This document is for you to concretely put together an idea for what your experience will be.
You are encouraged to read the whole thing through, think about what kind of experience you want to make, and then fill out the document.
Fill out the Design Document.
Next Steps:
These workshops are presented by iZone, a library space on campus that provides robust programming and services to students interested in developing their skills as creative problem solvers.
These workshops are designed to get you thinking about your project in these ways:
You can view the slides for these Workshops here:
Next Steps:
This workshop will take you through a brief introduction into XR technologies, the history and current issues of these technologies, the resources we have here at Studio X, and an overview of the Pre-College program (which is what you are going to be doing!).
Note: Libby mentions that the win container of Jellyfishin' is the crate, but in more recent versions of Jellyfishin' the win container is now the net.
You can view the slides here.
Next Steps:
What is a Rig?
In Blender, a rig is essentially a skeleton or armature composed of bones that controls a model’s movement. This allows you to animate and pose your model dynamically.
Step 1: In Blender, make sure your character is centered and lined up with the origin. To do this, you want to select your model > press N to open the transform tab > hover over location > and press backspace.
You want to make sure that your character’s origin (the small orange dot on your character is at the center of your model. To do this, you can right-click the model > set origin > geometry to origin.
Step 2: Once you’ve confirmed your model is at the origin center, ensure you’re in Object Mode and click Add > Hover over Armature > and click Single Bone to add a single bone.
Step 3: After adding your single bone, to make editing easier, ensure you’re in viewport shading mode (solid) and that transparency is enabled. After making sure you have selected your armature, return to Edit Mode.
Step 4: Now that we have our armature set up, let’s start at the hip! Since a bone is an object, we can treat it just like the other meshes in Blender. That means we can transform, rotate, and scale them. So move the first bone to the lower half of our character’s torso.
Step 5: Now, let’s name our bone. This is just to keep everything organized for later. To do that, select your bone in edit mode, and drop down to the bone property tab (the green bone) and rename the bone in the name panel to “HipBone”
Step 6: We’re going to name every bone we add to our character. To add a new connecting bone, select the small ball on top of your current bone, then press E to extrude. Make sure to press Z while extruding to keep the bone straight. Now, we’ve created a torso bone.
Step 7: Now, try to make bones for your character’s Head, Body, Arms, and Legs. To add new bones, go to Add > Create a New Bone > and place it where needed. Use the image below as a reference for positioning your character’s bones. Remember to name them!
Step 8: After you finish adding all your bones, we’re going to attach the mesh to the armature. First, make sure your layout is in Object Mode. Then select the mesh first, and then Shift click the armature. Afterwards, press Control P and a pop-up will appear. Find the option “With Automatic Weights” and click it. This will now join both the armature you created on top of your mesh.
After joining your character with automatic weights, you can now access pose mode! Go into pose mode, and try moving around your armature’s bones by clicking on them and rotating them with R.
Weight Painting
Now, after playing with your armature for a bit, you might notice that some parts of your mesh aren’t rigged correctly, and that’s completely fine! We’re going to fix it with a bit of weight painting.
What is Weight Painting?
In Blender, a process assigns varying degrees of influence, or “weight,” to each bone in a character’s armature, impacting the mesh’s vertices. This influence is shown as a color gradient from red (full influence) to blue (no influence), helping artists manage how the mesh deforms as the bones move.
To access the weight painting option, make sure you’re in object mode, then select the mesh and NOT the armature. When you open the mode tab, you will find the weight painting option.
Step 1: Once you enter Weight Paint mode, your mesh will turn blue and show different colors. Focus on the paint options and the tab at the top center of your screen, which displays the names of your bones from earlier.
Controls how strongly a bone will influence a specific part of the model. A weight of 1 means full influence, while a weight of 0 means no influence at all.
Controls the size of the brush you’re using to paint weights. A larger radius covers a bigger area, while a smaller radius allows for more detailed painting.
Adjusts the amount of weight applied each time you paint. A higher strength applies more weight quickly, while a lower strength allows you to build influence gradually.
Step 2: Now you need to decide which part to work on in the weight paint. I’ll show you the head of my character and how I plan to fix the weight paint. For my character’s head, the accessories weren’t automatically applied, so we’ll paint them on. The red indicates where the bone was affected, and the blue isn’t.
Step 3: Now you can adjust your weight, radius, and strength to meet your needs. Set them to 1.0 for weight, 75 for radius, and 1.0 for strength. After adjusting your paint settings, simply click and drag on the blue areas of your model to turn them red.
Now you want to do this for each part of your model that needs adjusting. If you need extra help with this part of the workshop, please use the Studio X Discord and contact an XR Specialist for assistance! Switch between pose mode and weight paint mode to test each of your bones.
Step 4: If you have any questions or get stuck while rigging, feel free to ask for help in the Studio X Discord channel. Remember to constantly save your progress.
If you’re done animating, and want to learn how to animate your 3D model, follow the How to Animate your 3D Character tutorial.
What is Blender?
Blender is an open-source and free 3D modeling software tool that runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and other operating systems. It’s used in a wide range of media, most commonly found in animation, the gaming industry, 3D-printed models, motion graphics, and virtual reality.
How to install Blender
To install Blender, follow the link here and select the version most compatible with your device. Blender doesn’t automatically update, so you’re encouraged to stay current with the latest version, but it’s not mandatory.
How to navigate through Blender
In Blender, there are three main parts of its interface:
The main workspace you’ll start with is ‘Layout’. There are many other workspace options that you can select on top of your Blender application. The most commonly used workspaces are Layout, Sculpting, UV Editing, Texture Paint, and Shading.
To learn more about navigating through Blender, follow the first part of the Intro to Blender tutorial linked here.
Because Blender is open-source, there are multiple extensions available online that we can install to help us speed up our work process and make our workspace more efficient.
Official Blender Extension Page: Link
Make sure to install the official extensions available on the Blender Extension Page. For Blender version 4.4 and newer, you can directly download extensions within the Blender application. To add extensions, go to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons. Afterward, you can search for your preferred extension and click Install; once installed, it should appear in your workspace.
Intro to Blender Workshop
If you want to learn Blender through a simple abstract art workshop, follow the tutorial here:
In this workshop you’ll learn about:
You can view the slides for this workshop here.
Creating a 3D Character
After completing the Intro to Blender Abstract Art Workshop, you’ll learn how to create your first 3D character in Blender. To learn how to create a 3D character in Blender, follow the tutorial here:
In this workshop you’ll learn about:
you can view the slides for this workshop here
Adding Materials
After creating your 3D character in blender, you’ll learn how to apply a material over the model. To learn how to create a material for your 3D model, follow the tutorial here:
In this workshop you’ll learn about:
you can view the slides for this workshop here
Studio X’s Intro to Unity workshop is recorded on YouTube!
You can view the slides for this workshop here.