Ops Harder: More Hard Ops course

 I started with a quick exercise to see how much of the previous lessons I'd retained. Not bad, not brilliant. I got lost in the snap grid settings, turning it off then not getting the previous interaction when I turned it back on. I also got stuck trying to apply an array because I couldn't change the array distance. I got the answer from the docs. 

Press "V" to get the array parameters

I scratch the HopsCutter surface with this 80s-style desktop

Next Lesson:

Mirror

When you want to mirror a cutter

Place your cutter
With the object selected, Alt+X  

Note that you click on the side of the existing cutter, not where you want the mirrored cutter to apply.

Reset Mirror: X

Add New Mirror: A

Mirror Help List: D

View Orientation: S

Help/Mods: H / M

Mirror an entire object

Alt+X


In advanced mode, change the pivot point to Cursor (for example).

Again, use the gizmo on the side of the object you want to mirror, not the side of the reflection.

There are plenty of useful mirror options available, such as Bisect and Symmetry

See the Mirror docs.

Operations

We've passed the Hard part of the course, and we are now dealing with the Operations bit. 

Modifier Scroll

Essentially, this was the original tool for cycling through modelling elements (cutters and operations), which was superseded by the Ever Scroll. 

Bevel/Edge Manager

Very straightforward. You have bevels? You want to modify them? Bridge up the Bevel/Edge Manager, and you have all the Bevel parameters to adjust.

 

Bevel/Bool Manager - LMB
CTRL Bevel/Divider (Half the size of the bevel)
Alt - Bevel Multiplier (Double the bevel)
LMB + Shift - Edge Manager

Note: The Bevel Divide/Multiplier can be run multiple times to increase or decrease the bevel.

Edge Manager - Josh doesn't use it. It's a big panel where you can apply sharpness changes to your model's edges.

Sharpen - This does the same thing as the sharpen menu, which was already covered.

Step Bevel - A Step Bevel makes the next bevel half the size of the previous one. This option can accumulate if you run it several times — each run uses the previous bevel as the guide.

(C) Sharpen - Already in the sharpen menu

Clear Sharp - Use this to remove the Sharp edges from a model.

Clean Mesh - This is a really cool attempt to automate the steps you would normally follow to clean up a mesh. Useful for doing an on-the-spot mesh cleanup.

Smart Apply - this shortcut opens the Smart Apply tool we've already covered.


UV Display - This oddball tool lets you peek at the current UV mapping applied to an object. It just saves you needing to switch to the UV Editing context.

To Shape

A note to the developers. Shapes are flat; a three-dimensional shape is actually a form. A square is a shape, a cube is a form.

Another oddball! Appy To Shape to a mesh, and it generates a new object based on the bounds of the selected object.

Scroll to cycle through different shapes. Here I scrolled to a plane.

AccuShape V2 - Use AccuShape to bound your object to make it fit into a smaller unit area. Good for 3D printing when you want to take greater care with real-world dimensions.

Add camera - Cool because it places the focus on an empty which gives you a different way to control the camera. 

Add lights - Cool way to add some random lights. You probably want to make manual adjustments once the rando lamps are out.

Mirror - Already covered.

Polygon Debug display - Got some nasty geometry?  See it using this useful tool. Ngons and triangles reveal themselves as they get a colour treatment. Apply again to remove the colours.

Add Modifiers - Same as before

Add Mesh Machine - Only appears if Mesh Machine is installed. Which is, here! Mesh Machine is its own rabbit hole of modelling-tool goodness, which I'll look into once this course is complete.

Shortcuts!

On the Q-menu, note the underlined letter! 

Press Q, then press the underlined letter.

MeshTools

The meshtools are an extensive set of helpers for editing meshes.

Reset Axis/Align/Select

Select the object and click Reset Axis to remove transformations from Blender's origin. Nice for when objects need to be reset to their origin along all axes or along a specific axis.

Align is not so useful as you can Align to a selected face:

1. Select the face
2. Shift + Number Key 7 

Select tool 

A  curious bundle of niche tools manage the selections on a mesh.

Set Origin

While this looks niche, it has some important uses. By way of an example:

You have a slice element in an iregular face. You add a cut which you want to mirror to the other side of the slice. It won't work because the mirror tool is tied to the original origin, so it can't mirror the slice to the other side.

