Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Improving Your House

In this module, you'll refine the house model you created two modules ago. In the process, you'll learn how to access Blender's predefined meshes and how to set a pivot point. You'll also learn how to select, extrude, delete, and subdivide the edges and faces of a mesh model.

To begin, set up Blender as follows:
 * 1) Launch Blender and load the factory settings.
 * 2) If you have a numpad, make sure NumLock is on.
 * 3) Load the house model you created in.
 * 4) If the 3D manipulator is active, disable it.
 * 5) Adjust the viewpoint until you can clearly see two walls of the house and two sides of the roof.

Adding a Ground Plane
Your house needs some ground to rest on. You can model the ground as an object in your scene. Blender has many predefined mesh objects built in. Happily, one of these is a flat, square surface.

Recall that new objects are added at the 3D cursor. Before creating the ground, you should position the cursor at ground level:


 * 1) Select the house by clicking  on it.
 * 2) Enter Edit Mode by pressing.
 * 3) Select one of the bottom vertices by clicking  on it.
 * 4) Bring up the Snap menu by pressing.
 * 5) Choose Cursor to Selected.
 * 6) Leave Edit Mode by pressing  so your ground is created as a separate object.

Now create the ground object:
 * 1) Activate a 3D View window.
 * 2) Press.
 * 3) Choose Mesh &rarr; Plane.

To enlarge (or scale) the ground object, use the :
 * 1) Make sure Blender is in Object Mode.
 * 2) Select the ground by clicking  on it.
 * 3) Activate the scale tool by pressing.
 * 4) Type  to enlarge the ground 7x.
 * 5) Press  or  to confirm and exit the scale tool.

Scaling with a Pivot
Suppose you want to shrink the house by 50%. As you can probably guess, this would be done with the scaling tool. However, if you did so right now without the right pivot point, the reduced house would no longer rest on the ground (check this by selecting the house and scaling it to 0.2). Blender scales (and rotates) objects around a, which by default is located at the (geometric center) of the selected object(s).

In order to scale the house while keeping its base on the ground, you need the pivot point to be at ground level. Since the 3D cursor is at ground level, you can do this as follows:


 * 1) Make sure Blender is in Object Mode.
 * 2) Select the house by clicking  on it.
 * 3) In the 3D View header, click  on menu item "Object" and put the mouse cursor over Transform and select Origin to 3D Cursor from the pop-up menu. This can also be done with Ctrl+Shift+Alt+C, select Origin to 3D Cursor from the pop-up menu. (A.K.A. select "Object" which is just left of where you've been going into object mode/edit mode, as shown in the image. So Object>Transform>Origin to 3D Cursor)

The origin of the house is now at the center of the 3D cursor. If you scale the house, the place where the 3D cursor is located will remain fixed, and everything else will expand or contract from that point. The pivot is marked with an orange-filled circle. Do not mistake it for a selected vertex.

Edge Selection
It is often useful to select edges instead of vertices.


 * 1) Make sure Blender is in Object Mode.
 * 2) Select the house by clicking  on it.
 * 3) Press  to enter edit mode.
 * 4) Click  on the Edge select mode button in the 3D View header.

In Edge select mode, edges appear as orange or white line segments when they're selected and as black line segments when they're not.

Just as you selected vertices in Vertex select mode, you can now select (and deselect) edges in the same way as vertices. This is also the same for Face select mode.

It may be because those edges are. This can happen if you cancel an extrude operation and forget to undo the duplication. Here's a solution:
 * 1) Switch to Vertex select mode.
 * 2) Activate a 3D View window.
 * 3) Select all vertices by pressing once or twice.
 * 4) Press to bring up the "Specials" menu.
 * 5) Choose Remove Doubles.

Extruding Edges
You can extrude edges in much the same way as you extrude vertices.

To add an overhang to the roof of your house, first move the pivot point to the peak of the roof:
 * 1) Switch to Vertex select mode.
 * 2) Select just the vertex at the peak of the roof.
 * 3) Press to bring up the Snap menu.
 * 4) In the Snap menu, choose Cursor to Selected to move the 3D cursor to the peak.
 * 5) Use the "Pivot" menu (located to the left of the 3D Manipulator button) in the 3D View header to change the pivot to "3D Cursor".

