Blender In-Depth: Jewelry Design Foundations in 3D

1. Welcome: Welcome to this foundational class on Blender 3D design. In this class, you will learn how to create your own 3D printable jewelry in Blender, the open source 3D creation suite. It will be fully ready to be shared in Social Media Center client or a future fancy, as well as of course, a 3D printer. My name is Gesa Pickbrenner. I'm a 3D jewelry artist and designer. I've been trained in the traditional art of goldsmithing, and I'm an autodidact in a 3D printing design. Since 2017, I've been freelancing as a 3D jewelry designer, creating many designs for clients and customers as well as tutorials. This is a foundational class, meaning you don't need a whole lot of experience in Blender. It is helpful to know some basics about the navigation, but I'm going to break it down to the smallest steps wherever I can. Intermediate students of Blender will learn a lot of tips and tricks specifically suited for a 3D printing design. Even Blender pros will get in depth inside into the jewelry world and the considerations to make. Every level will learn something from this class. If you ever dreamed of fueling your career in the jewelry industry from the comfort of your own home, want to get to know Blender a bit more in depth, our desire to learn how to create something beautifully visualized and 3D printable, jump right in. There will be plenty of knowledge to absorb. You will learn to design basic pieces of jewelry for jewelers and goldsmiths. It will also allow you to render scenes for product visualization entry at printable assets in general, not only jewelry. Online opportunities for selling 3D work are growing, as more and more people need the services of 3D artists. In the end, you will have a firm grasp on how to approach the 3D design process for designing a 3D printable piece and presenting it in a professional way. You will also learn about problems that can arise and how to solve them. By the end of the class, you will have brought here 3D skills to another level. My name is Gesa Pickbrenner, and I highly invite you to take this class with me. 2. Project Overview: In this lesson, I'm going to talk a little bit more about the project and the things you need in detail. First, the requirements, of course, you're going to need a PC preferably with no potato like quality. Means if you want to use a 3D program, don't use a tree trunk to run it because it just won't work. You will discover yourself if your system is adequately equipped once you start Blender and start playing around with it. Next to an adequately equipped PC, you, of course, need the peripherals, meaning the keyboard and the mouse. Your keyboard should have a numpad and your mouse should have a scroll wheel. You can get by without any of these two really, you can omit those, but it will be just such a cumbersome ride, if you don't have a scroll wheel, the numpad, give or take, it can be omitted because you can substitute it with the F keys. But the scroll wheel, it's just so hard to navigate Blender without it, it can be done, but why would you give yourself a hard time when learning a topic that is already technical and complex? The next thing that would be good is pen, paper and some eraser maybe, and also a ruler and maybe circle stencil, something with which to draw some straight lines and also some circles. Apart from this, I will be covering everything in the class itself, you just need to follow along, and trust that I have your best interests at heart and be ready. Some milestones we're going to cover. First, I'm going to show you something about the sketch creation, or the technical drawing, which will help you to bring your idea to paper out of your head, make it more concrete, specific, and a little bit more detailed. Lots of pitfalls can be avoided when you do this before you start creating the 3D work. It is also very good if you can show something like this to your client, so he or she knows that you have really put some thought into your or her idea and also not just start without knowing where to go. This can help you out a lot. If you don't want to sketch, you can just use mine. I've put it in the Resource Files and then you just inserted into Blender and are good to go. The second is actually bringing the sketch into Blender so we can use it as a reference and also creating the ring band and all the parts that are drawn onto the sketch. So the whole modeling process is covered in this class from the ring band onto the clock phase to the donut that brings the ring band together and of course, the pervious stones that line the big dam in the center, which you're also going to model. In the end, you're going to visualize your ring with a rendering. Of course, I'm going to show you a lot about the preparation for the actual 3D printable file. This is a basic overview, what you can expect from this class. I can't even count the amount of tips, tricks and helpful advice, I have stuffed into this delicious turkey roll or tofu role of a class. It's not meant to be taken in one go. I would highly recommend to take small bites out of it, like from your favorite piece of chocolate candy. Because it's just so chock full of flavor, I mean information that it could be a little bit overwhelming if you do it in one go, even though I'm not going to stop you if you want to. I will pour the knowledge into you like into a known mega twister and you will get out of it what you put into it. Means if you follow along, you will definitely bring your Blender skills to the next level. But really this is more like a treasure trove of knowledge to which you can come back again and again and being able to devise more and more knowledge from it while you're advancing in your 3D career because something that you may have not noticed now, one year from now when you have already advanced your skills, this may be a totally different thing and you will rediscover this class, news so to speak, and will also be amazed at how much you've learned already. For those who think they might prefer something more lightweight, more lighthearted then I would refer to my first class where I teach you how to create something like this. A little whimsical, beautiful 3D printable pendant where you don't even need a 3D printer. I will cover everything you need to know to get your piece quickly and easily printed in this first class of mine. Head over there if you want something that is suited for the absolute beginner and doesn't require such a commitment. But if you want to get something really good done, then it needs some commitment. Especially a 3D design, if you want to learn it, you got to put some work into it and this class is meant to make it as easy and fun to follow as possible for you. Like with any delicacy, it sometimes takes some time to get used to. But once you do, I promise you it will be addicting and you will be craving for more. All that's left to say and now is, I'm very glad to host this class for you and welcome you to follow along on this journey with me. Ready? Then let's go. 3. Creating the Sketch: In this sketch, we are going to start with the sketch, which is basically also technical drawing because it will show the ring from three sides, the front, the top, and the side view. We're going to need some materials for this. Of course, a piece of paper preferably empty so you can sketch on it. This is just an example of my previous sketches which I made to brainstorm some stuff. This is also always helpful, so I recommend you keep something like this to have a good log book of your ideas. So this one but empty, you will need a pencil, an eraser and maybe in such a small, tiny eraser to correct some small details. Then the next step, the next thing I use is this. This is for artists. That's why is so big, but you can use a regular school one, the tiny ones. We have the circle stencil, which is also super helpful in drawing, you guessed, at circles. I use this one because here there are numbers and the sizes of the circles. You can of course, use such a thing like a regular circle tool. But I find the stencil is so easy to use that I mostly opt for this as long as my size of circle is on there. Well, and that's basically it you're going to need. If you don't want to sketch yourself, of course you can use mine that I put down into the resources of the class. But as I said, I highly recommend you give it a try. Because if you want to create something for somebody, it's always good if you give them a sketch before you start with the much more effort for 3D work. You're ready, then jump right into it. As so often happens with drawing, we start with an empty piece of paper. I get my circle stencil ready. We're going to draw the sketch double size. So our length gets multiplied times two, just because it's much easier to draw small details when the whole thing is bigger. I start by marking the far sides, the far quarters of the circle, which is going to be our inner ring band. I drew the circle before, but of course it's more logical to start with a cross-section and then use this as a reference center point. I'd make my lines a bit longer so I can use them as reference for the other two perspectives. I continue with the outside of the ring band. I'm just doing this by eye here, I aim for a thickness of ring band of around two millimeters but we're going to adjust this in Blender anyway. It's just as a reference for the overall shape and proportion. Now, I start with the so-called or well called by me the so-called clock face of the ring, which is this plate of diamonds in a circle. I aim to make it around 10 millimeters wide, and so I'm making a 20 millimeters wide here. I'm just going for the rough shape. I know it should be like little doughnut but with a flat top, maybe a little bit skewed to the outside so that the diamonds shine a bit to the outside, I continue to draw the upper part of the ring mount with the two prongs that go up to the diamond. Those two prongs will be the support for the stone. If you're not quite sure how prongs work, they're basically have a little cut where the stone will be sitting. On a little step on top of the stone, the prongs are going to get pushed over the stone to hold them in place like a little claw, it will be held from four sides sitting snugly inside its little step so it can't fall off. We'll still have a lot of light coming inside it and making it sparkle. Now, I'm drawing the little facets. Don't worry about this too much. We're all going to create this in Blender, and there, the shape will be defined and clarified much more beautiful, of course. Now, I'm drawing the little pave stones, pave is coming from the French. As I've learnt, it means something like cobblestones, because the pave stones are lying directly next to each other like little cobblestones, so it looks like one continuous, sparkling street of diamonds. Doesn't this sun wonderful, and the pave on the side of the ring band as well. As you see, I'm going a bit asymmetrical here with the stones on each side. Is one of my weak points, I am not really able to draw a really symmetrical thing. I don't know it just it always comes out a little skewed. But as we say in German, " [inaudible] " A little skewed is loved by God, and Blender has the wonderful functionality of being able to render something absolutely symmetrical. Of course, I'm relying on this. Beautiful. Now you see me transfer the ring drawing to the side view. I'm basically turning the ring 90 degrees in my mind and try to imagine how it would look from there. As you can see, the stone has quite a lot of space between the prongs and it's only held at the girdle, which is the broadest part of the diamond. Down to the top view, as you can see I use my circle stencil again. I'm drawing the facets on top of the stone by drawing two rectangles inside one another. I have also referenced the width of this drawing with my ruler by just drawing a very slight line from the first ring to the second so that I match the dimensions. Now I am measuring the clock face. Excuse me, if this is totally not the correct word, but I just think it reminds me of the dial of the clock. So I'm calling this, and I measure the clock face to recreate it with my stencil. I tried to find a pave size of the little stones here so that the stones are evenly distributed around the center and there's no big gap between them. I also draw the little prongs between the stones where you can see those little tiny specks I drew in between each of the small stones, which is similar to the big prongs, which are holding the center stone on place because you always need some material going over the stone itself to hold it in place. This is called the art of setting a stone. Then it's finally ready. I think we're done here. It can be imported into Blender as a JPEG or PNG to be your reference point for modeling the 3D model. See you there. I hope you have now a finished sketch and you're happy with the results, and if not, of course, you can always use mine. As I said, don't worry about it. I hope you also learnt a thing or two about the jewelry drawing creation process. In the next lesson, we're going to start with interface of Blender. Make sure you have Blender installed. If you need a more detailed instruction, there is one and my first class Blender for absolute beginners. Just