It's time to get intimate with Blender. No, I don't mean you need to start placing scented candles around your computer. I mean that this chapter's focus is a detailed introduction to Blender's interface and how you can start finding your way around in it. First of all, it's pretty important to have an understanding of the various types of editors that Blender has and how to access them. These editors are the gateways and tools for creating whatever you want.
With the knowledge of what you can do with these editors, the next thing is actually building those creations. To do so, you need to understand how to work in a virtual three-dimensional space, and specifically, you need to understand how Blender handles that space. I also cover these topics in this chapter.
In many ways, Blender isn't so much one program as it is a bunch of different programs sharing the same interface and access to the same data. Thinking of it this way, each of Blender's editor types is kind of its own little program in a Blender area.
You may have noticed that I refer to the 3D View as the “first” item in the Editor Type menu, even though in Figure 2-1, it's at the bottom of the menu. This is due to a somewhat unique quirk of Blender's menus. They're designed to help you by keeping the distance you need to move your mouse cursor as short as possible. In practice, this means that when you open a menu from an editor's header near the bottom of the Blender window, it flows upward with the first menu item at the bottom, closest to your mouse cursor. When you open a header menu near the top of the Blender window, it flows downward and the first item is at the top.
For floating menus like the Add (Shift+A) menu in the 3D View (covered in Chapter 4), the behavior is a little bit different. Those menus always list the first item at the top; however, Blender remembers the last item you picked in any of these floating menus and automatically places that item under your mouse cursor. Again, this is for speedy workflow. The idea is that if you chose one menu item last time, it's likely that you want to pick it again this time. To reduce the distance you have to move the mouse cursor, Blender facilitates this notion by jumping directly to the last menu item you chose.
A Blender area can contain any editor type. You can see what editor types are available by left-clicking the button on the far left of that editor's header. Figure 2-1 shows the menu that appears when you press this button.
Each editor type serves a specific purpose, but you can organize them into four basic categories: animation editors, 2D editors, general editors, and miscellaneous editors. The menu shown in Figure 2-1 attempts to organize the editors according to these categories. The exception to this is the 3D View. Technically, it should probably be among the general editors, but since it's used most frequently, it has a distinguished position as the first option in the list.
The following subsections give you an overview of each editor, organized by category.
The editors covered in this section are usually the most common way of interfacing with objects in your 3D scene, as well as customizing Blender itself.
These editors give you general control over your scene or over Blender itself:
The following editors relate specifically to animation:
The following editors manipulate specific kinds of two-dimensional data:
The following two editors aren't easily classified in any of the other categories, so they've found themselves at the end of the list. That doesn't make them any less useful, so it's still worth knowing what they are and what they do:
After the 3D View, the Properties editor is probably the second-most used editor type in Blender. You use buttons and values in this editor to modify the attributes of your scene and elements within it. Because this editor can manipulate so many parts of a scene, it's broken down and organized into a series of subsections.
You can access each of the various subsections by using the buttons in the header region of the Properties editor. It's worth noting here that these subsection buttons are ordered logically from large contexts (such as Scene properties) to progressively smaller contexts (such as Object Data properties) as you go from left to right. It's also good to know that the available subsections in the Properties editor can change depending on what your active selection is in the 3D View. For example, if you have a camera object selected, the Modifiers subsection of the Properties editor isn't visible (because modifiers can't be applied to cameras). The following list describes each subsection of the Properties editor:
You can tweak Blender's screen layout to virtually any configuration you can imagine. However, Blender's customization features go much deeper than just readjusting the areas in a Blender window. There are very few parts of Blender that, with a little time and effort, you can't completely overhaul to be as comfortable of a work environment as possible. This ability to customize is especially useful for people who are migrating to Blender from other 3D graphics programs. I won't say that you can make Blender behave exactly like any of these other programs, but sometimes little things like using the same keyboard shortcuts help make the transition smoother.
Although this section gives you the means to completely bend Blender's interface to your will, bear in mind that unless otherwise specified, this book relies on the default settings that ship with Blender. Unless you can remember your customized behaviors, it may be more helpful to use Blender's default settings (FileLoad Factory Settings).
You can make a variety of layouts depending on the sort of work you're doing. In Blender, these workspace layouts are called screens, and, by default, Blender comes with nine presets: 3D View Full, Animation, Compositing, Default, Game Logic, Motion Tracking, Scripting, UV Editing, and Video Editing. When you first load Blender, you're in the Default screen layout. You can cycle through these screens by pressing Ctrl+ and Ctrl+. If you prefer to use a menu, you can use the datablock (for more on datablocks, see the “Understanding datablocks” sidebar in this chapter) at the top of the window in the Info editor, as shown in Figure 2-2, and left-click the screen icon next to the name of the current screen layout.
