Blender 3D: Noob to

Pro/Building a
House
< Blender 3D: Noob to Pro

Applicable Blender version: 2.67. Learn more

In this tutorial, you will learn how to make

a simple toy-like house with a fence
around it. You will learn how to use array
modifiers to replicate the palings of the
fence, saving you from duplicating them
one by one.
This tutorial is based on Bart
Veldhuizen's "Building a House" from
Tutorial #01 published by NaN in 1999
which is also available in a PDF at
http://download.blender.org/documentati
on/BlenderTutorialGuide1.tar.gz (a tar.gz
containing BlenderTutorialGuide1.pdf) or
http://download.blender.org/documentati
on/BlenderTutorialGuide1.zip (a ZIP file
containing the same PDF).

Permission was asked to use it and Ton

Roosendaal said "Be assured that
everything that was produced by NaN
now is open and free content for
everyone to reuse, including the tutorial
“Building a House”."
Setting the Scene
Start a new
document
(  CTRL  +  N  ). Split
the view into four
views as at right, by
pressing  ALT  +  CTRL  +  Q  . This gives
you a standard set of views: top, front,
side and camera, the first three
orthographic and the last one in
perspective. You can switch back to the
single 3D view at any time by pressing
 ALT  +  CTRL  +  Q  again.
Leave the default cube, it will be the walls
of the house.

Make the Roof

Ensure you are in
object mode (  TAB 
switches between
object and edit
mode)

Now, in the Front view window (lower

left)

Press  SHIFT  +  D  to duplicate the cube,

grab mode is automatically selected,
press  Z  to restrict the move to the up-
down axis and move the cube to rest on
top of the original (pressing  CTRL  while
moving will snap it to the grid and make
it easier to position accurately.) Press
 ENTER  when it is in place.

You can see how useful this four-paned

window is; it shows you exactly what's
going on.

Note: It helps to simply grab one of the

arrows, press  Z  and then press 2 on the
key pad, this will move the block 2 units
in the z direction. the standard starting
cube is 2 units tall.
 Make sure you are
duplicating the cube
in Object mode, not
Edit mode, so the
roof ends up as a
separate object.

The top cube is

going to become the
roof and needs to be
given a triangular
cross-section.

Select the top cube (if it is not already

selected) by clicking  RMB  on it
Press  TAB  to go into Edit Mode (check
the box in the middle of the 3D window
header)

Press  A  to deselect all the vertices.

In the top view, select the top four (  RMB 

the first one and  SHIFT  +  RMB  the
rest). You can check in the other views
that only those four are selected.

Note: another way to do this is to have

"limit selection to visible" turned off, and
then press the  B  for, border select, and
make a box around the top vertices. (it
helps to view it from one of the sides, by
pressing either the 1 or 3 keys)
Another Note: Or, with 'limit selection to
visible" turned on, press  C  for circle
select and turn the mouse key to make
the circle large enough to enclose all four
vertices before you press  LMB  .

Make the Apex of the Roof

Now press  S  for

scaling and  X  to
limit the scaling to
the X-axis (left to
right). You could try
to move the mouse back and forth to
bring the top vertices together, but you
will have a hard time lining them up
exactly, so it's best to just type in  0KEY 
(zero) followed by  ENTER  to set scaling
to zero.

Now it looks like there are only 2 vertices

where there were 4, but in fact there are
still 4, even though 2 of them are
occupying exactly the same positions as
the other 2. With these 4 still selected,
bring up the vertex specials menu with
 W  and select “Remove Doubles”. You
should see a message briefly flash up at
the top right saying “Removed 2
vertices”. Now there really are only 2
vertices where there previously were 4.
 “Remove Doubles” is
a handy function to
use after
complicated mesh
edits. It helps reduce
complexity in your
mesh structure.

Form the Eaves

The roof needs to

project over the
walls of the house to
form the eaves. To
do this, we will scale
it, but only along the X- and Y-axes, not
the Z, so it doesn’t become taller.

Select all the vertices in the roof object

by pressing  A  once or twice.

Press  S  to scale, followed by

 SHIFT  +  Z  to scale uniformly along all
axes except Z, and scale to about 1.1.
Confirm the operation with  LMB  or
 ENTER  in the usual way.

Naming the Roof and House

Objects
In a complex project with lots of objects,
it can be helpful to keep them straight by
giving them names. This is less of an
issue in a simple tutorial like this one, but
for practice, let’s give names to your
objects anyway.