check it out if you need some help. 4. Basic Interface: Blender has sometimes a confusing interface, especially for beginners, because many people don't really know how to navigate it at first. It does not really look like any other program I've come across. For me, it was also quite important to learn the basics of the navigation at first. If you are quite proficient in this, you can of course skip this lesson, but I will just give a basic overview about what to use and how to use it. Remove the splash screen with the artwork by clicking on it once. If you're seeing this for the absolute first time, and maybe also have the basic start cube, the camera, and the light in your view port visible, then I'd suggest you head over to my first class, which is about Introduction of Blender for Absolute Beginners. In this, I'm also showing you how to prepare the Blender units so that your objects correspond to the correct size in the real world. Ready and set, then we are going to dive a little bit deeper into the Blender interface. What you're seeing in the center of the screen right now is our main view port where all our objects in the 3D space are going to appear. If you hover the mouse over the separation line between the view port top and the timeline at the button, it becomes this double arrow, which of course means that you can move the separation between the two areas. If you move your mouse in the left or right-rounded corner of the areas, it becomes a little plus sign. If you click now, and hold it, you see there appears this big arrow in one of the areas, and if you then move your mouse into the direction of the arrow, and let it go, you will see that one of the areas swallows the other. This also works with the other areas inside your interface. If you think you've messed up, and it looks really hideous now, just click on "File" and "New" and "General" to go back to your previously saved new files there. By pressing "N," you can show and hide the sidebar, and by pressing "T," you can show and hide this left side menu. If you create a cube with "Shift A" and choosing cube, you will see that the cube appears in your view port, and of course, it will appear in the outliner in the upper right of your screen. The outliner is basically the same as the Explorer in Windows, or the Finder in Mac OS, and you see now that the cube has appeared inside the collection, and the collection is something like a folder, or better yet, a layer in Illustrator. You will see what I mean in a second. On the left side, you can choose different options for manipulating the object, like moving and rotating it around, though I really recommend you use the shortcuts here and I'm going to teach you to work Blender with shortcuts, which is much easier and a lot faster. Here you can see the measurement tool, which is very helpful. You can either use it just to measure by "I" or you press "Control" and using your mouse for snapping to your object, like I did here, and you can see that a cube has a diameter of two millimeters. If you want to delete your measurements, either you choose another tool from the sidebar on the left, or you just click on your measurement and press "Delete". Of course, through splitting your screen, you can also have two view ports to see the object from different perspectives while working on it. Hey, I hope your Blender interface does now look clean and tidy, again. All the strangely positioned pieces of interface have been tidied up with a new version of a file, and you're ready to get to the next step, which is to download some of the add-ons that we're going to use in this class. 5. Addons: Just a quick tutorial on how to install addons on Blender, don't worry, this is short and sweet. Here I show you the GitHub side of Mikhail Rachinskiy and his addons, which is the JewelCraft addon and also the booltron addon, both of which we are going to use in this class. Just go through how to install and download this first link. In both cases, just keep the zip file zipped and copy and paste those into a specific folder that you will use for Blender addons. I keep mine under Documents, Blender addons. Then open Blender, go to "Edit", "Preferences", and to the section "Add-on", and there you can click on "Install". Navigate to your folder and install both addons just by clicking on them and clicking "Install". Then you can search for them in the search bar by typing the first letters of the addon and just tick the box so that they are activated. You can also click on "Save Preferences, even though Blender is supposed to do this automatically by now. The rest we're going to cover and the rest of the class. See you there. 6. Inserting the Sketch: Inserting the sketch. We're now going to insert the sketch, so you have a perfect reference to work from and create your 3D model. Make sure you have your sketch ready, Blender open, and let's go. First, Shift A and select image, and reference. Navigate to the folder where you have saved your sketch, and select it. If it comes out all skewed like mine, navigate to the sidebar, remember the shortcut is N, and there you can select all three rotation axes when in object mode like so, and set them to zero. Hit seven on your numpad to be directly above the object. Select it with the left mouse button if not selected, and move it with G until the top view of the ring is directly above the true axis. Then click on the tab Object Data Properties in the Properties panel, where the properties of the image shown can be seen, and hit Transparency. Now you can see the axis and the grid background exactly. Where the object is selected, hit shift D, this will make a copy of your image. Hit R and X and 90. This will rotate your object for 90 degrees along the x-axis, which becomes highlighted in this way. Hit one on your numpad. You can then position the second sketch according to your drawing so that it also centers on where the two axis meet. Then hit three on your numpad, so you are on side view. Again, press shift D, and again press R, this time Z for the z-axis and 90 degrees, and you should be directly looking at it. Again, hit G to correctly position your sketch. You can then move the images so that they're all in the center and overlapping through changing their location in the transform tab in the sidebar. You can then rename your objects. I choose something here that makes sense. I also create a new collection by right-clicking on Scene Collection, and choosing New Collection. Very good to make this a habit because with a bigger project it is so easy to get confused with too many parts that have no useful name. It is also possible to drag and drop the images themselves, and also the collections, and put them inside one another. Collections can be really seen as layers like in Illustrator, if this reference is helpful for you. Otherwise, think of them as folders, which will help you keep a nice tidiness in your file. One other thing you can see me doing here is clicking on the little funnel symbol in the upper-right corner of the outliner. There you see something which is called Restriction Toggles. Here you can choose which viewport options should be available for your objects. I choose the little mouse symbol, which is equivalent to the lock symbol in Illustrator, and now I can click on the mouse symbol next to reference image, and this means that all the objects inside the reference image collection are now unclickable. So no matter what I'm doing with all the other parts, those will remain unaffected. Everything ready? Your sketch is inside Blender. Then in the next lesson, we're finally going to start with a basic ring band. See you there. 7. Ring Band I: In this class, we're going to create the best ring band. I'm going to introduce the basic functions of modeling. We're going to use the well-known, and sadly not much appreciated basic cube because usually it gets deleted every time you start a new session. But not this time. We're going to start with the basic cube. Creating the ring band is going to split into three parts because it is just very detailed. I hate this guy who is making this noise outside. I can't work like this. I can't work like this. It's too loud. Creating the basic ring band that's going to be split into three parts because I am just going into a lot of detail here, so to make sure no one gets left behind and you know exactly what you have to do, and what I'm doing, what you see on the screen. So have fun and follow along. At first, we need to create a ring size help. We will create a circle that will help us shape our ring band exactly like in the sketch. First press one on your numpad to be in front view. Press shift A, curve, and create a circle. Now, in the lower left corner, you can see that a new menu appeared. In this menu, you can set the settings for newly created stuff. In this case, I am choosing the radius of my circle. It corresponds to the ring size I am going for. To make it visible from the front view, which we are looking at right now, you can choose a line and view. My references are pretty small compared to the circle. We need to make them clickable again. So press the little mouse icon next to our reference image collection. You can select everything that is in that collection by right-clicking on the collection itself, and choose select objects. When I first try to scale them, the ring sketch does not stay in the same location. To avoid this, you can change the reference point. Click on the little icon up here, choose the 3D cursor. If it's not on the center-right now, press shift C. In this way, the pictures get all scaled up from the same reference point. Nice. If you are getting a little crazy right now because of all the shortcuts, don't worry. They will soon become muscle memory and it will be like playing a super nice Blender piano, I promise. Align your ring sketch with the circle you created, and don't forget to save. Onto the ring band itself, we are going to need that cube again. So hit shift A and create cube. Best to put the cube into the correct collection right away. Hide your sketches either by clicking on the tick next to your collection or in the eye symbol. Tap to edit mode. While having the mouse over the cube, hit control R to make this little yellow line appear. Accept it by hitting the left mouse button. Now you can slide those vertices along the cube if you want. But we need them in the center. So press right mouse button once and they will appear exactly in the center of the cube. Hit art see to make it transparent, then hit C to get the selection circle. Paint the leftmost vertices with it, and hit X to delete all of those. Now select the vertices on the right side. Use G and X to pull them out along the x axis. I pulled them out here roughly 18 to 20 millimeters. Then to align the cube better to your ring sketch, you can hit three to change to side view. You can scale it with S a little bit to make it fit the sketch better. Super. Then let's go into the next part of the ring band where we are going to curve the ring band around our ring size curve. 8. Ring Band II: In the second part, we're going to curve the ring band, so it really looks like a ring band and not like a flat elongated cube anymore. Now we're going to use modifiers for the first time in this session. Modifiers are very useful tools and blender to change the look and the behavior of your objects. The first modifier that we're going to use today is the mirror modifier, which I bet you have guess it, mirrors your object along an axis or a reference point. Mirroring is often very useful if you want to build something symmetrical. Please make another row of vertices in the center, because we're going to delete one-half of the cube again. Deselect everything with odd A, and with C you can paint the vertices you want to delete again, and hit X vertices until it does. Now we're going to get to the real staff, onto the modifier properties step. This is the blue wrench symbol here on the right side. Choose add modifier and create the mirror modifier. To see right away, the object now gets mirrored onto the other side along the x-axis, which you can also see here in the modifier panel. Also press the Y, so it is highlighted and now it gets mirrored onto all four sides. Please also turn clipping on. What this does is it prevents the vertices from going through the mirrors, so to speak. Because now we have two mirror axis, the x and the y, and the vertices will stick to themselves, but they will not go through the mirror. Create another modifier, this time in the D form section, the curve modifier. This mod needs a curve to tell the object what to do. As it so happens, we have one handy sitting right in the middle. So choose the ring band circle as the curve object in the modifier. This does not look too curves, right? It seems our ring band is actually flattening the curve. The thing is, for the curve to work and our object to gracefully shape itself like a yoga master, it needs small vertices. Right now our elongated cube only consists of five faces, four of which are very long. Faces cannot bend, they are flat. In order to make the cube be more bendy, it needs smaller sections. Think of it as joints on a body. If your body only consisted of one long bone, you'd have a hard time tying your shoes on, right? Short intermezzo about vertices, edges and faces. You