You can rename any screen to any name by switching to that screen and left-clicking its name in the Screens datablock. Get used to the idea of naming everything in your projects. Trust me, being in the habit of using a reasonable name makes life infinitely easier. It's especially true when you come back to an old project and you need to figure out what everything is.
The screens, and therefore the order that they're cycled through when you press Ctrl+ or Ctrl+, are arranged in alphabetical and numerical order, for fast and logical organization. If you want to cheat a bit, you can give a specific order to the list by putting a number in front of each screen's name (such as 1-Default, 2-Animation, and so on).
To create a new screen, left-click the plus icon next to the current screen name in the Info editor's header. Upon clicking this icon, Blender produces a duplicate of your existing screen layout. From here, you can make the changes to create your own custom layout, such as a materials editing layout or a multi-monitor layout with a separate window for each of your monitors.
You can also delete screens (including the default ones that ship with Blender, so be careful) by clicking the button with the X icon to the right of the Screen datablock. When you're happy with changes you've made and you want to have these screens available (or not available, if you've removed screens) each time you start Blender, save your settings by going to FileSave Startup File or using the Ctrl+U hotkey.
If you make an area a Properties editor, Blender defaults to using the same vertical orientation for the editor that's used in the Default screen layout. However, in an area that's wider than it is tall, this can look stretched and weird. You can manually switch between a horizontal and vertical Properties editor by right-clicking a blank spot in the editor and choosing between a horizontal and vertical orientation.
Before creating a new screen that you want to keep around for future use, first return to your default setup by selecting FileNew or pressing Ctrl+N. When you use the Save Startup File feature, Blender saves your current settings, layout, and even 3D scenes to a special .blend
file called startup.blend
that gets loaded each time it starts. So any models you have in the 3D View and any changes you make to other layouts are saved, too. Fortunately, if you've made a mistake, you can always return to the default setup by choosing FileLoad Factory Settings and recreate your custom layouts from there.
This behavior of saving a special startup.blend
file is fine for setting up custom screen layouts, but it can be pretty inconvenient if you're just making changes in User Preferences (such as custom hotkeys or themes). For those kinds of changes, it's better to use the Save User Settings button at the bottom of User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U). Using this button ensures that your new settings in User Preferences are loaded each time you start Blender, without overwriting your default scene or screen layouts.
When adjusting screen layouts, the menus and buttons in the header can be obscured or hidden if the area is too narrow. This scenario happens particularly often for people who work on computers with small monitors. In this case, you can do three things:
Understanding datablocks: Fundamental elements in a Blender file
In Figure 2-2, look at the widget that's used to manage screens. The interface gives you access to something called a datablock. A simple and obvious definition of a datablock is that it's literally a block of data. However, a datablock has more to it. Datablocks are used throughout both Blender's interface and its internal structure, so understanding how they work and how you can take advantage of them goes a long way to understanding Blender itself. Nearly every critical element in Blender is stored in a type of datablock, from screens and scenes to objects and animations.
Not only is a datablock a handy way to store information, but it also allows Blender to treat this information like a database. In particular, you can link datablocks and let them share information. As an example, say that you've created an excellent wood material, and you want to have two objects — a table and a chair — look like they're both made of the same wood. Well, rather than recreate that exact same material for each object, you can simply link both object datablocks to the same material datablock. Your computer uses less memory, and, more importantly, you have less work to do. And because datablocks are used throughout Blender, this same concept works in all kinds of situations: sharing textures between materials, sharing particle systems between objects, and even sharing worlds between scenes. It's an incredibly powerful feature of Blender and I refer to datablocks a lot throughout this book.
This section on user preferences is by no means comprehensive. The number of options available in Blender's User Preferences editor is mind-bogglingly large. My intent here is to introduce you to the most helpful and relevant options to get you working effectively. For specific details on every single button, see the online documentation available at www.blender.org/manual
.
Of course, the first question is, “Where exactly are the buttons for user preferences?” Well, the User Preferences editor is just like any other editor in Blender and can therefore appear in any area you want it to by using the Editor Type menu in the header region of any editor. (For more information, see the section “Looking at Editor Types,” earlier in this chapter.) Of course, you can also go to FileUser Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U), and Blender creates a new window just for the User Preferences editor. Although creating a separate window is a bit of a violation of Blenders non-overlapping philosophy, it is sometimes nicer because you don't have to replace or split any of your existing areas to get a User Preferences editor.
