How to use the Boolean Modifier – Blender Tutorial

Welcome to another Blender tutorial, as constructed by me. Thank you for attending. This will be my fourth tutorial for Blender modifiers that I have created this year, So I hope you are learning something from them so far. A Boolean modifier is a useful tool in your list of modifiers to use. Let’s go through it.

The Boolean modifier conducts procedures on a mesh that would take too long manually. The operation would be complex and require mesh editing, which if it was done manually would be very difficult. Therefore this will perform the Boolean procedure quicker.

Boolean has three operations which are Union, Intersect, and Difference. The modifier requires two mesh objects to perform the operation, the target body while the second (or more) provides the changes in the mesh.

Modifier Options.

Intersect: Everything inside both the target mesh and the modified mesh is kept.

If the target is a collection, then only the inside of all meshes is kept.

Union: The target mesh is added to the modified mesh, removing any interior faces. combining both objects into one.

Difference: The target mesh, or collection of meshes, is subtracted from the modified mesh.

How To Use The Boolean Modifier

Blender User Interface
Figure.1

Difference between Intersect, Union and Difference options.
Figure.2 – Intersect, Union & Difference respectively (Left to Right).

The intersected cube and torus. The cube intersected the torus, so all parts of the torus inside the cube are kept. Any part outside the cube is removed including the cube itself.

The union between the cube and torus. The torus is added to the cube, which will remove any interior faces. Combining both objects into one.

The difference between the cube and torus. The target mesh (Torus) is subtracted from the cubes mesh.

Thoughts

A boolean modifier is a powerful tool in any blender user’s arsenal. With it, you can add, subtract and join anything with anything, where other Software would struggle conducting such operations the boolean operation does it with ease. I think the tricky part as a new user is understanding what selection does which task and what objects to select first.

For more information see the section in the Blender Manual.

For more Blender tutorials, check out my series.

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Estikuma

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