Original subtitles

In this tutorial we'll be creating this kind of cast iron ornamental railing from

start to finish.

If you're interested in learning all

about curves and modeling ornamental details, check out my Blender Secrets book

with over 2000 pages of Blender tips.

The link for that is in the description

or on the card that you will see on the screen now, and in the pinned comment.

And now let's look at how to make this kind of cast iron railing.

I recommend starting with either a reference image, or if you don't have a

reference image at least make a quick annotation, so let's do that real quick.

I'm going to go to the side view, just 3 for the right orthographic view, and I'm

just going to press D so that I can draw an annotation, so I just want to have

this kind of general curly shape.

Let me just erase part of that.

What I want actually is that it is flat at the bottom, maybe something more like this.

I'm just going to erase this part, so yeah, a really crappy quick drawing, but

just to get the idea, and maybe actually I want it to be a bit longer here,

something like this.

As long as here it is on the same plane

because it will hit the wall there.

So to create this shape, I will add a

curve, so Shift A, bezier curve, the bezier curve as you can see already has

kind of that shape that we need.

So I'm just going to rotate it on the Y

-axis, you can press minus to flip the direction, enter, back to the side view,

and let's move this and adjust the handles.

You can rotate it and you can move it,

and let's just select all, right -click and subdivide.

That creates another control point, and actually the annotation makes it a bit

difficult to see the black curve on the dark gray background.

So let's change that, let's go to View, and let's go to Annotations, and this is

our annotation as you can see, and we can just change the opacity to super low,

something like 0 .1 or 0 .2, then we can see the curve a bit better, and we can

change the background to be a little bit less dark gray if we want.

So I just go to Background, Custom, and you can change it here, you can make it

darker or lighter if you want, so let's make it a little bit lighter, and let's

see, that makes our curve easier to see as you can see, and here we clearly need

more details, so I'm going to select both of these, and right -click and subdivide,

that gives us one more here, I'm just going to subdivide here, and move this

one down, and here we need a few more curves, first let me just move this

handle in, now you can extrude by pressing E, or you can hold Ctrl and

right -click, that also extrudes, so let me just do that, and just Ctrl click

here, and let me rotate it a bit, Ctrl and click, and now to fix the result you

can select these vertices and scale them up or down with S, rotate them with R,

and move them with G, and here it looks like I, because I was showing the

extruding and all that, I accidentally created one too many points, so when it

happens you can just press Ctrl X to dissolve it, and you just get the one

that is left over, so that's just a bit of fine -tuning, and here I want to have

a nice round shape, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to add a curve circle

that is already nice and round, and just rotate it and put it here, and we can

just use that to see if our curve is nice and round, so for example here it could

be a bit better, and it just serves as a kind of reference for the roundness of

the curve there, and I can just delete that reference, and let's remove this

annotation as well, we don't really need it anymore, and I just want to make sure

that on this line here, the curves meet the wall, so I'm just going to move this

back, and here, here, this one, I'm just going to bring that in, I'm just going to

select this, scale it to 0 on the Z -axis, and then just move it down

slightly, and I'm not really happy with the shape here yet, so I'm just going to

fine -tune it a bit, and so after tweaking the curve a bit more, we get

something like this, now obviously this is infinitely thin, it's just a curve,

and we need to give it some thickness, now there is a simple way to give

thickness to curves, and that is in the geometry here, you can just give it

depth, but that is always going to be around, it says so here after all, so

let's just leave it at 0, and let's create a bevel object instead, and so

what I'm going to do is, I'm going to press Shift -A, and I'm going to add a

mesh plane, scale it down a bit to the thickness that you want to give to the

curve, and let's move it out of the way, so that it is not overlapping here, then

it's just a bit easier for us to see what we're doing, and I'm going to go to edit

mode, and I'll switch to vertex selection modes by pressing 1, and I'll press X,

and then choose only faces, so I'm not going to delete faces, that will just

make everything disappear, but only faces, that way we keep the vertices, now

I still cannot pick this object as the bevel curve, because it is not a curve,

it is a mesh, so we need to convert it to a curve, but first I want to show you

what would happen if we were to add a subdiv modifier to this, so with Ctrl -2

I added two levels of subdivision, and it is now very round, and we don't want it