If you choose FileUser Preferences, and you don't see a new window with the User Preferences editor, your Blender window may be in a full-screen state and your operating system's window manager may not be allowing the window with User Preferences to sit atop that full-screen window. To get around this issue, toggle off the full-screen view by choosing WindowToggle Fullscreen from the Info editor's header region or by pressing Alt+F11.
When you get the User Preferences to be the way you like, you can save them as your personal defaults by clicking the Save User Settings button at the bottom of the User Preferences editor.
The first set of available options in Blender's User Preferences (shown in Figure 2-3) relate to how you interact with your scene within the 3D View. Moving from left to right, here are some of the more useful options:
The next set of options is related to the act of editing objects. As shown in Figure 2-4, the most relevant options are as follows:
The settings and controls in the Input options of the User Preferences editor have the greatest influence over how you interact with Blender. As Figure 2-5 shows, this section is extensive.
The largest part of this section — the event editor on the right side — is actually covered later in this chapter in the section “Using custom event maps.” However, the left-side column has quite a few useful settings as well:
Blender ships with an assortment of extensions, called add-ons, which provide users with additional capabilities within Blender. For example, if you're a veteran Blenderhead and you're used to the old Spacebar menu from much earlier versions of Blender, there's an add-on that puts that feature back. Other add-ons modify Blender's interface, add new primitive objects, or provide additional tools that can help speed up your work. Another key feature of add-ons is that they are tightly integrated into Blender's interface. Once an add-on is enabled, its functionality looks and works just like native features in Blender, like it was there all along!
You can manage all add-ons from the Add-ons section of User Preferences, as shown in Figure 2-6.
There are three types, or support levels, for add-ons:
You can use the buttons on the left side of the Add-ons section in User Preferences to filter the add-ons you see according to support level. By default, all community supported add-ons that ship with Blender are disabled. Most of the officially supported add-ons are for importing and exporting file types to and from other programs. The bulk of these are enabled by default. To enable or disable a specific add-on, use the following steps:
Left-clicking the triangle on the left of the box expands it so that you can get more details about a specific add-on.
That's it! The add-on is enabled. Depending on what the add-on does, you should be able to find it in the interface and use it immediately.
All of Blender's add-ons are broken down into specific categories, and you can use the buttons on the left to see just the add-ons that are specific to a single category. Alternatively, you can use the search field above the category buttons.
Blender has quite a bit of flexibility in adjusting how it looks, thanks to the Themes options, shown in Figure 2-7. I took almost all the screenshots for this book using a variation of the Default theme that I created, lightened for readability in black-and-white print. However, when I work in Blender, I use my own theme that's a bit darker and easier on the eyes. Darker themes are particularly helpful if, like me, you're known for sitting behind the computer and working in Blender for 10- to 15-hour stretches (or more). In those situations, the less stress you can put on your eyes, the better.
I include a copy of the theme I use in this book on my website for this book, www.blenderbasics.com
. Feel free to use this theme for your Blender sessions or make your own! Everyone has their own tastes. In fact, one of the more popular Blender users, Pablo Vazquez (known as VenomGFX), used to have a theme that's completely purple and pink! He's since moved to something a bit more tame, but pink still is used in it. You can see it by trying out the theme named Amaranth.
The File options relate to how Blender works with files. Figure 2-8 shows the settings in this section of the User Preferences editor.
The following list describes the important parts of this section:
Some file paths begin with two forward slashes (//
). These slashes are Blender's notation for a relative path, or file path as it relates to the location on your hard drive of your current file. In contrast is an absolute path, which is the full path to your file from the root of your file system. For example, if you have a file saved as /home/user/Documents/project.blend
, then the absolute path to project.blend
is /home/user/Documents/
. Now say that you have a folder named textures in the same folder as your project.blend
file, and in that folder is an image named sandpaper.png
. The absolute path to that image is /home/user/Documents/textures/
, while its relative path (relative to project.blend
) is //textures
.
Whereas the Interface options dictate how you interact with Blender, the options in the System section, shown in Figure 2-9, tend to dictate more how Blender interacts with you. Many options here are geared toward optimizing for performance, and generally the defaults work well.
