How to create candies in Blender

Freelance 3D artist Filippo Veniero takes us through the process of creating lollipops, candy and all things sweet using Blender

Introduction

In this tutorial I'll show you how to create lollipops and candies in Blender. We'll make extensive use of Blender's modifiers (array, simple deform, curve and lattice). They are extremely versatile tools and knowing how they work allows you to create complex shapes from simple primitives in just a few steps. (More details about Blender's modifiers are here.)

Create the base mesh

Open Blender, delete the default cube and add a circle (40 vertices). Enter edit mode and extrude just a little along the Z axis. Set shading as smooth and rename this mesh 'lollipop.base'. Select the Cycles render engine and assign 4 or 5 different materials as shown in the first image below (don't worry about node settings, we'll do those later).

Now duplicate 'lollipop.base' and rename it 'lollipop.cap1'. Enter edit mode and 'close' the mesh on the top (extrude along the Z axis and scale 3 times). Duplicate 'lollipop.cap1' and call it 'lollipop.cap2', enter edit mode and rotate the vertex 90-degrees as shown in the second image below. Now we have the body and caps of our lollipop.

Base meshes

Add modifiers

Select 'lollipop.base', and add an array modifier, tick the Relative Offset box and set the Z axis as 1 (start with count set at 20; we'll add more copies later). Tick the Merge option and select as Start Cap 'lollipop.cap1' and End Cap 'lollipop.cap2'. Now you should have a stick of candy. Add a Simple Deform modifier (twist mode), and set deform angle as 360-degrees.

Adding modifiers

Curve the lollipop

Open the add-on window (File > User preferences > Add-on) and turn on Add Curve: Extra Object. Select 'lollipop.base', snap the 3D cursor with the mesh and add a spiral (in this way the mesh and curve have the same origin). Select 'lollipop.base' and add a Curve modifier. The Curve modifier works on a (global) dominant axis, X, Y or Z. This means that when you move your mesh in the dominant direction, the mesh will traverse along the curve. If your mesh looks strange, change the deformation axis. Now increase the array count until the lollipop fits the spiral perfectly and set deform angle as 360 multiplied by 4, which is 1440-degrees.

Curve the lollipop

Materials and light setup

The materials are very simple; they are a mix of 90% diffuse and 10% glossy. I used 5 different candy colors (blue, green, red, yellow and orange) but the node settings are all the same. To make the scene tastier, I used only warm light (some emission planes and a warm sunny lamp).

The material settings

Create the scene

Duplicate the lollipop and change the color of the materials. Create a bucket by extruding a circle. Add a plane and use a wood texture on it (there are a lot of good free textures on the web) and add some candies on the table and other elements (like a cloth or some flowers). Set the render pass as 1500, disable Caustic and turn on the Transparent option. At the end of the render save the image as a PNG file and add the background using Gimp.

The final image with all the elements added – tasty!

Top tip: Use lattice on lollipops

The Lattice modifier is a good way to make lollipops different from each other; it is very simple to use and works very well. To add a lattice object around the lollipop, select lollipop and Add Lattice modifier. Now we can use the object lattice as a cage to modify our lollipop.

Related links
More details about Blender's modifiers can be found here.
Not got Blender? Download it here.
Check out Filippo's site for more Blender goodies!

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