to be round, we want it to be kind of square, but with some nice beveled edges,

so what I will do is, I'll select all these vertices, and I'll press Shift

-Ctrl -B to bevel, and I'll just left -click, and then here in this panel we

have some options, first I want to have two segments, and I want to set the

profile shape to 1, that way it is more sharp at the corners, and now if we were

to add two levels of subdivision, you can see that the corners are a bit beveled,

they are not as round, and they are not perfectly sharp either, so now we have a

nice bevel object, and I can just remove this, I just need to convert this to a

curve, so to do that, in object mode, right -click, and convert to curve, and

now as you can see, we still have those vertices, but it is a curve object, so

now I am going to go here into the curve panel, and in the bevel object, not the

taper object, be careful, that is a big difference, we choose the plane it is

called, but let me just rename it to bevel object, just to keep things clear,

so now this bevel object has been entered in this field here, under the bevel

object, now if this does not look like this, but it is flat, it could be that,

for example, this object is differently rotated, and you just need to rotate it

on the x -axis 90 degrees, and apply the rotation, then you will get something

like this, if it is all red, like this, that is because face orientation is

enabled, which shows us the flipped faces, in that case, take the bevel

object and rotate it 180 degrees, and apply the rotation, that flips the faces

on this object, and you can always also apply the rotation and scale on this

object, but it will not really make that much difference, now here we still have a

hole, if we click on fill caps, we fill those holes, or caps, and also here, as

you can see, that hole has been filled, and now we have our nice curve with

thickness, and as you can see, it has a nice bevel going, we actually have quite

a lot of resolution on this curve, so we can probably reduce that a bit, maybe not

too much, but let us maybe set it to 10, and we can add a subdiv modifier to it,

with two levels, and let us shade it smooth also, now it is very nice and

smooth, now I might want to have an array of this, so if I press shift d, and then

x, move it, and then repeat that a few times by pressing shift r, then we get a

bunch of copies, the problem with that, of course, is if I tweak one of these

now, it only tweaks that one, it will not affect the other ones, so it is a bit

better to use an array, we can find that in our modifiers, and let us drag it up,

and let me just drag this out a bit, so it is set to the line, I want five of

them, but I want them to be a little bit further spaced from each other, like

this, let us just make it minus five, and there you go, now we have a nice array,

and by the way, if you want this to look a bit more interesting, you can set it to

a matcap, and you can choose, for example, this metal matcap, that already

looks quite nice, now I would like to add some horizontal railings to this as well,

so just some spokes that go horizontally like this, and the challenge with this,

of course, will be to follow the exact rotation of this curve, but fortunately

we can use the new array modifier for that, so first let us create those

horizontal spokes, so I am just going to take one vertex here, where it is nice

and flat, just take this one, Shift -T to duplicate it, and I am just going to move

it on the Y -axis for a moment, so I can easily access it, and it is pointing in

this direction now, so I am just going to rotate it RZ90, so that it is pointing in

that direction, and I am just going to press P, to separate it from the rest of

this stuff, and now it has become invisible, but it is actually still here

in the outliner, let me just go to object mode, let us call that the horizontal

curve, and let us go back to edit mode, and I am just going to extrude it on the

X -axis all the way until there, as you can see, we have the array going on it in

that direction, but do not worry about that for now, and I am just going to go

to the top view, and just make sure that we extrude it to where we want, and here

I am going to select this one, Shift -S, cursor to select it, to have the cursor

on that vertex, and then I am going to set the origin to the 3D cursor, just to

make sure that the origin is exactly there, and I would recommend doing that

when you are working with curves and things like arrays, that it is easier to

align things the way you want if the origins are in predictable places, so I

am just going to move this on the Y -axis, so that it is kind of overlapping

with this, and I want it to be a little bit smaller than these spokes, so I am

just going to go to edit mode, press A to select all, and then N for the option

panel, and here, let us see, where are we, we have the mean radius, we can just

decrease it a bit, I am holding Shift to make sure it does not go too fast, just

something like this, so there is no overlapping geometry, and object mode, we

can move it back slightly, and in real life, this is pretty much what that would

look like.