Some of the more interesting options follow:
A primary inspiration for the deep structural changes introduced in Blender's code for the 2.5 series was to refactor Blender's event system. An event system is required for a complex program to interact with you and me, the users. Each time you press a button or move your mouse, it registers with the program as an event. The program then handles the event by performing an action of some sort. As an example, moving your mouse registers as an event, which then triggers your computer to perform the action of updating the location of the mouse cursor on your monitor.
Blender provides you the ability to customize the event system to suit your needs, mapping events to a wide variety of possible Blender operations. Don't like using a particular hotkey in Blender's default configuration? You're free to change it. And that's just the start!
If you refer to Figure 2-5, you should notice that the entire right side of the editor is devoted to modifying how events are handled within Blender. This list of events is particularly daunting to look at, and you can easily get lost among all of those expanding and collapsing categories of events. Fortunately, you can modify how events are handled in a much easier way, and you don't even have use the User Preferences editor if you don't want to. Instead, you can use the following steps:
Say that you want to change the hotkey for opening a new project from Ctrl+N (the current hotkey) to Ctrl+X, the hotkey used in previous versions of Blender. You can find this operation by going to the Info editor's header and choosing FileNew. Go to that menu item, but don't click it yet. Just hover your mouse cursor over it and proceed to the next step.
In this example, go to FileNew, right-click it, and choose Change Shortcut. Blender prompts you for a new hotkey.
In this case, you press Ctrl+X.
Congratulations! Your new hotkey is assigned!
Figure 2-10 shows this process in action.
As of this writing, Blender doesn't warn you if you attempt to assign a hotkey that has already been bound to another operation. Blender simply double-binds the hotkey, favoring default behaviors over custom ones. Blender's interface will still say your custom hotkey is assigned to the desired action, but it just won't work as expected. Currently, the only way to get around this problem is to make sure that your desired hotkey isn't already assigned.
Of course, for ultimate control, the Input section of User Preferences is really the way to go. As daunting as this section may appear, it's actually pretty easy to use. The most effective way to make use of the event editor is to use the search feature, a text field with a magnifying glass icon in the upper right corner of the Input section:
The listing below updates with Blender's best guesses for the operation you're looking for. Alternatively, you can just drill down through the categories until you find the event you want.
If you don't know the name of the operator, you can search by the hotkey it uses. Left-click the drop-down menu to the left of the search filter field. You can choose between Name (the default) to search by operator name or Key-Binding to search by hotkey.
Changing an actual event is much like the process used to add hotkeys to menu items. It works like so:
While you're editing your events, you might notice that a Restore button appears under the search filter field. At any time, if you decide that you want to revert to the system defaults, click the Restore button. Everything goes back to the way it initially was.
You can also use this interface to activate and deactivate events, delete events, and restore them to their initial values. Furthermore, if you expand the event's details by left-clicking the triangle to the left of the operation name, you have even more advanced controls. Figure 2-11 shows an expanded event.
Customizing the event system can be a pretty involved topic, so if you're really interested in making extensive changes, it's to your benefit to play with the event system editor in the Input section of User Preferences a lot and make heavy use of the Restore buttons so that you can get Blender back to its defaults if something messes up.
After you have your events customized, you can save them to an external file that you can share with other users or simply carry with you on a USB drive so that your customized version of Blender is available wherever you go. To do so, click the Export Key Configuration button at the bottom of the User Preferences editor. A File Browser opens, and you can pick where you want to save your configuration file. The configuration is saved as a Python script. To load your custom configuration, it's possible to load your script in Blender and just run it. However, simply using the Import Key Configuration button at the bottom of the User Preferences editor is much easier.
The 3D View is probably the most used window type in all of Blender. It also has some of the most unique interface decisions of any 3D software program. The purpose of this section is to guide you to understanding how to wield this part of Blender like a virtual 3D ninja!
All right, so perhaps I am a little over the top with the whole ninja thing, but hopefully this section takes you at least one or two steps closer to that goal.
When trying to navigate a three-dimensional space through a two-dimensional screen like a computer monitor, you can't interact with that virtual 3D space exactly like you would in the real world, or as I like to call it, meatspace. The best way to visualize working in 3D through a program like Blender is to imagine the 3D View as your eyes to this 3D world. But rather than think of yourself as moving through this environment, imagine that you have the ability to move this entire world around in front of you.
The most basic way of navigating this space is called orbiting. Orbiting is the rough equivalent of rotating the 3D world around a fixed point in space. In order to orbit in Blender, middle-click anywhere in the 3D View and drag your mouse cursor around.
