How many plane mirrors are used in kaleidoscope? When you look at your reflection in one mirror, you see light that has come from your face and bounced off the mirror. The mirrors reflect the images of objects inside, creating a symmetrical pattern. Otherwise you can always follow my work on Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Artstation, LinkedIn, and Behance.Kaleidoscopes work on the principle of multiple reflections. If you would like to stay in the loop when I publish new content your best bet is to join my mailing list, as I don't tend to post my tutorials and articles to social media. Otherwise please feel welcome to get in touch via anything is unclear.
You may want to checkout some of my other Blender tutorials which show you how to create looping spinning animation sequences. Of course you will mostly like want to do things like add materials, tweak the lighting, and add an animation sequence to your mirror object or objects.
Hopefully now your object is mirrored and ready to mess around with. Example showing the mirror modifier above the subdivision modifier to resolve distorted edges. To fix this simply click and drag the mirror modifier panel / section to be above the subdivision modifier. This is a result of the mirror modifier being applied below the subdivision modifier. Example of distorted edges where mirrored objects join You may notice that the edges where the objects meet are distorted. Mirror Modifier settings to mirror and bisect on the X and Y axis relative to the camera 6. This basically means that as the object passes over the axis it is not visible in that area. This is up to you, but I usually prefer to mirror on both the X and Y axis’. Now if you click and drag on your model in the viewport it should be mirrored on the X Axis.This will align the mirroring to be relative to the empty. The most important thing here is next to ‘Mirror Object’ click on the eye dropper tool and then click on your empty object in the outliner.With the monkey selected add the Mirror modifier.In the Outliner you might want to rename this object ‘Mirror Point’ or similar. Add an Empty – Plain Axes object (It works well if this is at the 0,0,0 location).For the subdivision properties – Levels Viewport, I like to set this to 2 for a slightly smoother view of the model in the viewport.With the monkey selected go to Modifiers tab, click on the Add Modifier field and select Subdivision Surface.With the monkey selected go to Object – Shade Smooth.This demo will use the Suzanne / Monkey object however you can always follow these steps with your own object. Positioning the camera to view directly along the y-axis. You should find yourself look directly at the front face of the cube. In the viewport click on the camera icon to view through the camera.Under Rotation set the X to 90º and the Y and Z to 0º.The Y location can be adjusted later to adjust the view zoom. Under Transform – Location, set the X and Z to zero.Move the cursor over the viewport and press ‘n’ to bring up the viewport properties.
I like to position my camera so it points at the objects directly along the Y axis. Here is a copy of the blender file that is created in this tutorial using Blender 3.1. This tutorial requires some basic knowledge of Blender such as adding and deleted objects, and adding modifiers. This tutorial which show you how to mirror objects in Blender to create a kaleidoscopic effect. Example of mirrored objects in Blender 3.0