Go to the Object context in the

Properties window, and at the top you
should see an editable field containing
the name of the currently-selected
object. The walls of the house should be
called “Cube”, and the roof should be
called “Cube.001” (note the automatic
addition of a numeric suffix to keep the
names unique). Try changing these to,
say, “House” and “Roof” respectively.
Object Name Versus Mesh Name

If you look in the Mesh Data context ,

you will also see a name like “Cube” or
“Cube.001”. This is a separate name for
the object-type-specific data (the mesh
data, in this case), quite independent of
the object name. Don’t worry about this
name for now; you will learn about its
significance later.

Colouring the House

The roof now needs to be given a
different colour to the default grey. Select
the Materials Context in the Object
Properties window. In the list at the top,
you should see a single entry, called
“Material” (the name of the initial default
material). Below that is an editable field
containing the name, and immediately to
its right should be a small box with the
number “2” in it. This number indicates
that the same material is being used in
two places—in this case, we know the
other place is the object representing the
walls of the house. Click on this “2”, and
that will force a new copy of the material
to be made (leaving the house walls with
the original); the number will disappear,
and the material name will change to
“Material.001” to be different from the
original.
Change this material name to “RoofRed”,
to make it clearer what it is for. Next, find
the panel “Diffuse” further down,
showing a swatch of the diffuse (non-
reflective) colour, which is initially white.
Click on this to bring up a colour picker,
and choose some suitable shade of red
for the roof. (Notice that when using
shades of red, the white to black slider
on the right actually creates shades of
brown from the red.) As you do this, the
3D view should instantly update to show
your new colour being applied to the roof
of the house. If you want to exit the
colour picker and leave the colour
unchanged, press  ESC  ; otherwise, to
confirm your choice, simply move the
mouse outside the picker window, and it
will close, leaving your last-chosen colour
in effect.
Follow a similar procedure to choose the
colour for the house walls: click the
“House” object with  RMB  in one of the
3D views, go to the Materials Context
in Object Properties, change the material
name from “Material” to something more
appropriate (here I’m choosing
“HouseSandy” because I’m going to give
the house walls a sandy-yellow colour),
click on the colour swatch in the
“Diffuse” panel and choose a suitable
colour for this material. Noob Note: I
have found it very useful, when I re-name
anything, to type my new name in ALL
CAPS. This makes it easier for me to pick
out what I have done.
Your house should
look like this now.

Make a Chimney
Go into Object mode,
if you're not already
in it. (  TAB  flips
between object and
edit mode.)

Go to the Front view (lower left window).

Click  LMB  to position the 3D cursor on

the right-hand side of the roof, this will
select the spot where the chimney will be
created.

Press  SHIFT  +  A  to Add → Mesh →

Cube from the popup menu — a bit large,
isn't it?

Scale it along the X and Y (  S  ,

 SHIFT  +  Z  ) to about 0.2.

Now grab it (  G  ,  X  ) and move it into

position looking at the front view (lower
left window). (Feel free to use the mouse
wheel to zoom in the view to make things
easier to see.)

When this is correct, move it into position

along the Y axis (  G  ,  Y  ) looking at the
top view (upper left window).

You can check the side view (lower right

window) and the camera view (upper
right window) to see that it looks OK.

Name and Colour the Chimney

In the Object context in the Object

Properties window, change the name of
the chimney object to "Chimney".

Next in the Materials Context in the

Object Properties window, you will notice
there are no buttons, and there is an icon
, and next to that a button with the
word "New" in it. You can now choose to
have the chimney a different colour to
the roof or the house or reuse one of
these colours.

If you want a new colour, the "New"

button, and it will create a new material
with a default name and settings. You
can rename this and give it an
appropriate colour.

If you want to reuse the same colour, you

can click on the icon and select from
the available materials, namely "RoofRed"
and "HouseSandy".
Adding a Window

Make the Window Frame

Be in Object mode.

Using the front and

top views, click
 LMB  to place the
3D cursor where you
want the window to go: use the top view
to place it against the front wall, and the
front view to place it a little to the left and
up from the centre of the wall. (Of
course, it’s easy enough to reposition the
window after you’ve created it, so exact
initial placement is not critical.)
In the front view (lower left) add a plane:
 SHIFT  +  A  Mesh → Plane). This will
initially be laying flat, facing upwards
instead of forwards; to fix this, just rotate
it 90° about the X-axis:  R   X   9KEY 
 0KEY   ENTER  .

Scale  S  it down to 0.4, and press

 ENTER 

To give it a rectangular shape, scale the

plane by about 0.8 along the X-axis  S 
 X   0KEY   .KEY   8KEY  .

