blender provides a lot of information with its interface and
can be flexible enough to fit the workflow you need,
let's go over some of the basics on how to interpret and interact with blenders you I
before we begin,
I want to point out that there is a very
handy display at the very bottom of the user interface.
This is an informative display that lets you know what each click
can do in the context your cursor is at the moment.
It also applies to when certain hot keys are being held down
to change the function of certain clicks.
For example
if you hold shift
you can see the information at the bottom changing
it tells us that without holding shift,
your middle mouse button rotates your perspective but holding shift pans,
your perspective.
Feel free to refer to this display at any
time while watching this series or playing around with blunder
to learn more of its features.
As a quick reference
here are what some of the mouse icons translate to.
Now. The next big thing you'll notice is that each important section of the U. I.
Is separated into panels.
These panels are scalable if you click and drag any of the
boundaries and they can also be whatever you like them to be.
Simply click the drop down menu in the top left or bottom
left of a panel and select a different type of editor.
You can also create more panels by right clicking a boundary clicking
split area and then left clicking at a position of the screen.
You desire
to delete a panel simply right click a boundary click joint
area and left click over the panel you'd like to overwrite.
Additionally, if you would ever like to maximize the panel to focus on it,
simply mouse over an area and press control space.
You can also press control space again
to return.
While this is extremely powerful, blender also provides default workspaces.
You can choose from
that set up the appropriate editors. For specific workflows,
you can find these workspace options in the tabs above.
For hot key users, you can press control page up or control page down.
We will be going over each of these workspaces in future videos.
However,
for this video we will focus on the primary editors of the layout workspace.
Further introduction of other editors will be given an editor specific videos.
So let's begin.
If you saw our view port navigation video,
then you already know what the view port is.
This is where our three D scene is displayed
in this editor.
You can perform a variety of tasks that interact
with your three D scene and its objects.
However,
it's important to note that there are two helpful quick menus in the view port,
simply press T as in tools or left click this arrow here
to expand the quick tools menu for the view port,
this includes tools such as the select box,
move
rotate
and scale
for hot key users keep in mind you can also use shift space at any
time to bring up these same tools menu but labeled and at your cursor location.
This works similarly to a pie menu and that
you have the option to hold the shift space.
Hotkey,
move your cursor to the tool you want and release the hot key to select a tool.
You can also press N as a number or left click the arrow
on the right to open additional quick settings which include your items,
transformation data, tool specific settings and other view port options.
You'll notice here there is an option for the 3D cursor.
This is a very powerful tool which you can see right here.
This red and white circle acts as the spawning point for any new objects and
can be used as a reference for pivoting which will go over in another video
to place it around your scene, simply hold shift and right click
to re center.
The cursor simply press shift S and select cursor to world origin from the
pie menu or adjust the location and rotation settings in the right hand side.
Quick menu.
Now this feels like a good time to explain what pie menus are.
For those who are unfamiliar
pie menus are quick wheel menus that appear around your cursor.
After a hot key is pressed, you have three options when navigating a pie menu.
The first option is to right click to cancel in case you change your mind.
The second option is to press and hold the hotkey to initiate the pie menu,
drag your cursor to your desired choice,
then let go of the hot key to select with no cooking necessary.
Or the third option is to let go of the
hotkey that initiated the pie menu before moving your cursor,
then use your cursor to left click, select the option you like
after you get used to where each option is.
This can greatly speed up your work foot
while also making several options available with less keystrokes
throughout the series.
You will see pie menus quite often for various different contexts.
Now below the view port we have the timeline.
This controls playback of your animation.
You can zoom in and out with your scroll wheel,
drag the timeline with your middle mouse button,
change the start and end frames for your
output and create and manipulate key frames,
all of which will go over in another video.
Mhm.
The Properties editor contains several tabs vertically
to display the properties of your seen,
your current tool and whatever object you have selected
to start at the top.
This first tab represents the options your currently
selected tool in the view port may have
in this case the select box tool gives you a few different selection options.
The next few tabs which you can see are separated by a small gap,
contain your scene specific properties.
Just to clarify you're seen refers to your entire 3D scene.
However,
you can create more than one scene in a single blender file by cooking up here.
