
objects, including the sky, and these tend to soften the shadows and
even add some colour to them. Outdoor close-up model photo shoots also
frequently make use of metal sheets, held up by support crew, to
deliberately add more of this indirect reflection and make the lighting
of a model more even.

Indoor (studio) lighting setups are commonly described in terms of the
number of lights employed, commonly "one-point", "two-point" or
"three-point" for 1, 2 or 3 lights.

In 3D graphics, you can cheat over this outdoor/indoor distinction.
After all, the Sun is just another light source you can choose to place
in a scene. Instead of metal reflectors, it is usually simpler to just
add more lights, even if it is meant to be an outdoor scene. In Blender,
the lights themselves need not show up in the render, only their
illumination of the scene.

## One-Point Lighting

!Ho-hum Continuing on
from the above example, move the default lamp so it is roughly in the
same location as the camera. Now your render should look something like
this:

This is similar to the lighting you get when you take a picture on a
point-and-shoot or cameraphone with flash enabled: because the light
source is close to the lens, you don't see many shadows (think about it:
the parts the light doesn't reach are close to the parts your vision
doesn't reach), leading to a very flat image. This is why experienced
photographers often try to avoid using the flash.

## Two-Point Lighting

!At least some
variation\...
This time I have gone back to the default light position, and added a
second light ("fill light") close to the camera, reducing its strength
to 0.5, while the original "key light" stays at 1.0. That way the second
light fills in the shadows just enough to make things legible, without
flattening out the lighting completely.

Set the direction of the light using object rotation. The light must be
selected, press the  and move the mouse to
change the angle.

The important point is that **the key (brightest) light is not at the
camera position**. That way, the image will contain some interesting
shadows.

## Three-Point Lighting

!Positioning the
backlight

Now we add a *third* light, called the "backlight". This is positioned
behind and a little above the model, and serves to accentuate the upper
silhouette (particularly the head and shoulders), and make our model
stand out from the background. I set its energy to 2.0, to increase the
effect. This screenshot shows what should be a good position for this
light (it is directly above the green line of the Y-axis). Put it too
close to Suzanne, and her bald head will glow a little *too* brightly.
:)

!I'm ready for my close-up, Mr
DeMille.
Now the render looks like this. Does the effect look familiar? You
should have seen something like it in countless close-ups in film and
TV, as well as portraits.

## Other Lighting Setups

Of course, there are countless other ways to light a scene. The above
ones are mainly intended for close-ups and portraits. But where there
are multiple characters in a scene, or even no characters at all and
just the scene, you may want to position multiple lights to draw
attention to some parts or characters while playing down other parts.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Faked Gi with Blender internal