Move it into position (  G  ), using the top

and front view, on the left hand side of
the house a little higher than midway.
Be in the Side View window (lower right).

Move the plane along the Y-axis (  G  ,  Y  )

until it is just in front of the house. You
may want to zoom in (  MW  ) to see
better.

Now, still in Side View,

Switch to Edit mode (  TAB  )

Extrude the plane towards the house (  E  ,

-0.07) until it is embedded in the wall.
Make the Window Sill

Box-select in progress

To make this box into a window frame

will require a larger view: move the
mouse into the Side View window and
zoom in with the mouse wheel.

Deselect all (  A  ) and select the outer

(leftmost in the right view) vertices using
box select (  B  ).
Press  E  and immediately (without
moving the mouse) press  ESC  . This will
extrude, but leave the newly-created
vertices on top of the previous ones.

Scale the newly created vertices by 0.9

(  S   0KEY   .KEY   9KEY   ENTER  ).
Extrude again inwards to most of the
depth of the box about -.03 to -.05 along
the Y axis, depending on how you have
your window into the wall(  E  ,  Y  , -.03,
 ENTER  ).

This screenshot shows a side view in

wireframe mode (use  Z  to switch
wireframe mode on and off).
The outer panel of
the window that you
just made cannot be
inside the wall, you
will see this best on
the side view. (if the
outer face of the
window pane is
inside the wall you
either won't see any
paint/texture you
apply, or it will half
show up.)
Name and Colour the Window Frame
Object

Change the name of the window object,

as you previously did for the rest of the
house pieces. It will be initially called
“Plane” (because that is the kind of mesh
object you started with); change it to
“WindowFrame”. Also give it a new
material, and make it white. Change the
material name to “WindowFrame”.

Make the Window Glass

The glass of the window has to have a

different material from the frame. There
are two ways to achieve this: make them
separate objects, or make them the same
object, with different materials assigned
to different faces. We will do the latter.

Deselect all (  A  )

Be in Edit mode .

Switch into Face select mode

(  CTRL  +  TAB  -> faces) select mode
(you've been in Vertex select mode up to
now)
 RMB  on the face in the center of the
window frame, to select it.

In the Materials Context, click the "+"

button next to the list of materials, and
where that was previously showing just
the “WindowFrame” material, you should
see a new blank item appear. The rest of
the window will go blank, but the “New”
button will appear; click this to create a
new material. Give it a colour reminiscent
of glass; I chose to colour it light blue
(“87ceeb” SkyBlue).

Now to connect the new material to just

that one face, press the Assign button
just under the material list.
The material Assign,
Select and Deselect
buttons only appear
in Edit mode.
 Patience,
Grasshopper. A
simple blue rectangle
may not look very
much like glass. But
don’t worry: in later
lessons, as your
skills improve, you
will learn how to
make a material that
looks like real glass.

Note: If you do decide to make the

windows with real glass material, as
explained in previous lessons, make sure
you use the materials on both faces in
the front and back of the window. Also
use loop cuts or knife to cut out a hole in
the wall in place of the window. And add
a point light inside the house.

Adding a Door
Add the door using
the same method:

Be in Object mode

Deselect all,

Create a plane, rotating it to face forward

as necessary (  R   X   9KEY   0KEY 
 ENTER  ) to align it with the front wall of
the house.
Scale the plane down by .7 and then
again by .5 along the X axis.

Move it into position using Front view

and then move it against the wall of the
house in Side view.

Change the Object name to “Door”.

Create a new material for it; change the
material’s name to “Door” and choose an
appropriate colour for it.

Building the Fence

The fence will consist of long sequences
of identical palings. Creating them one
by one would be a long, tedious process
—which is something the computer, not a
human, should do, right? In fact, even
creating just one paling and making
duplicate copies would be a long, tedious
process. Which is where the magic of
modifiers comes in.

Blender’s array modifier lets you make

any number of copies of a single object,
all neatly arranged in a row or in various
other ways. Being a modifier, the copying
only happens at render time, so there is
still only a single object to edit while
modelling: change that, and the change
is automatically propagated to all the
copies.
Make a Paling

Be in object mode, with

nothing else selected.

Add a plane, orient it vertically (  R   X  90

 ENTER  ), scaled to 0.4 and then 0.1
along the X axis in Front view.

Switch to edit mode.

Ensure you are in vertex
select mode (  CTRL  +  TAB 
-> "vertex"), in case you were still in face-
select mode from making the window
(above).