can manipulate geometry and edit mode via their vertices, their edges which are two vertices forming line, or their faces, which are at least three vertices or more forming a plane, which is then called a face. Okay, this is how we're going to do it. You've done it before, control R on the cube. But now instead of clicking right away to slot your choice in, use a mouse reader to make more segments, and only then click left mouse button, right mouse button to confirm, and boom, look at this, isn't this the nicest curve you've ever seen? Well, I bet not, but it will get better, I promise. Right now, one-half of it is below and the other half is above the curve. A to select all and edit mod G, Z and one. This will bring all the vertices of the cube up one millimeter above the center x axis. Now we are going to make the ring more rounded so its contours are not as Lego bricks anymore. For this, again, add another modifier, and this time you're going to choose the subdivision modifier. This is about the most used modifier in blender, because what it does, it allows you to make your object more rounded while still being able to manipulate it with the vertices in a very easy way. You can also increase the amount of the subdivisions by increasing the amount of levels in the viewport. I will choose three, and now it seems even softer because it subdivides three times. If you now tapped to edit mode again, you see that the vertices have not changed, they're still the same as before. That blender acts as if the object now had many more. Long story short, the subdivision modifier makes your object looks softer and have more details, but it also increases the amount of memory planner uses in its calculations. So use with caution if you're going higher up. Freddy, your ring band is curved, and not looking like this V-shape anymore. Then let's jump right in to the next lesson, where we finalize the basic ring band and create those little horns on top. 9. Ring Band III: The third part of creating the ring band will, of course, be about the upper part, which are those little horns that will hold the beautiful diamond in place. I don't know if they are called horns, but it fits pretty well, I think, they look like horns. You could just call it the basic ring band split at the top, I guess as well. Let's go. Now it's time to create the upper part of the ring band. Don't forget to save. Create another row of 30 C's in the center of the ring band. Then set the curve modifier to be visible in edit mode, and also turn on on-cage so that the view and the edit mode corresponds to the object mode. Maybe now a word or two about object and edit mode in general. By now you surely find out that the object mode corresponds to the display of the object or the shape of the object after all the modifiers are applied. In edit mode, you will have the option to see the vertices, how they are really still are before all the modifiers and through those little icons like on-cage and visible in edit mode, you can switch through the various stages. The vertices are deformed by the modifiers, just like here with the ring band, which originally still is flat in edit mode. But after applying all the modifiers, it would have this shape. Now until extruding the upper part of the ring band, please switch to face select mode by tapping three your keyboard and select those two faces on the inside of the ring band. If you now hit E and move your mouse, you will see that you can extrude those faces out of the face of the ring band. Just as with the ring band itself, we need a few joined points, so you can just extrude it a little bit and then extrude some more just like I did here and then I select the upper two faces and also extrude them separately. Now you see why we did the division with Control R before so that we can make two tracks of our one ring band. Of course, right now it's a little bit too thin. Select the faces and pull them up a little bit. I have turned on cage off again. The movement of the ring band corresponds to the movement of the curved ring band here. Right now I have this little spike in my ring band. The problem here is because we have the mirror modifier on, it's important that there are no inside faces. You see part of the ring band is hollow already, but we need to delete all the faces that lay directly on the mirror axis. Now it's hollow and when, you note on the mirror modifier on, then it is a nice continuous surface. You see I'm switching between vertices mode and edge mode and face selection mode with 1, 2, and 3 here depending on what I want to manipulate and what I want to move. This time I've selected the edges and I'm extruding them and shaping them around the virtual diamond that is not yet there, but will be in a second. Don't worry, we're going to sculpt it together. Here, when I tried to rotate the selected edges, I still have a 3D cursor as the focal point. Remember the scanning of the sketch pictures around the center? This is why I select here the individual origin, which makes the selection use itself as a reference point. Often when the scaling or rotating behave strangely, the focal point can be adjusted and it will work better. I also very often use S or R for scaling and rotating and afterwards, one of the X's letters like y to make it rotate only around the one axis. One important point I would like to mention in general is when you're sculpting those shapes, no matter if it's jewelry or anything else, especially if it has a lot of detail, it pays off to start with very simple shapes. Don't go over the top. Don't try to include details right away. Makes sure that your oval shape is nice before even thinking about going into the details. You will thank me later. At least that's the best way for me and many other 3D artists also recommend to work like this. There we have our little pair of horns or, however one might call this shape. Basically, you are done with the basic ring shape. Of course, if you just want a ring band that is close together, you would just skip the split and extend the ring band further out so that it meets in the middle and then you would have a ring band that is very easily adjustable because you can just change the size of the curve and the ring band will get bigger or smaller accordingly, which is a very neat trick. Hey, you're done with the ring band. Make sure to create a project file in the project gallery down below so we can partake in your journey if you want. It doesn't need to be the finished product. It can be something where you had a little problem you want to show because you deviated from the original plan and something else came out of it. So please feel free to share anything you want with the community and of course, I am going to give you feedback and I welcome you to also give feedback to your fellow 3D artists. 10. Sculpting the Diamond: In this lesson, we are going to finally sculpt the diamond shape. You're going to create your own very beautiful solitaire that you can then set and train in when you want in any color and any carat size. You're basically your own diamond cutter. Let's go. Please create a new collection, colored diamond, then hit Shift A, Image and Reference. Choose the file that you want to use. If you need the reference image for the stone, you can download it in the description. But of course, you can find those stones schematics also online in various varieties. Center the pixel that the stone is exactly in the center. Go to the object data properties and turn transparency on so you can see your grid and your axis. The cool thing about reference images is that they don't show in the Render. It's just there for you to be able to model from. Everything ready and set, all three sketches perpendicular to each other and sitting beautifully in your viewport. Great job. Let's go to the next step, which is of course, the modeling itself. Start by hitting Seven on your numpad to look at the sketch from above. Hit Shift A, choose mesh and circle. This is just a circle without any faces inside, it only consists of vertices. Now, on the left side, you see this little menu where you can specify the different settings for your circle. If you can't see your circle right now, choose Align to view, then it should lie flat before you. The important point here is to reduce the number of vertices. The top part of the stone, which is called the table has eight corners, and so we're going to create eight vertices. Then we're going to do exactly the same again with Shift A, Mesh, and Circle. This should reproduce the circle now with less vertices and then you can scale it directly in the left menu. We're going to set this circle to have 16 vertices, just making a new collection for the three sketches. After tidying up a bit, select the outer circle and hit Tab for edit mode. We're now going to extrude a new ring of verts with E, we're going to combine some of those vertices. To do this, select two vertices, then hit M, and then you can choose where you want to merge them. The last vertex that you will have selected will be marked wide, so choose At Last and both vertices match in the position of the last vertex you selected, then only one vertex is left. Do this with every second pair of vertices here. Once you've done that, tap to object mode again, select both objects and hit Control J. Even though they are not yet connected, if you now switch to edit mode again, you can select both vertices from the outer as well as the inner ring, and also combine them, and that's exactly what we're going to do. Select three vertices and hit F to create a new face between them. Next other faces with four vertices between the outer and inner ring, hit Alt Z again and then you can actually see the faces that you've created. Yeah, maybe I should have done this before. Now press Two for edge selection mode, and then you can use C to select all four edges nearly at once by just putting the circle inside. You can deselect with middle mouse button, and you can exit the surface selection mode with escape. We'll also need a giant face in the center of the stone, which will form the table. Usually it's best to info quads and blender, that means faces with four vertices around them, mainly because it makes subdivision much easier. On my screen, you can see the difference between subdividing with quads and subdividing with tris. Also, some other techniques are way easier with quads like texturing and UV mapping. But in this case, we are building a diamond, it can have sharp corners and sharp edges, so we can build faces with however many or little vertices we want. Once you've created the center face, keep it selected. Now we're going to give the stone its three-dimensional shape. I first tried this with proportional editing, see this little icon up here. This means that the vertices are influenced by the ones that I'm moving, indicated by this big circle. But then I realized that this would give the stone a shape that I didn't really want, so I turned it off again and just moved the center face with G and Z, until the face was where I wanted it. I also selected those other vertices in between the table and the girdle and moved them also up a bit with G and Z, so the shape of the stone would be approximated as exactly as possible. Select all the bottom most vertices with Alt leftmost button. Hit E, and pull them out. Once you have the lowering of vertices selected, go to Select and choose Checker Deselect. If the wrong ones get deselected, try making another vertex, the active vertex. The one's matching the illustration should be selected and you can pull them down by using E and Z, and combine them with M, and choose center. Then we subdivide the edges that we have just created with Control R, and this will create a new vertex on each of those edges. Watch out that you actually had one before using Control R, or otherwise you won't see your newly created vertex. In edge mode, the edges will still look the same, you can just select the halves of them separately. Now you can close up the diamond by creating new faces. I'm doing this similar to as in the beginning by selecting three vertices and hitting F, and hit little time Save As. If you click the first and then Control click the last, which could form a face with the first one, then all of them gets selected, so you can just hit F to close them up. Then onto the last bit of the diamond. Switch once more to side view. Select those vertices in the center, and then double tap G, and those will slide down along the edges. You can pull them down a little bit more to match the sketch more closely. Now we only need to close the bottom of the diamond up. That is basically the shape of the diamond nearly completed. The only thing that's still missing is rounding the outer girdle of the diamond a bit. Let's embrace the diamond cutter inside us and polish those off. Create another circle, give it around 64 vertices. Scale the circle down a bit, tap to edit mode, hit E, scale outward. Select All and extrude it again. Now we have this giant cylindrical segment. We're now going to cut this segment from the stone. Select the stone, choose Modifier, choose Boolean, Difference should already be selected, and then you can just use the Eyedropper tool to select our giant cylinder. Once the Boolean mode was in place, I singled out my diamond by hitting Slash on