# 20230525+20230526 Sophie's Blender Notes

## Modeling In Blender

**Video Tutorial** I'm following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlPPYkZg9D4&t=560s

**Important note:** As most students work on laptops, I am following this tutorial on a laptop without a mouse. There are a lot of handy shortcuts for blender on desktop but there are ways to follow these shortcuts on a laptop.

## Modeling tips that differ on desktops and laptops

| What you are trying to do | On Desktop | On Laptop |
| -------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- |
| Rotate your view around your selected object | Hold down middle mouse button (scrolling wheel) | Two fingers on the touch pad |
| Zoom in on your selected object | Scroll the wheel on the mouse upward | Pull two fingers apart on touchpad|
| Zoom out on your selected object | Scroll the wheel on the mouse downward | Push two fingers together on touchpad|
|Get into Front View|Numpad 1| Select the desired axis (x,y,z) on the X,Y,Z axis in the top righthand corner of the 3D viewport|
| | | |

## Helpful tools to turn on in preferences on Blender when making a character model:
* Go to **keymap** and turn on
* **"Tab for Pie Menu"**
* **"Extra Shading for Pie Menu Items"**
* Go to **input** and turn on
* **"Emulate 3 Button Mouse"**
* Go to **add ons** and turn on
* **"Add Mesh: Extra Objects"**
* **"Mesh: LoopTools"**

(Make sure to save your preferences!)

## Things that are just good to do when modeling in blender
* Use a reference image and import it as such into blender
* Make sure the "depth" is set to "front"
* Use a rounded cube instead of a sphere because it does not contain triangle face
* **to turn a rounded cube into a sphere set the radius of the cube to 1**
* Delete half of cube and add mirroring modifier to create symmetrical models
* **Turn on x-ray mode** using the drop down menu on the top right hand side of the 3D viewport
* Make sure to turn on "**clipping**" under the mirroring modifier
* Use the selection lasso tool for an easier time selecting vertices
* It can be found by holding down on the regular select tool found on the top left hand corner of the 3D viewport

## Rigging a Model in Blender


Make sure to turn on the add on "**Rigging: Rigify**" under preferences to get prebuilt rigs you can adjust to your model.

You can add a rig or an "armature" like you would a normal object.

You can add bones using "**shift**" + "**a**" like when adding an object.

Grab the bones and adjust them to the shape of your model.

Make sure to
* Delete any bones that are not needed
* Ex your character does not need an animated face - delete the face bones
* If you are deleting the face make sure to delete the hidden bone in the neck otherwise an error will occur later. The bone can be revealed by using x-ray mode
* Make sure to move joints and bones together or else an error will occur later when animating the character


## Easiest way to model and animate

How to get fast results:
* Get a model from Sketchfab
* Find a model that has clear locations of joints
* Import model in Mixamo
* Place where the joints are if needed
* You can also bring in your own models into Mixamo if you built any


## AI in Blender

An easy tutorial on how to install the Stable Diffusion plug in to blender and connecting it to DreamStudio: https://youtu.be/SG8JTzaNoec