In this tutorial, I create the “figure 8″ shape of the baseball pieces using a combination of the mirror, array, and shrinkwrap modifiers; then create a curve circle and edit it to fit around the ball in the shape of the “seams”, then we create a small model of one set of “stitches”, and use the array modifier mixed with the “fit to curve” modifier (taking from Jonathan Williamson’s “Christmas Lights” tutorial) to make copies of the stitch go completely around the seams of the ball.
Jonathan’s Tutorial: http://www.blendercookie.com/2009/12/12/modeling-a-set-of-christmas-lights-in-blender-2-5/
Cool! This looks great!
AE
Cool! This looks great!
AE
This simple tutorial covers a lot of good techniques, thank you!
Nice one !!
Thanks.
alt+s for scale alongst normal was a good tip!
Great tutorial Dave! Cheers.
Really Nice! and exactly what I need to improve my personal Technic about modelisation. Also could make an excellent wall paper with appropriate render option.
Nice tutorial.
Instead of pressing ctrl+L you could just mouse over a vertex and press L.
Yo ! I did not watch this tutorial yet but I know It will be awesome , Go cubs
Yo ! I did not watch this tutorial yet but I know It will be awesome , Go cubs
Yo ! I did not watch this tutorial yet but I know It will be awesome , Go cubs
Yo ! I did not watch this tutorial yet but I know It will be awesome , Go cubs
Yo ! I did not watch this tutorial yet but I know It will be awesome , Go cubs
Yo ! I did not watch this tutorial yet but I know It will be awesome , Go cubs
Yo ! I did not watch this tutorial yet but I know It will be awesome , Go cubs
Yo ! I did not watch this tutorial yet but I know It will be awesome , Go cubs
Yo ! I did not watch this tutorial yet but I know It will be awesome , Go cubs
Yo ! I did not watch this tutorial yet but I know It will be awesome , Go cubs
hey does anybody know how do do PIP in blender? ive been experimenting with it in the video sequence editor but i cant get it right. Anybody know of a free software that can achieve that?
Hi
Great Tut again.
But I had difficulties in aligning the Curve to the exact position where the 2 half connect. I found a different method which is much easier to me:
1. I selected a loop created past the extrusion to close the gap. 2. I made it a single Object with Ctrl-P; 3. converted it to a curve; 4. set it as the Curve in the 2 Modifiers for the Stich; 5. aligned the stich with Ctrl-T in proportional editing mode. Finally i added a shrinkwrap-mod. It flattens the stich, but looks ok for me. Image and .blend-file can be found at my Blog at http://wechsein.de/385-virtueller-ball/ (german language)
Wish my english-skills would increase as fast as my Blender-skills do with your Tutorials.
Btw:
Your Tuts always remind me of the great Bob Ross, with all these happy little Vertices.
ha, thanks for the bob ross comparison
i learned a lot from that guy
another hotkey tip:
When selecting all the outside edges you don’t have to select them all by hand. Even for that there is a shortcut: ctrl-alt-shift-m
Remember in 2.49 “alt-c” to convert a curve to a mesh? And the script “Mesh->Curve” if you wanted to do the opposite? Well in Blender 2.5 both options are now available with “alt-c”. You may have been able to select one of you edge loops, duplicate it, separate it, and then convert that to a curve instead of modeling a new one altogether. Just a theory. If you’ve got some time (lord knows I understand if you don’t) you should try it and see if it gives the same results – and let us know.
heh, yeah i did play with that beforehand, but for some reason it made blender crash when i tried to do the conversion (of course, this was on my weak little machine at work
)
Ouch, that’s brutal. It was worth a shot though I guess.
Great tutorial. bring back the games…
Thanks Ward,
Fantastic Tutorial! I recently created a football modeling/texturing tutorial over on my website, with intentions of creating a baseball next. Looks like you beat me to the punch! Oh well. Back to the ole drawing board! hahaha. Once again, great video!
I literally spent all day trying to model a baseball. Defeated and unhappy with my result, I thought I’d head over to BlenderCookie, just to teach myself something, anything to get the taste of failure out of my mouth. And behold, what did I see but a well put together tutorial on how to do what I tried all day to accomplish. True Story. Thanks David!
Hi david
looking good
But if I wanted more realism i would like to see holes in the leather where the stitches are (with a small bevel) Do you have a suggestion how you can achieve that without manually doing booleans at each stitch
first theory of the top of my head; bake some ambient occlusion, take that into gimp/PS and modify it slightly, the end result being a bump map.
David, thanks for your tutorial!
I tried to do a baseball ball by myself (I mean that I decided to do it using another method – retopology modelling) and I think that maybe I made a better topology but it took too long time to understand – HOW to use another method ))
And also I spent a lot of time to create proper curves.
Your mean is best for fast (a bit rough) modelling… or maybe you just know well how the baseball ball look like – and I’m lame about it
I’ll try to make a video (timelapse) about how I did this
http://s006.radikal.ru/i213/1011/f9/fdef317bb730.png
http://vimeo.com/17048841 – timelapse
Please, don’t repeat my mistakes
) It took about three hours of modelling. To many points in curves – the most biggest mistake.
