Jennifer's Classroom

[pappou]

Thanks, Grogyan
That Blenderwiki page looks very much to the point.
I am now trying to translate it into right brain human speak.

Yes, it is very promising; thanks again.

[Jennifer_P]

Hopefully I'll be able to do this tonight, pappou. Darn school...

[pappou]

I do have a question still: Having trouble with the two objects, taking a smaller cube out of a larger cube. It is the selecting problem. I'm sure i need to go back to your lessons, however. That will probably answer most of it.

And Jen, i cannot fathom how you do all that you do. You are a real bundle of energy. Keep up the good work, and when it is convenient, let us hear from you. There is no rush on our part.

[Jennifer_P]

I do have a question still: Having trouble with the two objects, taking a smaller cube out of a larger cube. It is the selecting problem. I'm sure i need to go back to your lessons, however. That will probably answer most of it.

Let me see if I've got this straight--you're trying to select a smaller cube inside of a larger cube in order to do a boolean operation on it? If so, then just switch the viewing mode from Solid to Wireframe (see the control the yellow arrow is pointing to).

Show Spoiler

And in other news, I think we're going to take an eder tomahn for about the next two weeks--I've got finals to study for and projects due, and you guys need to put into practice what you've learned and actually start to apply it. As pappou is finding out, when you're learning Blender you often won't know what you need to know until you actually start modeling. Then you'll always be wondering, "Okay, now how do I do that?" And then you'll have to learn some more!
So, I will try to get out a Lesson on how to texture whole objects (not just planes) here soon, but no guarantees I'm afraid. To keep up your modeling skills, I'm also going to give you some projects to work on which will sharpen your skills and keep you from forgetting what you've already learned. I'll also teach you a few new commands along the way. You don't have to try all of these, and some of them will take you more than twenty minutes a day, so you can spread them out. And don't stress out if you get stuck somewhere; if you can't figure out what the problem is within fifteen minutes, just ask someone on the forum. (I might be too busy to help you immediately, however, so I'd recommend that you post on the public Builder's forum instead of in this thread.)

Well then, here's project numero uno:

You'll need to use a lot of boolean operations with tori to get the rings and ring molds. The flutes in the main upper pillar could be created using extruded icospheres. And proportional edit falloff combined with scaling can flare the base of the main upper pillar (right below where the fluting ends), provided that you first add more vertices to that portion of the pillar (hint, to add more vertices on the bottom of the pillar cylinder, use the extrude tool multiple times on the circle of vertices at the base). Good luck!

[Norfren]

Boolen operations are a bit tricky but very useful... But it troubles me that the number of new vertices sharply raises. Many seems redundant. Is there a way to control it? Or reduce later?

[Jennifer_P]

Well, you can use less vertices in the original objects you use to do the boolean operations. You can also try the decimate modifier to reduce the number of vertices while keeping your object's shape as much as possible--there's a good description of it here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Decimate

[Ehren]

I get this message at start up...

Compiled with Python version 2.5.
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Checking for installed Python... No installed Python found.
Only built-in modules are available. Some scripts may not run.
Continuing happily.

I am very much a beginner.
Don't even know how to rotate view or anything.
I probably shouldn't even be trying, but would be nice to know what python is and how to install it? The things posted here are already too advanced, I'm not trying to be a pro, but it would be nice if somewhere explained at least "basic" things.

\/Thanks Szark, that installed easier then I thought it would

[Szark]

Ehren if you look at page one of this thread and then 7 posts down you will find the answer. I took the liberty of copying here for you.
Jennifer_P Wrote:

what you'll need to do to get Blender running is to go here: http://alcugs.almlys.org/PRPBlenderInstallation and then just click on those first two "Windows Download" links and the downloads should start automatically. You only need to download Blender 2.45 and Python 2.5.1; the others aren't necessary to learn Blender.

Then do lesson 1 and so on.
Szark

[Sophia]

I'm a little bit behind, but I did lesson 1 to 5 today and just wanted to show off the first result. There is hope... if I can do it, ANYBODY can!
Thanks again, Jennifer, for your excellent lessons. You are the BEST teacher I have ever come across!

[Ehren]

Can this be considered anything other then sad?

I skipped some parts of lessons because I couldn't understand what it was saying, like making a 3 sided pyramid I wasn't sure how to streach what vertices to make that, also the part about making a pyramid, changing it to a 3 sided pyramid, a triangle then a line then a dot I couldn't do. Though I could do the making the perfect 4 sided one by combine vertices in the middle.

It seems like people reading this picked up on how to do this all very fast, I don't get how you are all doing it unless you had past experience with it too.

I'm up to lesson 5 now and it makes no sense, how do you make the tree? I just don't get it, the cyclinder always looks wrong, the plane seems too small?, once I mess up the cursor it doesn't go back in place, and I can't color things seperately, am I retarded or something? I guess because the starting things were so easy, I thought I had a chance at really learning this, but now the lessons say to add objects and stuff and I don't get the proper way to do that?

Should I stay out of this thread now?
Maybe make a new one for extra slow people?
Maybe I should just shut up