my numpad. I'm not really sure if this is the default shortcut, but you can go to Edit, Preferences and Keymap, and there you can Tab local and change your preferred keystroke for local view quick and easily. You can see that the Boolean modifier has polished off our girdle very nicely. To make the polishing permanent, I apply the Boolean modifier and I also delete the cylinder. That looks like real diamond to me. Then I scaled it in object mode to make it bigger oval, put it up between my horns. It looks a little bit [inaudible] right now, and slide it down a little bit. Yeah. Here it is. I hope the little sculpting tips and tricks I shared with him were helpful in some way, and you're happy with what you created, and if not, of course, I'm here for you. Just share your concerns with me in the comments. Let's get into the next lesson, where we are going to create the clock face, which is the part on the top of the ring where all those little Purvi stones are going to sit in a circle. Let's go. 11. Creating the Clockface: Clockface creation. Even if it's not called that in real life, I don't care, I call it that. It's the part on top of the ring which will encircle the diamond, and let's have some fun with it. Some more sculpting. Let's go. Switch to the top view by hitting three on your numpad. Create another nice round circle this time with 32 vertices. Once you have that, you can scale it either in the left menu or with your mouse so that it fits the sketch. Switch to Edit Mode with Tab, select all the vertices with A, press "E" and right mouse button once, and then press "S" to scale the extruded vertices outwards to fit the outer contour of the clock face. Then hit "Tab" to switch to object mode again. Choose the subdivision modifier. You can also press Control 1 or 2 or 3 for different levels of subdivision. Right now, not much is happening except that the circle becomes a little bit less edgy. You can move the circle upwards towards the stone where it should sit. At this moment, I found that I really didn't like my original sketch as much as putting the clock face directly next to the stone to give it that wonderful radial sun dial like appearance. As I mentioned, this happens to me quite often and the initial sketch never has to be the final version. If you can improve, then you should do it. Don't hesitate to over write. Even under the Mona Lisa, you can find many unfinished lines and patterns of color. So don't be afraid to iterate and improve on your original idea. Don't get stuck, don't get fixed. Be like water, my friend. Well, to get on with our clock face, then switch with top to edit mode again. You can select the outer row vertices when you click with a left mouse button and holding Alt key at the same time in between one of the vertices. This will select the whole row of them. Move the outer edge a little bit down to make the radial clock face shine outwards a little bit, just a detail, but it makes a little bit of difference. Then switch to object mode again and choose another modifier, the standard solidify modifier. For this modifier to work correctly and to have the correct numbers shown, we need to apply the scale. If you did my first class on the foundations, you might remember that it is always useful to apply the scale of an object before modeling further onward so the planner knows exactly how big it should be. Press "Control A" and hit "Apply the Scale." Then in the sidebar on the item, you will see that the scale is now one in all three axes. It also means that the thickness which is shown on the solidify modifier corresponds exactly to the real thickness. Now you see you can extrude it out very easily. If you switch the order of the modifiers, it is often that the result changes because modifier are working in a sequence and if you have the first modifier, then the second gets applied afterwards and so on. Here I have now swapped both modifiers for short time. When you solidify the object first and then subdivide it, it gets all rounded. But if you subdivide it first, the subdivision only gets applied to the original shape and not to the extruded vertices. It can be always useful to play around with the modifiers some. If you have the feeling that your results are funky, it can really help to try and put them in another sequence. Now we can close the gap between the lower two sections of the ring band. With Shift D, you can make a copy, pull it down with a G and then adjust the shape and size a little bit. Make it a bit smaller which is always good construction wise to save some material and also further aesthetic impact because you repeat the shape of the circle on top and this will create a nice little rhythm. Just like before, as we did with the upper clock phase and the section of the ring band that touches it, now I am lengthening the lower part of the ring band a little bit to touch the clock face so everything can be connected later on. After deleting the subdivision modifier, I apply the solidify modifier to the lower ring and afterwards, I apply a new subdivision modifier. As you can see, the vertices now became tangible in Edit Mode. I can now scale them all individually. I'm also using a technique called edge crease here. For this, I select a row of vertices with Alt left mouse button and then I hit "Shift E" and put my mouse in any direction. I could also hit Shift E and type in a number between zero and one. What this will do, it allows me to leave some of the edges creased. They will not be affected by the subdivision modifier, and it is a very neat little trick if you want to subdivide something that still keeps some sharp edges. As you can see, I do not pull the edge crease up to one completely, so my edge is only a little bit sharper than the rest of the subdivided ring or donut. This object henceforth shall be called the lower doughnut because the end result will be made out of metal, it will get settled down and polished. There will be no such thing as an infinitely sharp corner anywhere. I think most things in the real world don't have infinitely sharp corners. Another thing is, if you want to make a mold from your print and you have very tight spots, then it is very likely that the mold can get stuck or will break in the whole casting process. You might want to keep that one in mind. Even if you're just designing for the fun of it and do not want to print it later on, it just looks more realistic. Similar thing with upper clock face. I first delete the subdivision modifier to first apply the solidify modifier here. I apply the scale. Actually not really sure why I did this here. I think it's just a habit. We don't really need it right now, but it's good to do it. Anyway, I afterwards created another subdivision modifier and then I also crease the upper edges of the clock face. First, again, it looks nice. It radiates outward like this, but it also gives enough material and space to put all the [inaudible] stones on there. I'm currently doing some more fine adjustment and fine tuning to make the ring connect better to the clock face and the lower donut. I think I have shown you everything that I'm currently doing, at least the techniques. If you have any unclarities, don't hesitate to write or just lower the speed of the video to get a bit more detail. Second, we are going to select all the innermost vertices. Those are the ones that lie exactly on the x-axis and 0, Z height. We can select them all with Box Select. Don't forget to turn transparency on so you will select also the ones on the backside of the model and then press G and Z. Because those vertices are in reality still on a flat plane, if you move them up and down along the z-axis, the inner diameter of the ring band will get bigger or smaller. I make it so that it lies exactly on the ring size circle we created the first place. I also adjust a bit of the upper part of the ring band so that it really follows this nice smooth circle. I now want to bend the donut a bit in the shape of the ring itself. For this, I switch to Edit Mode, then here we can use C to select the left and rightmost vertices all the way around. Then I hit "O" to turn on the proportional editing tool. When I now use G to move those selected vertices down, the whole ring will bend within. If the bend is too strong or too soft, you can increase or decrease the strength with your mouse wheel. Hey, you've got your clock face ready. Awesome. Now, because everyone needs a little support from time to time, we are going to create some also for our clock face which is of course those little parts in between the upper part of the ring band and the lower part. See you there. 12. Creating Supports: Creating subparts. In this lesson, of course we're going to create this subpart for the clock phase to put it all together and keep it stable and also make it work in the real world. So how are we going to go about it? We're going to copy a piece of the ring band, select the outer two vertices of the ring band, like I do here and then hit Shift+D. You can move it away a little bit and you see you now have two unconnected vertices just floating around in space. You can also see them up here because they also get affected by the curve modifier because they technically still belong to the same mesh. Maybe you remember from the way we sculpted the diamond, you can have one mesh, but the vertices are still separate. Now extrude those vertices and you see they appear up there and now I do the opposite of Ctrl+J. So I do not join two separate meshes into one but instead I hit P and choose Selection and this will make those four vertices we just created into a separate mesh. You will also see it in the outline before the ring band was only called cube, shame on me I did not name it properly. Now we have the Cute Cube 001. Now we can apply the curve modifier on this newly created objects. This means those four vertices we separated just now are now in this position permanently. Even in edit mode, they're up here. As you can see, the vertices go through the mirror, hence clipping on vertices and the x's, so everything becomes connected. With E, pull out a new layer of vertices. Now a little bit about the mirror modifier in more detail. First, moving the mirrored object in object mode. You see this little orange spot in the center, this is called the origin. The origin of the object changes only if you move it in object mode. It specifies the real location of the object, so to speak. By default, the mirror modifier uses the origin as the mirror axis. If you move the object in object mode, this would mean that the mirror also changes its place and it's not exactly in the center anymore. For a symmetrical object like our ring, this can be a problem. So I'm going to specify a designated mirror object. Just like in the beginning with the sketches, we will create an empty object, which we will not show in any render. It is just for you to help modeling. Then we will rename this object to mirror and now you can choose this object in the mirror modifier. It should stay in the center and you should turn off the little mouse icon in the outline so that it cannot be accidentally moved. So as you see, blender works with the objects itself or themselves, but also with a lot of references so that it knows where to move and how to rotate scale. It's just like when you have a landmark, you're orienting yourself. For example, there's a big tower in the forest. You know, if you go around the big tower, you come to the lake or something like this. That's probably how blender thinks about those reference points. Like a big tower in the woods and on the other side you get to the lake, or the prize or the treasure, who knows. So I hope this was somehow enlightening for you and has given you a better grasp on the mirror modifier and how to use it. If used properly it is just a very mighty tool and blender. I'm now adjusting the support for the clock phase a little bit so that it is a bit thicker and also a little bit more curved. But really there's no right and wrong here, it should just touch the upper and the lower clock phase and be in harmony, optically speaking with the rest of the ring. One neat trick is if the clock phase is in your way, but you still want to see where it is, go to the Object Properties while having the object selected and there you can go down to Viewport Display, and then you choose Wire and now the object will always be shown as a wire, not as an opaque object. In the render, this has no effect by the way. It's just for the view port for the modeling. In the end, we will all pool or combine those pieces together and they should combine in a nice and harmonious way. Now we're going to create an array modifier, so we will make four copies, which will all correspond to one editable mesh. Create a new empty by hitting Shift + A Empty and Plain Axes. Those plane axes, I'm going to name Clock Phase Support. Choose Add Modifier and chose Array, here you have various options. You can adjust the count, how many of them there are. You can adjust the relative offset so they're further away from each other or together, but we won't need the Relative Offset today. We're going to choose the Object Offset and it will be similar to the mirror modifier. We will choose our empty we have created and now I am going to show you a neat little trick. Array modifiers not only work in a straight line, but you can also use them in circular motion. So once you have specified the empty as your reference point, remember the tower in the forest, you can rotate it along the Z axis for them to be exactly at 90 degrees apart. Hit left mouse button once and then in the left side menu, write there 90 degrees or you can just write there, 360 divided by four. So go out of local mode and you will see that your supports are connecting the inner and outer clock phase now. Here I wanted to make them a little bit broader on top than at the bottom, but I did not really like this shape, so I just hit Ctrl + Z a few terms. Well, I did not hit Ctrl + Z, I just re-adjusted it but I could also have just used Ctrl + Z to get back to my original shape. Man, this is such a long journey, but in the end there is a sparkling beautiful diamond ring waiting for you and you can really create something with it. I mean, this is next-level stuff. Once you getting into blender, you can realize your ideas. You can give depth and space and everything to your inner world, to your ideas, to the ideas of others. You can serve others if that's your thing. So stay tuned for the next lesson. Finished with the subparts? Happy with your result? Then let's get on to the next lesson in which we're going to set the center stone into its little claw prongs. 