Lesson 3a Manipulating your object

Index to all 30 lessons in this Milkshape tutorial   

You have a lot of the basics down. You can scale, size, create and do other things. You also have a basic understanding of what the workspace is all about. You have actually come a long way. And I know you are anxious to actually make something but you have to learn all this stuff! This is all about learning a new program. Now let's now start to mold our object into shape.

Your Model takes shape

In the control panel, under the model tab press the Select button. Then in the lower section under Select Options press the vertex button.

A vertex is a square point where two lines meet. Now you can click on any of the tiny vertexes in your model and it will turn red.

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This image shows a vertex selected. Now you can move this vertex and the white lines will follow it. And voila your rectangle can be manipulated into a new shape. Now you can see how you can start to hammer out this sword into a real shape.

How to move the vertex? Easy enough. You already know this. Just press the Move button in the control panel then click hold on the selected vertex and you can slowly mouse around moving it.

Now do this to the top of your sword. Select the vertex on the right and move it in so it has a sword tip look to it like this: (this is done in the frontpane view)

Remember that this is only half your sword so it should look only like half a sword. Picture mirroring this half over to the left and you will have a complete sword blade.And make sure you are moving the correct vertex. This is the one that is not on the side that is ignored!

Let's make the sword get thinner too.

In the left paneview do the same thing, Press select, then press vertex in the select options at the bottom. Select your vertex then press move and move the vertex in.

Do the same process with the other vertex at the top left of the sword and move this vertex in so the sword comes to a nice point.

Stop and Take a look Moving a vertex only moves the line between that vertex and the next adjacent vertex. The whole sword length didnt get skinnier. Just the potion between the tip and the next vertexes.

Now you can start to see that this modeling stuff takes a bit of artistic ability and it is always a good idea to sketch out your objects on paper before you start modeling. They can get very complex and be difficult if you can't see how you want it to look before you actually start designing in milkshape 3d.

We have half our sword blade, now lets mirror it and get the other half