|nextText=Practicing Good Parenting
|previous=Basic Lighting Rigs
}}
```
**Getting uniform studio lighting with the blender internal renderer**

## Preamble

This tutorial will teach you how to use blender to create faked Global
Illumination (here forth called \"GI\"). The reason it is faked is that
blender currently doesn\'t support true Global Illumination but it\'s
not a difficult task to fake. To fake global illumination, we will
surround our subject with a lot of suns. The easiest way to do this is
to create a very large sphere around our subject and place a sun at each
vertex of this sphere, pointing inwards. Luckily, Blender can
automatically duplicate an object at each vertex of another object. The
results of this tutorial should look like this:

![](RenderResult.jpg "RenderResult.jpg")

------------------------------------------------------------------------

This tutorial assumes you know the basics of the blender interface and
how to add objects, toggle editmode, and scale objects.

Now lets start blendering!

## Blender Faked GI Tutorial

!In more recent Blender versions DupliVerts and Rotation options can be
found under the Object Data tab in the Properties Panel. Icosphere needs
to be
selected.

**Add an ICO-sphere.** Fire up blender and add an icosphere (**SPACE** →
*add* → *mesh* → *icosphere*). Set the subdivisions to 3 and accept.

**Scale the ICO-sphere** by 15 times

**Flip the normals of the icosphere so that they point inwards.** This
will make sure that our duplicated suns will point inwards. Go into
edit-mode and press the A key till all faces/verts/edges are selected
and press **WKEY** and *Flip Normals*.

![](TutFlipNorms-20081103140255.png "TutFlipNorms-20081103140255.png")

**Add a *sun* light source** (**SPACE** → *Lights* → *Sun*)

**Set the energy value of the light.** This requires some special
attention. If you keep the value at the default 1, you get a pure white,
washed out scene because we will duplicate the light 162 times. A good
way to calculate the light intensity required is to mess with the one
sunlight and do test renders while tweaking the energy value of the sun
as required till you get the brightness you want. THEN you divide the
energy value of your sun by the amount of vertices in your icosphere and
then finally set the sun energy to the number you got.

Noob Note: I found I had to set the energy of the sun lamp extremely
low, at .044. Otherwise, you end up with a completely washed-out image.

**Parent the sun to the sphere.** Select the Sun THEN shift select the
sphere and hit **CTRL**+**PKEY**

**Enable dupliverts for the sphere.** Depress the DupliVerts button.
This will copy the sun to each vertex of the sphere. Also depress the
ROT button. The ROT option tells Blender to rotate the suns to point
along the normal of each vertex.

![](EnableDupVerts.png "EnableDupVerts.png")

**Enable AAO (Approximate Ambient Occlusion)** This will result in more
realistic soft shadows around our subject. Set the AAO settings in the
world buttons as in the following image:

![](SetAAO-2008110322151223.png "SetAAO-2008110322151223.png")

**Set up the scene to render** This can be anything you want but I used
a simple curved plane with Suzanne on top of it.

![](RenderScene-20081103151408.png "RenderScene-20081103151408.png")

One more note: Often it is hard to see your scene when you have this
huge sphere encompassing your scene. So what you can do is to set the
draw of the sphere to wireframe.

![](SetWireDrawType.png "SetWireDrawType.png")

Just one last note: if you want more directional lighting, select the
sphere and go into editmode and press **CTRL**+**TAB**+**3KEY** for face
select and select one face on a spot of the sphere and press **WKEY**
and subdivided a few times to get more lights in one spot making that
side a bit brighter and a stronger shadow on the far side of that
cluster.

Blend happy and save often.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Parenting

In 2D drawing programs, you may be familiar with the concept of
*grouping* objects together, so that they can be manipulated and
transformed as an indivisible whole.

Blender can achieve a roughly similar effect through its concept of
 one object to another.
(Blender also has a concept called "grouping", but that serves an
entirely different purpose, which will not be discussed here, so don't
be confused.)

## Parenting and Unparenting

![](Blender268SetParentMenu.png "Blender268SetParentMenu.png") **To
parent one object to another** is simple: in object mode, select the
to-be-child object(s), then select the to-be-parent object, then press
 to bring up the "Set Parent To"
menu. The options in the menu have the following meanings:

-   Object: set the parent of the rest of the selection to the active
    (last-selected) object, clearing any existing parent relationships
    the new-children-to-be may have had. Any objects that were
    previously parented are reset to their original transformations
    before that previous parenting.
-   Object (Keep Transform): similar to the above, except the children
    keep the transformations from any previous parenting they may have
    had.
-   Vertex: this allows you to parent a child to a single,