13. Setting Center Prongs: In this lesson, I'm going to teach you about the Goldsmithing art of setting a stone, which means putting the diamond into its four little claws that hold it together in the center, so that it works out in the end. Now that we have sitting our diamond in the center of the clock face so nicely, it's time to give them some prongs, so he won't fall out of it. I'm going to do it in a similar way as we did with the ring band when we copied a part of the vertices. Just here, I select the upper cap of our clock face support, and I again press "Shift D" to copy it. Then "P" to separate it from the whole mesh. When we now try to move those objects in object mode, because the origin gets moved with them, the area modifier starts to behave strangely. To avoid that, remember we switched to edit mode so the origin does not change its place. Our prongs are not closed yet, so we can all select the lower ring of vertices, and hit "F". Now you already see how our diamond is clamped in the middle of them so nicely. The next step will be to adjust the prongs a little bit so that it looks more realistic, and would also come out realistic when printed. First, you see that our prongs right now have this little button in the center. I was wondering for some time why this was the case until I figured out. There were some faces on the mirror axis of all of those objects, and once I deleted those, it looked nice and smooth on the surface again. Now shaping the prongs so that they grasp the diamond in-between them, like little claws. I also add another row of vertices with "Control R", and reshape the prongs a little bit, because I felt they were a little bit too small for the big diamond. Then I discovered something strange. The mirror was not behaving correctly, because even though I had clipping turned on, it did not prevent the vertices from going through the mirror. I was puzzled for a bit. You also see this little nick in the back of the prongs. It shouldn't be there normally with the mirror modifier. I was really puzzled. As you can see, I'm diving around the diamonds here, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I just couldn't figure out what is wrong. But then I finally turned off the area modifier, and I saw that the mirror was mirroring the wrong thing. It was mirroring across the x-axis, as you see, it mirrored only the half, and it didn't mirror the thing itself on the correct side. When I then switched to the y-axis, so it mirrored across the y-axis, things started to look up. After adjusting the [inaudible] prong a little bit in local view, I could turn the area modifier on again, because now the mirror was on the correct part of the piece. I selected all the prongs, and also the reference object. Remember, tower in the forest, and they rotated at all of them for 45 degrees. Maybe this is all a bit hard to understand if you're just getting started with Blender, but maybe it is helpful for you to see my way of finding a solution for such problems. Trying to turn on the modifiers in the correct order can help you really narrow down the problems that might arise, and find those funky little errors that sometimes sneak in. You got your center prongs ready? Very nice. Then we're going to create the pavilion now. 14. Ring Band Pavé I: Yes. Finally, we're going into the fleshy parts of the whole thing. In this lesson we're going to create the pavé on the side of the ring band with the help of the JewelCraft add-on, and a few curves. Make some diamonds follow a curve, and make everything look really amazing, realistic, and beautiful. Let's go. We are going to work with a curve again. You know, the first time you've worked with curves today was with the ring size, which helped you curve the ring band around. This time, we are going to work with a little different kind of curve. It's not a circle. It's just a curve. We're again going to make something follow along this curve, and in this particular case, it's going to be our pavé. At first, please hide all the collections we do not need at the moment, like the clock face and the diamond. Then switch to the top view with seven on your numpad, hit "Shift A", and create curve, in this case, a Bezier curve. Move the Bezier curve a bit to the side. Whoops, I used the 3D cursor in the center as reference point, and not the origin of the curve. Tap to edit mode, and then you can see the handles of the curve, as well as those little arrows growing along the curve. Those arrows symbolize the curvature, and the strength of the curvature. If you want your curve totally straight, you select both handles of a point, press "S" for scale, then an axis, and then "0". In this case, I used the y-axis. You can also scale the length of the handles by just scaling up and down, and now we have a totally straight curve. Technically, it's not a curve anymore. It's a line, but it's still our Bezier curve. All right, now switch to front view with one on your numpad. We're going to make this curve follow our ring band. Select the right point of the curve, this will also select its handles, and move it to the uppermost point of the ring band. Then you can select the second point, and move it to where the pavé will approximately end, around here. Make sure you're still in front view, so the curve will be absolutely straight on the y-axis when we move the handles now, and then you can use the handles to make the curve follow the curvature of the ring. You influence with the length of the handles, the strength of the curvature. The longer the handles are, the stronger the curvature is. This of course works not only in two, but also in three dimensions, but it's really easier to go two dimensions at a time. Super-duper, you got all of that? Ready to create your first pavé? I might add that when I started out with jewelry, pavé setting was like the non-plus ultra in jewelry design in Blender for me. I had no idea how to get from a simple stone to the whole ring being covered in stones, and making them look nice, and rhythmical, and in a pattern. It was just non-conceivable for me how I should go about this. Special shout to Mikhail Rachinskiy, the creator of the JewelCraft add-on, which is so helpful with this, and now I'm going to show you a way of easily creating a pavé line with it. So let's go, shall we? First go to the sidebar, and click on your JewelCraft add-on, click on "Gems", click on "Add gem", and then you should see a diamond appearing right in the center of your view port. If you need other stones, they're available there as well in all shapes and sizes. In the side menu here on the left side, you can change the size of the stone. Select the stone, then select the curve we just put on top of our ring band, and select "Distributed on curve", and what you should see now is that the diamonds are spread evenly on the curve in the quantity that is defined in the side menu as well. Let's suggest the start and the end so that the stones are actually on top of the ring band, and also the quantity so that they really form one continuous line. Then adjust the offset a little bit. I sent them around minus 0.15 millimeters in. This may now seem a little bit weird, but we're going to cut out some material from the ring band later, and then it will look just perfect. Now, while still having all of the small stone selected, click on "Cutter" in the JewelCraft add-on panel. This will create this slightly hideously looking things on top of the stones. As usual in the left side menu, you can adjust the shape of it. Those cutters will be used in a Boolean operation to cut themselves out of the ring band, so they will not be visible in the end except for the holes they leave. I adjust the bottom length of the hole, which is what it's called on a side menu, so it does not go all the way through to the other side of the ring band. Otherwise, there would be some holes and were the ring band split, it would look really weird. We're not going to cut all the way through with them. I also make the top a little bit shorter because it just looks a little bit strange. Now for the second operation, we're still having only the diamonds selected. Click on "Microprong Cutter". This will create those little bars in between the diamonds themselves. They should be broad enough to make a good cut in between the diamonds, but not too broad so that they interfere with the other cutters. Then I created another row of microprong cutters, but this time I chose the type "side". This is another object that is purely there to cut something out of it. Illustrator analogy here again, Pathfinder. In the second part of the pavé for the ring band, we're going to now bore out all the cutters so that it really comes together and make the ring look like it's supposed to. 15. Ring Band Pavé II: Second lesson of Pave ring band. Now we're going to do everything and I'm going to show you a little bit more about the function of the duracraft add-on. Let's go. Now we're going to cut all the objects we created before out of a ring band. For this, we need to select all the extra cutting objects. This could take a long time by hand, but we have a nit little trick. While having one of the cutters, it doesn't matter which one selected. Hit "Shift" and "L" and choose material. This will select all the objects that have the same material and the dura craft add-on so nice to do this for us. After you have selected all of the cutting objects, select the ring band last, so it is the active object, because everything gets booled out of the active object when booling multiple things. Now we are going to use another add-on also from Mikhail, which is called Booltron, and I think he has developed it exactly for this purpose. Of course, we could also do this manually, but this would mean that we would have to apply a Boolean modifier to each and every one of those individual objects. As you probably can guess, and this can take quite a long time. As they say, time equals money, so let's save some of it. Once you have other Boolean objects and the ring band selected, go to the Booltron tab, go to the non-destructive version and then choose difference. If you just quickly click on overlays here, it already looks quite nice. Still, something's wrong with it, we're going to fix it in a minute. This time, just shift a and create a good old mesh, a good old cylinder here. Reduce the amount of vertices that a little bit. Turn it on the spot around the y-axis, scale it along the x-axis. Once you have an adequately sized cylinder, you can make it thinner. This works by hitting "S" and "Shift" and "X", and then it gets scaled on all axis except for the X1. Control 1 creates sub-division modifier and make an edge crease on the edge of the cylinder, on each edge. Also, create a few more edge loops so that the cylinder will be able to bend. Remember, choose for the cylinder the curve modifier, and then choose the bezier curve we just created for the Pave. It might appear in a little bit strange place, then just move it along the x-axis, until it fits and curves itself over the Pave location. Then I'm doing the same with the Boolean modifier and the booltron tab, choosing the different one, to bool the cylinder out of a ring band. Once more I switch to front view with one on [inaudible] and I adjust the bezier curve itself. Now you see the magic of bezier curves, when I try to edit it in edit mode, everything shifts with it. I always recommend if you want to change the position of things that are in an active Boolean modifier that you turn the Boolean modifier off in the viewport. I tried moving the bezier curve without turning the Boolean modifier off, and even though I have an adequate amount of calculation power on my machine, it still went a bit slow. In the end, I again tidied up a bit and put all the Boolean stuff into its own collection. First Pave of the day, done. 16. Clockface Pavé: Let's get into the next lesson in which we are finally creating the pave' for the clockface, which will look a little bit