# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Modeling a volcano

|previous=Mountains Out Of Molehills
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In this module, you will create a volcano using the proportional edit
fall-off tool. You should be comfortable with deleting and adding
meshes.

\_\_TOC\_\_

## Adding a Plane

Delete the basic cube. Add a plane, and
cale it up by 10. Rotate it so you see it
in top-view (make sure it\'s in Orthographic view too).

Enter Edit mode and subdivide (with ) 5 or
6 times. More subdividing will give you a \"smoother\" volcano, but it
also needs more CPU power.

\"Subdivide\" divides every square in the plane into four new squares.
So every time you press \"Subdivide\" you will have four times as many
squares as before. \"Subidivide Multi\" will make x horizontal and x
vertical lines through your existing squares, so the new number of
squares is: (squares_old)\*(x+1)^2^, where x is the number you
enter.\'\' 

## Making the Mountain

In top view, select one of the points in the middle of the plane. With
this point selected change to side view. Press the
, which enables the \"Proportional Edit
Falloff\" tool in the Menu-Panel beneath the 3-D-Window. As seen in the
previous tutorial Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Mountains Out Of
Molehills
when you move a vertex while edit falloff is enabled, all vertices in a
defined radius of the selected vertex will align with the selected
vertex when its position is altered. How they are adjusted can be chosen
in the tab on the right of the yellow dot. I propose using \"smooth
falloff\".

![](Blender_Smooth_fallof.jpg){width="400"}

Now grab the vertex with . You will now
see a gray circle. You can change its size with the mouse wheel. Every
vertex inside this radius will be affected by the falloff. Change the
size of the circle so almost the whole plane is in it.

![](blender_circle_size.jpg){width="400"}

Now move the vertex a bit upwards, as seen in the picture. Optionally
you can lock the z-axis to make the volcano go straight up by pressing
.

![](Blender_grab_1.jpg){width="400"}

As you can see all the other vertices will shift upward. We could keep
moving this vertex at the same rate, but that would cause the plane
itself to rise and bend, and that\'s not very good. So press
 to apply the changes, grab the same
vertex a second time and repeat the previous exercise as before, except
now choose a smaller radius for the circle, about half the diameter of
the plane ( →
 → scroll
).

![](Blender_grab_2.jpg){width="400"}

Repeat this two or three more times and you will get something like
this:

![](blender_grab_last.jpg){width="400"}

## Forming the Crater

Now we\'re going to create the \"hole\" on the volcano. First change the
falloff to \"root\". Grab the vertex one more time, change the size of
the circle so it\'s more or less as seen in the picture.

![](blender_grab_down_circle.jpg){width="400"}

Grab this vertex down a bit, apply, grab it one more time with a smaller
circle. You now should have something like this:

![](blender_grab_down_last.jpg){width="400"}

Just leave the border jagged and just smooth (Subdivision Surface) the
whole volcano cause it is much more realistic. Go to Object mode, select
the volcano, go to the \"Modifier\" menu in the \"Properties\" Header
and just click on \"Add Modifier\" -\> Subdivision surface (you can
leave \"view\" on 1). Do not apply these settings yet.

![](blender_2.75a_subdivision_surface.jpg){width="400"}

First we\'ll do a test-render. Still in \"Object mode\" Delete the
default Lamp point with \"X\" or \"Delete\" and place your 3D cursor
behind the camera and press
+ -\>
\"Lamp\" -\> \"Point\". With the Lamp Point still selected Click on The
Lamp point Properties (\"Data\") in the \"Properties\" Header then
change \"Energy\" to \"10\". Press **F12** to enter Render, after
adjusting the camera.

![](blender_2.75a_subdivision_surface_Rendered.jpg){width="400"}

## Finishing the crater

You can very easily make a nice looking crater. Just go into \"Edit
Mode\", touch \"Num1\". Make sure \"limit selection to visible\" is off
and \"proportional editing\" is on and set it to \"sharp\" falloff.
Select about the upper vertices with \"border select\" (Press \"B
key\").

![](Selection_Upper_Vertices.jpg){width="400"}

After that, scale (press \"S key\") it \'till it\'s a nice crater with a
circle as large as mine.

![](Selection_Scale_Vertices.jpg){width="400"}

And that\'s it, you just created a nicer looking crater.

