Blender for begginers

The Mission

Back to the beginning. Blender is a powerful tool to create awesome 3D stuff for your games, avatars or videos. Here is where you should start if you are an student or just a curious and want to learn how to use Blender.

In this article we try to explain the basics: how the interface works and where is everything you need to start.

Resources

• Blender 2.8 & Superior

User interface

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Workspaces

Workspaces are essentially predefined window layouts. It is often useful to quickly switch between different workspaces within the same file.

Blender's default startup shows the "Layout" workspace in the main area.
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It also has several other workspaces added by default:

• Modeling → For modification of geometry by modeling tools.
• Sculpting → For modification of meshes by sculpting tools.
• UV Editing → Mapping of image texture coordinates to 3D surfaces.
• Texture Paint → Tools for coloring image textures in the 3D Viewport.
• Shading → Tools for specifying material properties for rendering.
• Animation → Tools for making properties of objects dependent on time.
• Rendering → For viewing and analyzing rendering results.
• Compositing → Combining and post-processing of images and rendering information.
• Scripting → Programming workspace for writing scripts.

In "Layout" workspace we can see diferent Editors

1. Yellow → 3D Viewport
2. Green → Outliner
3. Blue → Properties
4. Red → Timeline

This Editors are distributed in Areas and this Areas can be Resized, Splitted and Joinned.

Resizing

Splitting

Joining

Basic movement controllers

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However since Blender is very hotkey based, in case you want to learn the default settings, we're going to post small guide of the basic movement controllers:

MC

ALT + MC

CTRL + MC Up/Down
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SHIFT + MC

Rotate Camera

Snap Rotate Camera

Zoom In, out
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Pan camera

Mouse

​RC = Right Click
LC = Left Click
MC = Middle Click

Editors

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The editors are so usefull, they are divided by tags (General, Animation, Scripting and Data) the most important editors that we could use frecuently are:

• 3D Viewport
• Image Editor
• UV Editor
• Shader Editor
• Compositor
• Dope Sheet
• Timeline
• Graph Editor
• NonLinear Animation
• Outliner
• Properties

Properties

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We have the Properties Editor, this will help us in so many cases.
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Here we can modify most of all the properties from our scene, word, object, etc.

• Workspace → Addons
• Render → Modify Render settings from the current Scene (we can choose between two Render Engines, Eevee or Cycles)
• Output → Before export a render, we can modify the output settings like the range of the image, aspect, resolution, compression, color depth,...
• View Layer → Here we can check the passes from the render to modify them in the Compositor Editor
• Scene → We can change the Units of Scale, Rotation, Lenght and the main camer (used for render)
• World → Change the parameters of our word.
• Object → All the properties of the selected object.
• Modifier → This could be the most important tool, there you have modifiers to apply for the objects you have selected. Ex. Mirror, Array, Remesh, Subdivision, Solidify, Decimate, Smooth and more interesting tools.
• Particles → Settings of particles and hair.
• Physics → Here we can add physics to the object selected like Soft bodies, Rigid bodies, fluid, cloth, force fields (wind, heat, vortex,...).
• Object Constraints → We can add constraints to our object like Copy Transforms, Copy Location, Solvers, Tracking,...
• Object Data → We can create groups of vertex from an object, this gives more facilities to modify the mesh or do Shape Keys.
• Material → We can add as materials to an object as we want, choosing the mesh or masks to change the material.
• Texture → Usually used to create textures for example, bumps, clouds, noise, etc.

Modifiers

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Modify
These are tools similar to the Deform ones, however, they usually do not directly affect the geometry of the object, but some other data, such as vertex groups.

Generate
These are constructive/destructive tools that will affect the whole Topology of the mesh. They can change the general appearance of the object, or add new geometry to it…

Deform
Unlike Generate ones, these only change the shape of an object, without altering the topology.

Physics
Those represent physics simulations. They are automatically added to the modifiers stack whenever a Particle System or Physics simulation is enabled. Their only role is to define the position in the modifier stack from which is taken the base data for the simulation they represent. As such, they typically have no attributes, and are controlled by settings exposed in separate sections of the Properties.

Keyboard Shortcuts

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Modeling

RC → Object Content Settings
S → Scale
E → Extrude
K → Cut
F → Fill (Edge/vertex/face)
J → Connect vertex with edges
Sift + S → Origin settings
Tab → We can swap between Object Mode and Edit Mode.
1, 2, 3 → Change between Vertex, Edge or Face edition.
Numpad → Orthographic view (front, lateral, top) Nº 0 → Enter main camera
Ctrl + R → Cut and create an edge loop.
Ctrl y RC → Selection of several vertex, edges, or faces.
Sift + RC → Selection between the active vertex, edge or face, to last choose.
Sift → Manual selection of several objects
Sift + C → Set origin in center
CTRL + E, V o F → (bridge edge loops) Connect edges/vertex nodes.
Sift + A → Menu add
Sift + F → Enter camera mode
Sift + H → Hide everything except the object we selected, H → hide just the selected.
Alt + H → Show every element hidden previously.
Ctrl + B → Bevel
Ctrl + P → Set parent
Ctrl + J → Join selected objects in one.
Alt + C → Convert in mesh
Ctrl + X → Disolve vertex, edges or faces.
Ctrl + + → Seleccion of all surface that have contact with selected
S + Z + 0 → Set all vertices selected in the same position, we can change Z for X or Y.
Shift/Alt + D → Create a copy/creeate an instantiate of selected.
Ctrl + Alt + Q → Change of view and perspective
Ctrl + G → Save proyect

Add-ons

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There is several add-ons that you can activate in Edit → Preferences → Add-ons, they could make you happy.

​Javier Vicén Lucia

3D ARTIST

​Enthusiastic about videogames, 3D Impression and photography