Original subtitles

hey everybody Welcome to my jewelry

design course with blender 4.2 in my

course you're going to learn how to

design a lot of different pieces of

jewelry for 3D printing and casting and

uh become somewhat of a functional and

proficient jewelry designer in this

course we're going to cover setting up

blender using blender and there's going

to be probably 50 or 60 different video

lessons but uh I want you to get

familiar with from the start how to set

up blender how to get it all

organized and ready to use as we move

into every part of each

lesson blender is a really cool program

it has a lot of different features I

typically use it only for 3D modeling um

I do some animation work for it but

mostly 3D modeling and that's kind of

what I'm going to teach you here uh

mostly geared towards jewelry design

we're going to add in a few add-ons to

use for blender

and become a lot more proficient with it

as we move on here's a quick index of

this video and what you'll find here you

can skip to these sections that you see

here if you need to or come back and use

them as a

reference so here I just want to show

you a few of the thousands of models

that I've made over the years I've been

using blender productively since 2012

and it's worked out very well for me and

as the program continues to become

enhanced it it's actually much more

easier to do certain things I don't just

just do jewelry designs when I do

catting I also do uh 3D game models and

3D characters that's something that we

focused on uh a little bit over the

years and it's also U got me more and

more familiar with blender but for for

the most part I've been doing jewelry

designs since 2012 and I work with this

program pretty much every single day now

you can see from these designs i' I've

done quite a few and I you can see I've

done I'm showing you Rings pendants I've

done earrings I've done bracelets links

for certain things so there are a lot of

designs that you can do uh with within

blender using its basic features and a

couple of add-ons we're going to cover

some of the add-ons in another video but

for now let's just get started on

getting this set

up let's get started with the

installation and setup of blender the

first thing you're going to have to do

is go to the blender website that

website is

www.blender.org or just blender.org

when you get to this website you'll see

that you're at the blender website uh

where you can find information see its

features download files support get

involved all the little things that

blunder does here but the most important

one is at the at the time of this

recording we're using blunder 4.2 LTS

and I'm going to the whole course is

going to be based on this version so I

want you to go and hit the download

button don't worry about which version

of an operating system you're using

because when you click on the download

button it's going to bring you to the

download page depending on which

operating system you're currently

running you'll see the download option

right here for whatever version you're

using now I'm using a mac Apple silicone

version so it's automatically detected

that and it will allow me to download

the correct file if you're using a

Windows PC it'll come up with the

windows version of that and if you're

using an older Macintosh that has an x86

processor in it it'll come up with the

option for that also lenux the same go

ahead and download blender U I'm

assuming that you all know how to

install applications on your computer so

I'm not going to cover that but we're

going to we're going to continue with

this as we uh first launch blender and

the screen we get will be

this okay so here's the opening screen

of blender um now what you see here are

several little windows that are

appearing this main window here is

called the 3D viewport this 3D viewport

is used pretty much for with most of

these tabs up here um it allows you to

select objects rotate your screen zoom

in and out add and and remove objects

from your collection and we'll cover

that in a little bit but we're not going

to do that right now I just want to

cover what some of these things are we

have a tools menu on the left this tools

menu can be uh hidden with the T key so

if you press the T key you'll see the

tools menu goes away press it again and

it comes back so any tool tool that's

associated with any one of the operating

tabs uh will they'll all be slightly

different but you can show it and hide

it with the T key one of the other

things that you'll need to do is get

familiar with the N tab panel the N tab

panel is it's called that because you

press the N key to bring up that n tabs

panel and I'm going to go ahead and do

that now press n and I've got my cursor

in the 3D viewport and you'll see that

these little tabs here show up when you

press the N key if you want to hide that

press the N key again and it goes

away in addition to that um I typically

leave the end tabs open all the time

when I'm modeling I'll hide them

occasionally if I need more space in my

3D viewport which is the big area so

from the 3D viewport we'll go to the

outliner the outliner lists all the

objects that are in your scene your 3D

viewport shows your scene so here we

have a scene collection and then we have

an object collection here and in that

object collection we have a camera if I

click here you can see highlights the

camera we have a cube which is the