Occasionally, you have the need to keep your orientation to the world, but you'll want to move it around so that you can see a different part of the scene from the same angle. In Blender, this movement is called panning, and you do it by holding Shift while middle-clicking and dragging your mouse cursor in the 3D View. Now when you drag your mouse cursor around, the world shifts around without changing the angle that you're viewing from.
The third way of navigating 3D space is when you want get closer to an object in your scene. Similar to working with a camera, this movement is called zooming the view. In Blender, you can zoom in two ways. The easiest method is by using your mouse's scroll wheel. By default, scrolling forward zooms in and scrolling back zooms out. However, this method doesn't always give you fine-grained control, and, even worse, some people don't have a mouse with a scroll wheel. In these cases, you can zoom by holding Ctrl while middle-clicking in the 3D View. Now, when you drag your mouse cursor up, you zoom in, and when you drag your mouse cursor down, you zoom out. If you prefer to move your mouse horizontally instead of vertically for zooming, you can adjust this behavior in the Input section of User Preferences.
Of course, if you happen to be working with a mouse that doesn't have a middle mouse button or you work with a pen and tablet interface, you should go to User Preferences under Input and enable the Emulate 3 Button Mouse check box. With this check box enabled, you can emulate the middle mouse button by pressing Alt+left-click. So orbiting is Alt+left-click, panning is Shift+Alt+left-click, and zooming is done with Ctrl+Alt+left-click. Table 2-1 has a more organized way of showing these hotkeys.
Although using the mouse to work your way around the 3D space is the most common way to adjust how you view things, Blender has some menu items and hotkey sequences that help give you specific views much faster and more accurately than you can do alone with your mouse.
On occasion, you want to know what a model looks like when it's viewed directly from the front, side, or top. Blender has some convenient shortcuts for quickly switching to these views. The most obvious way is to use the View menu in the 3D View's header, as shown on the left of Figure 2-12. This menu lets you choose a variety of angles, including the top, front, right, and the view from any of the cameras you may have in your scene.
You can also use this menu to switch between orthographic and perspective views. The orthographic view of a 3D scene is similar to how technical drawings and blueprints are done. If two objects are the same size, they always appear to be the same size, regardless of how far away from you they are. This view is ideal for getting sizes and proportions correct in your models, especially if they're based on blueprints or technical drawings. The perspective view is more akin to how you actually see things. That is, objects in the distance look smaller than objects that are near you.
If you have the Pie Menus add-on enabled, as described at the end of Chapter 1, there's an even faster menu for changing views. With your mouse cursor hovered over the 3D View, press Q. When you press this hotkey, a pie menu appears under your mouse cursor. The options in this pie menu are conveniently arranged for changing views. Move your mouse cursor up to change to top view, down for bottom view, left and right for their respective views, and so on. It's really incredibly fast. It feels almost like you're flinging the 3D View around in front of you. On the right side of Figure 2-12 is the pie version of the View menu.
The View menu is certainly helpful, even in its pie form, but you can change your view in an even faster way: the numeric keypad. Each button on your keyboard's numeric keypad has an extremely fast way of changing your viewing angle in the 3D View. Figure 2-13 is an image of the numeric keypad with an indication of what each key does.
If the image in Figure 2-13 doesn't quite work for you as a reference, Table 2-2 shows what each key does in a table-based format.
In Figure 2-13, notice that the hotkeys are arranged in a way that corresponds with how you would expect them to be. Top view is at the top of the keypad at Numpad 7. The front view is accessed at Numpad 1, and if you move to the right on the keypad, you can see the right side view by pressing Numpad 3. Because it's the view you render from, the active camera is the most important and therefore gets the largest key at Numpad 0. Pressing Numpad 5 is a quick way to toggle between orthographic and perspective views. If you have View Name turned on in the Interface section of User Preferences, it actively informs you about which view you're using. And having the very cool Smooth View option enabled definitely helps you keep from getting disoriented while working.
The notions of what is left and right in the 3D View are relative to you, not the object or scene you're working in. That is, if you model a character who's facing you from the front view, pressing Numpad 3 (right side view) shows your character's left side. This setup can be a bit confusing in writing or conversation, but while you're working, it's really not much of an issue. I actually tend to think of the right and left side views as side view and other side view to avoid confusing myself.
Here is where the numeric keypad shows its real power. With the numeric keypad, you can just as easily view the opposite angle (bottom, back, or other side views) as you can the standard views. To see the opposite side of the standard views, press Ctrl while hitting the corresponding Numpad key. For example, if you want to see the bottom view, press Ctrl+Numpad 7.
