Core

Moving stuff:

Right-click cancels whatever change you're busy making.

Hotkeys:

• G for Move.
• R for Rotate.
• S for Scale.
• follow with X/Y/Z to snap to the axes.
• middle mouse button will try to snap to whichever axis you head toward.

Middle-mouse - Orbit view. Shift+middle-mouse - Pan move.

Numpad-. - Focus on selected object. Numpad 1 and 3 are front-on and side-on views, handy for certain things.

Creating stuff:

Good rule of thumb right up front: Some detail is better than no detail. When in doubt, do something.

Shift+A - "Add" menu.

When you add a mesh, don't click on ANYTHING until you settle your "Add XYZ" options.

• But if you do, F9 will return the options menu. Whew.

Making copies. Shift+D to duplicate after selecting both donut & icing (or whatev')

• With the dupes selected, hit M to Move, make a new Collection for Backup Copies.
• Uncheck the box for the backup Collection to make it hide away for future need.

Donut tutorial stuff:

Torus, set the Major Radius to something actually real-world scale reasonable accurate.

• Not a 2 meter diameter donut, yeah?
• 10cm diameter, so 5cm radius.
• Minor Radius around .025 to .03 ish seems to look donut-y.
• He uses 28 & 12 for the resolutions, we'll see how ours goes.

Resolution? You don't actually want to start at high res to not overwork the compy.

• You're trying for square-ish faces, which helps displacements. (Sure, okay?)

X-Ray mode lets you "see through", Alt+Z toggles that. Now we can drag-select "through" the full mesh.

Shift+D duplicates, which we're going to do to that top almost-half of the donut.

• Esc or right-click to snap the duplicated thingy back to its starting location.
• P hotkey brings up the "separate" menu, to make this new selected thing its own mesh.
  • Pick Selection, that is.

With the backups made, Apply the Subsurface to the donut so there are more vertices.

• Then we go to sculpting.

Making more sprinkles:

• Duplicate source sprinkle, stretch it out (X-ray, grab top, Grab it up a bit).
• Name our sprinkles and Move to a new Sprinkles collection so Hair can use that.
• Bendy? Ctrl+R is what he refers to as a "loop cut," making our bend point(s).
  • scroll-wheel Up to make it 2 or more. can also slide them up/down before placing.
• Why do the new big sprinkles stick up so much? Origin points.
  • move them to the middle-ish, basically.
  • Right-click all the sprinkles, Set Origin to Geometry. That'll basically center.
• Too much intersection/overlap of sprinkles? Mainly all you can do is change seed.
  • Icing, particle settings, Emission, Seed. (Number change might help too.)
• We don't care about spheres but we do like the Use Count function under Collection.
  • Toggle that on and we can decide to have fewer big bendy sprinkles, etc.
  • You can only increase, not decrease, importance. So just bump up all OTHERs.

Donut improvement tips?

• Play with the sprinkles.
• Make some "null zones" with the weight painter, make it "look" more random.
• Play with the subsurface radius for the icing's material.
• Emission is an option for material, you can in theory make radioactive glowing icing. Lawl.

The coffee cup:

• Using the donut as reference, make the ref image's cup big enough to dunk a donut.
• Hide the donut, G(rab) the ref image and Z it up a bit to set the "plate" on plane.
• Shift+A, Mesh, Cylinder because that's most like a coffee cup.
  • Drop radius and depth to taste, 32 vertices (default) is great.
• Move cylinder so top matches the top of the ref image.
• S(cale) on not-Z (by clicking Shift+Z) to get coverage of the cup.
  • Wireframe view may help here.
• Tab to Edit mode, Alt+LMB to select the lower ring of vertices.
  • Scale in that lower ring to be more-or-less the size of the cup's bottom.
• Ctrl+R to add ring loops and place them at the top/bottom of the handle connections.
• Alt+LMB to select the topmost ring loop, X to initiate deletion, pick Face(s).
  • And that's how we get an open top coffee cup.
• Solidify modifier, maybe around 2mm, maybe a skosh more?
• Shade Smooth, then SubSurface modifier to give more geometry.
• To take the edge off that thing top of the glass, we'll Ctrl+R another loop cut.
  • Needs to be right up by the top ring of vertices.
• The weird star effect (seen at the bottom of the cup during this process) is from lots of thin faces going into one big round face.
  • It confuses the geometry algorithm, or some such.
  • Select the bottom face, hit I to create an inner smaller circle. One or two of these should remedy the "star" pattern.

