I attached a .blend at the end.
Here it goes:
This guide should teach you some basic modeling tools, I'll basically be using the E key for EXTRUDE, the basic G, R and S (Grab, Rotate and Scale), CTRL + R to add a Loop Cut.
First off, try to find a nice reference image of what you want to model.
I used this: http://thething.ca/collection/j_b_whiskey_candle.jpg (It's not an actual bottle afterall, but close enough
)Load it to Blender, as I did here:
Now, it's quite common that the reference image isnt properly aligned, specially if it's a picture not meant to act as reference.
I centered it as I could, using the 'X Offset' and 'Y Offset' atributes on the 'Background Image' tab.
Go into Top View (Numpad 7) and add a circle, you dont need many vertices for this model, the less vertices the easier it is too handle, I used 8 and disabled 'Caps'.
Back in Front View (Numpad 1) scale it to fit the width of your bottle.
Place it somewhere in the middle of it.
Now, with the entire loop of vertices selected, I'll begin to extrude to get the basic shape of the bottle.
Press the E key to command a exturde, and press Z to lock the movement to the Z axis.
Doing this you can rough out big part of the bottle.
Always remember to lock the movement to the Z axis, or you'll probably get a curvy bottle.
For the curved sections, you must extrude, place it somewhere above and then scale to fit the width. Repeat.
Once you have that down, keep roughing the shape of the bottle.
Now, on the bottom of the bottle, there's a slight curveand a dent.. It's important to remember that, cause it will affect once you add a proper glass material.
Here's a screen grab of the curve:
Here's a screenshot of the 'dent' at the bottom:
Notice I'm just roughing it out, I dont know how they actually are down there, so if you are commited enough to your work, you'll need to find out
Once you get to the tiniest edge loop, you'll need to 'close' it.
Example, this is how it looks 'opened':
For doing so, extrude again, but dont move it (press ESC key to leave it where it is), now press W for the 'Specials Menu' and select 'Merge' > At Center.
There are other ways, that will avoid triangular faces, but this should do fine here.
Right now I finished the shape of the bottle. I skipped a few steps, you should be able to model the rest of the bottle with what I explained
Remember that the cap is a different object, and you'll have to model it from a different mesh.
You probably think that it looks too blocky and un-smooth. So you'll go for the "Set Smooth" button ^^
But we are not done yet; if you press the Set Smooth button, you'll probably notice some odd black lines going across your model, and this is a very common problem for begginers, it usually happens when working with cylinders.
The black lines or odd faces are because the faces are pointing inwards. Faces, as a plane, have a thing called a 'Normal', which is the way the face points. They are drawn as a perpendicular line on the face. Faces should all face outwards the mesh for a clean result.
For changing this, you must go into Edit Mode, select all vertices (A key) and press CTRL + N (this will ask you if you wich to 'recalculate normals').
If you want to manually see where the faces point, you may go to the 'Mesh Tools More' tab under the Editing Panel and enable 'Draw Normals' button.
You can manually flip selected normals by selecting the face, press W for 'Specials Menu' and then 'Flip Normals'.
(I hope that makes sense)
Back with the model.
Switch back to 'Set Solid' (right next to the Set Smooth button), it's much better for working.
Now we are really going to smooth our model, but not by the Set Smooth button, but by adding more faces to it.
On the Editing Panel (F9), there's a tab called 'Modifiers'. There's a whole bunch of them, but I'm only going to explain the one I'll be using now, which is 'Subsurf'
What subsurf does, is that it calculates new edge loops across our faces, so it multiplies the amount of faces by the amount we want while keeping the shape smooth; it's usually set at 'Level' 1, you can change that by clicking on the little arrows on the sides.
Dont exagerate though, for a simple model like this we dont need that many faces.
Remember that the more faces you have, the longer the render time is going to be.
There's another attribute on the Subsurf modifier, which is 'Render Level', this means that you may work on a subsurf level 1 on your 3D window, but if you set Render Level to 4, when you render it Blender will see it at a level 4 Subsurf.
Level 2 is good enough for this model.
You may notice that the bottle 'shrunk', this is due to the small amount of vertices we set to the circle. Not to worry though, if you dont like it, you can always scale it up. (Select the object, press S and then press SHIFT + Z, this way you will scale in both X and Y axis, but the Z will remain the same).
You may also notice that some of your curves got messed up, or some parts are curved where they shouldnt.
To fix it, add a new loop cut with CTRL + R, place your mouse on the loop you want to cut and you'll see a purple line going to your model, click to accept.
Now you can drag those vertices wherever you want on that face, see how it affects your model when you drag it to close to another loop, you'll get a sharper edge.
In my case, I need to add a new loop cut to the bottom of my bottle, before the curve; the body gets too curvy where it shouldnt.
Here's a screenshot of the difference. Left side is before, right side is after I added the loop cut (I highlighted it on red for you to see)
Though, we are still not done.
If you think about it, this glass bottle so far is just of an infimate (spanglish?
) thickness.Just having one 'layer' of faces will do no good, specially once you add a glass material. It won't reflect light properly.
(Here's a great tutorial explaining the difference between hollow and filled objects on BlenderNewbies: http://forums.blendernewbies.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2377)
Let's fix it.
Disable the Subsurf Modifier for the time being (Click on the little Cross (+) button right next to the name) ... (The orange button enables the modifier to be rendered, the other button with yellow dots enable the modifier to be visible while in Edit Mode)
Then go into Edit Mode and select the whole bottle (A key)
Press E to Extrude, leave the vertices where they are (ESC Key) and Scale them inwards to add the desired thickness. I locked the scaling to all but the Z axis <-- That will give me some problems afterwards which I'll explain.
See how now it looks as if there's a botle inside our bottle? That's precisely what we need, now you have an actual _hollow_ glass bottle.
Now, before clicking anywhere, notice that the bottom part of the bottle has no thickness, as I didnt scaled it on the Z axis.
Fixing it is simple, just grab those vertices upwards.
A nice way to select only those vertices (as right now is very messy to do so), is to press B, for Box Selecting, and with the RIGHT mouse Button (RMB) click and drag over the upper most vertices, all the way to the middle of the bottle, that will UNSELECT those vertices.
Clicking with the LEFT Mouse Button (LMB) will select every vertice you box-selected.
Now, move those vertices upwards to add the desired thickness to the glass.
Check normals again, CTRL + N.
We now have our finished bottle model
I hope you found this tutorial easy to follow and noob-friendly.
(Screenshot with Subsurf on)
What I hope you learned with this 'guide', more important than how to model the actual bottle, is the extruding technique, most of simple hard-surface objects can be modeled with by this.
Also remember that before pressing set smooth for the render, add a subsurf modifier. Subsurf modifier has it's own rules though, you must keep a clean and ordered mesh for it to work properly -- No Tris!
For farther studying the subsurf modifier among with the Mirror modifier (and among much more stuff), I recommend that you head over to BlenderUnderground and watch the Blender Basics Tutorials.
Here's the .blend if you want to check it out!
http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/25681/Bottle%20tut/Whiskey%20Bottle.blend