Okay, so that is the first one, and now I

want it to be following this curve, so we still have the array modifier, and

currently it is doing the wrong thing, but actually, we can set it to curve, and

then we can, it disappeared now, but we can select a curve object, and this is

still a curve object, let us see what happens, nothing happens, and here in the

modifier, we have some error messages, no curve selected, input geometry has

unsupported type, mesh, and that is strange, I am not sure if that is a bug

in Blender, but this is definitely still a curve, it is not a mesh that I

converted to a curve or something, but for some reason, it does not work, and I

did some testing, and it is because it has a bevel object, it has this bevel

object, which was converted to curve from a mesh, so I am just going to take this

curve, shift T, duplicate it, and move it to the side, where it is easier to

select, and I am going to remove its array modifier, and I am just going to

remove the bevel object, and the subdiv modifier, you have to remove both of

those, so that you really have just a pure curve, there is nothing special

about this curve, it is just a pure curve, and let us rename it, I just

renamed it to guide curve, so that it is easy to recognize, and I will click on

our horizontal curve, and I am just going to pick the guide curve, and as you can

see, now the array is working, it is not working exactly the way we want,

obviously, but it is working, and that is just possible only with this perfect

curve, which does not have any modifiers on it or anything, so now we just need to

change the rotation, so let me just experiment until we get what we want,

this is almost what we want, they are following the general shape of the curve,

but not its rotation, so let me just change the up axis, and it looks like

that is the one that we want, and then all we have to do is change the amount,

so let us just say, actually, something like this is what I want, I do not want

to have this one here, and what we can do is just take the guide curve, and just

select some vertices, and delete them, and then we can just take this guide

curve, and move it on the x -axis, so that those horizontal ratings are where

we want them to be, and this one, let me see if we can move it now, so we probably

have to take this guide curve, and in edit mode, move this forward just a

little bit on the y -axis like that, and yeah, that is the result that I was

looking for.

Before we continue, let us look at a

couple of ways to put objects along a curve.

Now, this is the way that we have been

placing the horizontal bars so far, this is the new array modifier from blender 5

with the curve method, and then we have picked our guide curve, and as you can

see, these cubes, even though, as you can see in edit mode, they have plenty of

geometry, they can definitely deform, they are staying rigid, they keep their

original shape as they are placed along the curve, but here, in this other

example, you can see that these cubes deform as they are placed along the

curve, they are following the curvature, and you can see it especially when there

is more curvature like this, and they are exactly the same cube, just the way they

are placed along the curve is different.

So, we are using also the new array

modifier, but it is just set to line, we are just pretending here that we do not

have the curve option, which used to be the case in the old array modifier, and

we are placing the offset along the x -axis, but we are also adding another

modifier, the curve modifier, and it uses the guide curve, and by using an array

modifier and a curve modifier separately, you get this effect where the object that

is instant along the path has been deformed.

Now, very important to make this work,

this guide curve has the origin there in exactly the same place where the origin

of this cube is.

Now, it is pretty important for making it

work, both objects need to have their origin in the same location, so it is

best that you just place, let me just turn off the modifiers, you just place

the cube at the base of the curve, and then we are using the x -offset and the x

-deform axis, and it is important that the rotation is applied of both of these

objects, so that everything matches up.

If you do not put these objects in the

same location, it might look something like this, and it will be a bit

confusing, so that is the best practice for using this.

Now, why am I explaining these two methods?

For the horizontal bars of the object, we

want them to not deform, but for some details, we do want it to follow the path shape.

One more thing I need to tell you about this, is that the resolution of the curve

is pretty important here, let me just show you if I turn this down, you see

that if the resolution of the curve is too low, then the deformation of the

objects is quite ugly, so the more resolution you have there, the better.