default blender Cube and we have a light

so we can make changes select these edit

uh control them move them anywhere we

want within our scene or our 3D view

port and we'll have them in our

collection a lot of times what I like to

do is change these around a little bit

because uh I like to be able to turn off

some environmental objects so that I

don't select them when I'm working on

particular models we'll cover that

either in this video or another video

when we're doing a setup so once you've

understood that this panel here the

objects or the outline panel and you can

see it's called outline just by putting

your mouse over here and hovering it'll

bring up a little box that shows you

what it is when we add objects to our

scene they will appear here now in the

on the on the lower half of this part of

the screen we have this other panel that

has tabs on it and we have our tool tab

we have a render tab we have a format

tab for our

rendering this panel here is our layers

tab we're not going to we're not going

to use a lot of these I'll cover them as

we use them um we are going to use the

scene tools because these scene tools

will have to change the setup to work

with jewelry we have our world options

and I'm going to show you how to set up

your environment later on in another

course or another lesson where we can do

some rendering and make our renders look

a little bit real we have our objects

parameters our physics parameters or

light parameters these are our

constraints I'll cover constraints in

another lesson and then we have for

instance we have our light selected so

we have functions for our light if I

change this to the cube you will see

that now we have all the parameters for

our Cube so we can we can basically

change the way this lower half looks

because it's tied to whatever object you

have selected for instance if I click on

the camera this lower half from here

this lower half here here kind of

corresponds to the camera and so on so

if I click the light again you can see

this lower half now applies to the

light over when we first install blender

by default it gives us a timeline now

that is going to be used for things like

animations or if you're doing video

editing because this jewelry course does

not cover animations or video editing

we're going to remove this at some point

uh later on in this video as we get set

up and then we have our toolbar at the

bottom which gives us you know like we

have a dope sheet here if we click on

the right Mouse button the left Mouse

button is change frame and this all

corresponds to uh our tool tab if I

click here in the 3D viewport now you

can see it's changed to address the the

functions of the viewport settings you

can see now I can hit the left Mouse

button and select I can right click on

it and get an objects properties and

chain certain and things which we'll be

covering as we again go through the

lessons so these are the things that you

need to know when you first install it

and just get a little bit familiar with

blender um there is another area that

we're going to cover quite a bit and

that is in the edit menu so we come down

to edit and preferences and this brings

up a new window which has all the

preferences for blender now I've gone

ahead and reset my blender application

to its default settings so I should be

working with blender just like you with

no add added just in the default stage

so what I want you to do in the next

stage of this lesson the next part of it

is we're going to go ahead and make

changes to blender I'm going to close

this up right now we're going to go

ahead and make changes to blender so

that we are working in a way that you

can follow along in the course so that I

can set you up to be very similar to how

I work that way when I give you

instructions to follow during the course

you can see just that your computer is

going to be very similar to mine in its

setup mode

okay so we have to make some changes to

blender now many changes to blender that

I'm going to walk you through here are

basically changes that I've made to make

my life in jewelry design much more easy

that I have access to all the things and

only have things turned on that are

predicated to jewelry design and 3D

printing because this has a lot to do

with 3D printing in the jewelry industry

we'll cover that in one of the next

lessons so let's get started with

changing our parameters first let's take

our viewport we don't need to have the

timeline as I mentioned before so I want

you to click somewhere in this viewport

and when you do that you can move your

mouse to the lower left corner and

you'll see it changes to a little plus

sign click and hold the left Mouse

button and drag down and you can see

we've removed our timeline we don't need

that for jewelry design so let's get rid

of

it the next thing we have to do is deal

with with the fact that blender by

default Works in meters in the jewelry

industry we work in millimeters so the

end all in the jewelry industry is

everything is measured by

millimeters except for ring sizes but

let's take a stone a 1 karat round

diamond is 62 millim so we want to work

in millimeters so that everything we do

corresponds to the the

design limitations

or the conditions that we need to design

in so that when we pass it off to a 3D

printer we get the right size models and

then when we send it to a Caster he gets

the right size model to work with

because you don't want to send a 3 meter