To give it some thickness, go into Side

view and extrude it to 0.05.

The pointed top is made by

going back into Front view,

Selecting the top vertices and extruding

them by 0.07 (along the Z axis is
selected automatically),

Scaling them to 0 along the

X axis and then removing
the doubled vertices (  W  ,
"Remove Doubles": it should say
"Removed 2 vertices").

In Top view move the paling to the

intersection of two grid lines at a suitable
distance from the house.
In Front view again, check that the
bottom of the paling is level with the
bottom of the house.

Change the name of the object and the

mesh to "Paling", create a new material
for it called "Paling" and make the colour
white.

Duplicate the Paling

Be in Front view, as
the flat face of the
paling is along the X
axis and it is easier
to create the front fence first.
Change to Object mode. Select the
paling. Find the Modifiers Context in
the Object Properties window. Click the
“Add Modifier” button, and in the menu
that pops up, select “Array”. You should
see a second copy of the paling appear
next to the first.

Look at the checkboxes:

“Relative Offset” should be
checked, “Constant Offset”
and “Object Offset” should
not be checked. Under
“Relative Offset”, there are
values for X, Y and Z; these
are the distances between
copies, relative to the dimensions of the
object. Change the X value to something
like -2 (the negative value causes the
duplicated paling to appear on the other
side, away from the gap we want to leave
in front of the door). Now increase the
number under the popup that says “Fixed
Count”, and watch the line of duplicates
lengthen until it reaches the point that
you want to be the corner of the fence
line—a count of about 12 did it for me.

Now type  ALT  +  D 

to make a duplicate
of the row of palings,
followed by  X  to
constrain its movement to the X-axis
(parallel to the row of palings). Move the
duplicate row to the end of the existing
row so it looks like a continuation of it.
Now type  R   Z  -90  ENTER  to rotate it
so it lies parallel to the side of the house.
Increase the array count for this row to
something like 24 so it extends all the
way past the side of the house to a
suitable corner point.

Again, type  ALT  +  D 

to duplicate this
second row, this time
followed by  Y  to
constrain its
movement parallel to the side of the
house. Move the duplicate so its looks
like a continuation of the same row.
Rotate it parallel to the back of the house
by typing  R   Z  -90  ENTER  . Adjust its
array count as necessary to get the right
length.

Once more, type

 ALT  +  D  to
duplicate this third
row, followed by  X 
to constrain its
movement parallel to the back of the
house. Move the duplicate to the end of
the row, and rotate it to be parallel to the
side of the house with  R   Z  -90
 ENTER  . Give it the same count you did
to the array on the other side, so its
length will be the same.

One last time:

 ALT  +  D  to
duplicate,  Y  to
ensure it only moves
parallel to the side of
the house, move to the end of the row,
rotate into position with  R   Z  -90
 ENTER  . You’ll probably find it’s so long
it runs into the original row of palings you
started with on the other side of the front
of the house; reduce its array count to
something like 8 and you should end up
with a nice gap in front of the door.
Noob Note: I encountered a problem
when rendering the fence. It became
grainy, and when I say grainy, there are
random clusters of black all over every
rendered post. Some had few of this
'grain' while others were almost black. I
have environment lighting at 1 and it's
still goofed up. Would this be due to
hand-sizing them instead of putting in all
of the above values?

Noob Answer: I don't think hand sizing

would make any difference. The first
thing I would do is go back into edit
mode on the original paling and select all
vertices. Then I would hit 'W' and click
remove doubles. After that, recalculate
the normals by holding 'Ctrl' and hitting
'N'. Those operations typically fix
common rendering issues for me,
hopefully it will work for you too.

Alternate Noob Solution: I

encountered this problem
and it turns out it is
caused by having more than
one copy of the fence in
the exact same place. Try
moving the affected fence
pieces, to find the
duplicate then delete it.
Remove doubles did not
 work for my instance of
the problem.

Make the Horizontal Bars (Left Side)

The fence needs

horizontal bars to
hold the palings in
place: be in Front
view

 LMB  below the middle of the left-hand

fence.

Create a plane, rotating it to the vertical

as necessary (  R   X  90  ENTER  ) and
scale it to the length of the fence.
Scale it again to 0.05 along the Z axis
and move it into position. ( if you keep
 CTRL  pressed while you move it, it will
snap to the grid.)

Go into Edit mode (  TAB  )

In Side view move it so it is against the

back of the fence and extrude it by -0.04
along the Y axis.

Go into Object mode (  TAB  ). Give the

horizontal bar the same material you
previously created for the palings.

