This experience has become so quintessential to many 3D beginners that it’s a bit cliche to talk about The Blender Donut now, but I would still recommend it to just about anyone looking to get started as an absolute beginner. I remember following every video exactly, duplicating his instructions in Blender and being surprised at the results I was able to achieve. Looking at it now, I laugh to myself because it is so simple, but I learned a tremendous amount from this experience at the time. Going through Andrew Price’s famous Donut Tutorial opened my eyes.
I had opened the program before, but never managed to achieve much beyond a cube or cylinder. Back in April of 2020, I was considering how best to get started in 3D and was most attracted to the open source software Blender. Well, it was a toe at first, but then I took the complete plunge!Īnd here it is, my very first baby render. Maybe it will inspire other 2D artists who are considering dipping a toe into the 3D realm like I was. And since April of 2021 will soon be here, it will nearly be a year since I started, a benchmark for what has been one of my biggest years of growth as an artist. Since we are both self taught, the journeys are remarkably similar: a lot of personal struggle on what can sometimes feel like an endlessly meandering path in the dark. It occurred to me that I’ve been doing much the same, but in the opposite direction – moving from 2D to 3D. I was recently reading a blog post by influential Blender educator Andrew Price about his 2 year development in drawing and painting. It’s been a long journey, and while I’ve spoke often about my experience, I’ve never actually put the entirety of what I’ve learned into one post. Since April of 2020, I have been educating myself in 3D. Note also that the normal of the plane must be pointing towards the donut.This is a long post in a two part series – if you’re just interested in seeing my latest project, feel free to check it out at my artstation here. To see a collapsing object, use a cylinder instead of a donut.Īs of version 2.37a, Blender has no support for softbodies colliding into other softbodies. Try rotating the donut and the plane to get the donut to roll along the plane :) Things tend to roll better if softbody damping on the Deflection tab is turned up high. There is huge potential in the softbody system. (insert joke about quads and working out here :). Stiff Quads means that quads (the four-sided faces) get diagonal springs to help keep them in shape too.
through the volume) to help them keep their shape. This can be remedied by putting edges inside the object (i.e. With some objects (e.g., spheres, cylinders), if E Stiff is too low the object will collapse. Put E Stiff up to 0.9 to get a nice jelly effect. Turn off Use Goal (Goals are used to give each vertex a (partly) predefined position, and are too complicated for this tutorial) and turn on Stiff Quads. Hit Enable SoftBody and set Grav to 9.8 (this puts a downward force on each vertex). This will make our donut bounce off the plane. Press F7 and find the Particle tab, then turn on Deflection. It should be about 3 grid units under the donut. We have achieved donut.Īdd a plane (as a separate object) under the donut, and scale it up so that the donut has something to fall on to. Turn on Subsurf, (which I won't bother mentioning is a modifier, found in the modifiers/shapes panel, inside the editing window) and set it to 2 iterations. Select all vertices, and hit Rem Doubles. Top view, press F9, and in the Mesh Tools window (in editmode) set Degr to 360, Steps to 8 and Turns to 1, make sure the 3D cursor is at the origin, and hit Spin. Move the circle 5 squares to the right (holding down ctrl). Goto the front view and add a circle with 8 vertices. Be sure to delete the default cube, you won't be needing it. We'll make a donut shape, and then make it springy and let it drop onto a plane.ĭonut shape: Ctrl-x for a new blender file if you haven't already. The easiest (and coolest :) way to explain it is to give a demonstration.
It is thus a very effective way to simulate physics. The softbody system in Blender makes each edge of your object behave like a spring, and gives each vertex a weight. Previous page: Intermediate Animation The donut falls on the plane.Ī quick softbody tutorial just to demonstrate the new system.