1. Select the Slice
2. Q+M+S
3. Select two corners of the object and while they are selected, click F to place the centre point. This defines the slice's centre point.
4. Repeat, but this time select a corner, hold shift and ensure the rotation is correct.


Now this initially didn't work for me, as I think I was in the wrong mirror mode. I then fixed an unexpected displacement by moving an empty gizmo on the mirror operation.

Go there in the end!

Blender-School: Hard Ops on the menu

 The Hard Ops/Boxcutter course finally gets to Hard Ops itself. I was a bit surprised by how the lessons jump straight in without an overview. If you are watching a training course, you might not fully understand the big picture, and with Hard Ops, the picture is huge.

Before the lesson, the menus

Alt+V Viewport panel...cool!

Q Basic HardOps menu / Settings

MeshTools

Add Modifier

Operations

Array V2

Bevel

Sharpen

That's not even everything, just the top-level stuff.

Let's start with that last item:

Sharpen

This is an odd one as Hard Ops seems to work on the assumption that models are not auto-smoothed. Hard Ops does this smoothing itself and nicely handles the job by applying appropriate ordering on the modifier stack.

In Blender's Hard Ops, SSharpen (Shift+Q menu) simply marks sharp edges for shading based on an angle, while CSharpen (Ctrl+LMB on Sharpen or Ctrl+Shift+Q menu) is a more advanced, workflow-focused tool that applies Boolean modifiers, adds a Bevel modifier, marks new sharps, and sets up autosmoothing, creating a procedural, live workflow by keeping modifiers intact for quick iteration.

Think of SSharpen as basic marking, while CSharpen automates the entire setup after a boolean, making it essential for efficient hard surface modelling with booleans.

Think of SSharpen as basic marking, while CSharpen automates the entire setup after a boolean, making it essential for efficient hard surface modelling with booleans. 

SSharpen (Simple Sharpen)

• Function: Marks edges as sharp (using Blender's built-in mark sharp) and sets up autosmoothing based on an angle threshold.
• Workflow: Good for basic hard surface detailing, where you manually apply modifiers or work in a more traditional, less procedural way.
• Shortcut: Often accessed via Shift+Q (depending on settings) or within the Q menu. 

CSharpen (Complex Sharpen)

• Function: A procedural powerhouse that applies Boolean modifiers (from the Bool Tool), adds a bevel modifier, marks new sharp edges, and enables autosmoothing, all in one step.
• Workflow: Ideal for non-destructive, live modelling; you can keep booleans and bevels live, apply CSharpen, and continue working without manually cleaning up the modifier stack.
• Shortcut: Often Ctrl+LMB on the Sharpen button or via the Q menu. 

As you make changes to objects, you may need to rethink where sharpness is applied. Rather than manually selecting edges that no longer need to be marked sharp, you can recalculate sharpness.
Resharpen: Ctrl+Shift+S (Sharpen)

Bevel

H for the help menu. Yes, it's very expansive, and you need the help at least when you are getting started. It's otherwise straightforward in basic use.

Ever Scroll

If you are modelling with lots of Booleans, it can be tricky to find the one you need to make tweaks. Ever Scroll is a really effective way to go through and tweak Boolean operations.

Enable Ever Scroll, then use the mouse scroll wheel to fly through the Boolean cuts. 

Explore! There are just so many special functions and features that you can't learn them all at once. You need to time play.

Alt+Ever Scroll generates a Smart Apply!

Smart Apply

Hard Ops all-in-one apply/conversion tool!

After a complex build, you might end up with a lot of Boolean operations that you want to bake into the model by applying their modifiers. Hard Ops has the Smart Apply feature that automatically runs through the modifiers and applies them, but leaves the bevels and smoothing modifiers in place.

These modifiers are not included:

• last bevel
• weighted normal
• last mirror if more than 1 mirror mod is present

LMB - Complete a Smart Apply

Shift+Smart Apply - Create a duplicate of your Smart Apply
Ctrl +Smart Apply - Convert to curve (edge/face)

Alt+Smart Apply - Step

Josh never covers these cases. Here's the official Hard Ops Docs - Smart Apply

Add Modifier

This is a quick way of adding the basic modifiers. As simple as that!

The next lesson is an exercise that doesn't apply for me as it did for Josh. I'll investigate!

World detour

 I did some additional planet content -- testing a move from 16k to 21k resolution. It's a lot of painting, and the previous strategy of smudging Earth terrain textures together doesn't work as well as you get a visual sludge at the regular viewing distance, even if things look sharper and better when you get close-in.