You can also select a scene from existing scenes using this. Drop down
This back facing camera icon is your render tab.
This allows you to change render engines,
sampling
engine specific properties and other properties that affect your final
image and how it's interpreted from the 3D scene.
The next icon looks like a printer and this is your output tab.
This is where all of your output settings can be tweaked before render resolution,
frame rate, file, path, file type and much more.
The icon that looks like a stack of photos is the view layer
tab and is similar to what used to be called render layers.
View layers are typically used to separate background and character passes,
for example, for easy compositing after a render however,
you'll notice this is only the past properties not the objects
And it's for only one view layer, The one We're currently in
to select a different view layer to change its properties,
you'll need to go up here similar to creating a new scene
you can create and select existing view layers here.
While we're on the topic,
I'd like to point out what this panel above Properties is for in order
to specify which collections of objects are rendered out in each view layer.
You can check and uncheck collections here in what's called the outline. Er
I highly recommend using descriptive names for your
collections and view layers by double clicking them.
But we will go over this in another video.
Next we have the general scene tab.
This is other miscellaneous seen properties that affect your scene
such as your active camera, your units and rigid body settings.
Finally, the globe icon is the final tap of this section and is called the world tab.
This includes properties for the sky and air of your seen.
In other words,
the surface option for your world is the shader used for your sky or background color
while volume allows for volumetric lighting throughout the
atmosphere of your scene as a whole,
such as fog or mist.
For the next section,
the property tabs will be specific to the active object you have selected,
so in this case I will select the cube.
Our first tab is the object tab.
This contains basic information such as location,
rotation and scale of the object.
You can also specify parent child relationships which collections
it belongs to and visibility of the object.
The next tab is a very important tab for blender represented by a wrench icon.
The modifiers tab allows for powerful
manipulation of objects using predefined modifiers
simply select a modifier from the drop down menu to add it to the stack below.
You can use as many modifiers as you like
and change the order or application of these modifications.
Using these arrows,
for example the subdivision surface modifier and the bevel modifier.
This next tab is the particles tab.
You can see the icon looks like an object shooting particles out from its main body
in here you can create particle systems and add them to the object you have selected.
Next is the physics tab which looks like an orbiting planet icon.
This contains several different types of physics
simulations and physics manipulators including cloth,
rigid body smoke, fluid
collision and force fields such as wind.
The next icon looks like two objects wrapped together.
This represents the constraints tab.
This tab is very similar to the modifiers
tab but deals more so with relationships of the
objects you have selected with other objects or
values rather than manipulating the object by itself.
You can have an object copy of the location
of another object with the copy location constraint,
stay above the ground with the floor constraint or
point at another object with the tracking constraints.
The green triangle icon is for your objects mesh data. To explain what mesh data is.
I can tell you that the reason why our cube is a cube is because of the mesh data.
If I were to take this exact same object and change the mesh data,
its shape would not be the same but its
object properties such as its location would remain the same
here.
You can manipulate your vertex groups also known as weight maps,
your shape keys also known as blend shapes and your UV maps
other geometry specific settings belong here as well.
And finally we have our material tab.
This is represented by a material sphere icon and is where
you control much of how your object is shaded during render.
The material you choose here will affect how shiny your objects is,
what color it is and how rough it may appear to be.
The final tab is actually in a different section. As you can see
there's a small gap there.
This is the texture tap represented with a
checkered canvas icon and is not object specific
textures exist as separate entities that can be referenced
for a number of things including the world.
Ak skybox, materials or brushes
because of this ubiquity. They are in a separate section.
Before we move on. Let's go ahead and left click to select our lamp object.
This is the dotted circular thing you see next to our cube.
Once you have that selected,
you'll have access to its lamp properties which looks like a light bulb.
This is where you can tweak its brightness,
the radius of light whether or not it casts shadows and what type of lamp it is.
We can also left click to select our camera object
which is this sideways rectangular pyramid shape we have here.
Now you should have access to the camera options
which include focal length perspective type and much more
and that's the summary for the default layout workspace.
We see when we opened blunder.
I hope this is helpful for you,
and I'll be going into more detail about the other
workspaces and what each editor does in separate videos.