Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Since I misplaced parts 2 and 3, I was recreating them, when blender made the jump to 3.0. So if anything does not look 100% the same, just go with the flow. The first few are going to try and draw your attention to different parts of the interface so you can orient yourself. By no means is this series a deep dive, I do not work with blender every day, I got it to make isometric landscapes and threw up my hands in frustration more than once, so I know how it feels. Picking up a book, I found that they used words for things I had no idea of. On top of that, English is not my first language and I know there are many more people like me. Here, I attempt to get you up to speed, the fastest way I know how. Later on we will make a penguin and maybe a low poly landscape. Thanks to @JavierSam for his input – you can find him at: javiersam@blogspot.com When you fire up blender now, you have the choice of keeping the old settings or loading the new settings for blender 3.0. The choice is yours. I suggest going for the newer settings as things only move forward. Now that we have demystified some of the interface, and we are able to do some of the basics like zoom, pan, rotate and so forth, it is time to talk about what you see and why it sometimes looks different in tutorials than you are seeing now. So far, we have only explored the default view.
Let us quickly talk about some more interface before we start making something – last one, promise! When I say predefined workspaces, I want you to look at the image up top. Starting with Layout, modelling and sculpting. Please go ahead and click through each of these so that you know what they look like. By the way, if I did not mention it, I will be using only a three-button mouse as that is what most people have. We will go into more detail, once we have actually made something. I want you to accomplish something first before we dive in deeper, so hold those questions on things I may not have mentioned. On our right, we have the scene collector at the top and the editors below it. What you currently see is not the only view, they can change, so if you have ever seen an online tutorial and it looked different, just go with the flow for now, we will reveal more as the series develops. The scene collector’s default view will give you the following (shown below). A camera, a cube and a light. Clicking on the little eye next to the cube, will turn it visible or invisible. It does not remove it. Now expand the cube. Click on any of the two properties below it and look at how the panel below the scene collector changes. I want you to understand that it is dynamic and will change from the default view. There is a little tree view icon that acts as a drop-down expansion here for you to see grouped icons, just above the words “scene collection” To understand the properties panel below it, you need to realise that it is grouped into sections by thin black lines, that you may or may not be able to see (it is black on dark grey after all).
I want you to hover over each one and read the tool tips. The first one, the “screwdriver and spanner”, is separate, denoted by the large space between it and the next icon, then we have a group of light-grey / off-white icons, followed by a red one, a white one, an orange one, and blue ones. This is a visual representation of the category that the icon falls into. Please go ahead and click through each one to see what they do until you reach the chequer board at the end (you should also expand the entries inside each one). Now say your screen is 1366×768 or some such, you may not be able to see all of the icons in the list. Fear not, just above the “screwdriver and spanner”, there is an icon that expands into a drop-down list, ringing up a nice grouped view. The view contains all the shortcut keys for you to learn. In no way do you have to use the shortcut keys, however, it makes the work flow a lot faster. You will find another of these organised drop-down icons in the top-left (looks like a grid with a sphere on it), and one in the bottom left (a clock face). Now that you know where to find what, let’s look at doing things quickly. Move your mouse to the bottom corner of the viewport and drag vertically or horizontally.
The pointer icon should change into a cross, or else it will not work ( don’t know if you can see mine – the magazine may be on a small screen). This is handy when you want to look at an object from different perspectives. You can change the perspective of each window you created in your viewport. Just go to each one and press any of the numpad keys we talked about in a previous issue (I may not have mentioned it, but if you do not have a numpad, you can emulate it by going to: Edit → Preferences → Input). It is as easy as that, provided you have the screen real-estate. To join or merge windows back into each other, rinse and repeat. Move your pointer to the corner, where it makes another cross and drag into the adjoining window, and voilà! Tip: if, for some reason, you mess up your interface into the FUBAR state, you can reset it to factory defaults from the file menu. File > Defaults > Load factory settings. That concludes the whirlwind tour of our interface. Next issue we start making things!! Questions or comments? misc@fullcirclemagazine.org