An Introduction to Blender's 3D Modeling and Sculpting Tools
Welcome to the exciting world of 3D movie making!
We know you are super eager to start making your first 3D movie, but before you can do that, you need to get virtual actors, virtual sets, and virtual props, just like in a (virtual) Hollywood movie.
To create these 3D assets, you will need to learn how to use a piece of 3D software called Blender. This 3D creation suite is open source (free to use).
In this chapter, we will cover two approaches to creating 3D assets in Blender: 3D modeling and 3D sculpting.
I will start by explaining the very basic concepts of 3D modeling, then delve into the differences between 3D modeling and 3D sculpting and which is the best suited for a particular task.
After this, you will get a quick overview of how to use Blender by learning how to use the user interface, navigate in the 3D Viewport, view modes, and manipulate and select items.
Finally, we will briefly explore some of the most used 3D modeling tools, 3D sculpting tools, and modifiers that we will use in the practical exercises throughout the next four chapters.
Note
This chapter's purpose is to introduce you to the fundamentals of 3D graphics in general and the basic functionality of Blender's 3D modeling and sculpting tools. It is not meant as a practical chapter but rather as a reference of the tools that are used in Blender.
In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:
- What is 3D modeling?
- Understanding 3D sculpting
- Introducing Blender
- Exploring Blender's modeling tools
- Using modifiers in Blender
- Exploring Blender's sculpting tools
- Other sculpting tools
By the end of this chapter, you will have a thorough understanding of the basic concepts of 3D modeling and sculpting.
You will learn the basics of Blender's functionality and learn about the 3D modeling and sculpting tools that you will use in the upcoming chapters.
