Lesson 7: More Modeling and Editing: The Pencil

Sharpening Your Modeling Skills

We have finished our desktop and our cup. Our next object is the pencil. We will model and texture our pencil in four parts and then join them into one.

Getting the Shaft

Let's start with the shaft of the pencil. Numpad1 to the front view and left-click to place the cursor just above the desktop surface. Press the spacebar and select Add>Mesh>Circle. Set the number of vertices to 6. You can leave the scaling at 1. This will place a hexagon at the cursor. You may need to go to the side view (Numpad3) and rotate the circle 90 degrees. Form the front view (Numpad1) it should look like this:
Now go to the side view (Numpad3) and tab into Edit Mode. Press 'e' and select Only Edges and extrude the shaft out to the length you want your pencil. Here's what you should be seeing:
To Err Is Human - So We Need an Eraser

Now let's make the eraser ferrule. Leave the selected edge loop selected and press Shift + 'd' and then the escape key. We just mad a copy of the edge loop. Now press 'p' and choose Selected to separate the duplicated edge loop from the shaft. Tab to enter Object mode and select the duplicated circle and then tab back into Edit Mode. Press 'e' and select Edges Only to extrude the eraser ferrule. Here's how it looks:
Subsurf the ferrule with the following settings:

1. Levels = 4
2. Render Levels = 4

Now it should look like this:
Now press 'a' to select all vertices. Press Shift + 's' and select Cursor to Selection. Change the Rotation/Scaling Pivot to 3D mode:

Press 's' to scale the ferrule and scale it up so it covers the end of the pencil shaft:
Now we'll cut some edge loops. Press Ctrl + 'r' and place the pink loop at the center of the ferrule. Now roll the center mouse wheel up to produce multiple evenly spaced edge loops. Create quite a few. Once you've got as many as you want, click the left mouse button to set the edge loops:
Now we need to erase a few of these edge loops. Press 'a' to deselect all the vertices. Numpad3 to the side view. Use Shift + Alt and select the center edge loop. Press 'x' and select Edge Loop. Delete several from the center:

Now select the intermediate edge loops as described above:
Press 's' for scale and 'z' to scale along the z axis. scale it slightly. Pay attention to the scale size in the lower left corner of the screen. when you get the bumps close to the size you want it (say the Scale X reads 1.159) enter a round number using the number pad (for instance, 1.15). Now press 's' again and 'x' to scale along the x axis. Enter the same number you did for the z axis and press enter:

Now we are going to crease the subsurfing. Creasing allows us to make edges sharp within a subsurfed object. Deselect everything and select the low edge loops and press Shift + 'e' to and drag the mouse to crease the subsurf. Once you get it the way you want it, click the left mouse button:
Now to make the eraser itself. First we need to switch back to the Median Point Rotation/Scaling pivot:

As we did with the ferrule, duplicate the last edge loop, separate it and select it in Object Mode (see above if you've forgotten how). Tab into Edit Mode and Press 'e' and extrude it out. Now press 'e' one more time and make a very short extrusion. Scale this edge loop down:

Press 'e' one more time and then the escape key. Press Alt + 'm' and select At Center from the menu. We have an eraser!
Getting to the Point

Now that we have the shaft and the eraser, all we have left to do is the point. We'll start that the same way we did the ferrule - by duplicating and separating the edge loop at the point end of the shaft. Extrude it out:
Scale it down, but do not close it yet:
Extrude the tip a slight bit and then Alt + 'm' to collapse the vertices at the center:
Now for the graphite. Cut a single edge loop near the tip:
Now subsurf the tip:

1. Levels = 4
2. Render Levels= 4

Select the original edge loop again and Shift + 's' to move the Cursor to Selection. Change the Rotation/Scaling pivot back to 3D mode and scale the tip up to match the size of the shaft:
Readjust the camera and render it out. It's a pencil!

Lesson 5: Subsurfing and Shiny Stuff

Make it Smooth

Now that our cup is built, we need to get it to where it doesn't look so 'blocky'. We do this by subsurfacing it (referred to as subsurfing in Blender).

TIP:

Subsurfing is highly demanding at render time. The subsurf creates hundreds of facets on each face of the model, making it look smooth. The more levels of subsurfing we use on an object at render time, the longer it takes to render the object. Try and keep the subsurf to the absolute minimum render level that looks good in your render. Adding more levels will not significantly improve the outcome but will slow the render way down. One exception is with reflective materials like we will be modelling here in which case the reflectance will make the sub-surfed facets create 'jagged' reflections.

To subsurf our cup, select it in object mode and go to the edit buttons:

In the Modifiers tab, click the Add Modifier button and select Subsurf from the list. Change the following settings:

1. Set Levels to 4
2. Set Render Levels to 5 (this is a high number - see the tip above)

Now press F12 and we see that our cup is looking considerably more 'cupish':

All That Glitters is Not Gold

Now we will give our cup a high gloss ceramic texture. I'm not going to cover every step of the material creation because I did that in Lesson 2. If you need a refresher, go back and look at that tutorial.

Add a new material for the cup and set a color in the Material tab by clicking the color bar next to the Col button. I set the color to Hex 000253, dark blue. Make these changes to the settings in the Shaders tab:

1. Spec. = 1.6
2. Hard = 278

Now we do something different! We are going to make our material reflective like a mirror. Click the Mirror Trans tab next to the Shaders tab. Select the Ray Mirror button and set:

1. RAYMIR slider to .25
   
2. Gloss to 1.00

Since we have changed the color of our cup to a dark color, now would be a good time to change the background of the render so we can see it better when we render it.

Click the Shading and World buttons:

In the World tab, click the upper left color bar and enter the Hex number D0CC8C to change the render background color. Press F12:

Now our cup looks nice and shiny. You could stop here, but if you observe the way a real ceramic cup looks, there are variances in the thickness of the glaze that cause smooth 'ripples in the surface. We will now model these.

Go to the texture tab and create a new texture called "MARBLE". Click the Textures button and under Texture Type, select "Marble". In the Marble tab, change the following:

1. NoiseSize = .250
2. NoiseDepth = 2
3. Turbulance=31.22
4. Nabla = 0.045

Click the material button to return to your material. In the Map Input tab, change:

1. sizeX, sizeY and sizeZ to .25
2. Select the button marked Tube.
   

Click the Map To button and change the following settings:

1. Deselect the Col button
2. Select the Nor button
3. Set the Nor slider to .03

Now we have a cup with a shiny, ripply surface: