Ever wanted to create a suburban fence?

In this tutorial, I’ll show you a quick and easy way to model a realistic wooden suburban fence that you can use for your own backyard scene!

Step 1: Fire up Blender. You should see a default cube.

Step 2: Select the cube by right-clicking.

Step 3: Scale the cube to look like the shape of a fence post. To do this, scale on the y-axis to and make the post as thin as you like (Press S and then Y). Then, scale on the z-axis to make the fence post as tall as you like (Press S and then Z). Finally, scale on the x-axis to make the fence post as wide as you like.

Step 4: Extrude the top face by pressing E and then scale it in by pressing S. You should now have a basic fence shape.

Step 5: To give a nicer look to the fence, you can optionally Tab into Edit Mode, select all vertices by pressing A, and then adding a VERY subtle Bevel effect by pressing Ctrl+B. You can also add a SubSurf modifier to create an even smoother effect but is not recommended if you are going to have a lot of these fence posts.

Step 6: To finish off, we need to duplicate the fence posts along a line to give the look of a fence. But duplicating via the usual Shift+D is tedious and takes a lot of time. Instead we can use the Array Modifier to duplicate the fence posts to save time. Add an Array Modifier to the fence post.

Step 7: Change the count to however long you want your fence to be.

Step 8: Also change the x-distance amount (highlighted in red) to give your fence some gap in between. And that’s it! You have your fence!

Texturing

Step 9: To create the material for the fence, simply download a fence texture. I used this texture: http://cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=74988&PHPSESSID=r86ncaaljv6tnqpiq1ikkvcsr2

Step 10: Go into front view (by pressing 1). Make sure your fence is facing frontward. Tab into Edit Mode, select all vertices by pressing A, and then press U–>Project From View.

Step 11: Time to create the shader! Create a new material and select Image Texture under the Diffuse settings. Select your fence image texture.

Step 12: Drag another window and select UV/Image Editor. You should be able to see your project fence UV. If not, make sure all your vertices are selected while you’re in Edit Mode. Scale the UV to fit a fence post.

Step 13: Each fence post looks repetitive and the same. To add variation, go ahead and apply the Array Modifier from the Modifier stack. After this, tab into Edit Mode and then one-by-one, select each post (by hovering over a fence post and pressing L) move the UV coordinates to a newer coordinate.

Step 14: Finally, create the shader for the fence from the Node Editor. I added a Bump node (via Add–>Vector–>Bump) and used the image texture as input. I then connected the bump to the Normal node of the Diffuse and tweaked the settings. Here is the node setup I used:

Additional Stuff

Step 15: Add an Array Modifier again to increase the length of your fence some more.

Step 16: That’s it! Here is the same fence being used in a 3D render!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave a comment if there’s anything you’re stuck on!