different than the pave' on the sides, but it's going to be basically made in the same fashion, except of course, that it will follow a circle, and for this, I'm going to show you a neat little trick here and there. You're ready? Let's go. I don't know if I have mentioned it before, but here you can see that I have creased the outside of my ring bent a little bit to have a little bit more material for the stones to sit in. Also, its a nice feeling on the finger of the inside of the ring is a little bit bombarded, as we say, in goldsmith technical jargon. I also created an additional face on the end of our ring bent here. Because we want to pull it together with the other parts in the end, and for this, there can't be any holes left in the mesh. I also scattering bent a bit on the Y axis to make the edges of either side of the ring bent flash with the edges of the diamonds. This looks especially beautiful. It is like there's no material holding the stones except the little prongs in the corner, and for the most part, the stone is just floating above the metal. I do not mention it every time, but please try at least to save once at the start and once at the end separate file. It is just easy to mess something up in Blender and it is always so good if you have some back up files. Don't hesitate to save a little bit more often. You can also specify for Blender to save some backup once in awhile in the Preferences. This can be a lifesaver sometimes. Once you have your saved file, switch to transparency with Alt D, then Shift A, curve and create another curve circle. We're now going to create the circle for the pave' on top of the clockface similar to how we created the curve on the side of the ring bent. Go to the JewelCraft tab again, then create another diamond. We're first having the diamond selected and afterwards the curve. The curve is bright orange, the active object, choose, distribute and curve in the JewelCraft panel. I changed the amount to something that makes more sense on top of the clockface. Then I adjust the tilt so the diamonds shine slightly outwards and I also adjust the offset back to zero and 100, the distribution of the diamonds. So there's no interruption in the pattern. Looking good. We're still having all the small stone selected, choose Cutter from the Jeweling panel again and there we have our cutters which still need some adjustment in their settings, as always. Here, I thought I would let the aptly named whole part of the cutters go through the bottom of the clockface. This is not unusual when setting some stones somewhere because they will have more light and they will also be easier to clean from the backside. But I decided against it because it would have interfered with the placement of the ring bent. So I shorten the bottom part of the cutters later. You can do it right now if you want. Then same game as before. We now create the Microprong Cutters, the big ones, which will go through the place where the stones are sitting. This always looks so weird before you cut them out. Create the other Microprong Cutters again, those who go in between and make them smaller so that it is similar to our first pave'. Oops, there's one missing. We can just copy one of the others. We use the center 3D cursor as reference again and just rotate slightly around it so that it sits in the right spot. Cool. Now you have it. Select all those [inaudible] things and the clockface and then choose in the [inaudible] tab, the non-destructive difference so they all get cut out of the clockface. One thing is still missing. Yes, you're right. The cylinder and we're just going to reuse the one we built before. Make another cylinder with Shift D. Please feel free to follow along while I start cleaning up a bit. Awesome. We are now going to do something very cool. We're just going to switch the object which curves the cylinder. Click on the little x, make side pave' disappear and choose clockface. Of course, you would have renamed the BezierCircle before to clockface, just like I did not. Wallah, look at how the cylinder bents the other way just like those friends you never needed. Where was I? Yes, we want to create a cylinder for our pave'. What a nice idea? Let's continue. Once you have the cylinder curved, press G and Z to make it go up like an elevator directly towards the pave' of the clockface, and then switch to edit mode here and you can lengthen the cylinder along the X axis with S and X a little bit so that it goes all the way around the clockface and not only a quarter to a third. Afterwards, I increase the subdivision a little bit to make it look more smoothly. You remember, the original object is not really bent already because the curve mode is not applied yet. We can move it along the X axis and just move it along there and then it will turn in this wonderful circle along the clockface. What I do here? I have the ends of the cylinder in the center of one of the smaller stones. It's better to have those ends somewhere where they do not touch the object, the cylinder shortcut. You may have noticed by now that the in-between cutters, the Microprong Cutters, are quite broad on the inside of the clockface and we're going to correct this so it has a more radial appearance. Otherwise the cuttings will be too broad on the inside of the clockface and that looks a little bit strange, and there's also not enough material. One of the cool things of creating the Microprong Cutters with the JewelCraft Addon is that they are all instances of each other, which means if you change one in edit mode, the others will also change. I switch to transparency mode with Alt Z. I can select all the vertices that are on top one another in one swoop. Sorry, You may have noticed by now that English is not my natural language and I tend to carnalize it quite a bit sometimes, sorry. I hope you did get everything until now. So the same holds true for the broad cutters directly on top of the diamonds. Those you can scale down as well. We're only having one selected, the others will follow. Of course, also don't forget the one single cutter which we copied before. He also needs some attention, or of course, you can delete it and just copy one of the others again. So it looks absolutely the same. A final look at our result. Wow, this is how you create a radial pave' setting in Blender. Well done. You get your pave' ready on top of the clockface. Are you happy? Have you got some problems with the process? Please share it. Either or I love to hear from you. Of course, also share your result in the project gallery if you want to. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you a neat little trick from the JewelCraft Addon which is asset creation before we're finally going to jump into rendering and preparing the ring for printing. 17. Asset Creation: Asset Creation. Now we're going to create a little asset from our file. I also talk a bit more about how to organize your files so that you always have a backup plan if something goes ugly or you messed up your jewelry in some way and lost some file that cannot be easily edited anymore and stuff like this. It happens all the time, so I'm here to teach you a little bit more about the current way of creating a backup file, so you don't have to start from scratch if the client or your friends want some changes after you've shown them your hard work. Ready for this? Then let's go. The good thing about an asset is that it will save the exact state of your model at the time you create it, with all modifiers and even the helping objects like the ring size circle we created. You start by selecting your object, go to the Jewel Craft tab and go to the Assets panel there. You should find a little folder icon or Jewel Craft will ask specifically to specify a new folder where to store your assets. You can also just go to Preferences, Add ons, search for the Jewel Craft add on by typing jewel under the search panel, and there you'll also find the folder symbol and can specify your favorite folder for your assets. You can save the preferences manually. I always do this out of habit, but Blender has the functionality to autosave your preferences. Make sure your object is still selected, and then click on "Add To Library". You can name the object anything you want, and it will become visible down below as a thumbnail. If you now delete the object, it's gone forever. No, just kidding. Sorry, getting a bit late we're recording here. Don't mind me. You click on this little icon that looks as if you want to put something into a folder, but actually, this will recreate your asset for you. As you can see, all the modifiers are still there, nothing had changed and it even recreates the ring size curve. I think it's a pretty awesome functionality, even though I do not use it that often. I rather tend to make a save file and then I work with those. But because the asset functionality works across all your Blender files, I think I will tend to use it in the future more often. At least I am going to try because it's really handy to have some of those basic shapes just right at hand. Get your asset created, everything ready. The next two lessons are going to be about rendering. But of course, you can just jump right into the print preparation, which are three lessons in themselves because there's a lot to talk about. It's either/or here. Of course, I encourage you to do both, but you can just choose a few, just on the rendering or just the print preparation or both. Or maybe, we're going to take a break now, just as you like. Let's see you on the next one of those. 18. Render I - Materials: Rendering 1 and 2, basic materials. I'm going to show you how to create the basic materials that I used to make my render come to life to make the ring look realistic, or better yet, a little bit artistic in this picture that you've probably seen because it's all over the project, and you can create the same if you follow along. Have fun. At this moment, you should be absolutely sure that the ring band is correct in this position, because now we are going to apply most of the modifiers, so it really will stay fixed and it will not be as easy to move segments of the ring band, because it will be subdivided into many more vertices. Ready? No more adjustments on the overall shape necessary. Then the next step is to apply all three modifiers which keep the ring band in shape at the moment; the mirror, the curve, and the subdivision modifier. If you now switch to edit mode, you'll see the many more vertices the ring band consists of now. If you try changing its shape, you will see that it is much less smooth as it was when the subdivision modifier was still unapplied. In projects such as these, it is very useful to wait with the application of the modifiers until you are really sure that you won't change the shape anymore. Of course, sometimes it is not even necessary for rendering to apply all the modifiers right away, but here, as you surely have noticed by now, the stones are not yet mirrored onto the other side and the easiest way to get this done is by applying the moths and mirroring the whole ring again. While having transparency mode on, you can use box select with B and select exactly one-half of the ring band. Once you have selected them all, press "X" to delete those. Then you can just add another mirror modifier, but this time, after the Boolean modifier. In this way all the cutouts get mirrored onto the other side and the ring is ready for rendering. Congratulations. As usual, I clean up a bit in the outliner so I don't get lost and confused. I create another collection and call it Render, and in here, first, I'm going to create a camera, and then I hit "Control and Numpad 0," which will bring me directly inside the camera. Then under View in the side panel, there's an option under View Lock, Camera to View, and now the camera will follow your every move. You can just use the controls like usual, but we'll now use the camera to fly around. Brilliant. Once you have that, you can go to the output properties and set the resolution of your render. I use the standard used by YouTube and also Skillshare, 1920 times 1080, and I orbit around the ring like a little satellite until I find a nice view. For me, a nice view most often constitutes a three-quarter view of some kind. It's often when you portray a thing that this three-quarter view looks especially nice, no matter if you have faces, shoes, or jewelry as your subject. Then I turn off Camera to View, and continue. I also scale the camera a bit, but it's only to make it more visible in the view port. It has no effect on the render output in the end. Now that we have positioned our camera, we can create a background plane. We will not do anything fancy, just a simple single color flat background, to really put all the focus on the jewelry. Shift A, create plane, scale it a lot bigger, move it inside for down. You can move it down exactly 10 millimeters. For me here this will pretty much hit the spot exactly. Maybe some slight adjustments. Then you switch to edit mode. With E, extrude the vertices behind the ring upwards, and in object mode, you can add a subdivision modifier with Control 1. Subdivide it a bit more to get the floor of the plane a bit more flat. I first thought about creasing this edge in the background, but then decided to create a few more edges, which