✤MURO Making: Let's make a basic teacup in Blender!✤

    Hi again, everyone, today I have something a little different! This post is going to be very technical. I'm a beginner at 3D modelling, so I wanted to share some of my work with you! Today, I'm going to be making a teacup in Blender.

    So, why a teacup? My first reason is that it's a very simple object, but there's also some historical context here. I wanted to make a homage to the Utah teapot, also known as the Newell teapot, created by Martin Newell in 1975. Personal computers were not something that your average person had until the 70s. Working at the University of Utah as a computer scientist and needing an object to model more advanced shapes, Newell's wife, Sandra Newell, suggested using their Melitta brand teapot. The Utah teapot is now iconic in the 3d modelling community, and the real teapot is currently located at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. You can read more about Newell and the Utah teapot on Wikipedia!

    Blender is a free and open-source program used for 3D modelling, animation, VFX, and more. What open-source means is that the code of the program is freely available for viewing and modification. You can go to GitHub, a code-sharing website, find Blender, and see every line of code that makes up the program. It encourages transparency and collaboration, because other developers can read the code and understand exactly what it does. For example, if a person hid code in an open-source program that was malicious (ex. steals your data, infects your device, etc), other developers could see it and inform others or develop their own version without the malicious code.

 

The initial setup that appears when you launch Blender

But enough talk! Let's launch Blender and make that teacup!

A circle mesh, representing the rim of the cup.

    To start, I use the Shift + A command to bring up the Add menu and add a circle mesh to my scene, representing the rim of the teacup. A mesh is a simplified representation of an object's physical form that resembles a wire frame. Much of the terminology is complex, but the simplest way to think of it is that a mesh represents an object's form. After selecting my circle and entering edit mode, I can use the extrude feature by hitting E, which allows me to add to the wire-frame and build out the shape. With just these two commands, I've gone from an empty starting point to creating a hollow cylinder. 

An extruded circle mesh, now becoming a cylinder.

 

   But my way isn't the only way! 3D modelling is very similar to pottery in the sense that there are many different ways to achieve the same goal. I could have started with a cylinder shape and worked from there, but with my process, I felt it was easier to begin with the rim of the cup and build outward. You can start from the top, bottom, side, whatever part of the object catches your attention most! There aren't complex rules that say you can ONLY make an object this way or that way. Have fun with it!

 

After using the Scale tool to pinch one ring of my cylinder inwards, it has a cup shape.

    Now in Edit Mode, I can select each ring I've created and adjust its size, like sculpting a clay pot. It already looks like a teacup, but wait! The inside looks terrible! It has a massive hole in the bottom! There's no way someone could drink tea out of a cup like that, so let's fix it!

 

A hollow teacup. The horror!

    I switch back to Object Mode. Using Shift + A again, I add a sphere and nestle it into my teacup like an egg. Then, I select the top half of the sphere and delete it, leaving me with a smooth, bowl-shaped object. Now, we need to determine how to fill in the gap between the half-sphere and our cup shape. By selecting both objects, right-clicking, and then pressing Join, we can merge them into one. Then, we can choose each edge and press the F key to fill in the gap. Going around the rim and filling in the top and bottom, I soon have a completely solid cup! Now, we need to make the handle. But how?

 

Adding a sphere to form the inside of the cup and deleting the excess.

Filling in the gaps between the exterior and interior using the F key.

    Thankfully, Shift + A saves us once more! Re-entering the Mesh section, I can add a doughnut-like shape known as a torus. Using the Scale and Move tools, I position and resize the torus to fit inside the cup, then delete the excess. I also make the section of the handle that disappears into the cup bigger to make the shape look more organic.

 

    One last step before we can start looking at this as a finished product! Like in origami, we need to add creases so the computer understands which parts of the object are sharp edges and which should be smooth. Selecting the edges of our object and pressing Shift + E allows us to crease them, making them nice and sharp. Now, we can return to Object Mode, right-click, and press Shade Auto Smooth. This button takes our mesh and uses math to smooth it into a more organic-looking shape, so we don't have to smooth it out manually. Our creases help preserve the lip of our teacup and its base. We now have a full teacup!

 

After adding the handle, I got a little excited and forget to photograph the process thoroughly. This is after applying a smooth material to the cup!

 

    Now, we can move on to the material of the cup! After reviewing our materials and applying one to our teacup, we have several options. For now, we're going to focus on Roughness. Since we know glassware is smooth, we lower the Roughness, and we now have a glossy reflective surface on our cup. We can also use Base Color to change the color of our cup! I started with a sky blue before I eventually chose a deep plum color.

 

The teacup, shown in a Render preview display mode that includes lighting and material properties.

At this point, I'm shifting towards rendering, which is the step that processes the base scene into a polished image. Rendering is a subject I'm not deeply familiar with, so I use default settings. I add planes, which are flat surfaces, to represent walls and floors. Then, I add the model we mentioned at the very beginning of this article, our teapot!

 After adjusting the camera to where I want it to be, I line my objects up, adjust the light source, and select Render Image from the Render menu.

And here's our result! I think this is an easy project for anyone starting out, so if you'd like to try 3D modelling, try downloading Blender and making a teacup! Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next time!

My finished cup alongside the legendary teapot!