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This post is going to assume you understand concepts like working in Edit Mode, creating new objects, resizing them, and just basic stuff I covered in Part 1 of this series. See the link above.
With that out of the way…. In the last post, we left off with a plain set of walls like this. This was made by creating cubes and using Face Select to resize them (described in Part 1).
Now, we want to add a door and a window to our structure. The best way I’ve discovered to do this is through using something called Edge Loops. This is a tool that slices through the entire shape, allowing you to cut pieces out of it. For our purpose, this will make doors and windows!
Making an Edge Loop
In Edit Mode, focus on the wall, and press Ctrl+R to initiate the edge loop.
This makes a little pink line on the surface of your shape. If you hover over a vertical edge, the line displays horizontal and vice versa. Here, I hovered over the left edge to get a horizontal line.
This line is mostly just for display. It’s not until you left-click that Blender actually draws the edge loop.
The line turns orange and it also allows you to edit the position using the colored handles. Once you’re happy with it, just press A to deselect and see the cut.
If you don’t like what you just did, you can press Ctrl+Z to undo and try again.
Here’s a quick video showing you what that looks like in motion.
Resource
Cutting Out the Door
That first edge loop is the top of the door frame of the house. Now, just keep making edge loops for the sides of the door until you have something like this:
Okay! There you have it. The door is outlined using edge loops!
Now, make sure that Face Select is enabled.
Then right-click on the face to select it.
With the face selected, press the X key. This is the delete tool.
Choose Faces to delete the face.
Alright! Now you have something that looks like this. But there’s a face on the other side, too, as you can see.
That’s fine. Just select that and delete it like you did the first.
Now you have an open doorway!! Yes!
Building the Door Frame
But there’s one little problem with this — it’s kinda hard to see. There’s some open areas around the door frame (since we just cut through the middle of a hollow shape).
We want to fill that in — it’s important for texturing and for making the actual door. Thankfully, this isn’t hard to do.
Click the Line Select tool – located next to the Face Select on the bottom menu.
What we want to do is select two lines opposite of each other and fill it in:
- Right-click on the first line.
- Hold the Shift key down.
- Right-click on the line opposite of it.
Two lines selected will look like this:
To fill in that missing face, press the F key. And boom!
You’ve just made a solid face for your door frame! Congrats!
Now, you’ll have to cam around and take care of the other missing faces — the top and the other side to complete the door frame. Getting the one above will be a bit of a pain to position, but it’s good practice!
Making Windows
To add windows, just repeat the exact same process:
- Make edge loops to draw the window.
- Select the window face and delete it. Then, delete the face on the other side, too.
- Fill in the missing geometry around the window sill.
And you get something like this!
Duplicating to Make Doors and Windows
Let’s talk about duplicating. This will actually be helpful for making windows and doors.
So, say you have a cube. You want to make a second cube exactly like the first.
Make sure the cube is selected and press Shift+D to duplicate.
Let’s see how this helps making a door.
- Ensure Face Select is on.
- Right-click on one side of the door frame to select the first face.
- Shift+Right-Click on all the remaining faces of the doorframe, including the bottom. If a part of the door frame was sliced in half with an edge loop, make sure to get all pieces!
- With all faces selected, click Shift+D.
- Gently pull your mouse away from the building and you’ll have duplicated the door frame.
- Left-click anywhere to place the duplicate part.
Gosh, that would be a perfect fit for a door, wouldn’t it? Lucky for us, that’s easy to do!
Making Doors and Windows
Remember how we filled in faces between lines for the door and window frames? We’re going to do this again.
Using Line Select, select the front line at the bottom and the front line at the top of the door frame. It’s not easy to see, but if you look, one line is yellow and the other is white, indicating your selection.
With both lines selected, just press the F Key. It’ll fill in the front of your door!
Repeat for the back face of the door, and now you have a perfectly sized door that will fit in that frame!
Repeat for your windows. You can narrow this shape a bit to make it more like a thin piece of glass if you like. And if your windows are all the same shape, just duplicate the first to make them all consistent!
Now that you’ve got the method, go out there and make as many windows and doors as you please!
Next, we’ll tackle how to add materials to your house so that Second Life knows where to put your textures! 🙂
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*|* {April} *|* {2018} *|* {Second Life} *|*
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