Now, maybe you got a little bit excited and hit Ctrl+Numpad 0 to see what the opposite of the camera view is and had some unexpected results. Ctrl+Numpad 0 does something entirely different than pressing Ctrl in combination the other Numpad numbers. The Ctrl+Numpad 0 hotkey actually allows you to treat any selectable object in Blender as a camera, with the view looking down the object's local Z-axis. You can also access this functionality from the View menu at ViewCamerasSet Active Object as Camera. If you're confused, take a quick look at the beginning of Chapter 3 for more explanation on local and global coordinate systems. The ability to treat any object as a camera may seem like a strange feature to have, but it can be really helpful for doing things like aiming lights and checking the line of sight of an object or a character.
Another cool thing you can do with Numpad 0 is to quickly snap the camera to your user view. For example, say that you've been working on 3D model for a while from a certain angle, and you want to see what the model looks like in a render from that specific angle. Rather than try to grab and rotate your camera to get close to this same angle, you can simply press Ctrl+Alt+Numpad 0 or choose ViewAlign ViewAlign Active Camera to View, and the camera jumps directly to where you're viewing your model. I find myself using this hotkey sequence quite a bit when I'm creating my models. Sometimes it's just easier to change your user view and snap your camera to it than it is to aim the camera how you want it.
The numeric keypad also gives you the ability to navigate your scene like you might normally do with your mouse. You use the 8, 4, 6, and 2 keys on the numeric keypad. Numpad 8 and Numpad 2 orbit the view towards and away, respectively, whereas Numpad 4 and Numpad 6 orbit it left and right. By default, Blender does these rotations in 15-degree increments, but you adjust this amount to be more fine or coarse in User Preferences under Interface with the value labeled Rotation Angle. Orbiting with the Numpad is a nice way to get a quick turntable view of a scene, particularly if you have your View rotation set to Trackball in User Preferences. You can also pan the view by pressing Ctrl in combination with any of these buttons. For example, Ctrl+Numpad 4 and Ctrl+Numpad 6 pan the view left and right. You can even zoom the view by using the Numpad Plus (+) and Numpad Minus (−) keys.
Two more useful hotkeys are on the numeric keypad: Numpad Slash (/) and Numpad Dot (.). These keys are somewhat more esoteric than the other keys, but they definitely come in handy.
Of the two, I tend to use Numpad Slash the most. Pressing Numpad Slash (/) toggles what Blender calls Local View. Basically, Local View hides everything in your scene except for the object or objects you've selected. Local View is really helpful for temporarily isolating a single object or set of objects in a complex scene so that you can work on it without anything else getting in your way.
The Numpad Dot (.) hotkey also comes in handy when you want to focus on a specific part of your scene. Pressing Numpad Dot (.) centers the objects you've selected in the 3D View. Centering is particularly useful if you've rotated or panned everything out of sight, and you want to bring your selected objects back into view.
One other key worth mentioning, although it's not exactly on the numeric keypad, is the Home key. Whereas using Numpad Dot (.) brings your selected objects into view, pressing Home zooms your view back until all objects in your scene are visible in the 3D View. Home is a very convenient key for getting an overall idea of what's going on in your scene.
Aside from changing the angle from which you view your 3D world, you may also want to change how the world is shown in the 3D View. In particular, I'm referring to what is called the viewport shading. By default, Blender starts in the Solid shading type, which shows your models as solid 3D objects, lit by the OpenGL lights you can set in Blender's User Preferences under System. You can change the viewport shading by going to the 3D View's header and left-clicking the button with a white circular icon, as seen in on the left of Figure 2-14.
If you have the Pie Menus add-on enabled, you can also change viewport shading type by pressing Z. The options here are the same as the shading types described in the previous paragraph. The only difference is that they're faster to access by using the pie layout. Figure 2-14 has the pie menu of viewport shading types on the right side.
Clicking this button reveals the following possible viewport shading types:
You may also notice that if you have more than one 3D View window, they don't all have to have the same viewport shading type. You can see the wireframe of your model in one editor while adjusting the lighting using the Shaded draw type in another.
How you select objects is one of the most controversial design decisions in Blender's interface: In nearly every other program, you select things — be they text, 3D objects, files, or whatever — by left-clicking them. This is not the case in Blender. When you left-click in the 3D View, all it seems to do is move around some strange crosshair thing. That “thing” is Blender's 3D cursor. I talk more about the 3D cursor later, but in the meantime, you're probably thinking, “How in the world do I select anything?”
