In this lesson video, we will cover about modifier. So what is exactly modifier? Well you can think of modifier as a function or a plugin that can be attached to an object. To add a modifier to an object for us, you need to select the object, then go to the properties editor, open the modifier panel, which looks like orange symbol. Currently, there is nothing on this panel. As we haven't add any modifier to this object.

Click this add modifier button. This will open up the list of modifiers that we can add to our selected object. In this lesson, we are going to focus on a basic concept of the modifiers so we will cover only several of them. I am hoping that after this lesson, you will have a good understanding of how the modifier works so you can explore the rest of the modifiers exist in render by yourself. Let's add a wireframe modifier here. Notice that adding a wireframe modifier will alter the monkey objects geometry, every age in the monkey head now change to a cylindrical form.

If we look at the other monkey head, notice their appearance has not changed at all, only this one change. And if we select this one, we don't see any parameters of the wireframe modifier like the parameters we see in this object. So basically, the first thing we need to know about modifiers is that they are unique. I mean, they only exist on the object where we add the modifiers on to. The second thing you need to know about modifier is that they are non destructive. So you can select any object that has a modifier and then change the values here.

For example, we can change the thickness of it anytime we need to. If you don't like the modifier, you can always hide it using this monitor button up here. This monitor button toggle the modifier visibility on or off in the viewport, but this will not change the visibility of it when we do the final rendering. To turn it off from showing up in the final rendering, you need to click this camera button. Next, if you want to remove the modifier completely from the current object, you can do that easily simply by clicking this X button at the right and now the modifier is gone and our object back to its original form. The next modifier characteristic we are going to learn is that modifiers are stackable, we can stack modifiers on top of each other and also change the stacking order as we like.

For example, I add a subdivision surface modifier here. The subdivision modifier will multiply the number of polygons or faces with the power of four thus making our object looks smoother. We have two types of subdivision values here. viewport and render. The viewport value is used for the viewport smoothing and the render value is used for the final rendering. By default, the render value is set to two, meaning when we render the object Blender will smooth out the object by multiplying the face amount by four to the power of two equals 16 times of the original face number four.

Now, I will just turn the viewport value to two also, as we can see, we now have a lot more faces in our 3d model. Now let's add the wireframe modifier again. Let me turn this on. We will discuss about this button in a moment. Notice we have a denser wireframe from the previous example. This is because we add the wireframe modifier after the subdivision modifier.

So basically, the wireframe modifier is working based on a more dense of the geometry produced by the subdivision surface modifier Now watch as I switch the modifier order, we can click this up button to move this wireframe modifier to the top. So Blender will process modifiers from top to bottom, it will process the wireframe modifier for us. So we have something like this. If we hide the subdivision modifier, then the subdivision modifier will be calculated after the wireframe modifier. So in conclusion, modifiers can be stacked on top of each other, and we can also arrange the stacking order. Just be aware that changing the modifiers stacking order will produce a different final result.

The next thing we need to know about modifiers is that they can be applied. What I mean by this is that we can convert the actual geometry to the result of the modifier. You might be wondering by now, isn't the object currently already change? Well, the answer is yes and no reason Yes, if you render the object, this is what we get as the result, but no in terms of mesh editability because for example, if you want to select these vertices or faces, you cannot, they are bound to the modifier. If we go to the edit mode by pressing tab, notice we can see these semi transparent geometry. This is the original measures that we can actually edit.

The solid one is the result of the modifiers. Sometimes when we edit an object, we want to turn off the modifier, we can do that by clicking this button here. So this way, we are not distracted by too many details that we cannot select directly. If we go back to the object mode, the result of the modifiers will be visible again. Now to apply a modifier we need to be in the object mode. If you try to do this inside the edit mode, Blender will give you a warning message.

So again, Make sure you are in your object mode, and then hit this Apply button on the modifier you want to apply. Okay? Now here is something you need to remember, when you want to apply a stack of modifiers like this, you need to apply them in sequence top to bottom, not random, not bottom to top. If you don't do this in the correct order, the final result will be like having the modifier stack not in the correct order also, so apply this one first at the top. Notice that the applied modifier will be gone from the stack. Next is this one.

Okay, after uploading the modifiers if we go to the edit mode by pressing tab, notice now we can edit this mesh elements directly. But you also need to realize that applying a modifier means that your original mesh will be gone forever replaced by this new mesh data