Simple Glass TNT Molecule Tutorial

Transcription

1 Simple Glass TNT Molecule Tutorial Quinten Kilborn Today, I ll be showing you how to make an awesome looking glass TNT molecule. I was messing with glass textures and found that it makes an awesome science project! Feel free to change anything you want to make it look how you want. This is a little bit of an artsy project, so make it look how you want! First, of course, delete the default cube and the default light source by right clicking on them and pressing delete. Then change your render method to Cycles Render. Cycles looks a whole lot better than Blender Render, and will make the glass texture really pop. Now you re going to add a UV Sphere. This will be our first atom. To do this, (making sure your cursor is in the 3D View space) press the spacebar and type Add UV Sphere. Now, before you do anything else, you re going to need something for this model to sit

2 on. Press the spacebar again (again, in the 3D View) and type Add Plane.

3 Right click on this plane and then use the key command S and drag outward to make it fairly large.

4 Still having the plane selected, use the key command G, Z to drag the plane down on the Z axis. You want the plane to BARELY be touching the bottom of the UV sphere.

5 While you re here, go ahead and add a material to the plane. It s just going to be a gray/white, as we want the attention on the molecule. Go over to the right hand side of the screen and click on the little orangish ball, which is the Materials tab. Go ahead and click New. This will spawn a whole new list of cool things.

6 Go to the surface drop down menu where it says Diffuse BSDF and choose Velvet BSDF instead. I found that this creates a soft-looking, non-distracting surface for the model to sit on. Leave the rest of the settings as they are.

7 Okay, now back to the UV sphere! If you haven t already, G, Z the sphere so that it s barely touching the plane. Also, on the left, click Smooth under the Shading section.

8 Making sure that you have the sphere selected, go over to the Materials tab again. Once again, click New. This time in the surface drop down menu, choose Glass BSDF. This makes the sphere a glassy texture like you want it. Click the white bar where it says Color. For this particular atom, you re going to choose a reddish color.

9 Now to add our light sources. Again, press the spacebar and type, Add Plane. Move it up and away from our sphere by pressing G, Z. (To make this all easier, press 1 on the Number Pad on your keyboard to get into the front view.) Press S again to size the plane about 3 times its original size. Then tilt it slightly to the right by pressing R and rotating it with your mouse. Move it over to the right by pressing G, X so it s only JUST overlapping the blue Z axis line.

10 Making sure you have the plane selected, go to the Materials tab again and click New. Then, set the surface to Emission. This makes the plane a light.

11 Now duplicate it by pressing Shift, D and move the duplicate over to the left in the same manner. This one should just be overlapping the other.

12 Before you render, make sure you have the camera pointed down at the sphere. It doesn t really matter where, because we re going to move it later.

13 Go over to the menu on the right and click on the little camera. This is the Render tab. First of all under Resolution, drag the 50% to the right to 100%.

14 Then, go down under Sampling and Samples, and click the Render bar. Type 50 and press enter. This will give you a quick idea of what it looks like when you render it. We ll set it higher for the final render.

15 Now, with your cursor in the 3D View box, hit F12. This will render your image. You should have something similar to this! Now that most of the work is done (Hooray!), I m going to rely on you having read the previous steps in order to do some stuff.

16 Let s make the rest of the molecule! This molecule has a Hex structure with 4 branches. Three of these branches are the molecule, NO2, which is Nitrogen Dioxide (2 Oxygen and 1 Nitrogen), and the other is CH3, which is Methyl Radical. But I ll have your Chemistry teacher get into that with you( ; It looks like this. Seeing as how I m using the same basic colors as the picture above, you re going to

17 need to make 5 duplicates of that red sphere. For simplicity, place them in the same basic pattern as they are in the picture. To make this easier, hit Z to go into wireframe mode, and hit 7 to go into top view. You should now have 6 red spheres.

18 Next, you re going to want to add the next atom! Hit the spacebar again and add another UV Sphere. Under the Materials tab, hit glassy again and make this one a dark gray. You don t want to make it too dark or you won t be able to see the glass texture. Make sure you also hit Smooth again. Do this for every sphere.

19 Now make 5 duplicates of this one too. Put them into the hex shape in the picture. These will be your Carbon atoms.

20 Okay, now you re going to add ANOTHER UV Sphere. This one you re going to size down to about half the size of the others. Add a texture to make it a light gray color. Make sure you have the Glass surface selected. Duplicate this one 4 times so you have a total of 5 small spheres. Arrange it like so: These are your Hydrogen atoms. Add one more UV Sphere. Make it glass, and this time, color it blue. These will be

21 Nitrogen. Place them like this: Congratulations, you re almost done!

22 Now you re going to make the connectors, or bonds. To do this, hit spacebar and type, Add Cylinder. It s going to be pretty big, so size it by hitting S, Z, Shift, X. This will make the cylinder skinnier. You also need to make it shorter. Hit S, Z and make it about ¾ that size. Now hit R, 90 to rotate it 90 degrees. This will make it sideways and in a position to connect all your spheres. Keeping the spheres in the configuration we have them, move the cylinder to connect two of them (use the colored picture all the way up there ^ as a reference point).

23 Before we go on, add a material to the cylinder. Of course, make it glass. You can make it any color you want to, really, but I m going to make mine the same gray that I used for the Hydrogen atoms. Now duplicate this thing for every single connection! You may have to move the spheres a bit to fit, but it shouldn t be too hard.

24 Your molecule is done! Move around your camera until you can see the entire molecule. Just play with it until it looks right to you.

25 Now go back under the Render tab on the right hand side and go back down to Sampling and Samples. Set the Render bar to I ve found that this creates a good, clear render.

26 Also, you re going to want to set the Output to your desktop. Click the little folder icon beside the bar that says /tmp\ and navigate to the Desktop location.

27 Now go into the 3D viewport and hit F12. You re finally done! Your final render should look something like this!