Articulate Lab · Training

30 days to configurator-ready meshes

One session a day, 30–45 minutes, every one of them inside your own Blender with the LLM driving through the MCP bridge — you watch the viewport, take the controls when told, and every day ends with a named artifact. The only subject is the trailer. By day 30 you produce swappable, named parts the configurator can use, unaided.

How this works

Three rules. Every day ships an artifact — a .blend, a render, or a GLB with a date in the filename; if there's no artifact, the day isn't done. The LLM does the typing, you do the judging — you never need to memorise menus, but you must be able to say why a result is right or wrong. Skip nothing, stack everything — each day assumes the one before. Miss a day, do it next; don't compress two into one.

Keys you'll use constantly from Day 1: Tab = Edit Mode on the selected object · 1/2/3 = vertex/edge/face select · Z = shading pie (Wireframe/Solid) · N = properties panel (dimensions live here) · middle-mouse drag = orbit. That's the whole survival kit.

Week 1 — Read a mesh

You already have the specimen: the Rodin mesh sitting in your scene (15,696 verts · 38,557 edges · 23,332 faces). This week you learn to see what a mesh is made of and judge its quality on sight.

Day 1 · Mesh anatomy

Vertices, edges, faces

Toggle wireframe overlay on/off yourself (Z pie) and orbit the Rodin mesh for two full minutes
Enter Edit Mode (Tab), switch vert/edge/face select (1/2/3), click around each mode
Say out loud where the mesh is dense vs sparse, and why the roof needs fewer faces than the wheel

screenshot of the wireframe, annotated with one dense + one sparse zone — day01-anatomy.png

Day 2 · Normals & shading

Why surfaces look right or wrong

Turn on face-orientation overlay — blue is outside, red is inside; hunt for red on the Rodin mesh
Shade Smooth vs Shade Flat on the whole body; watch what happens to the panel creases
Learn the one-line fix (Recalculate Normals) and watch the LLM apply it

before/after render of a normals fix — day02-normals.png

Day 3 · Topology quality

Quads, tris, n-gons

Compare the Rodin mesh (AI tri-soup) against the June parametric GLB (clean quads) side by side
Count triangles in the stats overlay on both; understand the web budget (≤100k for the whole configurator scene)
Spot three places on the Rodin mesh where topology would fight a clean door cut

side-by-side screenshot, tri counts visible — day03-topology.png

Day 4 · Objects vs meshes

Origins, pivots, transforms

See that "model" is ONE object; understand why the configurator needs ten
Move/rotate/scale the object (G/R/S), then undo everything; find its origin point
Place an Empty where a rear door's hinge pivot must go — your first pivot decision

scene with hinge Empty placed — day04-pivot.blend

Day 5 · Selection & separation

Cutting a part out of a fused mesh

In Edit Mode, box-select and Select Linked (L) on the Rodin mesh's wheel
Separate the selection into its own object (P) and name it wheel_L
Set its origin to its centre; move it away and back — a swappable part is born

wheel_L as its own named object — day05-separate.blend

Day 6 · Real-world scale

Units, dimensions, the SPEC

Read the Rodin mesh's dimensions (N panel) — it imported at 0.66×1.9×0.82 m, wrong
Scale it so overall length = 2500 mm per SPEC v1.3; Apply Scale and understand why applying matters
Sanity-check wheel diameter against the spec's 778 mm tyre

mesh at true scale, dims visible in N panel — day06-scale.blend

Day 7 · Week test

Judge a mesh cold

The LLM imports a mystery GLB; you assess it unaided: tri count, normals, topology, scale, parts
Score it against the five freelancer-brief acceptance criteria, verdict in three sentences
Review the week's artifacts folder — anything missing, redo it today

written verdict — day07-verdict.md

Week 2 — Build the trailer

From reading to making. You build a clean-topology trailer from the SPEC — the "C method" body — learning the modelling moves that AI meshes can't give you.

Day 8 · Blockout

The trailer in five boxes

Model body (1500×1500×2000), nose block (500 deep, 430 face), two wheels, drawbar — primitives only, exact SPEC dims typed in
Name every object to the brief's convention from the start
Orbit and compare silhouette against the v9 render

blockout scene — day08-blockout.blend

Day 9 · The tapered prow

Editing real geometry

Taper the nose block to the 430 mm front face (Edit Mode, proportional editing off)
Merge nose + body into one continuous shell; check normals after the join
One bevel pass on the body edges — the 4 mm ACP look

shelled body render — day09-prow.png

Day 10 · Boolean door cuts

Cutting the three doors

Boolean-cut the rear 900+600 off-centre pair and the RH prow door per SPEC
Inspect the cut topology — find the ugly triangles booleans leave and clean one edge loop
Keep the cut-out pieces: they become the doors themselves

body with three openings + three door slabs — day10-doors.blend

Day 11 · Doors as parts

Pivots, parenting, hinges

Set each door's origin on its hinge line (the Day 4 Empty logic, for real)
Parent handles to doors; rotate each door open/closed to prove the pivot is right
Name check: door_rear_L · door_rear_R · door_front · handle_*

GIF/render of doors swinging open — day11-hinges.png

Day 12 · Running gear

Wheels, fenders, drawbar

Model one wheel properly (cylinder → tyre + rim), 778 mm dia, duplicate to wheel_R — outboard per SPEC
Fenders 265 wide; axle line 800 from rear, 100 below base
A-frame drawbar with coupler + jockey wheel from primitives

rolling chassis render — day12-runninggear.png

Day 13 · Roof kit

Solar, trim, awning bag

550 W panel (2278×1134×35) flat and centred; separate, toggleable object
Trim belt 50 mm @ 600 from base as its own object (the recolour target)
Awning bag on the side wall — stored state only for now

full exterior kit scene — day13-kit.blend

Day 14 · Week test

The parts manifest

Every object named, pivoted, and listed in a README exactly as the freelancer brief demanded
Hide/show each part from the outliner — the configurator's swap, done by hand
Compare your build vs the Rodin mesh: where does each win?

trailer-v1-parts.blend + parts-manifest.md

Week 3 — Surface & ship

Materials, UVs, light, and the export discipline that gets a mesh into a browser at speed. This is where "it looks like our trailer" happens.