So now that we know the different ways to put an array along a curve, we can start

adding those details in between the spokes, but first, I want to make those

spokes a little bit thinner, so I am going to select all of this, and I will

change the mean radius, and do not worry about the array getting messed up, we can

easily fix that later, so let me just set it to 0 .65, that seems like a good

width, and the same for these horizontal ones, let us go with 0 .55, and then we

just need to fix this array, something like minus 7 .7, and I am just going to

use the annotation tool to sketch something, and what I am looking at is

some reference material from a book that I have with ornament designs, yeah,

something like this is fine, and now I am just going to shift -A and add a single

vert, we have to make sure here we are in edit mode, single vertex selection mode,

and where is it, it was probably created along where my 3D cursor is, and I am

just going to make sure that the annotation is not quite as strong, so

that I can actually see what I am doing, and then I am just going to extrude,

duplicate, and extrude that one as well, and we do not need that annotation

anymore, and I am just going to convert this to curves, and let us add two levels

of subdivision, and we can start to kind of tweak this, tweak the shape, and have

proportional editing on, alright, so after a bit of tweaking, this is the

basic shape of the curve, and then we are just going to use the same bevel object,

so I am just going to go in here, and I am going to go in bevel, choose object,

and then pick the bevel object, and of course we have to go into edit mode, and

change the radius, because now it is way too big, do something like this, oh, and

let us fill the caps, there you go, and of course smooth shading, and that is

better, and so let us try and put this where we want it, first of all, I am

going to put the origin here, so I will select the vertex, shift s, cursor to

select it, set origin to 3D cursor, so now the origin is here, and let us select

our guide curve, that one is here, and I am just going to select this here,

vertex, also cursor to select it, and I am going to set the origin to the 3D

cursor there, fortunately, that did not do anything else, and I am just going to

take this, shift s, selection to cursor, let me just show you that a bit better,

selection to cursor, so now it is here, and it is exactly in the same position,

and let me just give this a name, so now this interior decoration piece and the

guide curve have their origin exactly in the same place, and that is what we want,

and so you will remember from the previous lesson, that now we have to give

this first an array modifier, and let me just drag that up here, and we are not

going to change anything right now, I am just going to add also a curve modifier,

and I am going to pick from the outliner the guide curve, and so initially we get

this, which is of course not what we want, so let us try some different

orientations here, and this looks like it might work, but we do not want it on the

x -axis, we want this on the z -axis, so this generally will be the same as this,

so if it is z here, then it will be z here, and if it is x here, then it will

be x here, okay, so let us move it over here, and let us just press G and Z, and

move it until it touches this part here, and then G and Z to move it up, and then

I will, actually, I am going to scale it up, because what I want is for this first

one to fit perfectly in here, and we are just going to have to scale it a bit, and

move it a bit until it fits perfectly, so what I want is to have these swirly parts

touch the spokes, and I think we will need to scale it up a little bit more,

something like this, that looks pretty good, and move it on the x -axis as well,

so that here it also fits perfectly, and then here we need to extend it a bit in

edit mode, so just go to the original, and select these, and G and Z, just move

them down a tad, and away they sort of come out of that spoke, so this looks

very good to me, I am just going to fix the array value here, and then the other

ones should also start to fit perfectly, add a couple more, and it seems to get

buried a little bit, so maybe we need to adjust this value very carefully to

something like that, and let us check here, yeah, that all looks pretty good,

so now it fits perfectly within those spokes, and yeah, let us see what else, I

kind of want to fix something here, let me see if I go to edit mode, and let us

go back to our original, so here it overlaps in a kind of ugly way, so I want

to scale this down a tad, and this, I will make it a little bit smaller as

well, and then I am just going to add a mirror modifier to this, let us bring it

all the way to the top, and let us add a empty, let us just add it in the world

origin, empty plane axis, and let us use that as the mirror object, and then we

can move that empty so that we can place the mirror exactly as we want, and

another thing we can do is, we can just shift D and duplicate this, move it on

the axis, and we can flip it around, and let us press R, Z, 180 on our numpad, and

