Modeling: A Million to One - Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 - page 73

selections with the A-key dance. Then, hovering the mouse over the sphere, press the L key. It should
select the UV Sphere. Now, you can use the G key to move it away from the rest of the model and
border select the lower half.

There is a fourth, more clever, way though. Use this same L-key technique to select the entire UV Sphere
if it isn't already selected. Then, press the B key to enter Border Select mode. At this point, either a front
or side view is fine. Instead of LMB dragging to select a region, MMB drag to define a region around
the top of the sphere. This will deselect the vertices within the space, just like MMB painting with the
selection brush removes selection. This is a nice way to do it, because it doesn't matter what is behind
the sphere or how cluttered the display might be.

At this point, the complexity of choice involved in modeling might be dawning on you. There are a
million ways to model a particular object. The way that you choose to approach a modeling task will be
determined by how well you know the available tools and personal preference. The more you know about
the tools, the more efficient you will be, and the better your end result will be.

Before we get too far ahead, remove the selected lower vertices with the X key. We're trying to make a
dome (half-sphere), no?

To move it into proper place and orientation now shouldn't be too difficult. It only uses skills you've
already learned. I'll make it brief, since you're no dummy:

● Reselect the half-sphere (L key).
● Rotate it in a side view so that it is facing outward from the center of the flower.
●

Scale it so that its outer edges nicely cover the inner tips of the petals.

●

In a side view, scale it once more but use the transform constraints you learned in Chapter 3 to scale
it only along the z axis (S key for scale, followed by the Z key). You might have to reposition it
above the petals after this last scaling.

When you've done these things, you should have something like Figure 4.14 . Rotate the view with the
MMB to see your modeling work in all of its beginner's beauty.

Web
Step-by-step images are available for this sequence in the Web Bucket for Chapter 4.

Let's finish this little monster. Once again, we won't do anything we haven't already learned. It's seeing
where you need to go and figuring out how to apply the tools that is the trick. Right now
we need a circular stem that extends downward from the center of the flower and possibly has a slight
bend to it. One thing you might have noticed is that from a global perspective, the flower is facing upward.
We'd actually like for it to face forward so it looks nice in a vase. Select all the vertices you've modeled
so far with the A key, then rotate them 90 degrees around the x axis by pressing the R key, pressing the
X key (to signal the x axis), typing “90,” and pressing Enter. Now the flower is oriented properly for
later.