    currently-selected vertex in the parent (which must be a mesh). You
    can go into Edit mode on the parent mesh to make the selection
    before using this option. The child will then track the movements of
    just that vertex, not the entire object.
-   Vertex (triangle): here 3 vertices are selected in the parent mesh.
    The child tracks, not just their translations, but also their
    relative rotations as well.

When viewing your scene in Object mode, you will see black dashed lines
connecting child objects to their parents. Try moving, rotating or
scaling just the parent object, and you can see how the same
transformation is automatically applied to its children as well.

**To parent multiple children at once to a common parent**, select all
the child objects in turn, then *last of all* select the parent object.
Now when you do , all the objects
selected (except the last one) become children of the last one.

A parent of objects may in turn be a child of yet another object; any
transformation of its parent will automatically be passed on to it and
all its children, and their children, and so on.

![](Blender268ClearParentMenu.png "Blender268ClearParentMenu.png") **To
remove a parent relationship:** select the child in Object mode, and
press  to bring up the clear-parent
menu. The options here are:

-   Clear Parent: remove the parent/child relationship, and reset the
    child to the original transformation it had before the parenting.
-   Clear and Keep Transformation: remove the parent/child relationship,
    but the child keeps its current transformation as a result of the
    parenting.
-   Clear Parent Inverse: this doesn't actually clear the parent/child
    relationship, but it sets the transformation of the child relative
    to the parent to the same as the transformation the child had on its
    own before it was parented.

### Clear Parent Inverse Clarified

Normally, when a parent relationship is set up, if the parent has
already had an object transformation applied, the child does not
immediately inherit that. Instead, it only picks up *subsequent* changes
to the parent's object transformation. What happens is that, at the time
the parent relationship is set up, the *inverse* of the current parent
object transformation is calculated and henceforth applied before
passing the parent transformation onto the child. This cancels out the
initial transformation, leaving the child where it is to start with.
This inverse is not recomputed when the parent object is subsequently
moved or subject to other object transformations, so the child follows
along thereafter.

The "Clear Parent Inverse" function sets this inverse transformation to
the identity transformation, so the child picks up the full parent
object transformation.

## Lock Up Your Children!

![](Blender268PropertiesShelfTransformPanel.png "Blender268PropertiesShelfTransformPanel.png")
In the Properties shelf at the right of the 3D view (you can toggle its
visibility with ), you will see at the
top the Transform panel. This shows the overall object transformation
(translation, rotation, scaling), but note also the padlock icons next
to the transformation fields: clicking each one closes its padlock,
locking the corresponding field against further changes, *including
changes made with the usual object-transformation tools in the 3D view*.
(If you click a closed padlock, it will open again and remove the lock.)

This can be useful for a child object: if its object transforms are
locked, it will still follow changes to transformations on its parent,
but it cannot have its transformation changed directly. This can prevent
accidents when manipulating an "object" which is actually made up of
multiple Blender objects: parent them all to a common root object (e.g.
an Empty), and then lock them all, apart from the root object, and so
they will transform together by manipulating just the root object, and
cannot (accidentally) be separated.

For example, you might construct a car with separate objects for the
doors and wheels; these might be left free to rotate (about their hinges
and axles respectively), but are otherwise locked in position relative
to the car body.

## Example: Camera Pan

Imagine you want to make a movie where the camera does a 360° pan right
around an object. We'll leave the details of how to set up an animation
for later, but for now let's just consider how to set up the camera
movement.

Start with a new default Blender document. With the 3D cursor at its
default location (at the centre), add a new Empty object. It should end
up inside the cube, so it won't be visible; switch
 to wireframe view, and it should be
easier to see.

Select  the camera; then select
 the Empty as well; now
 parent the camera to the Empty.

Now select  just the Empty, and try
otating it: notice how the camera follows
along? For added fun, switch to camera view
 (make sure the Empty is still the only
thing selected). Now try rotating the Empty: it should look like the
cube is rotating in the opposite direction, when it is really the camera
moving around it.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Basic Animation

|nextText=Introduction to Keyframing
|previous=Parenting
|previousText=Practising Good Parenting
}}
```
### Frames and Keyframes