The answer is simple: You select objects in Blender by right-clicking them. Multiple objects are selected and deselected by Shift+right-clicking them.
Although right-clicking to select certainly seems strange, there is actually a reason for doing it this way. This design decision wasn't made at random or just to be different for the sake of being different. There are actually two reasons for doing it this way. One is philosophical, and the other is practical.
Bottom line, the right-click-to-select paradigm really is a nice, efficient way of working in 3D space after you get used to it. However, if you try it and still don't like it, Blender offers you the ability to swap left and right mouse button usage in the Input section of User Preferences. Do note, however, that this book is written with the default right-click behavior in mind, so remember that as you read other chapters.
“Okay,” you say, “I can handle the right-click-to-select thing. But what's with these crosshairs that move to where ever I left-click? It seems pretty useless.”
Those crosshairs are the 3D cursor. It's a unique concept that I've only seen in Blender, and this design is anything but useless. The best way to understand the 3D cursor is to think about a word processor or text editor. When you add text or want to change something in one of those programs, it's usually done with or relative to the blinking cursor on the screen. Blender's 3D cursor serves pretty much the same purpose, but in three dimensions. When you add a new object, it's placed wherever the 3D cursor is located. When you rotate or scale an object, you can do it relative to the 3D cursor's location. And when you want to snap an object to a specific location, you do it with the 3D cursor.
In terms of adjusting your 3D View, you can use the 3D cursor as a quick way to recenter your view. Simply place the 3D cursor anywhere in the 3D View by left-clicking. Now press Alt+Home and watch as the 3D View adjusts to put the cursor at the center of the window. This is similar to pressing Numpad Dot (.), except that you don't have to select any objects. Another convenient hotkey sequence is Shift+C. This combination relocates the 3D cursor to the origin coordinates of the 3D environment and then brings all objects into view. The Shift+C hotkey combination is like pressing Home with the added benefit of moving the cursor to the origin.
In Chapter 3, I cover the topic of grabbing, scaling, and rotating objects. Usually, you want to use Blender's default behavior of doing these operations relative to the median point of the selected objects. However, you can also perform any of these operations relative to the 3D cursor by pressing the Period (.) key on your keyboard or selecting 3D Cursor from the Pivot menu in the 3D View's header, as shown in on the left of Figure 2-15. You can use this menu to switch back to the default behavior or press Comma (,).
If you have the Pie Menus add-on enabled, pressing Period (.) does not automatically toggle. Instead, pressing that hotkey brings up a pie menu version of the Pivot menu, as shown on the right of Figure 2-15.
The 3D cursor is also very useful for snapping, or moving a selection to a specific point in space. For a better idea of what snapping means, hover your mouse over the 3D View and press Shift+S. A menu like the one in Figure 2-16 appears.
Through this menu, you can snap your selected object to a fixed coordinate on the grid in the 3D View, the location of the 3D cursor, or to the center of the grid, also known as the origin of the scene. You also have the ability to snap the 3D cursor to the middle of multiple selected objects, a fixed location on the grid, or to the active object in the scene. This method is a very effective way to move an object to a specific point in 3D space, and it's all thanks to the little 3D cursor.
A handful of additional features in Blender's 3D View are worth mentioning before closing this chapter. They can be classified as productivity enhancers, learning aids, or comfort features for users migrating from other programs. This section outlines a few of these features.
If you've used other 3D graphics programs, you may be used to something referred to as Quad View, where the 3D View is split into four regions: top, front, and right orthographic views, along with a user perspective view. You can create a layout similar to this through the somewhat arduous task of manually splitting areas and then setting up each area as a 3D View from each of those perspectives. However, with no way to lock those views in place, you could very easily change one of your orthographic views to user perspective on accident. Fortunately, there's a better way. Go to the 3D View's header and click ViewToggle Quad View or use the hotkey Ctrl+Alt+Q, and your 3D View will switch to look like the one in Figure 2-17.
When toggling back to Full View from Quad View, Blender chooses the view that your mouse cursor is hovering over when you do the switch. As a result, when you use the View menu (ViewToggle Quad View), you'll almost always pop back to the top view. However, if you use the Ctrl+Alt+Q hotkey with your mouse cursor over one of the other views, Blender will pick that one as Full View.
In Chapter 1, I briefly describe regions as areas in an editor that give you additional tools specific to that editor. In fact, you've already had exposure to one type of region in this chapter: the header. Figure 2-17 shows the other two regions in Blender's 3D View.
