Modeling a Doghouse

 

 

 

Modeling a Doghouse Modeling The Doghouse Ground: A Dog Name A Dog Bowl Materials Ground, Dog Name, Dog Bowl Dog House (Multiple Materials)

 

Modeling

The Doghouse

 

1. When you first encounter Blender, you see a pretty sparse set-up, a simple cube on a grid.  One of the things you might notice is that Blender has a interesting transform widget which has axes that you can click and drag to move the selected object (in this case, a cube) around.  Neat though it is, for this tutorial we won't be needing it.  To hide this widget (also called a "Gizmo" in other programs), click on the button with the hand-shaped icon at the bottom of your 3D Window (circled in the image below):

   

2. In the next series of steps, the idea is to stretch out our cube on the y-axis (the green one) to get it into a more general doghouse shape.  So to start doing this, go into Top View (Press Numpad-7).
3. The default cube should be selected by default. You'll know because it has a pink outline.  If it s not selected, however, move your mouse cursor over the object and select it by pressing the right mouse button (RMB).  With the cube selected, we want to scale it in the Y direction.  This is easily done with hotkeys.  Press the S-key to begin scaling the cube.  Now, to scale only in the y-axis, press the Y-key.  Adjust the size of your cube so it's roughly a rectangle that would fit the proportions of a doghouse.  Now you should have something that looks like this:

   

4. Notice two things about the above screenshot.  First, you can see the vertices of the cube in that shot.  That's because the cube is in Edit Mode.  You can toggle into Edit Mode by pressing the Tab-key.  Once in Edit Mode, you might notice that you can still see and select vertices on the back side of your object.  While this can be useful on occasion, it's often more helpful to hide vertices that you cannot see.  In order to do this, you want to turn on backface culling by pressing the button with the cube-shaped icon (circled above).
5. Now that we're in edit mode, we can really start customizing and building our doghouse.  First things first, though, we know that [generally speaking] well-built doghouses are symmetric.  That is, they're the same on both sides.  Blender can take advantage of this knowledge and make our lives easier so we don't have to model everything twice by using a Mirror Modifier.  This is a simple process, but we need to do a couple things to prepare our cube.  Start by pressing the A-key until all vertices are selected.  This is a cool button; it toggles selecting all or none of your vertices.  For example, if you have any vertices selected at all, pressing the A-key will deselect everything.  If you have no vertices selected, then pressing the A-key will select all of the vertices in the mesh for you.
6. With all of the vertices selected, we now want to make a cut in our mesh to add some vertices along its center line.  However, in order to do this, we need to be able to see through our mesh.  The easiest way to do this is to change your view into Wireframe by pressing the Z-key.
7. From a wireframe view we can make our cut by pressing the K-key and choosing "Knife (Midpoints)".  Your mouse cursor should turn into a knife shape.  With this, take your mouse, move it above the cub, and press the left mouse button (LMB).  Then move your mouse below the cube, drawing a line vertically and press the LMB again.  Press Enter to confirm your cut.  This should give you some vertices along the center line of your mesh.
8. Next, make sure all vertices are deselected by pressing the A-key until none are highlighted.  Now that we know nothing is currently selected, we can select all of the vertices left of the center line.  Do this by pressing the B-key and box selecting.  The B-key gives you a set of crosshairs that you can use to create a box in the 3D Window.  Any vertices within that box will be selected.
9. We now want to delete those vertices we've selected so they won't be in the wa when we mirror our mesh.  To do this, press the X-key and choose "Vertices".  You should now have something that looks like this:

   

10. With this little bit of preparation done, we can now put on our Mirror Modifier.  To do this, look at the bottom of your Blender window.  You should be in your Edit Buttons Window (F9-key).  In this window, there's a tab titled "Modifiers".  Press on the "Add New" button and select "Mirror".  This should open up some options for you in this tab.  The defaults work fine, but you want to make sure of two things: 1) "Do Clipping" is enabled (press it) and 2) the modifier is visible in Edit Mode (the circular button next to the up/down arrows in that same tab).  Do Clipping will bind all of your center vertices to the center line so you cannot accidentally tear your mesh apart.  Making the modifier visible in Edit Mode is a matter of taste, but I like it. ;)
11. The mesh is now mirrored and changes that you make to one side will occur on the opposite side simultaneously.  You can get a better angle by moving around in your 3D Window.  This is done by pressing your middle mouse button (MMB) and dragging your mouse around the screen.  Choose a good angle where you can see the top of your mesh and toggle back into Shaded View by pressing the Z-key.
12. Great!  There's a nice box there, but it doesn't really look like a doghouse yet.  Let's fix that.  Deselect all vertices (A-key until nothing is selected) and then select the two vertices at the top of your mesh that are along the center line.  Again, selecting things in Blender is done with the RMB.  To select multiple objects at the same time, press SHIFT+RMB with your cursor over the thing you'd like to select.
13. Now that we have these vertices selected, we want to grab them (press the G-key) and move them up along the z-axis (press the Z-key) to give your doghouse a peak.
14. There are three different ways to select things in meshes when you use Blender; you can select vertices (what we've been doing), edges (the line between two vertices), and faces (polygons consisting of either 3 or 4 vertices).  The bottom of the 3D Windows has buttons to allow you to do this nicely.  Switch into Face Select mode by pressing the button shaped like a triangle or press CTRL+Tab and choose "Faces".
15. Move your view around (drag MMB) until you can see the faces on the bottom of your house.  Select them with the RMB as shown below, and then delete them (press X-key and choose "Faces").