enter, and we can adjust placement of this, and then we have this result, so

now we have these nice decorative elements inside, and I just want to fine

tune this a little bit, I do not really like the way that looks, so I am just

going to go to edit mode, and let us go to the front or rear view, and we can go

to X -ray mode, and just kind of adjust this, and we can just turn off the array

for a moment, then it will go a bit faster, and this one, maybe we can just

scale it to a very small point, I would not recommend setting it to zero, because

then you get this kind of rendering error, so maybe 0 .01 or 0 .001, and then

we kind of taper it like that, and maybe here we also just taper it to 0 .031, and

then we gradually taper it for the rest of it as well, and it gets while we are

tapering, or we might as well do all these points, of course no changes were

made to this one, so I am just going to delete it, shift D, and duplicate it on

the X -axis, and we will turn the array back on, so it is better to do changes in

edit mode without having the array modifier turned on, that way it will go a

bit faster, alright, so this is starting to look nice and detailed, so next I

would like to add some decorations on the side, but before we do that, I want to

make sure that we really fine -tune the thickness of all of these individual

elements, and right now we are using a single bevel object, this one, for the

thickness of all of these, so of the side spokes, the horizontal spokes, and the

surrounding bits in between, but to be able to control their shape and their

thickness, I want to have three separate bevel objects, so let us call this one

horizontal, and then we make a duplicate that we call bevel object vertical, and

then we make one more duplicate that we call bevel object swirls, so let us look

at these first, I want to have these a bit flatter, so I am just going to make

sure we have the correct bevel object selected, and you see the name while you

are hovering over it, when you are picking it, so let us pick the vertical

ones, and let us adjust the shape a bit, so let us press S and Y, and as you can

see we are making it a bit flatter, let me just do that really extremely, you can

see it is becoming flat, I do not want it to be that flat, but just a little bit

more flat, something like this, and then of course I need to adjust the horizontal

ones as well, this already has the correct bevel object, which is this one,

you can see the name here as well, and I am going to press S, Y, and just very

carefully adjust it, it looks like we have to scale in the X direction instead,

if this is going very sluggishly, I recommend that you just temporarily turn

off the array modifier, so something like this, I just wanted to fit in between the

vertical spokes, that is all, and now for this one, let us pick the swirls bevel

object, and let me just zoom in a bit, and I want to press S and Y, and let us

see if that is the correct, no, we have to press S and X for the correct axis,

and just make sure that they do not go too far out of this horizontal spoke, and

it looks like this is about right, and that is just the adjustment I wanted to

make, and I am just going to delete this one, and then shift D, and move them on

X, to about here, and with that, I have adjusted their shape, and I am just going

to take these bevel objects, and I am going to select this empty as well, and I

am going to place them in a new collection, so I pressed M in a new

collection, and just call that control objects, and we are going to turn that

collection off, we do not need to see it, and we are just going to rename that to

vertical curves, so we have the horizontal curve, vertical curve, guide

curve, and the interior decoration, and so now let us draw the swirls on the

side, so I am going to go to the side view, and first let us just use the

annotation tool, so just by holding D, and I am just going to roughly draw what

I want, sometimes it is easier to just use short strokes, and I want something

that is roughly like this, but it needs to meet in the middle there, it is just a

guide for drawing the curves, so I am just going to go ahead and reduce the

opacity of that, I just want to barely be able to see it, otherwise when I adjust

the curves, it will be just a bit too difficult to see what I am doing, and so

I am just going to add another curve, does not matter, just a busy curve, and

let me just move it up here, so you can see it, so this is the new curve, I am

going to tap into edit mode, A to select all, X to delete vertices, so as you can

see, there is nothing left, just the origin point, let me just go back to the

side view, and we are in edit mode, but here we have a draw tool, so not the

annotate tool, but the draw tool, and this is only available when we have the

curve selected in edit mode, so now what I am going to do, because I have this

curve pen tool, I can just draw curves, as you can see, and so I am going to just

use the annotation, and just carefully draw what I had there, and it does not

need to follow it perfectly, because we can still adjust it, you do not need to

do it fast, you can just really take your time, I am using a graphics tablet screen

for this, so I am drawing on my screen, which is quite nice, I have to say, I did