A  is a snapshot of the scene at
one moment in time. An animation consists of displaying a succession of
frames representing successive moments in time; if these are shown
sufficiently quickly (at least 24 frames per second), the eye is fooled
into seeing smooth movement, instead of a succession of still poses.

This is the principle behind both cinema film and digital video. But
long before these were invented, it was known that you could make a
sequence of drawings on pages of a *flipbook*, which could then be
rapidly flipped by hand to produce an animation.

In live action video, we can capture the frames simply by letting the
camera record as the scene unfolds. In hand-drawn animation (cartoons),
each frame had to be drawn by a human animator (though there were some
shortcut techniques like articulated character pieces, separately-moving
scenery layers etc). Actually what would happen was that the most
skilled artists would create
s representing pivotal points
in the animation (starting and ending poses in a character's movement
etc), and the lower-paid assistants would have the job of filling in all
the intermediate frames to produce smooth movement between those
endpoints.

Computer animation works in a similar way, except here Blender is your
lower-paid assistant. You go to crucial points in the timeline of your
animation, position and pose your objects/characters appropriately, and
tell Blender that this is a keyframe for the relevant transformations
(positioning/rotation/scaling) of those objects/characters. Then when
you run the animation, Blender will *interpolate* the specified
transformation parameters between keyframes, giving you smooth motion
over those intervals.

## The Timeline

At the bottom of the default Blender screen layout is a window called
the
![](Blender270TimelineIcon.png "Blender270TimelineIcon.png"). This gives
you an overview of your animation.

![](Blender263Timeline.png "Blender263Timeline.png"){width="800"}

You can zoom the view in and out with the mouse wheel, or scroll left
and right with .

The numbers across the bottom are frame numbers, with your animation
starting at frame 1. The light grey background indicates the total
duration of the animation. The vertical green line is positioned at the
current frame time, and the current frame number is also displayed in
the box between the start/end values and the transport controls, and at
the lower left of the viewport in the 3D view window. Yellow lines
indicate where keyframes have been inserted.

You can set the current frame time by clicking with
 at the desired position. You can hop
forward and backward a frame at a time with the left- and right-arrow
keys, skip to the next or previous keyframe with the up- or down-arrow
keys, and jump immediately to the first or last frame by holding down
 and pressing left- or right-arrow.

You can also "scrub" by dragging with
across the timeline, which causes the animation to run backwards or
forwards at whatever speed you choose, locked to the times across which
you drag.

## See Also

-   The animation
    section
    in the Blender user manual.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/The Ways of the Animator

|nextText=Animation Editors
|previous=Basic Animation/Keyframing Introduction
|previousText=Introduction to Keyframing
}}
```
You have just seen how animation can be applied to most object property
values. In addition to this, Blender provides some specific features to
aid in animating movements of parts of objects:

-   Meshes can have *shape keys* defined for them. These give different
    positions to the vertices (though their number and
    *topology*---edge/face connections---cannot change). The amount of
    influence each shape key contributes to the shape can be
    continuously adjusted from nothing to 100%, and like other property
    values can be made to vary over time.
-   *Armatures* are specialized objects, consisting of rigid *bones*
    that can be connected by joints, and moved and rotated relative to
    each other to produce different poses, very much like the skeleton
    of a human or animal. Armatures do not appear in the final render,
    but a mesh can be *deformed* (i.e. have its shape changed) by an
    armature to bring lifelike movement to a character.
-   *Lattices* are another kind of specialized object that can also be
    used to deform a mesh. Like armatures, they do not appear in the
    final render. Unlike armatures, they lack rigid joints, and so
    produce more rubbery changes of shape, characteristic of creatures
    without bones, or perhaps for a cartoony effect.
-   Curve and surface objects can also have shape keys defined for them.
    And of course curves can be used to deform a mesh via the curve
    modifier.
-   You previously saw the usefulness of the Empty
    object in modifiers. But being an
    object with position, scale and rotation properties like any other,
    these properties can be animated for an Empty, too, with
    corresponding effects on those modifiers. Also if the Empty happens
    to be a parent of other objects, then
    those objects can be animated as a group, just by animating the
    Empty.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Animation Editors

|nextText=Introducing the Graph Editor
|previous=The Ways of the Animator
|previousText=The Ways of the Animator
}}
```
Blender offers several different kinds of editing windows specifically
to do with animation.