    

16. Don't worry too much about your doghouse not having a floor, we'll add it back later.  In the meantime, move your view around (drag MMB) so you can see the top of your doghouse and select the face that makes the roof (RMB).  This is a simple roof and we'd like to give it some depth.  In order to do this, we want to extrude that face.  This is most easily seen from the Front View (Numpad-1).  To extrude, press the E-key and move the face so it looks similar to the image below.

    

17.  Now that there's some depth to the roof, let's create some overhangs so our dog doesn't get rained on.  Deselect everything (A-key) and then select the face that make up the front and back of your newly extruded roof.  Remember to use SHIFT+RMB to do multiple selections.  With the front and back faces selected, we can do a pretty neat extrusion trick.  We want to extrude these faces equally, but in opposite direction.  To do this, we will be mixing extruding and scaling.  Press the E-key to begin extruding.  Notice that right now both of your new faces go in the same direction when you try to move.  To alleviate this, scale in the y-axis by pressing the S-key and then pressing the Y-key.  You now how front and back overhangs that should look something like this:

    

18. The front and rear overhangs are nice.  Let's do the same thing for the sides.  Move your view around (drag MMB) so you can see the underside of your roof.  Deselect everything (A-key) and then select the three faces that make up that side of the roof with SHIFT+RMB.  Now, from your Front View (Numpad-1), extrude (E-key) so it looks similar to this picture:

    

19. Congratulations!  You now have a basic doghouse.  However, there's a problem.  There's no way for your dog to actually get into the house, so let's make a doorway.  Start by selecting the faces that make up the front of your doghouse (not the roof, though!) by pressing RMB and deleting them (X-key and choose "Faces").
20. There's a big hole where we want to put our doorway now.  We'll be making our doorway by extruding individual vertices.  In order to do this, though, we need to change into Vertex Select mode by pressing the button on the bottom of the 3D Window that has 4 dots on it (or press CTRL+Tab and choose "Vertices").
21. Now select the vertex on the bottom right-hand side of our doorway hole with the RMB.  You may have to move your view around (drag MMB) to see it properly.  Extrude (E-key) this vertex along the x-axis (X-key) until it's halfway to the center line.  It may be helpful to hold down SHIFT while you do this, since it allows you to move things in fixed increments.
22. Now take your newly created vertex and extrude (E-key) it along the z-axis (Z-key) to make the side of your doorway.  Again, moving in increments by holding SHIFT may be helpful to you.
23. We've formed the border for part of our doorway.  Let's create a face so we know there's a wall there.  Select (SHIFT+RMB) the two new vertices you've created as well as the two vertices that make up the front corner of your doghouse and create a face by pressing the F-key.  The result should look like this

    

24. From this point, we could easily extrude another vertex to create the top of our doorway for our dog.  However, we can make it a bit nicer by making it an arched doorway.  We do this by using the Spin tool.  This, of course, require a bit of set-up.  You may have noticed that while you've been working in Blender, if you accidentally press the left mouse button (LMB), it moves these funky crosshairs to where ever you click.  This is Blender's cursor.  Think about it like a word processor or text editor.  When you add new text, where does it appear?  Where the cursor is.  The cursor is also import to things like the Spin tool.  For our purposes we would like to make sure our cursor is at the origin (0,0,0 in x, y and z).  Fortunately, there's a nice shortcut for this.  Press SHIFT+C.  This zooms out your view and places the cursor at the origin.
25. Now it's time for some set-up.  Go to your Edit Buttons Window (F9-key).  Under the tab titled "Mesh Tools", you'll see all kinds of buttons.  The ones circled below are the ones you are most interested in.  Set your Degrees to 45, your Steps to 6 and make sure you are not spinning in a Clockwise direction.  Once you've done that, make sure you're in the Front View (Numpad-1) and press the Spin button.  If you don't like the result, you can undo by pressing U (or CTRL+Z), tweak the numbers, and spin again.  When you're doin tweaking, your arched doorway should look something like this:

    

26. Chances are good that when you performed your spin, your last vertex did not quite make it to the center line.  To fix this, simply select that last vertex (RMB), grab it (G-key), and move it left to the center line where it should automatically connect to its mirrored version.
27. Now it's time to fill in that hole in the top.  "But I thought you said that faces in Blender only have 3 or 4 vertices... there's way more than 4 vertices there," you say?  No problem, there's a neat trick to take care of that, but because we're mirrored, we need to do one extra step first.  You already have the peak of your arch selected.  You should also go select (SHIFT+RMB) the vertex that makes the lower peak of the roof (this is one of the first vertices we moved at the beginning of this tutorial).  Press the F-key to make an edge between those two vertices.  Now for that trick.  Go select all of the vertices that form perimeter of that hole in the front of your dog house using SHIFT+RMB and/or box selecting with the B-key.  Now, with all of these vertices selected, press SHIFT+F and that hole will magically be filled with faces.  Amazing!