allowed me to create a softer fold in the plane like this, but the outer edges got creased. Yay. Now we have our setup already. Only thing that's still missing is, of course, the material and the light that shines on the material. This won't be a really deep dive into materials. I will just show you the basics you need to know, which are absolutely sufficient and will get you amazing results right from the start. While having the rings selected, click on the Material Properties tab, then select Add New Material. I call mine whitegold, because stones like those wouldn't be set into silver. Use Nodes should be active, which means it should be blue. To work with nodes, we need to create another editor. In the upper left corner of the new editor, you can click on this little icon and then you can click on Shader Editor, which brings you to the nodes. In this case, you see the BSDF principled node and also the output node, which shows you that the input that is generated by the BSDF is going directly into the material output and will be represented in the rendering just as such. You can switch on the preview view port shading. This is not yet a render, but it can give you a very good basic idea of your materials and it uses much less computing power. The left node looks a little complicated, but it really is not, it just has a lot of options to play around with, but we only need a few of those. First, of course, we need to ramp up metallic to one and if you want to create sufficiently realistic renders in cycles for metal, you should always go to one. I also lower the roughness a bit to around 200 or a little bit below this because our ring is quite polished. You can, of course, also set it to zero, but then it really reflects a perfect mirror and it does not really look realistic for jewelry in my opinion. Those were the only two settings we really needed in the shader editor. You can make the view port eat the shader editor now. Yay. Fun times. Of course we want all the elements of the ring to have the same material, except you want one to one to have it in white gold and one in yellow gold, which is also possible of course. But assuming you don't want this here and just want everything to have the same material, you're selecting everything that belongs to the metal part of the ring, and make sure that the object that now has the right material last, so it's the active object. You hit "Control L" and click "Materials." Other parts of the ring have the same material. Next, we are going to create some lights for our ring. With Shift A, you can go to light and then choose Spot. I really like working with spotlights. I think they're the easiest and most intuitive ones to understand, especially if you're a beginner. Now, up on the right, you can switch to the rendering preview. Right now, the renderer is EV, the real-time renderer that came newly with Blender 2.8. I don't know why the spots always start with such a low output power. Ten micro-volt, that is less than even the dimmest LED diode. But anyway, of course, we're going to ramp it up. I want to have a bright light on my ring. So I went with two watt and started to manipulate the lights a little bit. At this point, I choose also a new material for the plane so the background of the ring wasn't white anymore, but black. I really only created a new material and then set the base color to black. The spots sometimes look better if they have a bit wider spot shape, so here, you can see me changing the size of the spot. I also copied this one and rotated the other one to the other side, so the ring had some light from the left and right. For the ring always being shined upon by the spots, I set the 3D curves and the center as the tower in the forest. Of course, the pivot point. Hey, get your materials ready, then in the next, I'm going to show you the rest of the lighting setup, and of course, the rendering settings you're going to need. 19. Render II - Light, Background and Settings: In this lesson, of course, we're talking about lighting, we're talking about HDRI pics for a bit. I'm going to show you a few tips and tricks, what you should consider before rendering your final file and afterwards, you're hopefully going to love the results. Let's go. At this point, if you are still following along, you can add a second kind of light, one that is directly integrated into the background of the scene. We're going to use an HDRI map, which is a special kind of picture that has light information integrated into it and is a very cool tool to make your lighting look much more realistic. You can find the HDRI I have used for this course under the Project files. Please open up the shader editor again, but this time choose world. Here, you can see are two nodes which are background and world output. At this moment, the background is simply a flat color. For the HDRI to work, we need to include a new texture. You can simply do this with pressing Shift A in this panel. Then go to texture and choose environment texture. You see that you have now a new input node and its output is called color. How convenient? The background note has an input that is called color as well. Maybe we could try combining those two. If you ever played around with modular synthesizers, it's basically exactly like this. If not, don't worry, it's just plug and play, so to speak. If you connect the two nodes without any picture, a bright pink light will appear. This is blender's way of showing you that somewhere a texture or an image should be, but it isn't. Of course, therefore we click on Open and choose our HDRI pick. Now, you should see a shift in the lighting. Of course, we need cycles, so I switched it. Watch the magic happen. By the way, if you have a GPU, then, of course, I should advise you to now switch to GPU compute because your CPU is usually much worse with rendering. Because what else should the graphic cab be doing except doing graphical stuff? This also looks a bit dim still. Here on the right under surface, you can see that the strength of the HDRI pick that you choose as your environment texture is also only at one, and I think this is a little bit too dark, so I put it up to 10 or 20. It's not perfect yet, of course, some materials are still missing, but we're on the way. One important thing I should mention here, in the final render and in the look you see right now, I did not actually use the HDRI pick, at least not in the way I've shown you before so that you really see the environment. It was basically a white background because I used the image texture node instead of the environment texture node. This was a mistake. I realized not until now. But actually, I think this way it looks much better. The way I used it now made the HDRI image just look like a white background. I could have omitted it and gotten the same effect. Still, now you know how to include an HDRI. Just make sure to use the environment texture node if you actually want to see the environment. Now finally, also the small diamonds are shining nicely. The jewel craft item automatically gives them the right material. To achieve this final setup. First, the material of the diamond. For this basic material, you don't really need to use the node editor. You can just edit the materials right here under the materials tab. I'm just going to create a new material to show you how I did it. Let's make it blue this time. I ramp up transmission to one, which means that this is basically now a glass because it transmits light just like glass does, and also the IOR is roughly the one for glass, which is 1.45. IOR means index of refraction, and it refers to the way that the light waves get bent inside the material. Diamond has a higher value than glass, around 2.42. By the way, air has an IOR of one, so it is always relative to air. Also, the roughness needs to be zero because it's highly polished, of course. If you'd now turn on the rendering in the viewport, you will see that it has this beautiful diamond-like appearance. Of course, you can change the color to whatever you like. You can also make it white. Just quickly showing you an overview of the setup I'm doing here right now. I have created a third lamp or spot. I've widened the shape of their light cone a little bit more.You see all the lights are shining down in a soft way on the ring. One of the last things you can see me doing here is adjusting the light colors a little bit. Each spot has slightly different tint, just a little bit, but it really can make a difference because the leftmost slide now reflects the color of the diamond, which I think looks really nice. The right light has a slightly blue tint, so the warmth of the pink tone is complemented by the slightly cooler blue. Also makes the wide of the ring shine a bit more. The last step here, because I wanted my background to be black, was going to the plane and just setting it to metallic. I had it set to black before but as you could see, the lights were really so bright that the black did not really shine through. But once I set it to metallic and had the roughness at around 0.5, I think it now look really special and noble. Also, the colors of the lights were reflected a bit better. The ring, of course, really contrasted the black background, so I kept it. Super. Now, we are done with the materials. I'm now going to continue with the random settings themselves. We're, of course, going to start with a sample rate, which is one of the most important settings for rendering. You might have noticed that in the viewport render a preview, it really looks very noisy and it is not very clearly rendered. This is because the sampling rate is very low, I think it's at 25 or 32 or something like this. Cycles works in a way that it samples the picture again and again. Each review of the picture, so to speak, makes the picture more detailed and gets more information, gathers more light, more color. More samples, of course, are better but take longer. I have found that 500 samples for my picture was more than enough. I have rendered up to 750 in the end just because I wanted that extra perfection. But I don't think it was really necessary. One neat little trick that I always use when rendering jewelry, turning de-noising on. Directly under sampling, you can find a small point which is called de-noising, that can make your renders so much better. Of course, I switch it on in renders. This will in most of the cases, get rid of those little, messy noise, crumbly. You know what I mean. You know how noise is looking. Chaos. De-noising will bring you a really smooth looking surface. Now, we're basically ready. We're basically ready for first test render. For the test render, it is always useful to start with a smaller pic so it doesn't take hours only for you to discover something was wrong. First thing in the output properties, where we set the resolution, we can under this set a percentage of the finer resolution, and as you can see, I put it down to about 25 percent. So the render output will only have 25 percent of the area of the finer picture, which means blender has much less work to do. Finally, some advice which I always tend to forget until I start rendering, we need to turn on all those subdivision modifiers in the render. They have two different settings for the subdivision levels, for the viewport and for the render. Of course, if you want for it to look the same in both, then the settings should match. I usually end of revisiting all the subdivision modifiers that my material and my objects have and make sure they match. Another thing is that we need to turn on the Boolean modifier we created with a jewel craft app in the renders by clicking on this little camera icon up here, because the jewel craft app by default turns those Booleans off in the render. If you weren't convinced yet, this is just another good reason to lower those rendering settings before giving the go for the finer render so that you don't come back hours later just to discover that an important part of the image was hidden behind a white plane you just forgot to turn off. This shouldn't happen. Of course, I could have told you earlier but I think now that you've clicked through this directly before rendering, you will maybe learn quicker than me and turn them on before you start rendering, ideally, exactly when you create the subdivision mods. This was basically what I did. It's not really that complicated, but I think it gives a really nice and wholesome result. It looks clean, it looks shiny, and it really is a nice presentation pic. I really hope you have been able to follow along well. For now, the only thing that's still missing is preparing the ring for the printing process. See you there. We are done with rendering. You have made it through the rendering and all the scepting so far. I hope you did because then you will have this beautiful rendered pic right now on your hard drive waiting to be shown and introduced to the world. If you still get some energy left, and I hope you do, because this is just very rewarding in the end when you finally get your printable file. Then let's take the next step and prepare the ring for printing. 