ring to a customer because obviously you

can't print it and cast it and you know

what I mean let's start changing

everything to millimeters just follow

along and you'll see that this is

relatively easy and what I want to do

now is come over to our properties

panels and properties tabs and we're

going to start with our scenes icon now

again if you hover your mouse over an

object it'll tell you what it is we're

going to go to the scenes Tab and we're

going to click on units when we do that

you'll see that we are in metric we have

a scale of one and we are currently

working in meters so first things first

let's change the length to

millimeters and what that's going to do

is basically just going to change the

way BL blender reports the size of an

object for instance if we click on this

Cube here we look at the items tab you

can see that our cube is 2 by 2 by two

meters so if I change this to

millimeters by doing that now we have a

2,000 mm Cube which is basically 2 m and

we have not changed the dimensions that

we're working in we've just changed the

reporting method so the next thing we

need to do is change our unit scale to

change this unit scale we're going to

click in this box and type in

0.001 and then press the enter or return

key now you will see that our cube is

reported in millimeters only so that how

that's how easy it is to adjust our

scale in blender but we have to make a

couple more changes just to uh fix some

other issues that we're going to have in

blender now if you don't have a keypad

on your computer keyboard let's say

you're using a laptop computer without a

keypad I encourage you to go buy one on

Amazon and use it because the keypad in

blender is a must have function you

can't get away without it but it's just

something to have that you want to use

on a daily basis so what I want to do is

I want to change the perspective I want

to look straight down from the top at

our model and that's the keyboard number

seven if I press that here you can see

that we're looking straight down at our

model we have a y AIS here denoted by

Green an xais denoted by red and we

can't see the z-axis because we're

looking straight down at it but you can

see now that this is a 2 mm Cube and we

have 1 mm blocks that represent the

scale or um the grid size of our work

area now I like to break these down so

that I have a further breakdown of 1 mm

divid by 10 so T of a millimeter and

I'll get a smaller grid Within These

large grids to denot that to do this

we're going to come up to this tab here

which is the overlays oh I'm sorry we're

going to come up to this tab here which

is the gizmos tab we're going to hit the

little drop- down arrow and we're going

to click on

move and that's going to put arrows

within our object parameters and then we

can just take these and move them around

so I want you to make that change now

and then we're going to come over to the

overlays Tab and you're going to see

there's an option here at the top called

scale again we're going to click in that

and we're going to type in

0.001 and press return or enter and now

you can see within our 1 mm cubes there

are 10 smaller 1/10 of a millimet cube

now that itself that grid helps us to

know where we're moving objects so for

instance if I wanted to take this and

move it over 210 of a millimeter I could

do that or I could change the parameters

here but it's it's up to you I do a lot

of free forming so I like to have these

grids here now when you move your cursor

and go at it from a different

perspective those small grids will

disappear they only work with a direct

orthographic View and if I click in one

to look at it from the front or three

from the side now these are the one and

three keys on my keypad or seven from

the top you see we get those sub sectors

within our dimensions on our

grid with that done we're going to

change one more thing just to make life

a little easier there is a little bug

that has appeared previous versions of

blender and that is in the view tab you

can see here we have a clip start and a

clip end and what we want to do is

change this clip end to something like 1

million and actually going give it

another zero couple zeros just to cover

myself this allows us to zoom out and in

on an object without losing or clipping

the screen so something disappears in

some cases blender kind of tweaks out

when it does that and we're just kind of

correcting for that now now that how we

work in millimeters we set up blender to

work in millimeters from that particular

Point what I want you to do is come over

to file and go down to the defaults menu

option here and then save startup file

and we're going to overwrite the

existing one and now every time that you

open a new version of blender no matter

what it is you're going to come over to

file new it's the same as opening up a

new one we'll go to General and what

happens is I'm not going to save this it

brings in all our information and if I

come over here to the items tab you can

see our cube is 2

millimet and not 2 MERS again this is

going to be very handy for 3D

printing the next part of this lesson is

going to be setting up the user

environment or the UI for blender and I

am going to cover that really quick here

and just want you to follow along we are

going to set up some parameters to

adjust the way our blender operates now

if I come over to edit and preferences

and I'm going to come over to interface

