komodo's Blog

I’m still pretty new to Blender, so sometimes I forget how to do certain things. I made myself a little cheat sheet for the things I most commonly do in Blender and I thought I would share. It’s very basic, but helpful if you are just starting out :)

Handy Dandy Blender Cheat sheet!

G (grab)  allows you to pick up and move selected objects.

               Press x, y, or z afterwards to constrain the movement to that plane

               Type a number afterwards x, y, or z and move the object by that amount

S (scale) allows you to increase or decrease all of your object’s dimensions relative to the little yellow reference point.

               Type a number to scale by a fixed amount

R (rotate) allows you to rotate your object

               Press x, y, or z afterwards to constrain the rotation to be only around that axis

               Type a number afterwards x, y, or z and rotate the object by that amount

B (boarder select) Select any vertices within the square

               Hold shift as well and you can deselect

Right mouse button select points

               Hold shift to select multiple

Tab enter and exit edit mode

Shift+middle mouse button pan the field of view

Middle mouse button rotate field of view

W brings up menu with remove doubles and subdivides in edit mode

Ctrl+E brings up menu to split edges in edit mode

Ctrl+J join meshes

Alt+C turn curve into a mesh

A select all points

P bring up menu to separate objects in edit mode

F make face in edit mode

L select a connect section of a mesh

E extrude selection in one direction

Ctrl+R Loop subdivide

Pose Tips: Facial Expressions

There’s a lot of little things that go into making a really good pose.  I don’t think I’ll be able to touch on every single thing, but I’d like to at least cover some of the things that you may or may not have figured out through trial and error.  This is going to be a series of tutorials on improving your poses.  They will assume you have basic knowledge of creating poses in Blender.

First up, I strongly suggest that you sketch out or have a photo reference of the pose you want to create.  This will be a huge help as you work because it will help you have a feel for the things you’re going to have to move and rotate as you go.

I always start with the facial expression, as you’re going to be making only tiny movements that are much easier to manipulate if you’re working with the model in a straight starting position rather than something that’s at an angle.

Less is more!  Make tiny adjustments!  You’re not trying to change the shape of a sim’s face, you’re just trying to give expression to the face the sim already has.

Only ‘move’ bones relating to the eyebrows, lips, and cheeks.

Use 'rotate’ on the jaw to open the mouth.

The tongue can be posed using both 'rotate’ and 'move.’

Move your model around to make sure the expression looks good from every angle.

I’m sure I’m forgetting and/or missing stuff (because honestly I’m still not 100% comfortable in Blender, but I far prefer it over pose creation in Milkshape), but hopefully this is still useful to some people.  :)

Pose Tips: Hands

There’s a lot of little things that go into making a really good pose.  I don’t think I’ll be able to touch on every single thing, but I’d like to at least cover some of the things that you may or may not have figured out through trial and error.  This is going to be a series of tutorials on improving your poses.  They will assume you have basic knowledge of creating poses in Blender.

Hands can be tricky, and there’s more than one way to go about getting good hand positioning for your poses.  First, right away I’d like to suggest you download my modified AMRig.  It comes with a skintone that I added black dots to in order to help in better seeing the exact rotation of the individual fingers.

After faces, I try to tackle the hands on my poses next just so there’s less chance of various body parts getting in the way.  It’s perfectly fine to start with just the basics of the positioning, because obviously if you have the hands intersecting other body parts you’ll need to line things up.  

I almost always do a combination of editing in both straight-on view and rotating through 3D view.  Some handy keyboard number pad shortcuts for camera angles in Blender are:

1 - Straight-On Front View 3 - Straight-On Right Side 7 - Straight-On Overhead

Other numbers will rotating the camera in varying degrees and angles, and 5 does a weird thing with the zoom of the camera that gives me a headache but I’m sure must be useful for something.

Back to the hands.

It’s important to attempt to mimic the pose you want to make using your own hands.  Pay attention to how each finger bends, and where.  Finger joints aren’t like wrist joints, and thus lack full independent, 360 degree rotation.  

Notice how moving one finger generally causes another finger to move along with it ever so slightly.  The index and pinkies tend to be the most independent, while the inner two tend to move together.  (In fact, in TS2 there weren’t even separate bones for the two center fingers!)

Notice how your hands change depending on if you’re in a relaxed position compared to a tense one.

Part of what makes good poses really good is when they seem natural, which is why it can really help to do pose mimicking in real life.  

I’m sure I’m forgetting and/or missing stuff, but hopefully this is still useful to some people.  :)