Great tutorial – really helped me get to grips with Blender and make some great looking balls!
I have one question for anybody who’d like to help. The direction arrows along the bezier curve for the seam seem to rotate around the curve – this makes all my stitches also rotate. How do I make that rotation not change around the surface of the sphere?
Thanks!
Hi El Mono,
You can adjust the tilt of any point along the curve by selecting the point and pressing CTRL + T.
Cheers,
-Jonathan
I had trouble following this tutorial, particularly the part where you make the two separate baseball sections and then use proportional editing to “stitch” them together. I could never get that to look right. So, instead, I came up with my own method of making the baseball seams, using the tutorial as a guide.
To make the seams I started off with the same UV sphere as the tutorial did. Then, I cut the sphere into 1/4 and mirrored it, just like the tutorial did.
After this my method started to differ a little bit. Instead of cutting out faces of the mesh and using the array modifier in order to create the two sections of the baseball, I used loopcuts to cut the seams into the solid baseball mesh.
I then used proportional editing to position the seam loop cuts into the shape that the seams follow on a baseball (this step is similar to how the tutorial works). Finally, I scaled the “seam” loop cuts inward to give the effect of two seperate sections of the baseball coming together.
After that I figured out another way to make the “stitch guide” curve that is used to define the path that the stitches are layed out. To do this, I selected the seam edges on my baseball and copied them and then seperated them so they formed another object. The result is a new mesh that is just a loop of edges that follow the baseball seams. I then used the “convert” feature of Blender to convert the mesh object into a curve object and used that as my stitch guide.
If you do that, you don’t have to bother with creating a new curve circle object and manually shaping it around the baseball. You can just use the baseball’s actual seam geometry and turn that into a curve.
Nicely done and very instructive. The shrinkwrap modifier to keep the points on the sphere while editing is a nice general method, but for a sphere there is a handy alternative. Put the 3D cursor at the center of the sphere, set the rotation center to 3D cursor, and move points (still proportionally) by rotating only.
There’s another way to use the array modifier that saves some tedium and some inaccuracy. Notice that the quarter-sphere that you model (and reduplicate with mirrors to make a full sphere) itself comprises two congruent halves: not mirror images but superimposable by rotation. So cut it in half and model an octant, supplying the other half with the array modifier.
The advantage comes when you do the proportional editing to shape the seam. You don’t have to match the two pieces: they automatically match.
Naturally, once you have the seam where you want it, you can apply this modifier and go back to the other one if you like.
Great tutorial I must say,
I have a problem however i cant seem to fix. When i perform the array of the stitch, for some reason the length isnt for the entire curvecircle only a portion? So when i apply the array to the curve i end up with only a small length of stitch in the shape of the curve cirlce outline. Any ideas?
Regards
Try selecting the stitch and pressing CTRL + A > Apply Scale.
-Jonathan
Hi,
I have a question: I’m using blender 2.49b, and I’m having trouble with the circle creation as shown in this tutorial. Specifically, there is no Curve->Circle object. Instead, there are Bezier Circle and Nurbs Circle.
From the looks of things, when I add a Bezier Curve object, it looks rather like the Circle object added in this tutorial – I assume that maybe the object was just renamed.
However, using a Bezier Circle, it seems to be constrained to a plane: I can move the individual control points, just as I can move the handles to modify the curvature in that control point, but all control points and handles remain constrained to one and the same plane…
My thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Matthias
uh – never mind, found the 3d button
Help!
I know it’s an old thread, but I’ve got a problem – Right at the beginning! Once I’ve created the Array Modifier, and made the offset to be the new sphere, whenever I rotate my sphere to create…well, the sphere – the array and the original UV sphere move together, so you can’t create the ball! Help!
Why don’t you add a crease to the edge instead of adding loops? when trying to hide the holes near where the seams are?
How would be go about putting seams across a more complex structure like a football?
I designed a football as explained in the following tutorial, but was not able to make a path that ran through all of the smaller segments for the seams to run through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzkZyPDxks4
Beginner level..you sure Dave?? I found it very tricky in parts. Ive done easier intermediate tuts on this very site. Never mind though Ive struggled through so far and all in all its a great tut and Ive learnt a lot of new techniques. So tnx for tut Dave
good job!
I am fairly new to blender and I stumbled across this tutorial on how to make a baseball which I decided to try. I do fine until I try and extrude and scale down the edges of the curve. I have spent a lot of time trying to get this to work and I am sure it is something simple I am missing but I have not been able to figure it out. After selecting all the edges I hit E but at that point it will not let me scale it down. I am using Blender v2.64 on Windows 7-64 Bit.
Another great tutorial down. Starting to get the feel for Blendet. Thanks again
I’m having a slight problem…
Near the end when you are getting the seams to fit the curve, everything is going fine for me until I apply the Curve Modifier… I click on the “-Y” but there aren’t enough seams to fit the curve around the entire ball- only part of it. Please help!
Eric