Blender Bezier Curves

I’ve been wanting to create a bit of a stylized landscape, a bit like a topo map, where each contour line is an actual adjustment in height. To do this, I just wanted to draw some curves. I’m still getting the hang of doing this in Blender, but some general helpful notes:

Draw a New Bezier Curve

1. Shift + A -> Curve -> Bezier Curve

Blender actually just inserts a curve into the drawing, which is a little odd to me, since most other software I work with then prompts you to draw or click points to create the line. At first, since I was so zoomed out, I didn’t notice that it actually added anything, so I was a little confused.   

2. To Edit the curve, click on it, then hit the tab key (go into edit mode). This will highlight all of the vertices, which you can click on. If you hit “g” (to grab), you can then move that vertex around (again, took me a few seconds to remember to hit the ‘g’ key — other software I’ve used you can just click and start dragging it around).   Scaling (‘S’ key), and rotating (‘R’ Key).

Adding New Points on a Bezier Curve in Blender

To add a new point on a bezier curve, click on one of the ending vertices, and press “E”. This will add another vertex and you can move your mouse to wherever you want it and then click to actually add it (you can add them in the middle of the curve as well)

Joining Two Ends of a Bezier Curve in Blender

To join two ends, click on the two ending vertices (click on the first one, and shift+click to get the second one). Then hit the ‘F’ key. This will connect the two vertices with a new curve segment.

Offset Bezier Curve

Right-click on the curve (edit mode only?). You’ll want to adjust the settings for this to have it truly offset (otherwise it won’t be totally parallel to the original Bezier Curve), along with the distance.

Giving a Bezier Curve Height

Click on the ‘Object Data Properties’ tab (green spline icon). Then in the “Shape” section, click on ‘2D’, and then change Fill Mode to “Both”.   In the “Geometry” section, set a height for the “Extrude” option.   Sometimes I’ve noticed that when I set a height here, the actual height is waaaay off. Like I’ll set the height to 1′, but the actual height of the object becomes 127′ or something. When this happens, you can change the ‘Z’ dimension in the “Transform” pane to the right dimension (you may need to apply transformations first?   Ctrl+A > Scale)