Introduction

In this tutorial we will make a high poly mushroom.  If you don't have much (or any) 3D background, you might be asking, "What are polys?"  Well, the word poly refers to the number of faces (visible, solid surfaces) the object has.  A low poly model will not have as much detail as a high poly model because there are less faces making up the object.  If you have not done the tutorial on making a simple mushroom , I sugest you do that first.  That tutorial will walk you through making a low poly mushroom.  This tutorial uses the same idea as that tutorial, but takes it a step further in using subsurfing, which makes an object much smoother (adds more polys).  This tutorial was made in Blender version 2.48a.  So lets begin:

-> Open up Blender and delete the cube. (XKEY)

-> Go SPACEBAR>Add>Mesh>Cylinder.  Default settings are perfect.

-> TAB into EditMode and deselect all the verticies. (AKEY)

-> Go to FrontView (NUMPAD1)

 -> Now using what you know from the pervious mushroom tutorial, extrude (EKEY), grab (GKEY), and scale (SKEY) the verticies to look like this.



Now that is our low poly starting point.  We can work with this to make a wonderful looking mushroom!

-> Go down to the EditButtons in the lower screen and find the "Modifiers" panel.  Hit the "Add Modifier" button and chose "Subsurf".

Look at your model.  TAB into ObjectMode and use the MMB to pan around.  Hit the "Set Smooth" button in the "Link and Materials" panel.  Is that cool or what?

-> Now go back down to the "Modifiers" panel and change the "Levels" field to "2".

Look at the difference!  The "Levels" value changes the number of virtual subdivisions to perform.  Why to I say virtual?  Go back to EditMode (TAB) and take a look at the number of verticies.  There are no more and no less then what we started with.  Cool eh?  There are a few other subsurf options you can play around with but were done for now.  Exept for one thing.  See that nasty rippleyness at the bottom of the mushroom? (SHIFT+MMB to pan and MW to zoom)  Lets fix that.

-> TAB to Editmode it your not there already.

-> Select the very botom verts.

-> Hit PKEY and click "Selected"

We have just seperated those select vertices into a seperate object.

-> TAB to ObjectMode and select the botom vertcies with RMB(which is a seperate object) and then select the main mushroom (hold SHIFT while selecting the second object).

-> Type CTRL+JKEY and click to confirm.

Now you can TAB and see that the verticies are back.  But why are they not causing that problem again?  Because they aren't actualy conected to the verts they are on top of and thus the subsurf smoothes them as a seperate bunch of verticies.

The basic mushroom is now done!  You can use porportional vertex editing (explained in the image) along with your basic transforms (SKEY GKEY RKEY) to give the mushroom a nice organic look.



Here's how to use porp vertex editing.  Select a vertex (only one) and transform it (just like you would normaly do).  Lets say you grab it.  There will appear a gray circle.  Everything inside the circle will be influenced by the transform.  Here's what mine looks like:



You can play around with the camera and lighting and render if you want but I'm not going to explain that here (you'll find how to render in my other tutorials ).  In a future tutorial.  We will use this mushroom to learn vertex painting!  I hope this has been useful fun and totally COOL!  Keep experamenting with mushrooms (they are a great thing to learn Blender with!!).