## Timeline

You have previously come across the Timeline
![](Blender270TimelineIcon.png "Blender270TimelineIcon.png") view as the
simplest way to see the keyframes in an animation. This window also
includes transport controls that you can use to start and stop the
animation, jump to a particular frame with
, and scrub by dragging across a time
range with .

This window also lets you define *markers* which you can name to
identify important points in the animation, for informational purposes.
Also, using the "Bind Camera to Marker" function, you can dynamically
switch the active camera at marked points in the animation, to cut
between different viewpoints.

## Graph Editor

You previously saw how to define keyframes for animating a property,
such as an object position or material setting. But what if you get a
keyframe definition slightly wrong? Perhaps the timing is slightly off,
or the movement is not quite right. You could delete the keyframe and
try again. But, in many cases, it would be easier if you could get into
the actual definition of the keyframe and tweak it around a bit, move
its time position, adjust the animated property values, that kind of
thing.

This is the purpose of the Graph Editor
![](Blender270GraphEditorIcon.png "Blender270GraphEditorIcon.png"). It
gives you the most detailed, low-level view possible of your animation,
by drawing an *FCurve* for each animated property of the selected
object, representing how the property value varies over time. Each curve
has control points located at each of its keyframes, and you can move
these points around---horizontally to change the timing, or vertically
to change the keyframe value---as well as add and remove points.

## Dope Sheet

The Dope Sheet
![](Blender270DopeSheetIcon.png "Blender270DopeSheetIcon.png") gives a
high-level view of your animation, similar to the Timeline, but slightly
more detailed. Here you see the separate keyframes for each animated
object, and you can do some limited editing, like moving the keyframes
around, and duplicating and deleting keyframes, but you can't seem to
add entirely new ones.

Actually, this window can show any of five different editor submodes:
Dope Sheet, Action Editor, Shape Key Editor, Grease Pencil or Mask. The
Action Editor is useful in conjunction with the NLA Editor (below).

-   **See also:**
    Dopesheet
    on the Blender Wiki.

## NLA Editor

The NLA ("Non-Linear Animation") Editor
![](Blender270NLAEditorIcon.png "Blender270NLAEditorIcon.png")
represents a different way of setting up an animation: instead of
thinking of it as a single linear sequence of keyframes, you break it up
into *actions*, which are separate sequences that can be arranged in
various ways. You can also duplicate an action any number of times,
position the copies at different times in the overall animation, and
even attach them to different objects. But they still share a single set
of FCurve contents, which you can edit in the Graph Editor as you would
a monolithic linear animation sequence, and your changes will take
effect in all copies of the action.

To edit the contents of an action in the Graph Editor, you select the
action and  into "tweak mode" (analogous
to Edit mode in the 3D view).  again
takes you out of Tweak mode.

However, the Action Editor submode of the Dope Sheet now becomes useful,
for creating new actions. These start out initially empty of any
keyframes or FCurves, but you can add these in Tweak mode.

-   **See Also:** NLA
    Editor
    on the Blender Wiki.

## To Summarize\...

The above description may seem rather confusing in places. Basically,
there are two ways to organize your animation:

-   Linear, as a single sequence of FCurves and keyframes
-   Non-linear, as a sequence of actions, each consisting of a sequence
    of FCurves and keyframes. The nonlinear data can be further divided
    into multiple overlapping *tracks*, which combine together at any
    moment in time to produce the complete animation.

Objects that can have animation data attached to them can have both
kinds, linear and nonlinear. You can even attach both kinds at once,
though then the linear animation data takes precedence. It is easy to
change your mind and switch back and forth; typically, the development
of a simple animation might start out linear, then change to nonlinear
as it gets more complicated.