Learn how to quickly and easily create a table that you can use for your animations! These techniques can be used to create dining tables, office tables, school tables, etc..
Step 1: Open up Blender and select the default cube.
Step 2: Scale the cube and shape to the size of a table top. Press S to scale, then Z to limit to the z-axis and then 0.1 to scale it to 10%. Similarly, I did S + X + 4 to scale 4 times along the x-axis and S + Y + 2 to scale twice along the y-axis.
Step 3: Duplicate the top (Shft+D) and now scale it to the size of one of its legs. I did S + X + 0.05, S + Y + 0.1, S + Z + 15. Position the leg to one of the corners of the table top (leaving some gap).
Step 4: Duplicate the new object using Alt+D (instead of Shft+D) and then immediately press X to move along x-axis. Position the second leg in the opposite corner. Then select both legs and position them via y-axis to the opposite end. Note: We use Alt+D to duplicate since this will preserve more memory and allow you to edit just the one leg instead of all 4 legs.
Step 5: When rendering hard surface objects in 3D, it’s always better to add bevelling to give more smoother edges compared to sharp edges. In real life, nothing is 100% sharp (even knives!). Adding bevelling will add more realism to your hard surface models. To do so, add a SubSurf modifier to the table top and one of the table legs.
Step 6: Tab into edit mode after selecting the table top and add two loop cuts (Ctrl+R) along the length and width of the table top. Then scale along the length of the table until it nearly reaches the end. Do the same for the width. To finish, hit the smooth button to give a smoother, more polished look.
Step 7: Repeat Step 6 for the leg. Only this time, create loop cuts along the length and that’s it. Also, increase the subsurf to 2 for more rounded appearance.
Step 8: Select all the leg posts and the SubSurfed leg post LAST. Then hit Ctrl+L and then select ‘Modifiers’. This gives the same modifier in the LAST selected object to ALL the selected objects.
Additional:
Step 9: We’ll now make the table look less…boring…. Duplicate the table top and create the panel thingies like from the image below. I used Shft+D for the front panel and left panel. Then Alt+D for the opposite right panel. This way, I don’t have to texture twice.
Step 10: To make it look even better, add a loop cut somewhere in the table top (I chose the middle). Then add a few more on the right or left, whichever you prefer.
Step 11: Enable proportional editing (Alt+O) and change the falloff to ‘Sphere’. Select middle vertices and pull along the y-axis to a level you like. Scroll to make the influence bigger or smaller as you prefer.
Step 12: And there you have your simple table!
Step 13: You can then go into edit mode and UV unwrap each part (visit this tutorial to learn how to UV unwrap!) and then add a wooden kind of image texture.
Step 14: Create the shader for the table. Here is the node setup I used:
Step 15: That’s it! You should now have a cool looking table. You can create matching chairs using the methods shown here. Here is another variation of the table used in a render:
Thanks for reading and feel free to drop a comment if there’s anything you’re stuck with!
