A Loop Cut is defined as splitting a loop of adjacent faces down the middle. And if that doesn’t make sense, let me demonstrate with our trusty cube. I have selected a closed-loop of faces – the left, top, right and bottom faces. The face at the back and the one nearest us are not selected. The other four that are selected are adjacent (share an edge) to one another and form a loop.
The Extrude tool in Blender is a simple, often-used tool that extends the geometry length by adding extra geometry instead of changing the size. Extrude works in Edit mode with Faces, Edges and Vertices, but it works slightly differently for each.
As you model your objects, a common fault often creeps in – more than one vertex on top of each other. This happens in various situations but most commonly when an extrude, or scale operation is abandoned. Vertices on top of each other are invisible, yet they can play havoc with model shading.
A bolt including its thread is quite a complex modelling operation to do manually. However, since a machine easily manufactures it, you can create a bolt in Blender that can be easily generated parametrically.
Trying to get photographs or blueprints to agree with the other published dimensions is a lesson in futility. Instead, we choose the best orthogonal blueprint we can get our hands on and use that in Blender as the anchor ortho picture.
While Procedural materials are much easier and quicker to apply to the model, texture-based materials consume less processing power. They, therefore, are more easily manipulated in the Material Preview viewport. They also render faster.
Once you have completed an object that forms part of a large drawing, and have moved into the correct position, get into the habit of Applying the Location as well as the Rotation and Scale so that the object origin is moved to Blender’s World origin.
The Angle value of the Bevel Modifier determines which edges get bevelled depending on the angle of bend. To target edges specifically, we go back to the Bevel modifier and change the Limit Method to Weight…
When you understand Loop Cuts, it is easy to do. Go to edit mode. Press Ctrl+R. Hover where you want the loop cut to be, and if it appears, click and drag it to where it needs to be…
Every flat surface has a normal that points outwards at 90 degrees to the face. Every bevel has its own normal for each face segment. When smoothing is applied, Blender tries to average out the adjacent normals to provide the illusion of a smooth curve. The problem with this is that a large flat face next to a small thin bevel will be influenced excessively by the bevel’s normal…