    

28. We only have one more step on modeling this doghouse!  We need to make our doorway look like it has a little bit of depth.  Deselect all vertices (A-key) and then select all of the vertices that make up just the doorway (HIFT+RMB and/or B-key).  Now, with those vertices selected, extrude (E-key) them into the house along the y-axis (Y-key).

    

29. If you haven't been doing this all along, now would be a very good time to save all of your hard work (File > Save or F2-key).  Blammo!  We've got a dog house.  Tab-key out of Edit Mode (which puts you into Object Mode) and have a look at your work!

 

 

Ground:

 

1. Now we have to make a ground for our dog house to live upon.  Change your 3D window to look from the Top View (Numpad-7) and make sure your cursor is at the origin (SHIFT+C).
2. From here, we will add a plane by pressing Space-key and choosing Add and Mesh and then Plane.  This will put a plane at the cursor.  You should also notice that when you add a new object, Blender will automatically put you into Edit Mode.
3. In its current state, your ground plane is probably too small.  Scale it up with S-key to a decent size.  It should look something like this:

   

4. At this point, we're done editing our ground plane, so Tab-key back into Object Mode.
5. If you look at the scene from the Side View (Numpad-3), you may see that your ground plane is cutting through your dog house.  Fix this by grabbing the plane (G-key) and pulling it down in the z-axis (Z-key).  Now your dog house has a proper ground.

 

A Dog Name

 

1. A dog house is not a dog house without the name of the dog on it.  So let's add one.  Change to the Front View (Numpad-1) in the 3D Window and make sure that your cursor is at the origin (SHIFT+C).
2. We could just add our dog's name here, but it would be nice if the name would bend around the archway to our door.  In order to do this, we will need a curve to reference for that shape.  Add the curve by opening the Toolbox (Space-key) and choosing Add > Curve > Bezier Circle.  The reason we're using a circle here is because it's default shape is more more similar to our arched door than a plain curve.  Also, you may notice that it's difficult to view your curve.  Change into a Wireframe view (Z-key) to make it more apparent.  Again, you should see that newly added objects automatically go into Edit Mode.

   

3. Now, we obviously don't want to have our dog's name wrap all the way around our doorway.  We solve this by first selecting the bottom-most control point of the circle (RMB) and deleting it (X-key).
4. That gets it to match the shape a bit better, but the circle still forms a closed (or in Blender terminology, "Cyclic") loop.  We would like to open it up.  Select any point (RMB) in this curve and then we can toggle whether or not that curve is cyclic by pressing the C-key.
5. Now that the curve is open, we can adjust it a bit more to fit the curve of our dog house's doorway.  The best way to do this is to select each of the two outside control points with SHIFT+RMB, grab them (G-key), and move them up in the z-axis (Z-key).  Your curve should now look something like this:

   

6. We have our curve in place and it's time to add our dog's name.  First, Tab-key back into Object Mode.  The curve should still be selected.  Take notice of the lower left corner of your Blender window.  Note that it says "CurveCircle".  This is the name of your curve object and that information will be worthwhile momentarily.
7. Our cursor should still be at the origin (SHIFT+C).  Add some text by pressing Space-key and choosing Add > Text.  The text, like other new objects in Blender, is automatically in Edit Mode and has "Text" as the default text.  Regular typing in the 3D Window works, so backspace and type your dog's name.
8. Now to get our text to properly fit the curve, we need to use some buttons in our Edit Buttons (F9-key).  In particular, you're interested in the buttons in the Font tab.  These buttons will allow you to center the text, adjust its size, and even change the font.  Most interesting, though, is the TextOnCurve button.  In here, you can type the name of a curve.  This is where you want to type "CurveCircle" (without quotes, but capitalization is important).  Blender can be pretty clever here, by the way, because it has something known as Tab Completion.  To take advantage of this, you can start typing (for instance, type just the "Cur" part) and then hit the Tab-key and Blender should auto-complete the name for you.  With this field filled, you will see that your dog's name now follows the curve.

   

9. You may want to tweak your dog name's font a bit here.  And once you're done, Tab-key into Object Mode.
10. If you look at your scene from an angle, you'll notice two things: first, your dog's name is flat and without depth.  Second, it needs to be moved forward to look like it's on the front of your dog house.  To fix the first issue, look in your Edit Buttons again under the Curve and Surfaces tab and increase the value for Extrude.

    

11. From here, we just have to grab (G-key) our dog's name and move it along the y-axis (Y-key) until it comes through the front wall of our dog house.  This might be easier for you to see from Shaded view (Z-key).

 

A Dog Bowl

 

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Materials

Ground, Dog Name, Dog Bowl

 

 

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Dog House (Multiple Materials)

 

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