you can see that I'm at 1.0 so my screen

might look very small to you I'm going

to actually change this to 1.4 so that

everything's a little bigger and you can

see it better now depending on your

computer screen or your computer monitor

you may want to change this you can

click and drag back and forth just to

make it whatever size you want again I'm

going to go to 1.4 just for the course

of this video now these are the

parameters

that blender will have within its user

environment so for instance we have an

interface that's the whole interface of

the window and we can change you saw the

scale of that we have the splash screen

that always comes on we can turn that

off if we don't want to use it I'm going

to leave it the same developer extras if

you're a developer and adding or making

add-ons for blender this is you kind of

want this on as well as python tool tips

we're not going to do that I'm going to

leave user tool tips on because that

allows us to put our cursor over

something and bring up a little popup

that tells us what it is regional

overlays that's the area here and

navigational controls would be these

areas on the side here so if you turn

these off you can see uh the purpose of

that and I'm going to leave those on

because we're going to use them there's

nothing else here other than the status

bar and what I like to do with the

status bar is and follow me here uh

scene statistics and you'll notice the

status bar is down here it tells you

what version in the lower left corner or

lower right corner what the version

you're using is and we can change these

to we can add these scene

statistics scene duration we're not

going to use scene duration we don't

need that but system memory and

depending on the memory of your computer

you want to have that turned on blender

version U that was what I told you about

just a second ago and extensions updates

we're going to leave that there because

anytime there's an extension update that

come comes in while you're using blender

uh and if you're connected to the

internet it'll let you

know um that's under interface changes

now we'll go ahead and we're going to

hit the save preferences just to store

those now let's go to viewport and

there's nothing in viewport that we need

to change just yet if we make changes

it'll probably be during the course of

the lessons in the future lights we're

not going to change editing edit mode

and editing we're going to leave

basically the same way it's always been

by default um animations since we're not

doing any animating of characters we're

going to skip that for now add-ons get

extensions and themes we'll cover later

let's go to the input Tab and see if

there's anything here we want to use

again if you don't have a numeric

keyboard keypad on your keyboard you

might want to either purchase a keypad

to add to your system or emulate one now

I've always had a keypad on my keyboards

I'm not going to click on that because I

already have the keypad so let's move on

to the next part which would be

navigation under navigation and I'm

going to just kind of move this over

here actually we're going to leave that

on right now just like

this uh probably making that too small

we'll just put this off screen so

navigating in your 3D World or your 3D

viewport first of all if you click and

hold the middle Mouse button you can

rotate left and right up and down and

that rotates around the center point of

the screen not the object itself I could

take this object move it way over here

again hold the middle Mouse button and

you can see I'm rotating around the 3D

cursor

this 3D cursor is currently in the

center of your scene or Center of Your

World you can move this other places and

it will throw you off so here's what I

like to do let's take this and let's put

it back in the

center and we're going to bring up our

preferences tab here and what we want to

do is orbit round selected I'm going to

put a check mark there I'm going to hit

the save preferences and I'm going to

move this off screen for instance now if

I click on this Cube and I hold my

middle Mouse button you can see where

we're rotating around the cube if I

click on the light and I rotate now you

can see we're rotating around the

light and not the cube so that's what

rotating around selected is I always

keep rotation around selected on because

I like to look at a specific part of a

model by rotating around it just to see

how it fits into my models so I'm I'm

asking you to do this because it's going

to help you later in addition under has

in the past in some versions had depth

problems where you scroll into something

and it locks up into a specific depth

and you can't zoom in any further to

correct that we'll click on the depth uh

check mark here and we'll activate that

again we're going to hit save

preferences um Zoom to Mouse position

again so if I put my cursor up here and

I zoom in you can see it's only zooming

to the 3D cursor or whatever is in the

middle of the screen screen now let's

take this and let's change that we're

going to zoom to Mouse position I'm

going to hit save and I'm going to move

this off screen and now if I put my

cursor here and I zoom in you can see

it's zooming to wherever I'm

pointing again if you want to see the

camera you put your cursor over it you

can zoom into your camera and it just

makes things a lot easier to use and

navigate within the 3D

viewport now we're not really going to