Calantica with 16k textures and the procedural planet material node tree

An aside to the detour: Aurore, from 2300AD

Base colour map. Meh!

Close-up, you realise how big a 21k map actually is! The coastline is too strong. For the next iteration, I will look into whether it's possible to add noise that suggests undersea terrain.

Test renders. That material is far from finished, but it looks okay as a starting point.

Blender School: Hard Ops continued

 Snapping

During a Boxcutter operation, press "Ctrl" to activate the default grid-based snapping mode, which is pretty cool.

Live mode

Press Tab during operation to make Boxcutter "live". In the live mode the operation doesn't complete and can be manipulated. The Blue dot is for bevel control. Press Return to complete.

Lock Mode

Click on the arrow/chevron to make shape selection a two-step process.

View Align

Boxcutter aligns with the detected surface. If you want Boxcutter projected from your view, select Align to View. This lets you make off-angle cuts into a model. In a normal operation, the start of a cut can be deep inside a model because of which face you are clicking to start. To avoid the problem of a cut starting instead of a model, use View Align when viewing from a side-on view, then the cut will not consider how deep the selected face is.

Destructive Mode

Fast operations that automatically apply each Boolean operation. Instead of making a post-operation adjustment, you would instead use Blender's undo.

Optional Stuff

Not critical stuff but might help you occasionally

Grid Mode

You can use a grid as a cutter. Niche but nice!

Taper

Make your cutter shape taper into the cut. From the menu, select the taper amount for the shape.

Note: Instead of selecting the Taper mode, you can press Shift+T during an operation to enable a taper.

Lazercut/Autodepth

Lazercut is the function that cuts all the way through, while the toggled Autodepth can set a fixed cut distance, which is really useful if you make a series of cuts that need to all go to a fixed depth.

So endeth the Boxcutter section of the course.

Aerial Shot - A new direction

 The director provided feedback on my last concept. He's come up with a new sequence, as follows:

Shot 1: Planet (Low Orbit) showing the local region

Shot 2: Aerial shot showing the rugged location of the up-and-coming service road scenes with a mountain range backdrop and, further back, a coastline and an island that features a city from which plumes of smoke are visible.

This seems to flow better, but it's going to be a challenge to smoothly segue from a very high altitude to a lower one. Do I need to create a planetary texture that features the landforms that are visible in the follow-on shot? Yes, I think I do.

What first?

What does the planet look like?

Draw it!

Calantica is a young world with a single major continent and a tectonic system that runs straight along the equator. The main human settlement, New Caligari, is located just north of the equator, surrounded by numerous resource-gathering settlements.

The area of interest is located on the coast of a small northern sea with a more moderate climate.

I tried to sketch the regional area but found it very hard to project accurately. 

What next?

Build it!

1. Grab a big Earth texture map. I used a 16k map.

2. Clone the sea and make that the top layer. 

3. Import the sketched planet map, and use your image editor's tools to cut away the background. 

4. Create another layer and use it to trace the coastline in a black outline. This is where you can create the fine detail that will make the most of your 16k resolution. Once you have the coastline outline, fill it with black. It's a mask!

5. The sea around coastlines is lighter because continental shelves are shallow. One way to get that light-blue coastal sea is to create a copy of the landmass mask, paint it light blue, and apply a strong blur. Once you're happy, you can merge the deep-sea and coastal shallows layers.

6. Now use the landmass mask to cut a hole in the sea layer through which the familiar terrain of planet Earth will show through.

7. This part is fun/therapeutic. Use your image editor's powerful clone / infill brush  to paint into the big gaps using Earth's biomes. Careful brushing can create appropriate biomes such as mountain ranges, dry and temperate zones. Start by getting the land filled in without worrying too much about the details.

8. Once your land is filled in, start blending and cloning away the harsh borders.

9. You'll need a specularity map that will make the seas more reflective than the land. This is easy to create using a white layer and your land mask. There's an extra step, though! While creating the land textures, you should include big rivers and lakes, which also need to be selected, copied on top of the spec mask, and set as white patches, so they catch the light just like the oceans.

10. You might need a displacement map, although this can be fudged using Blender nodes. In True SKY 3, the Earth shader already does this.

Well, that's the easy part done. There will be fine-tuning required once you are happy with your staging, so you will understand which areas need the most attention to detail.