finally get used to using this kind of screen instead of a Wacom tablet, if you

do not have that kind of screen, or you do not have a Wacom tablet, you can just

extrude vertices with your mouse, that is also fine, I just wanted to show you one

more way to do this, and I am going to click on select box, and first of all,

with this method, sometimes Blender creates this kind of strange handles

type, so what you really want is these kind of handles, just a Bezier handle,

and you do not really want this, so what you can do is you can either select it

and Ctrl X and dissolve it, and if you want to replace it, you can just

subdivide these, and then we get the kind of handle that we want, or rather than

deleting and then replacing it, what you can do is just select it and press V, and

then you can get this menu with handle types, and the one you want is aligned,

okay, so you get this kind of green handle, and you can scale it up, rotate

it, and just everything that you would normally do with that kind of handle, and

so what we are going to do now is we are first going to quickly go and see that we

have the right handles everywhere, it is pretty easy to see, like this kind of

pinching, that is not what you want, so V, aligned, and then we just rotate it

and scale it a bit, whoops, do not scale it too far, but generally it does a

pretty good job of automatically setting them all to aligned, and here is the last

one, so now I am just going to quickly adjust these, and I am actually just

going to delete this annotation, so I can see even better what I am doing, and I

just want to make sure they are all nice and round, and it may be important to

know that you can scale these handles, and you can rotate them, but you can also

select one of these ends, and then just move with G, and that also scales it in

and out, so sometimes you get it where it is like this, where one end is really

short, and the other is really long, you typically do not really want that, you

want it to be kind of imbalanced like this, that way it is easier to control,

and here it is a little bit difficult to create a nice bend, and it will be easier

if you just select two of these, and then subdivide, so right click and subdivide,

and you have one more control point, the more control points you have, the more

control you have, obviously, but also the more work it is to adjust them all, so

you have to kind of find a balance there, I am also making sure that it is all

aligned with the edge here, like you can see in the grid, there is this light gray

line, and I kind of want everything to touch that line, okay, this is the result

after fine tuning the curve, you might notice that I extruded some more points

here and there, just to make the swirls a bit more swirly, and yeah, this is

generally something that I am happy with, and I am just going to quickly go and

rename it to side curves, going to take one of these control points, duplicate

it, and call that the bevel object for the sides, then we have some control over

that as well, and let me just select it here in the bezier curve bevel object

field, and then we can start to play with this, so let me just scale it on the y

-axis, and also on the x -axis, and something like this, maybe we can be

thinner, and of course we need to fill the caps, not on this object, but on this

object, and this kind of reveals where some places it is still not so perfect,

so first of all, let me just add a subdiv modifier to this, that makes it a bit

smoother, shade smooth, and then let's go back to the side view, and then we can do

some final tweaking to make it look even better, because of course we don't want

to overlap these here, so we just need to adjust the shape, so that they're just

kind of lightly touching, and it might seem like a lot of work, but this kind of

final, just fine tuning is where things actually become good, because here

there's almost no control points, so I'm just gonna subdivide this one more time,

so that I have a bit more control there, same here, it's really the fine tuning

where something becomes good, I'm doubling a bit in game design now, and

there's a saying in game design, the first 90 percent of making game is making

it playable, and the second 90 percent is making it good, or something along those

lines, which is just to say, that it might feel like you're almost done when

you've set up the very basics, but that's actually when the fine tuning starts,

then again at some point you need to know when it's enough, and just let go, I mean

you can work on something forever, and it will never be perfect, but it needs to be

good enough at least, so this is the result, let me just check how it's

placed, all right, and I think we can just shift and duplicate that, I mean we

could also use a mirror, but it's fine, we can more quickly just move it like

this, and that's it for modeling this ornamental cast iron railing, if you're

interested in learning all about curves and modeling ornamental detail, check out

my blender secrets book with over 2000 pages of blender tips, the link for that

is in the description, or on the card, that you will see on the screen now, and

in the pinned comment, thanks a lot for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video,

and that you learned some new valuable techniques, that you can use for your own

creations, and I hope to see you in the next one!