Building a 3D model with Blender

SMOOTH CURVES

Article from Issue 65/2006
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Although Walt Disney’s masterpieces are not forgotten, legacy cartoon techniques are a thing of the past. As long ago as 1995, the movie “Toy Story” proved that computers are more than up to the task of animating pictures. We’ll help you get started with building your own animations.

Spational models start life as wire frames. After you add textures and lighting, they can be converted to artificial 3D scenes. This process is known as rendering. Most industrial designs, from cars to coffee machines, are created using this method. Blender is an open source program that handles all the steps from the construction of a model, through texturing and lighting, to rendering the 3D scene. Blender also has powerful animation features. This article describes how to build a basic 3D model using a cartoon character as a reference. Next month, I’ll describe how to teach this static model to walk.

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