Day 15 · PBR materials

Base colour, metallic, roughness

Build brushed-aluminium (body) and polished-aluminium (trim) materials; understand the two sliders that matter
Rubber tyres, black RV paddle handles
Flip roughness to extremes and see why "metal" is a spectrum

materials test render — day15-pbr.png

Day 16 · UV unwrapping

Why textures need a map

Unwrap the body with marked seams; see the UV layout appear
Apply a test grid texture; hunt for stretching
Understand texel density in one sentence and check it across two parts

UV layout screenshot + gridded render — day16-uv.png

Day 17 · Recolour architecture

The 25-cladding-colour requirement

Separate base-colour from the material so one value drives the cladding colour
Swap 4 colours live via the bridge — the configurator's colour-picker, previewed in Blender
Render the colour-convoy strip: same trailer, four claddings

4-colour convoy strip — day17-convoy.png

Day 18 · Light & camera

The studio look

Three-point light setup on a neutral grey world — the OHV configurator look
Camera at the brief's ¾ front hero angle; depth of field off (product truth beats mood)
Render at 1920×1080 and judge against the v9 reference renders

hero render — day18-hero.png

Day 19 · glTF export

Out of Blender, into the browser

Export GLB with the right settings (selected objects, +Y up, apply modifiers, PBR)
Load it in a browser viewer; verify every part arrived separate and named
File size + draw calls: know your two numbers

trailer-v1.glb loading clean in a viewer — day19-export.glb

Day 20 · Optimisation

The web poly budget

Decimate a heavy part and watch quality vs count; find each part's floor
Texture sizes to 2K power-of-two; total payload under 5 MB
Re-export, re-check in the browser on your phone

optimised GLB + before/after size table — day20-budget.md

Day 21 · Week test

Ship it end-to-end

From .blend to browser-loaded GLB in under 15 minutes, unaided
The LLM breaks three things in a copy of your file (flipped normals, bad pivot, fused parts); you find and fix all three
Write the export checklist you'll use forever

export-checklist.md — your permanent SOP

Week 4 — The AI pipeline

Now the generators join the loop you learned to judge. Each day one AI route runs against your Week-2 build, and you make the production calls.

Day 22 · Rodin, properly

Method A at full quality

Re-run the trailer through Rodin above Sketch tier, multi-image input (v9 front + side + rear renders)
Import via the bridge, scale to SPEC, compare against Day 8's blockout silhouette
Verdict: what survives into production, what gets replaced

rodin-v2 comparison render — day22-rodin.png

Day 23 · Segment the AI mesh

Fused blob → parts

Run AI segmentation (3D AI Studio) AND manual separation (your Day 5 skill) on the same Rodin mesh
Name and pivot the results to the manifest
Score both against Day 14's hand-built parts

segmented rodin GLB — day23-segmented.glb

Day 24 · CubePart / part-schema

Method B

Feed CubePart the parts schema from your manifest; generate
Import, scale, inspect — are the boundaries where a builder would put them?
Verdict vs Method A in five sentences

cubepart run + verdict — day24-methodB.md

Day 25 · The hybrid assembly

Best of A + B + C

Assemble the production model: your Week-2 body, best AI wheels/tyres/awning, generated details
One naming pass, one pivot pass, one scale audit
This file becomes the configurator master

trailer-master.blend

Day 26 · Variants

The 9-configuration grid

Parameterise length and height to produce the 3×3 configuration family from the master
Export the first three variants as GLBs
Check the family lines up in one scene — the colour-convoy shot, but for size

3 variant GLBs — day26-variants/

Day 27 · Into the configurator

model-viewer wiring

Drop trailer-master.glb into a <model-viewer> page; rotate it in the browser
Wire one part swap (door variant) and one colour swap in JS with the LLM
This page is the seed of BYOT v2

local configurator demo page — day27-demo.html

Day 28 · The unlock layer

Vren mechanics on real meshes

Toggle solar/awning/kitchen parts per the unlock×level matrix
Camp Score updates on toggle — the concept doc made real with your GLB
List what the full Tier-2 build needs that today's demo lacks

unlock demo + gap list — day28-unlocks.md

Days 29–30 — Capstone

Prove the whole point: words in, configurator-ready meshes out, you in charge.

Day 29 · Capstone build

A part that never existed

Design a NEW part by prompt (roof rack, or the slide-out drawers) — image → mesh → implement → segment → name
Integrate it into trailer-master with correct pivot, scale, material
Export and load it in the Day 27 demo as a swappable option

new part live in the demo — day29-capstone.glb

Day 30 · Graduation

Teach it back

Record/write the full pipeline in your own words — every stage, every judgement call
Grade yourself against the freelancer brief's criteria one final time
Decide the production question: which method builds BYOT v2, and what's the first client-visible milestone

pipeline-SOP.md — the document that replaces the freelancer

Standing rule for all 30 days: the session artifacts live in Articulate/microsites/blender/training-artifacts/, dated. The LLM keeps the register; you keep the judgement.