- [Zach] In this video,
to prepare the posing process,
we will clean up the scene a bit
and pick a nice camera perspective.
So here we are where we left off,
and just for your information from now on,
I'm using Blender 3.4.
Now let's prepare the scene a bit
by cleaning up the outliner.
First of all, let's rename the rig
into epic_creature_rig and then let's move the rig
into the epic_creature collection.
And you will notice that all the meshes disappear.
And that's because these meshes
are child objects of the rig.
And since the rig
was not in this epic_creature collection before,
they were shown independently,
and now they're displayed correctly
inside the epic_creature_rig.
Then let's click the scene collection, press C
and create a helper collection where we put in everything,
which we don't wanna render
but we still wanna keep in our scene.
And then let's move up the helper collection
to the top here, and then save the BLEND file.
And now to start completely fresh
with the whole rendering process, let's go to File, New,
and open up a completely fresh BLEND file
by clicking on General.
In this BLEND file,
let's delete the default cube and the light.
Let's rename this collection into render
where we have the camera
and maybe add lights and so on later.
Then make sure scene collection is enabled.
Go to File, Append, then navigate to the folder
where you have saved your BLEND file with the creature.
Then double click on this BLEND file.
And now we are looking inside this BLEND file,
and here we have the different libraries.
And here we find collection.
And here, make sure to select these three collections
and hit Append.
Now we basically copy it over to this new BLEND file.
Then let's disable the helper, move it to the top.
And here we also have our creature.
So now we have a completely fresh BLEND file
and we can start from scratch.
First, let's adjust the user interface a bit.
Let's remove the timeline.
We don't need it right now.
Let's split this view.
And over here, let's press numpad zero to move
inside the camera perspective.
Then let's press T to hide the toolbar
and middle mouse button click
and move it to the side and disable all the overlays.
Then over here, let's create a new collection
and let's call it environment.
Make sure this is selected.
And then let's hit Shift + A + Mesh
and add a simple plane as a basic ground object.
Let's scale it up a tiny bit
and apply the scale with Control + A.
And let's rename this into ground.
Then let's go up here to the restriction toggle filters
and enable the mouse cursor.
And then we can disable the mouse cursor
for the environment collection
so we can't accidentally select the ground.
Then make sure the camera is selected.
And over here, you can see this is the area which we can see
through the camera, but we can still see everything outside.
And what I like to do is in the camera settings
under viewport display,
let's increase the passpartout to one.
So everything outside becomes completely black
and it's way easier for us to really see what we will see
in the end through the camera.
Then in the output settings,
let's change the resolution to 2K square format
because I wanna render a square image,
which can easily be used for social media and stuff.
And let's press also the home key
so the camera area will be full screened.
Over here, let's press T to hide the tool shelf.
And let's disable the navigation gizmo
so we have a bit more real estate.
Now, in order to pick a better camera position,
let's select the creature
and zoom in here a bit, something like this.
And then press Control + Alt + numpad zero.
And then the camera position will jump to this spot.
Middle mouse button click and move.
And then you can jump outside of the camera view.
And I feel since this should be a majestic, epic creature,
we should look at it from a little bit further away.
And when we select the camera, go to the camera settings,
we can change the focal length.
And here, let's use something like 75,
which is a little bit more zoomed in.
And this means with G,
double Z can move the camera a bit further away
so it feels as if we are looking
at the creature from a little bit further away.
And let's press G + Z.
And let's move the camera down a bit.
Since this creature is big and majestic,
we look from below to the top.
And by the way, you can also control the rotation
and position from inside the camera perspective.
Simply press R for rotation.
And then you can lock this along X,
press twice for the local axis.
And then you can see how I can rotate the camera
along the vertical axis.
I can hold down Shift to make it a bit more precise.
And you can press R + double Y to rotate
along the horizontal axis.
And the same, you can also press G to move it around
and lock this along certain axis if you like.
So after a little bit of tweaking,
this is what I have so far.
Of course, we can always later
adjust this camera perspective.
However, for posing the creature,
it's good to have a nice starting point so we know
from which perspective we will look at the creature.
And I think having this nice 3/4 view,
we have a good look
on all the nice features of this creature
and it looks very three-dimensional opposed
to just viewing it from the front or from the side.
So with this setup, we can now go over
to the posing process, which we will do in the next video.
But before we jump over, as always, don't forget to save.