This article provides a step-by-step instructional guide on how to adjust textures within groups and complete a truss using various tools in a 3D modeling software. It covers methods such as push-pull, duplicating, exploding, making groups, erasing, and applying texture images.
Key Insights
- Grouping elements in a model allows for more controlled manipulation. The use of 'push-pull' and 'double-click to copy' tools was demonstrated as a way to make components, such as a truss, six inches thick.
- Texture application and adjustment is essential in creating a realistic 3D model. For instance, a wood texture was applied to the truss, and its aesthetic appearance was improved by changing its dimension and orientation with the axes tool.
- Beyond just creating and adjusting elements, the article highlights the importance of maintaining organized groups and individual members in the model. Techniques like 'exploding' groups, 'making groups,' and erasing unnecessary lines were covered.
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So here, now that we know that this is a group, and we know that this member is six inches, we also know that standard lumber for something like this would be around six inches thick. So let's go into each of these groups, double-click, and using our push-pull tool, let's pull these out six inches, and hit escape to close out of that.
Double-click this group, push-pull, double-click to copy that same move, double-click, double-click, double-click here, push-pull, double-click, click out, double-click into that group, double-click that face, close out of that, double-click this, and again, we made all of our members six inches thick. And now I will hit escape to close out of this group. I wanna make a duplicate version of this truss on the opposite side.
So I will go to my move tool and click this corner, and then hitting Control on my keyboard to make a copy, I will select along the red axis, snap to this endpoint. And then I wanna flip this group along the red axis. So I'll go to right-click, flip along groups red, and now I will select this group, and then holding down Control, select this group, and right-click, make group one last time.
Now I'll go into this group, and I will select everything, and then right-click, explode, to blow this apart in each individual member. One thing that I noticed that I'm not wanting to keep are having these members be split and these members be split. I want them to be combined.
So what I can do is I can select both of these groups, right-click, make group, and double-click into this group, and then since these are still groups, I can select both and then right-click, explode. And then using my eraser tool, I can erase this line and this line, and then orbiting to underneath, erase the bottom line. We'll select out of this, and I'll do that same thing for these two.
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Holding down Control to select multiple, right-click, make group, double-click, select both, explode, and then clicking this selection window, select this line, and then hit Delete on your keyboard. Now I hit Escape to close out of that, and there we have, we have our completed truss. I will save my file.
The next thing I would like to do is I would like to apply a wood texture to these members. I have provided a JPEG image to use in the file downloads folder, wood grain texture. So let's create a new texture with that material.
We'll go to Materials and click our plus, create material, and we'll rename this material as wood truss, and then we'll select this checkbox, use texture image, and we'll go into our SKP 2.1 file downloads folder and click wood grain texture, and then we'll select OK. And then with our paint bucket tool, we can select this entire group and paint. One thing I noticed is I think that this material is a little bit too small for this.
So what I can go into Edit, and I can change this dimension to say now be, let's make this be five feet in the horizontal direction. Hit ENTER. As you can see, the texture on the bottom member looks great, and I'm very happy with it.
However, the other textures are not orientated the correct direction. To quickly change that, what I can do is you can see that along the red axes, the texture follows the grain in the wood along that same axis. If I was to modify each one of these members' axes, it would change the texture to follow that same direction.
So I'll double-click into this group, and then we can go into each of these members. And then using our axes tool, we can click this point and making sure that we follow the line that we want our grain to go. And select this, and then we can select our green in this direction, and then we can close out of it, and you will see that it'll automatically regenerate this texture based off of that new axis direction.
We can do that same process by going into each of these members, going to our axes tool, and going red, and then green, and then clicking out again. You can also go both the same direction, and it'll keep this locked in that same position, making sure that we want this side to be green. And you can see here that it's showing blue, so we wanna make that green.
We want blue to always be up. Again, do the same thing to this member, and this member, and this member. I'll quickly do each of these.
This is a really simple way of adjusting each of these textures within groups. If this is all one group, then we would have to go into each of these textures, right-click, and then modify the actual texture itself. But there we go.
There's our completed truss. At this point, we no longer need this background, so I can actually delete this, and I will save my file, making sure this is saved as Clubhouse Structural Truss. I will see you in the next video.
