This tutorial will teach you how to make a simple winter scene, including some fir trees and a snowman. It is supposed to show you how to use the most common Blender functionalities (i.e. modelling, adding materials and textures) and shortcuts.

When a shortcut is used for the first time, I'll say something like "press the x key". When I use it again, I'll just put something like "(x)".

The Snowman

	Step 1 - Press the X key to delete the square that is in the middle of the scene. Press the space bar. Select Add > Mesh > UVSphere to add a sphere in the scene (click on the OK button for the number of segments and rings, 32 is perfect). Zoom in ("+" key or the mouse scroll button) and press the S key (size) to make the sphere 4 squares wide. (if you want it to be exactly 4 square wide, hold the Ctrl key while you move the mouse ). This is going to be the body of the snowman.
	Step 2 - Press the Tab key to switch to the object mode (the sphere is now displayed in pink). On the bottom of the 3D view, there's a little menu with icons, click on the one circled in red opposite (or press F9), and change the values of the 2 fields with a name that fits (i.e. SnowmanBody). It is not necessary to name the object, but it's a good habit to develop :).
	Step 3 - Now switch to the front view (numpad 1), and add a 2nd UVsphere in the scene. Resize it (S) to 2 squares wide. Switch again to the object mode (Tab) (when you create an object, blender automatically switches to the Edit Mode). Name it SnowmanHead (as done in the previous stage).  Now press the G key (G=Grab) and move the head on top of the body. This is the beginning of the snowman. (You can add some "arms" later if you want, or a 2nd snowball for the body). If you're satisfied with the shape of your snowman, you can "link/join" all the elements together. Select them by pressing the B key and drawing a square all around them. Then press Ctrl+J and click on "join selected meshes".
Step 4 - Now, let's create his face. Stay in the front view, press the space bar and choose Add > Mesh > Cone. Switch to the side view (3 on numpad). The cone is going to be the nose and, as you can see, it's much too big. Deselect all the points by pressing the A key. Then select only the points on the right (the base of the cone). Press the S key and decrease the size of the base of the cone. Switch to the object mode (Tab), and press the S key to decrease the size of the "nose" of the snowman. Then place the nose (G) onto the face of the snowman. Note : The other sphere you can see is an arm I added to the snowman.
Step 5 - Switch to the front view (1 on numpad), add a sphere, and make it small enough (S) to be one of the eyes of the snowman. Press Tab to get into object mode, and put (G) your sphere in the place of one eye. Then, with this sphere still selected, duplicate it by pressing Shift+D, and put it (G) at the place of the second eye.  Zoom in (+) and select the 2 eyes (right-click on the first one if it's not already selected, and Shift+right-click to select the other one. They should now appear in 2 different tints of pink. Be sure to be close enough not to select the snowman instead of the eyes. If it happens, press the A key to deselect all and try again). Now, join the 2 eyes (Ctrl+J).
	Step 6 - Keep the eyes selected, move to the top view (7 on numpad), and move the eyes as shown in the picture. To make sure they're visible, press Z to switch to "Solid" mode (instead of "wireframe" mode). and move around the snowman (hold the middle mouse button down, and move the mouse). As you can see, the snowman is all grey, but we're going to make it look better. Press Z once again to switch back to the wire frame mode.
	Step 7 - In the object mode (tab) select the snowman body. Now go to the editing menu (F9 or the button that is circled) and click "Set Smooth". If you press Z now, the snowman should look smoother. Then, click on "New" to create a new material for the snowman, and click "Shading" (or F5) to go onto the shading menu.
Step 8 - Name the material "Snow", and change its RGB values to 1 to get a white color. Also set the "Hard" value to 1 (If it's bigger than 1, you'll get a grey snowman looking more like metal than snow) and the specularity value to approximately 0.24. If you go to the solid mode (Z) once again, you'll see almost no changes. They'll be noticeable only when you make a render of the scene. (This is the F12 key. If you see nothing, don't panic, that happens if your camera is not "watching" your snowman. Select the camera (the triangular object that should be hidden somewhere in the scene - If you deleted it before, press the bar and choose Add > Camera) and use the rotation (R) & move (G) to point it at the snowman. Press the 0 key (zero on the numpad, not "o") to go into the "camera view" and check that you can see the snowman, then try to render the scene again).
	Step 9 - Now, select the nose of the snowman. On the shading menu (F5) click on "Add New" to create a new material for this part. Name it "Orange" or whatever you want, and set the RGB values to an orange color. There's a big probability that the nose will look very dark if you make a render (F12), but don't worry, as that's only a lighting problem, which we'll fix later. Do the same thing for the eyes of the snowman (name the material "coal" and set the RGB to zero).

- Tutorial written by DuskBlue

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