Duplicate it (  ALT  +  D  ) and move it

(keeping  CTRL  pressed) along the Z
axis (  Z  ) to make the bottom bar.
Make the Horizontal Bars (Right
Side)

To make the bars on

the right-hand part of
the fence: In Front
view, select both the
horizontal bars you
just created:  RMB  on one, then
 SHIFT  +  RMB  on the other (you may
need to zoom in to be able to select them
without accidentally including the rest of
the fence). Duplicate them with
 ALT  +  D  . Move your duplicates along
the X-axis  X  until they are horizontally
centred around middle of the right-hand
fence; now scale them horizontally  S   X 
until they are the right size.

You could have done the bars one by one,

but it’s quicker to do them both at once,
don’t you think?

Put the Horizontal Bars Around The

House

Select the two horizontal bars you

created above for the front fence (make
sure you don’t select anything else, like
the palings). Press  ALT  +  D  to make a
duplicate, then  R   Z  to rotate the
duplicate about the Z-axis, type 90 for the
angle and press  ENTER  to confirm the
rotation. In the top view, move the
duplicate (  G  ) you just made so it’s
against the side fence. Keep scaling it
along the Y-axis (  S   Y  ) and/or moving it
along the Y-axis (  G   Y  ) until it’s the right
length and position.

Having done the side of the house, press

 ALT  +  D  to make another duplicate of
the horizontal bars, and  R   Z  90
 ENTER  to rotate it into the right
alignment for the back fence. In the top
view, move (  G  ) it against the palings.
Now keep scaling and moving it along
the X-axis until it has the right length and
position.
Having done the back of the house, do
the other side: another duplicate of the
bars, rotate 90° around the Z-axis, move
against the palings, move and scale until
they’re the proper length in the right
position.

Again, another duplicate, rotate and

move/scale into position against the
palings on the other side of the front of
the house.

Your house should now look like this.

The Ground Plane and a
Path

Make the
Ground

In Top view
put the 3D
cursor somewhere near the middle of the
plot, (click  LMB  )

Create a plane
Be in camera view (bottom right-hand
window)

Scale it to extend just past the

boundaries of what the camera sees
(10.0 seems a good number).

Go back into Object mode and change its

(object, mesh) name to "Ground",

create a new material for it, rename it

"Grass" and select a suitable green from
the colour selector ("00cd00" green3).

Check in Front view that it is level with

the bottom of the house and fence and
move it (along the Z axis) if necessary.
Make the Path

For the path: Go into

Top view, create a
plane.

Scale it to fit the gap

in the front fence
with some space on either side and
position it just outside the fence.

Check, in Front view, that it lines up with

the door and is level with the bottom of
the house.

Scale it along the X axis to the same

width as the door.
Be in Top view,
Select the two
vertices closest to
the fence, and
extrude  E  away
from the house  Y  to make a suitable
width for the footpath outside the fence.

Of those four
vertices just outside
the fence, select the
left two and extrude
a suitable distance
to the left, and then the right two and
extrude a suitable distance to the right, to
make the path passing the house.
Give the Path Some Thickness

The path is still just a flat plane. Let’s

give it some thickness, so it rises slightly
above the ground.

Go to Object mode. Make sure the path is

still selected. Go to the Modifiers Context
, click Add Modifiers, and look for
Solidify. The default thickness (the top-
left editable field) is 0.01; change this to
-0.01 so the path protrudes above the
ground rather than into it.

Improve the Lighting

If you were to try to render now, you will
probably find that most of your beautiful
house is lost in
gloomy shadow. To
fix this, let’s add a bit
more light to the
scene.

In the top view, find the existing default

Lamp object. Duplicate it a couple of
times, and position your copies around
the house to give it a more even lighting.

Check the Camera View

Before doing the
render, check your
camera is properly
positioned to
capture the beauty of
your work. In the camera view (top-right
quadrant of the split view), you should
see something like this; note the
passepartout (darkened area) outside the
rectangle denoting the visible area of the
scene that will be rendered. If you  RMB 
on the rectangle, you can reposition the
camera from side to side or up and down
with  G  , or do  G   Z   Z  to move it closer
to or further away from the scene.

Pro tip : To adjust camera view, select

camera view by  0  , then  CTRL  +  F  to
enter "Fly" mode. Then, use FPS control
to move the camera (WASD keys to move
around, mouse to change direction and
 Q  or  E  to acsend or decsend.
Final Render
Now hit  F12  , and hopefully you should
see something like this!

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