3D Graphics

Making lamp with Blender and Unity.

In this tutorial we'll make a kerosene lamp with the hlep of Blender 2.78 and Unity 5.4.2. I'll explain how we'll model the lamp in Blender and export that model into Unity to apply materials and some adjustments for better appearance. We'll add ground and wall to our scene, apply texture to ground & wall, and add normal maps to material for the realistic look. We'll also explore how to add and setup the lighting to our whole scene.

  1. Open blender. Delete the cube shown in blender.

    delete cube in blender

  2. Press SHIFT + A, a menu will pop up into mesh > cylinder to add a cylinder.

    add cylinder in blender

  3. Press CTRL + ALT + Q to go into quad view mode. You can also skip this step for your convenience. Now we can see four views those are front view, side view top view and perspective view.

    blender quad view mode

  4. Press TAB to go into the edit mode and then press Z to go into the wireframe mode.

    blender wireframe mode

  5. Now, to create a lamp we can either work in side view or in front view for our convenience. Make sure you have the vertices mode selected from the bottom panel.

    blender vertices mode selection

  6. Now resize the cylinder accordingly by pressing the S button. Then by pressing Z,X or Y you can resize only on that specific axis. OR you can resize with the help of resize tool from the bottom panel.

    resize the cylinder

Front side with wireframe mode on.

Front side

  1. I am going to working on front side. We select all of the top vertices by pressing Bfor rectangular selection or C for circular selection.

    rectangular or circular selection

  2. To create a 3d Model, you might want to look at the real thing for reference. For Example, You can find many images of a lamp from google.

    First of all, press G and lower the vertices. Afterwards, I press E to extrude the vertices and then I resize accordingly by pressing S key as shown.

    adding reference image

  3. REMEMBER :If you have selected some vertices and you want to deselect them you can also press the A button. You can change the size anytime with the help of S key, you may pull the vertices with the help of G key and then pressing the Z key to pull or push along the z axis.

    Now using this same method, we make the bottom part of the lamp.

    REMEMBER : You can always look how your model is looking by pressing the Z to switch between solid mode and wireframe mode.

    DON’T FORGET!!! : You must save your file by pressing CTRL+S.

Making bottom and upper part of the lamp

making bottom part of lamp

  1. You can always deselect vertices by rectangular selection or circular selection, you just have to press the middle mouse button instead of LMB. Now we prepare the part where there will be glass. We do it the same way. You have to take care of the sizes of the shape created.

    lamp glass part

  2. You have to draw according to the figure shown above. Now, we create the upper part of the lamp.

    making upper part of lamp

  3. Now , Starting from the bottom select all the vertices from where the glass part starts.

    select all the vertices

  4. Press E to extrude and then press ALT+M and then click at center, this will join all the new vertices. We are doing this so that the glass parts remains concealed since it’s going to be transparent.

    Join all the new vertices

  5. Similarly , do the same thing where the glass part ends.

    join all the new vertices

  6. And now we create the handles for the lamp. First Press TAB to go into the Object Mode and press Z to go into the solid mode. Add a cube and then extrude it accordingly to make the handle OR extrude as shown in the figure.

    create handles for lamp

  7. Now if we observe, the cube is added on the side in front view, and in the center in side view. Now we go into the Edit mode by pressing the TAB key while we have selected the cube. If we don’t select the cube then we won’t be able to make changes to the cube. Cube must be selected , no other object must be selected.

    Cube and the lamp are separate objects for now. Currently, we are in the edit mode , we go into the wireframe mode by pressing Z. From the front view, these are the vertices we are going to select.

  8. We will extrude it to make handle.

    extrude to make handles

  9. We can always rotate vertices, just like in this case, by pressing the R key. Then, you can either use the mouse to rotate it or you may use the keyboard to input the angle for which you want it to rotate, just like in this case I am going to enter -90.

    rotate vertices

  10. This way, we can create handle for one side.

    create handle for one side

  11. Now to create the handle on the other side, we shall copy and paste it. First of all, go back to Object mode. Copy and paste it. Press the R key, and then press Z to rotate it along the Z axis,afterwards, we press 180. Since we want it to rotate 180 degrees.

  12. And then we put it into suitable location.

  13. And now select the two handles and the lamp, make sure the lamp is selected is last because we want the pivot of the lamp to be the pivot of all the three objects combined. Then press CTRL+J to join all of them. Now if we select the any of them by right clicking , we see the whole object is selected

Applying material

  1. Now we will apply materials. Go into the edit mode by pressing TAB. First of all, we select the vertices of the bottom part.

    select the vertices

  2. Make sure that you don’t select the vertices of the any other parts. If so, you can deselect the vertices using middle mouse button while in the rectangular selection or circular selection. Select the material tab from the right in the blender.

    Material tab

  3. Click the + button and then click + New button.

  4. A new material shall be made and we will rename it bottom part by double clicking on it

    new material and rename it.

  5. Next, click on assign button to assign the material to the specific selected vertices.

    We are now going to make a new material for the handles. Select the vertices of the both handles by using rectangular or circular selection. I prefer Circular selection by pressing the C key.

  6. Now similarly, we create a new material for the handles, in the materials tab we are going to name it handles and then click on assign.

  7. Similarly, we select the vertices of the glass part of the lamp and create a new material for the glass part and name it glass.

  8. Similarly for the upper part of the lamp. Select the vertices as shown and create the material and don’t forget to assign.

  9. Now since lamp model is ready we will give different random colors to check if the materials have been properly assigned. First of all, make sure you are in the solid mode and object mode. To switch between solid mode and wireframe mode press Z. To switch between object mode and edit mode press TAB.

    Now you can turn off the quad view by pressing CTRL + ALT + Q. Click on any material, for example first I click on ‘Upper part ’ and change it’s color by clicking on the color swatch below diffuse.

    assign different color

  10. We see that it does change the color of the upper part. Similarly, we check all the other materials.

  11. We can see that every material has been properly assigned . We will apply the materials properly in UNITY3D. For our own convenience, I am going to change the color back to white. Now, we will add a modifier to the object. To do so, we need to go to the modifier tab.

    adding modifier

  12. Click on add modifier and then click SubDivision Surface.

    SubDivision Surface

  13. Change view and render to 3.

  14. Finally, Click on apply. Your lamp model is ready. Now, we are going to export the model in fbx form.

Exporting model in FBX

  1. First of all, we make sure that we are in object mode.

  2. Press A, to select everything and then SHIFT + RMB .

  3. Delete everything except the model, we don’t unnecessary stuff.

  4. Now export, Click on File > Export > FBX(.fbx).

Our work in blender is now over, we are now set up the scene in unity 3d.