Now extrude by scaling from that point:
 * 1) Switch to Edge select mode.
 * 2) Select just the four edges at the base of the roof.
 * 3) Press to activate the extrude tool. The effect is that you have just made a copy of the four edges.
 * 4) Press to scale the four edges uniformly from the pivot point.
 * 5) As you move the mouse pointer away from the pivot point, the roof of your house will expand.
 * 6) When the roof is the size you want, confirm by (or pressing ).
 * 7) Press   to toggle the manipulator on then make the overhangs slanted by holding  on the blue arrow that appears in the center of the house, and dragging down.

Face Selection
It is often useful to select faces.


 * 1) Make sure you're in Edit Mode on the house.
 * 2) Click  on the Face select mode button in the 3D View header.

In Face select mode, the center of each face is marked with a small square. Faces appear as orange or stippled grey areas with orange edges when they're selected (depending on which face is active), and as grey areas when they're not.

Just as you selected edges in Edge select mode, you can now select (and deselect) faces:


 * If any faces are selected, press to deselect all faces.
 * If no faces are selected, press to select all faces.
 * To select a single face (and deselect the rest), click (or ) on the center of the face.
 * To toggle the selection status of a face (without affecting the rest), click on the center of the face.

Use these techniques to select all three faces (two roof and one wall) on the +X side of your house, as shown.


 * Remember that the positive direction of the axis is the direction the arrows point to.

Extruding Faces
Just as you extruded edges to grow the roof, you can extrude faces to grow the entire house.

To double the size of your house without changing the pitch of the roof:
 * 1) With the three faces on the +X side selected, activate a 3D View window.
 * 2) Press to activate the extrude tool.
 * 3) Press to extrude along the X axis
 * 4) As you move the mouse pointer in the +X direction, the +X half of your house will expand.
 * 5) Press to expand by exactly 2 Blender units. (If you scaled your house earlier, you must change this value accordingly, e.g. scaling by 50% means you press .)
 * 6) Confirm and exit the extrude tool by clicking (or pressing ).

Deleting Edges
If you look closely at the model, you'll notice an extra edge, inside the house, connecting the seams between the two halves of the roof. To delete this edge:


 * 1) Edit the house object in Edge select mode.
 * 2) Select just the edge you want to delete.
 * 3) Press or.
 * 4) When the "Delete" menu comes up, choose Edges.

Subdividing Faces
In order to add openings such as doors or windows to the walls of your house, you'll need to subdivide the wall (vertical) faces into smaller faces.



To subdivide each wall face into a 10x20 grid:


 * 1) Make sure you are not in wire-frame mode (otherwise the occlude hidden geometry button will not appear)
 * 2) Edit the house object in Face select mode.
 * 3) Select all six wall faces of your house.
 * 4) Press to bring up the Specials menu.
 * 5) Choose Subdivide.
 * 6) Set the number of cuts to 9 in the Operator panel (also accessible through F6).

You might be wondering why to make 9 cuts instead of 10, the reason is that in case of dividing a finite surface along one axis there will be always n-1 cuts to generate n single faces. Here the number of cuts is applied in 2 dimensions. So, if you count the number of faces on the subdivided walls, you will find a 10x20 grid. The reason why there are 20 faces instead of 10 lengthwise is because you doubled the size of the house along the X axis (lengthwise).

Now you can extrude windows and doors:


 * 1) Edit the house object in Face select mode.
 * 2) Turn on the "Limit selection to visible (clipped with depth buffer)" (for old Blender versions "Occlude background geometry") option by clicking on the toggle button in the 3D View header.
 * 3) For each wall of the house:
 * 4) Go to the perfect view for that wall:
 * 5) * for "front"
 * 6) * for "back"
 * 7) * for "right"
 * 8) * for "left"
 * 9) Select faces where you want to create a window or door. An easy way to do this is by:
 * 10) Deselecting all faces by pressing once or twice.
 * 11) Pressing to activate the Border Select tool.
 * 12) Clicking and dragging to delimit a rectangular area.
 * 13) After you release, all faces in the rectangular area will be selected.
 * 14) Press to activate the extrude tool.
 * 15) Extrude inward 1/10th of a BU by typing and confirming it with  or.

Final Steps

 * 1) Adjust the position of the lamp and aim the camera until you obtain a good render.
 * 2) Save your work!