Extrusion of the handle for the cup:

• We need to rotate the cup mesh just a skosh so the faces are aimed flat rightward.
• Rotate the cup while looking down from above.
• Apply solidifier so there are outside and inside faces to work with.
  • Otherwise extrusion will pull a "hole" into the entire handle structure. Yikes.
• Select face at the top handle part of the ref photo, E to extrude a bit.
• For the first couple extrusions, just get that start out a bit to match the ref.
  • Maybe move the ref photo "back" along the axis to get it out of the way a bit.
• With the latest face/vertices selected: T for Toolbar, select Spin tool.
  • Then set the cursor into the middle of the handle space: Shift+RMB, boom.
  • Click-and-drag to make spin do its thing. Might need to click the popup box.
  • Get most of the way 'round 'til it's pointing where you want it.
  • Fiddle with Center X/Z a bit if needed, as well as # of Steps.
• Then fuss/fiddle with the resulting things, then do more Extrude to get close.
• To join up? Select each face, X to get rid of the face, so there are two "holes".
  • Alt+LMB and Shift+Alt+LMB to get the eight relevant vertices selected.
  • F3 to bring up search and find Bridge, which will do all the things.
• The joins are kind of melty-sloppy, so let's fix that.
  • Select the four vertices around where the handle meets.
  • Shift+E puts a crease effect in where selected, so we can make it look neater.
  • Something in the .8-ish range should work.
  • Creasing is like doing an edge-loop detail but only faking it.
• Still some wonkiness around those joins... which go away if you crank SubSurf.
  • Take Render/Viewport up to 4 and oh hey, look how nice it appears now.

The plate:

• Need the 3D cursor in the middle of the cup so... select cup.
  • Shift+S brings up a selection/cursor flyout menu, we want Cursor To Selected.
  • That makes the cup the reference starting point for the plate process.
• Shift+A for Circle to start our plate.
  • Radius: bring it in a bit, make sure Fill Type is Ngon.
  • That way there's some THERE there instead of an empty ring of vertices.
    • OH HEY guess what I didn't think to do with the duck's eyes, on previous attempt.
  • 16 vertices, 32 is too many.
• Grab Z it down a bit versus the ref photo, which is tricky because of perspective.
  • We'll be proportional editing soon anyway.
  • I to inset to get the innermost ring of the plate, then Ctrl+R to add 2 loop cuts.
• Set Proportional Edit on, in Sphere mode, then Grab Z down the center and make it go.
• Solidifier, 3mm or so. Then SubSurf modifier. Another loop cut right by the rim.
• Shade Smooth, and that's most of a plate now.
• How about that raised ring in the upper surface?
  • Two Insets on the center face so one of them can be the "ripple".
  • Once those are in place, Apply the Solidifier so there's an upper & lower set.
• Turn off Proportional Editing, grab that "ripple" ring, Grab Z it up a bit.
• Could probably use a loop cut (Ctrl+R) just outside the ripple zone.
  • Bring it in close to make the ripple just a bit more pronounced.

Camera

Numpad-zero puts your view into the camera.

• While there, hit G to move the camera in your view.
• If you hit Lock Camera to View in the N swingout you can move that way.
• OR. Find what you want it to look like, then Ctrl+Alt+Numpad-zero PLACES camera.

Linking/parenting

• First the child gets selected, THEN shift-click the "parent".
• Ctrl+P for Parent, use the Keep Transform option.
• Then if you move the PARENT, the child comes with.

Oh hey you can also merge two meshes via the Boolean modifier on one and selecting the other, then hitting Apply. Duck head attached to duck body!

Miscellany

Outliner is the object hierarchy thing up in the upper right.

• Name your objects! F2 lets you rename things quickly when selected in Object mode. Same hotkey as Windows!
• Seriously, stay organized. Tomorrow!You will thank Today!You.

When working with small scenes/objects, possibly lower the Clip Start value to .001

• N key toggles that whole properties section flyout menu on/off.

Reference photo:

• Shift+A, Image, Reference (not background!)
• Before adding, make sure Align To View is UNCHECKED in the file selection dialog.
• R(otate) along the X axis, then Ctrl to snap to increments to get it 90deg up.

Too many workspaces? Right-click the boundary (double-arrow indicator), Join, and pick the direction of the workspace that should go away.

If you have one vertex selected, Ctrl+L will select all vertices in that mesh.

• One way to get the whole object "back" again if you lost track of it?

Splitting the view, at the edges of the viewports you can right-click to split.

F3 - Search functions dialog

• Smoke is a preset. Does a lot of stuff for you.

Toggling Show Overlays is helpful when playing with materials, less distraction/confusion.

Properties / Units lets you change Unit System to Imperial. Which we won't.

• Yeah, let's try being metric. Just try.