Flanking either side of the 3D View is a Tool Shelf on the left, and on the right is a region for modifying the properties of the 3D View, referred to as the Properties region or the Information region.
You can toggle the visibility of the Properties region by going to ViewProperties in the header or by pressing N (for iNformation) while your mouse cursor is in the 3D View. In fact, quite a few editors in Blender have a Properties region. And with the exception of the Text Editor, you can consistently open all of them by using the N hotkey.
In the 3D View, the Properties region serves two primary purposes. Most obviously, it allows you to directly modify your selected object by typing in explicit location, rotation, and scale values within the Transform panel. The rest of the region, however, is dedicated to customizing your 3D View. From here, you can control features like the location of the 3D cursor, which axes are displayed, the appearance of the grid floor, and the shading mode used for the Textured Viewport Shading type (Multitexture or GLSL). This region is also where you go if you want to load a background image in the 3D View as a modeling reference. You can find out more about using background images for modeling in Chapter 5.
Because Blender has a Properties editor as well as a Properties region, you may find it useful to think of the Properties region as an Information region instead. It's a game of semantics, but by thinking of it as an Information region, the N hotkey is easier to remember. Throughout the rest of the book, I'll be referring to it as either the Information region or the Properties region for the editor you're working in.
The real gem of a region within the 3D View is the Tool Shelf, shown on the left of the 3D View by default. You can toggle the Tool Shelf's visibility by going to ViewTool Shelf in the header or by using the T hotkey.
Think of the Tool Shelf as a place for frequently used tools or operators. Most of these operators also are accessible by hotkey or some other menu, but having shortcuts in the Tool Shelf is extremely helpful for helping you work faster, especially if you haven't memorized all of Blender's various hotkeys. This way, frequently used tools are only a single click away rather than the multiple clicks it might take you to hunt through the menu system. And when it comes to Blender's sculpting and painting tools (covered in Chapter 5 and 8, respectively), the Tool Shelf is indispensable.
The Tool Shelf holds an additional feature that's extremely useful. At the bottom of the Tool Shelf is the Last Operator panel. If you've just opened Blender, this panel should just have the heading of Operator. However, if you perform an action in Blender like moving your selected object or adding a new object, this panel updates to display values relevant to that operation. Using this panel, you can perform a quick, rough operation and then tweak it to be more precise. For example, if you add a UV Sphere to your scene (Shift+AAdd MeshUV Sphere), Blender adds a UV Sphere object to your scene at the location of the 3D cursor with 32 segments and 24 rings. Using the Last Operator panel of the Tool Shelf, you can not only adjust the location of your new sphere, but you can also modify the number of segments and rings it has. You can see more on how the Last Operator panel is used in Chapter 5.
If you happen to have the Tool Shelf hidden, you can still access the last operator panel by pressing F6. Upon doing so, a “floating” Last Operator appears under your mouse cursor. Figure 2-18 shows the floating last operator panel after adding a UV sphere to the scene.
You should note that the Last Operator panel is only relevant for the last operation you actually performed. It's not a construction history, and it doesn't persistently remain in memory after you perform subsequent operations. For example, if you add a UV Sphere and then immediately rotate that sphere, there's no way for you to adjust the number of segments and rings in it from the Last Operator section. Even if you undo the rotate operation, those Last Operator values won't return (after all, Undo is another operation). The Last Operator section relates to the last thing you did — no more, no less.
Blender has a search feature that's fully integrated into Blender's interface. If you've been working your way through this chapter, you've probably already used it when adding custom event maps.
The benefit here is that if you know the operation you want to perform, but don't know where to go in Blender's interface to access it, you can simply search for that operator and perform it immediately. How's that for awesome?
The fastest way to access Blender's integrated search feature from any editor is to press Spacebar. A blank menu with a search field at the top appears.
From here, simply start typing the name of the operator you want, and Blender updates the menu with search results that match what you've typed. Furthermore, if a hotkey is associated with that operation, it shows up to the right of the operator name in the menu so that you can remember the hotkey in the future. As an example, bring up the search menu (Spacebar) and type save. As you type, the menu updates with operations within Blender that relate to saving.
Using the integrated search feature is a great way to familiarize yourself with the way Blender works, even more so if you're migrating from another program. In that case, you know the terminology for what you want to do; you just have to find out how Blender does it. Figure 2-19 shows Blender's integrated search menu.