20. Print Preparations - Final Adjustments: Print preparations number 1. First part is basically just me doing a lecture. So you can just sit back and be taken along with me on this little dive into the blender functionality. First and foremost, it's about what a goldsmith is going to need for the print to be absolutely well finishable. What I mean by that is that you print it out and then you cast it, and then the goldsmith will have an easy time to finish what you create in 3D. If you're a goldsmith yourself, you probably know a little bit more about this already, but to get your 3D file into the real world and what to consider, and this is also a new process even for a goldsmith, so I had to learn about it and I'm still learning about it because you never can know enough about the intricacies of this. Please enjoy, and I hope you'll learn something new. In general, it is a good idea to check on your subdivisions. The whole ring consists of so many vertices right now after subdividing it for rendering. The thing is the more subdivisions you have, of course, the bigger your STL file is going to be. With really big files consisting of many millions of vertices being larger than 100 megabyte is not a rarity, so make sure you know that you can handle those big files, you can send them, and if not, it may be useful to lower the amount of subdivisions. Of course, you should find a balance between too big a file size and too course a resolution. In this scale we're working here, generally, all subdivisions which result in polygons smaller than a 10th of a millimeter are usually okay because after filing and polishing, those won't be visible anymore, but this is really the upper end. Anything above it will probably be visible as some edges on the surface except those really will get polished on. I can just give you a rough recommendation here. This is something one has to find out via trial and error. The way you see my ring here in the view part will be definitely enough to get a very good print result and therefore a very good ring in the end. There are two possible ways the setter could want the printed file for setting the previous stones. One, like how we have rendered it or the small heavy prongs are already there and the holes for the stones as well, or the other alternative is he or she does not want to have any pre-cut holds at all, and the surface should just be smooth because many setters like to measure the placement of the stones themselves to make sure the stone size fits absolutely perfectly well. Make sure you know what you're dealing with before printing that file and casting it. Of course, for either alternative, the solution is really simple. Either you export it with a Boolean modifier still on it or you turn the Boolean modifier off. This would just simply allow you to export the file without having the purvey cuts in it. If you don't want to export it with a purvey cuttings, the useful thing is to crease the edge of the clock face because then, all of the material will be there for the setter and the goldsmith to work with, and nothing will be cut away already. Remember, in goldsmith thing, it's always easier to take something away than to reattach some more material for obvious reasons. You can't just glue some metal back on, but you can very well file some away. Next, we're going to take a look at the prongs. In edit mode, select the uppermost vertices and pull them up. Also move them a bit outward so they're slightly bend. As I mentioned in the lesson about scattering the diamond, in the end, the diamond will sit inside the setting held by the prongs a little close, and for this, of course, the setter first has to drill a bar a little step for the stone to sit on, and also he has to bend the prongs over the stone so they hold the stone in place. For this to be easier, it is better to have a bigger lever. A bigger lever means longer prongs. So the setter can just take the prong with his pliers and bend it over. Imagine if the prongs were already very short, he would have not room for holding the prongs and moving them over the stone. That you enjoyed, that you learned something, I hope so. If you have any questions, as always, drop them down below, and I'm going to come back to you. 21. Print Preparation - Booleans: Now it's hands on again. We can bool the ring together finally. I bet you are itching to do this because I've talked enough. Haven't I? I'm sure you will have an awesome result if you followed along so far. Head along and bool your ring together. The main part of booling is having one continuous mesh that has a clear inside and outside, no holes, and is watertight, so it will make no problems printing it. First and foremost, the absolutely number 1 rule when you work with Booleans, always keep a file before you bool staff together, always. Why? Because once you bool things together, they lose their modifiers and you lose the ability to easily manipulate anything, even if it's only a small adjustment at some angle or some thickness, it will be infinitely more hard for you, if you do it after booling in most cases. Always, and I repeat, always, keep a file before you apply the modifiers and especially before you bool. This is the number 1 rule if you want to design jewelry for 3D printing, or generally for 3D printing, it will make your life so much easier. Have I mentioned to keep a safe file? I think I might have. Do it now. Great, now that I have this disclaimer out of the way, let's start with a ring band. We have been mainly finished with everything we needed to do. The subdivision should be sufficient. There shouldn't be any holes in the mesh, so make sure the ends are closed up. Make sure the mirror modifier is set on clipping and the center is clipped together. That would be at [inaudible]. For the rest of the piece, the smaller things like clock face part and the doughnut, it is mainly to make sure that the subdivisions match your desired resolution. For the clock face, it is very similar. If you want to keep the pave Booleans, we need to reapply those after we bool the clock phase and the ring band together because otherwise, parts of the ring band will peak out of the pave of the clock face, very quick error to make. Now, I select everything except for the center prongs, go to the Booltron addon and choose the Destructive, Union, which is of course much quicker than using individual Boolean modifiers for every piece. As the last step before adding the prongs, of course, we need to recreate the pave on top of the clock phase. Now I'm going to show you a common mistake that can happen when you work with those operations. First, I try the usual way of selecting all the Boolean objects we created before, then selecting the ring, and hitting the Destructive Difference. Now, what was happening here? This arrow was a result of me trying to bool the same thing twice. Why twice? The way the booltron add on works is that it combines all the objects that should be cut out into one big box. If you select this box, you will see all the Boolean modifiers which combine the cutters inside it. I was basically trying to cut out the object twice, and this results in a boolean error. The correct solution would be either to delete the box and use the underlying objects again, or just use only the box as the boolean object. One of those should work, at least. Now would be the time to also bool the center prongs to the ring. I waited for those because this is the element of the ring, which most probably would require some adjustments and therefore would be a clever thing to also have separate in one safe file. I also adjusted the placement of them a little bit so they wouldn't interfere with the pave stone settings, and if everything is all right, we can just use the booltron operator to combine the whole thing. Finally, we are ready to export our file. Once you've check that there are no errors left in the mesh and you are sufficiently satisfied with the results, make sure you have the ring selected. Click on "File", and then "Export", and then choose "Stl". Here, you usually do not need to change any of the settings. Only, switch Selection Only on, because if you have other stuff in your scene, it could get exported with it and it would make a file hideously big. Give your ring a name you like, and then click on "Export Stl". This can take quite some time if your PC is not so fast and also if the file is pretty big, but here it really should not take that long. For me, the resulting Stl with a pave was roughly about four megabyte in size, so it's not really very large. Sometimes the goldsmith will also ask you to deliver him the files in two separate pieces, or maybe even more. It can be that the printability is okay, but it's very hard to clean the metal afterwards once it's cast, and sometimes it's much easier for the goldsmith to just combine the pieces via soldering, and cleaning them beforehand. You got a good result, everything's good and fine and dandy, super. But if not, that's more than likely, I would say. At least I always happen to have one or two problems when booling stuff together in the end. Then just head to the third lesson of print preparation where I will talk about the most common pitfalls and how to avoid them. 22. Print Preparation - Common Pitfalls: Hello, welcome to the third part of print preparation. We are going to make the ring perfect by taking care of all the errors and problems that can arise if you run into some problems that may be very likely that they arise from one of those I'm covering here. Such a long sentence. Then let's go. The problems before booling are most often flipped faces, which means that faces are oriented to the wrong way, the inside is out, and non-manifolds. Non-manifolds are vertices which are in some way creating bad geometry, like vertices which are connected to the air or to a hole or to a flipped face. You should check for both of these problems before booling. First, the flipped faces can most often be spotted by turning on face orientation and the view-part overlay, everything that is in the right orientation, so the outside is outside and the inside is inside will be blue. Or going to the view part display and turn on Call back faces, which will make all the back faces transparent. So we'll immediately see when some of your geometry disappears that those are probably flipped faces. To repair flipped faces, go to Mesh, Normals, and flip while having the flipped faces selected. Or if you want the quick and easy way, select the whole mesh and press "Shift N", which means recalculate outside. The second are non-manifolds. You can check for them in Select by trait, and then choose non-manifold, which will select all the vertices which have this problem. So you shouldn't have any vertices selected. You can also set a very useful shortcut because you're probably going to use this quite often if you are working with 3D printable objects. You can set the chart cut by going to this menu point, right-clicking on it, and then choose Set a shortcut. I use Control, Shift, Alt M. Planner does not use this for anything else and I find it very memorable. Another minor thing which can often result in problems is when flat geometry has exactly the same plane. So imagine you want to bool two cubes together but one of their sides is exactly on the same plane as the side of the next cube, Planner won't know what to do and how to resolve this operation, so it most often results in an error. It is sufficient to just move the object tiny, tiny bit to solve this in most cases. Once you've put it all together, the main thing to check still left is to see if there are any non-manifolds resulting in the Boolean operation. The blue tone add-on is so kind to throw an error or warning if this will happen through the Boolean operation. But if you bool it manually only with the modifiers, you should check afterwards with your shortcut because non-manifolds often are the result of intersecting geometry not being booled together properly. Those can make your print erroneous and the mesh being too fragile on some places or holes inside the print, all such stuff. So this is the most important thing to check for. I hope this lesson helped you find out something about the common pitfalls about booling, and if you run into a problem that was not covered here, of course as always, please leave me a comment. I will get back to you. 23. Byebye & Thankyou!: Okay, guys. Thank you so much for watching. I'm so delighted that you've made it this far, that you take this class, that you learn so much, that you have taken this challenge on, and hopefully, you created something you're really proud of because you can be if you've made it all the way through. I hope that you will come back to this lesson at some time in the future because as you may have noticed, this class is so chock-full with information that you probably can't remember everything in one go. It's also more meant as a guide and helpful almanac, so to speak when you make a new project, something 3D printable and you need some guiding on how to tackle some problems or how to do some stuff, this or that. Of course, share your project, leave feedback, leave recommendations for improving, for making something better, for making something more interesting, or more exciting, or more easy to follow. Anything you want to pour out on the page, please do so. Leave me your innermost feelings and I will, of course, respond, and use your feedback for creating more classes. Yeah, and I hope you enjoyed it. See you in the next lesson. Bye bye.