This project is going to take advantage of several powerful editing tools that Bender provides. The first one is going to be the extrude operator. Extruding takes its name from a process for making things in real life, but in 3D modelling, extruding takes a selected part of an existing model and creates new geometry on the edge of the selected parts, so that the original can be moved away but remain attached to where it came from. The result is a new shape that can then be edited.
Let's get ready; it's time to get to work:
- Open Blender, select all (A) in the default scene, and clear (X) it:
- Next, add (Shift + A) a cylinder object to the scene:
- In the Tool Shelf, open the parameters for Add Cylinder and change the number of Vertices from
32to8. Change the Radius field to25and the depth to15:
Note
Remember that these settings are only available when an object is first created. Selecting anything else, performing a transformation or action, or even deselecting the object will make these setting disappear. If the settings are gone, the only way to get them back is to delete and re-add the object to the scene.
- Enter Edit mode (Tab) and switch to Face Select mode (Ctrl +Tab):
- Deselect all faces (A).
- Select one of the vertical sides of the cylinder.
- In the 3D View menu, navigate to Mesh | Extrude | Region, or press E on the keyboard.
- Move the mouse until the leg is long enough for you to just type
40to extrude it exactly40mm. - Press Enter or click on the select mouse button to complete the action:
- To give this arm a gentle, tentacle-like shape, scale the selected face at the end of the arm (S) down to about 20 percent (. + 2):
- Repeat the extruding and scaling process with the other seven vertical faces of the cylinder to make all eight tentacles:
- Select the top face of the cylinder and extrude (E) it about
30mm:
- Then scale (S) it up just a little bit to make the head bulbous:
- Extrude (E) the top again, this time about
20mm, and scale (S) it in to give the top a more rounded shape:
Like making a carving out of stone, these first stages are rough, but the model will be refined later. As it is, this basic shape has got a head and eight arms. That's enough like an octopus to get started.