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Blender

Loop Cuts and Keyboards

I

actually loved my day 2 so much! It's got me pumped for day 3. Okay, so I spent the evening reviewing a video on Loop Cuts. Not much to say about that but I did learn something I didn't know before about Loop Cut & Slide. You can slide a vertex along connected edges or a singular edge without distorting the geometry of the model! To do so, the shortcut is G + G. I also learned that loop cuts stop at triangles or n-gons because it's not obvious which direction to go next! 

Alright, let's get down to what I really came here to write about...the keyboard that I made.

Whew, ya'll. Creating that keyboard was a doozy - especially when I initially tried to do so from scratch. I was not built for venturing out and doing that so soon. Prior to creating this keyboard, I had only ever created a keyboard in Spline. I tried to create the keyboard sans video help but I exhausted every brain cell I had and opted to find a video on YouTube. I only watched enough to understand how to model a keycap. I hadn't realized that keycaps are in fact not even on all sides. The back side is just ever so slightly straigther than the front. Once I had 1 keycap, I used the array modifier to create 5 along the initial row. I ended up changing that later than the road because I wanted to make the first key a different color than the other ones in the row.

I had found an example of a keyboard on Pinterest similar to the style I wanted to recreate. Having that photo reference helped out with some of the details such as making the face of the base a dark charcoal color and also elevating the keys just a bit upwards from the base. As I look at my own mechnical keyboard right now, it makes sense. Key caps are certainly not flushed to the base of the keyboard.

Where I spent a ridiculous amount of time was on lighting. I know that I'm not focusing on lighting until probably a month or so from now, however, I wanted to try my hand at it for creating this render. I opted for a 3 point light setup made from area lights. I definitely need to pay all the attention possible once I begin the lighting portion of this journey - a sista needs help!

All in all, I'm very satisfied with the keyboard that I made. The color palette is cute and I'd definitely buy it.

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