Reference Images and Auto Merge Vertices

a'll, I'm so proud of my yellow seat! Last night, I took a new approach and followed the modeling style of Blender Magic. There's a Blender Chair Modeling Tutorial available on their channel which helped me with creating this chair. Prior to starting that tutorial, I watched Blender Guru's chair modeling series which was split between multiple ~20 min videos that provided a more in-depth approach to explaining how to model. I found that reviewing both was pretty useful. What Blender Guru taught me was that I really need to get a better understanding of how to improve topology. However, he did point out that there are instances whereas it's best not to have it perfect. But regardless, it's always better to have good topology. I did find a topology book on Amazon that I may purchase later on in my journey. However, I don't feel deep enough yet in my journey to dive into such a big topic.

Both Blender Guru and Blender Magic leveraged the illustrations provided on the Fredericia site - which was perfect! I didn't realize that some furniture brands actually provide 2D drawings of their products. This was perfect for creating this chair because I was able to mimic the design as close as possible. Although the chair isn't an exact replica of the reference images, it looks pretty dang close (and good if I do say so myself)! I'm going to find some more items on that website to model as soon as I figure out how to convert a DWG file to a .png or .jpg.

Blender Magic introduced me to Auto Mirror. I think it's essentially a button that applies the Mirror modifier to an object. Whenever it's pressed, it splits the object in half and mirrors everything that you're doing on one side. I'm going to start using that one more for objects with symmetry. Blender Guru introduced me to Auto Merge Vertices which merges two vertices together as the vertices get closer to one another. I had some trouble at first using this feature. I think my threshold was too low (or too high?). In any cae, I resolved it and now it works properly. This feature helped with developing better topology. One thing Blender Guru pointed out that stuck with me is that you can identify whether something has good topology based on the direction of the faces. If I'm unable to make a full loop in my preferred direction, then the topolgy needs to be fixed and I could do so by auto merging vertices. Blender Magic also used the Auto Merge Vertices feature while constructing the sides of the chair.

One thing that's starting to settle into my brain is that most objects can be created simply with either a plane or a single vert. The entire base of the chair was made with a plane that I extended and moved around. The legs were made with a vert. The legs creation was actually a new workflow for me given that I had to convert it to Curves and then convert it to Mesh which later enabled me to bevel the bottom of the legs. I accidentally didn't make the back legs long enough to touch the ground.

And finally, I used proportional editing to create the slight indentation in the pillows. I'm glad Blender Magic pointed that out because I was wondering how to get the cushion to look more rounded to align with the curvature of the chair base. The final thing I'll share here is that the subdivision surface modifier is truly the supreme modifier of Blender haha. But what I'm realizing more now is that it's best to get the basic shape first of the object and to then later apply the subdivision surface modifier to make everything rounded. Since I started with a plane for the chair, once I had the shape I applied the solidify modifier to add some thickness.

Overall, this has been one of my favorite renders to date!