![](Crater_done.jpg){width="400"}

![](Crater_done_Rendered.jpg){width="400"}

## Adding Magma

Let\'s add some \"magma\" using lighting.

1.  Make sure you\'re in \"Object Mode\"
2.  Press
    +
    and choose *Cursor to Center*.
3.  Press
    +
    and choose *Lamp → Point*.
4.  In the Properties window, click the Data tab.
5.  In the colour box (white by default) in the Lamp section, change the
    color to reddish-orange. (Red: 1, Green: 0.1, Blue: 0)
6.  Set the Energy to around 7.
7.  Raise the light until it\'s just above the bottom of the crater
    (rab along the
     axis).
8.  If the ground level of your plane is reflecting light from the lava
    lamp this is because the bottom of your crater is above ground level
    of the plane you created; you\'ll need to turn on ray-tracing. in
    the object data menu for the light, open the Shadow menu and click
    \"Ray Shadow\"

-   Alternate 1: Spot Lamp

1.  Change the light\'s type to *Spot*.
2.  Raise the light until it\'s covering most of the crater. If the
    light is not pointing down, otate and
    angle it downwards.You can also scale the radius of the light by
    press  to fit the rim of the crater.

-   Alternate 2: Area Lamp

1.  Change the light\'s type to *Area*.

2.      otate along the  axis: 180 degrees.

3.  Set Gamma to 2.

4.  Set Distance to around 5.

Experiment with the values and positioning to get something that works
with your volcano.

It should now look like this:

![](blender_volcano_magma.jpg "blender_volcano_magma.jpg"){width="400"}

## Varying the Terrain

Next, let\'s set the volcano\'s material.

1.      on the volcano plane.

2.  Select the \"Material\" button
    ![](Materials_button.png "Materials_button.png") and press New.

3.  Change the Diffuse color to ashen gray. (Red: 0.260, Green: 0.230,
    Blue: 0.230)

4.  Select the \"Texture\" button and press New.

5.  Change the Type to Stucci.

6.  In the Influence panel, uncheck Color, and check Normal. Set the
    Normal slider to 0.5. This will render the texture as a bump-map.

(Note: In version 2.77 you may need to change the texture Mapping -\>
Coordinates option from UV to Generated before you see bumps appear.)

(Note: In version 2.78c you may need to change the texture Mapping -\>
Coordinates option from UV to Global or Object before you see bumps
appear.)

**Older versions:**

Select the volcano and press F5. Keep Pressing F5 until the Materials
Buttons (symbolized by a red ball) is highlighted. Then add a new
material. You do this by clicking the Add New button in the Links and
Pipeline Panel. Once you\'ve done that, set the settings similar to the
picture below. Now press F6, then add a new texture to the material.
Choose a stucci texture, set the noise size to 0.15. Now switch back to
the materials-window (F5) and click on the \"map to\" tab. Deselect the
\"col\" button and select the \"nor\" button. This will render the
texture as a bump-map on the volcano. Set the \"nor slider\" to 0.5,
which should be the default. Switch to the \"map input\" tab and choose
\"tube\".

![](blender_material_volcano.jpg){width="400"}

If you now render you should get something like this:

![](blender_volcano_stucci.jpg){width="400"}

This looks really smooth, like clay pottery. To get a more rough-looking
volcano, try out these options:

-   Option 1: Subdivide and increase the fractal. 5 should do the trick.

![](blender_volcano_fractal5.jpg){width="400"}

-   Option 2: Decrease the texture\'s basis size (in the \"Stucci\"
    panel when you select the \"Texture\" button).

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-   Option 3: Proportional edit tool.
    1.  Press  to turn on Proportional
        Editing mode. Select Random fallout.

    2.          rab the center vertex, and raise it along the
         axis.

**Older versions:**

Go into Edit mode, select all Vertices, and use the fractal (set from 15
to 30) to really get things looking rocky and mountainous. **TAB** (Edit
mode) → **F9** → **AKEY** to select all → Mesh Tools → Fractal → 15 - 30
(15-low, 30-high) → OK → **TAB** (Object mode) In Blender 2.5 you can
use the random proportional edit tool: use **NUM7** to switch into top
view, grab the central vertex of your volcano using a large-radius
random proportional edit, and pull it slightly into Z-direction.

(A note: Seems there is no need in subsurf at all since fractal tool
will dramatically increase vertex quantity.)

