Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Model a Chair-The Feet

Now the seat is finished, time for the legs for it to stand on.

Starting Primitive

The leg is mainly made up of cylinders so a cylinder is a very good primitive to start. In object mode add a cylinder with 16 vertices.Center the cylinder on the upper part of the telescope.

Adding the cylinder primitive

Tip: to make the cylinder centered relative to the seats center, while in object mode select the seat then hit Shift+Skey (Snap options) then select Cursor->Selection. The 3d cursor would be moved to the center of our seat. Now when you add the cylinder, the cylinders center would be located at the cursor which is also at the seats center. Now all you have to do is to move the cylinder along the y and z axis because it would be properly located relative to the x axis.

Hide or move the Seat to another layer so that it would not intrude while modeling the leg.

The Upper Telescope

Go to edit mode and scale the cylinder until its radius match the radius of the upper telescopic element of the chair's leg. Then move the top and bottom vertices to match the reference.

Modifying the primitive to fit reference

Extrude the bottom part and place it a little lower. Extrude again and right click so that the newly created vertices would remain in their position. Scale the vertices a little. Extrude again and move the extruded region up the cylinder.

Shaping the bottom of the telescope

Remove the top and bottom vertices that cap the ends.

Opening ends

We will be using subsurf modifier to make this part smother. Add this loop to constrain the smoothing on this area.

Adding control loop

The Lower Telescope

Now lets start with the lower part. Add a cylinder in object mode and adjust the newly created vertices to match the reference.

Start modeling the lower telescopic part

The legs would be extruded from this cylinder. Add this loop to prepare.

Add this loop to enable extrusion of legs

Select the faces between the newly added loop and the bottom loop. Extrude this faces but right click after extrusion so the extruded faces remain in their position. Now scale them constrained along the xy-plane (Skey->Shift+Zkey) a little. This is how it should now look.

Forming the base

In top view select the two topmost faces and extrude to form the back leg. Shape the tip according based on the reference. Here is the steps taken to shape the tip. First after extruding, Constrained scale the tip along the x-axis (SKey->XKey) to make the tip thinner. Then move the tip lower. Deselect all, then select the top vertices of the tip and lower this vertices further.

Extruding a leg

Shape the base as shown bellow. This is done by selecting the vertices where the leg connects to the base then constrained scaling it along the y-axis to zero (Skey->YKey->0key). Then move the scaled vertices further back.

Shaping the leg

Then add an edge loop as shown bellow. constrained scale the newly created edgeloop along the x-axis to make it thinner.

Shaping the leg

We will be using the subsurf modifier to smooth our model so lets add the following edge loops so that the model will smooth properly. Add an edgeloop at the tip.

Adding control loop

And this loops on the side.

Adding control loops

Also remove the vertex that cap the top because we will not be needing it and it would cause smoothing artifact when subsurfed.

Shaping the leg

Now how about the other legs? We will be using Spin duplicate tool to make those. In top view select the central vertex then snap our 3d cursor to it.

Relocate 3d cursor to the center of the base

Now remove the other part of the cylinder as shown. We would be left with a quarter part of the whole leg assembly.

Delete extra vertices

Select all the vertices that are left. Change the parameters of the spin tool to this: degrees to 360, steps to 4. Click on the "Spin Dup". If you have multiple 3d views, your mouse cursor would turn into a question mark. Move your cursor to the top view and then click. The other legs would appear as shown bellow. This legs are made of separate mesh and the original leg have a duplicate at exactly the same position creating double vertices. Connect the mesh and remove the doubles by selecting the whole mesh then remove the doubles (Wkey->Remove Doubles).

Spin duplicating other legs

The Stops

Now lets create the Black Stops on every tip of the leg. We would be creating this joined to the legs as one object then separate it later. Its just that it seems more easy that way.

Without leaving edit mode, add a cube. scale an move it to one of the tip. Move the cube so that it would be lower that usual to separate it from the other mesh making it easier to edit it without disturbing the others.

Primitive for the stops

Shape the cube to match the tip. This should be easy by now. The whole step is left out.

Shape the primitive

Subsurf would be used to this too so add extra loops to control how the mesh would be smooth.

Stop with control loops added

Now make copies of the stops using the Spin Duplicate tool. Don't forget to remove the doubles.

Creating the whole stops with Spin duplicate tool

Select all the tips then move them together up until they intersect with the tips of the legs.

Positioning stops

Now lets separate separate meshes to individual objects. Press Pkey and select "all loose part" option.

Separating the Stops

Notice that the other part of the mesh would suddenly change in appearance. Don't worry. It just means that those meshes are now separate objects by themselves. If you go to object view you would now be able to select the leg and the tips as separate objects.

There are some issues though when you use the subsurf modifier on the leg base as shown.

Unwanted smoothing effect

Select the leg and go to edit mode. Add the following edge loop.

Adding control loop

Scale the base loop too as shown.

Scale lower loop

The issue should now be solved.

Much better

This is how the whole leg assembly should look. All have subsurf modifier on.

Leg assembly

There is still an issue though. This is not important in most part but will be taken care of for this time.

When one of the leg stops is selected in object mode, it would show that its center is not at the center of the mesh. The center is where the gizzmo (the red, blue and green arrow) would be located.

object center not at the center of the mesh

To correct this select the offending object. Click the Mesh menu (located at the header) and navigate to "Transform" and select "Center New" from the options. Blender would automatically calculate the new center based on the objects mesh. Now when the object is selected, the center would be located at a mush more appropriate location.

Center at proper place

Do the same to the other stoppers.

Now if you haven't named each individual part yet, You can do it now. Name each part sensible names like uppertelescope, lowertelescope, etc.

The Whole Chair

Unhide or Show the layer where your chair seat is so that it would unite with the legs. Now this is how the whole model should look like.

Finished Model