change much else but I will cover the

the system folder here this is the

parameters for your graphics card or

your GPU I'm using an M1 Mac with eight

cores I'm going to activate uh the M1

and just leave it at that my online

access um it'll time out after 10

minutes it's con connection limit is

five tries just leave that set up and

you it'll it'll work when you first load

blender and then kind of stick or kick

off of the internet when it's not being

used uh let's see there's not much else

here memory undo limit uh for instance

right now everybody knows control Z will

cancel the last operation you have 32

cancellations or or steps that you can

go back I like to change this to

75 now that'll also be dependent on the

memory on your computer so be careful if

you have to change that you can go back

and change it later your save load this

is for Save prompts you always want it

to have a prompt so that you don't

overwrite a file if you don't want to it

gives you kind of like that last bit

effort that you're not going to

overwrite something uh relative paths

we're going to leave all these the same

and under file browser which will'll

cover in a lesson when we save and load

files I'll go through all this but we

want recent system and filter uh files

in that so then file paths this is a

little bit more of a detailed section of

the preferences but for instance we can

tell it where our fonts file is if you

have a a directory that has hundreds or

thousands of fonts you can add the

location of that textures sounds

temporary files Etc in addition since

blender 3.0 we've had asset libraries

and those are blender files that you can

bring in and Link objects within those

other files into your current file if

you so wish we'll cover that in another

lesson um I think it'll be lesson four

or five where we're going to set up our

own library of things that we'll need

for instance um some materials and some

objects that we use on a regular basis

so again we'll cover that later once

you've got all the preferences saved go

ahead and hit the save preferences

button and close up the preferences

window and you're pretty much good to go

and that's setting up blender basically

so that we can start using millimeters

and your user

interfaces part three of this lesson is

going to be setting up our environment

within our 3D viewport or our scene now

I like to take

certain things in my environment and

move them into a collection of objects

that I don't particularly want to have

accessible during my modeling but are

available within my scene so we can see

that we have a scene collection which is

everything within our scene and then

within our scene we have another

collection called

collection and all that doesn't make

sense but just hear me out here if we

right click on scene collection we go to

new collection and it'll bring out

collection number two I'm going to

double click that and I'm going to to

type in

environment okay within our environment

tab I kind of want to store my camera

and all my lighting and any ancillary

things that are in my scene that are

never going to change the reason for

that is that I can move the light into

the environment Tab and my camera into

the environment tab I'm just going to

move this up to the top here and then I

can turn this off with a little eye

dropper here and now I can't see it in

my scene however it's always there there

if that makes sense I just don't have

access to it for instance we can turn

things off by clicking this little box

here or we can make them invisible or

invis or visible by clicking the little

eyeball and this camera here is for

render settings so for instance if we

didn't want an object to be rendered we

could turn that object off for instance

the cube and if I go ahead and turn the

camera off this Cube will never get

rendered when we do a rendering of a

file now we're not going to really do

that with much here but just just so you

understand what all these are you can

put your cursor over that it'll give you

a little hint of what it does so again

this hides from the viewport we're going

to turn that off but again our camera

and our light are in scene we just can't

see them and if we want to go back to

them we can just turn on the eyeball and

boom they're

there so with that done I've got my

collection here and I've got my cube in

my collection um that's fine I tend to

just leave that the way it is uh we'll

deal with collections as we start

modeling in the in one of the first I

think lesson five or six so when we get

to modeling a simple object I'll show

you more about collections now that I've

got that all set up we're going to go

ahead and go save our default settings

file defaults save startup file and

we're going to overwrite it so now when

you go file new and general it brings up

that particular setup that you have

Within

just the way we have here and that's

perfect that's the end of this lesson

guys in the next lesson we're going to

cover setting up the add-ons that we're

going to need for blender to use in the

jeury design industry thanks for

watching I hope you like this video if

you did give it a thumbs up share it and

of course this is going to be part of uh

these lessons are going to be part of a

subscription or a if you become a member

of my Channel or a member of patreon

you'll be able to go and see all the

videos they're not all available to the

general public thanks have a good day