Blender For Dummies

Introduction

Welcome to Blender For Dummies, 4th Edition, your introduction to one of the most well-known free programs for creating 3D computer graphics. With Blender, you can create characters, props, environments, and nearly anything else your imagination can generate. And it's not just about creating objects. You can set them in motion, too. Tell a story in an animation, walk people through a world of your own creation, or add a special effect to some video footage. It's all possible. They still haven’t quite designed a way for Blender to give you a foot massage if you’ve had a bad day, but in all seriousness, it’s difficult to imagine a task in computer animation that you can’t do with Blender. And just think: the developers of Blender have included all these features in a package you can download for free and run on nearly any computer. Crazy!

Blender sits at a very unique position in the world of 3D computer graphics. In the distant past, to get into 3D modeling and animation, you had only a few options, and most of them were too expensive, too limiting, or — ahem — too illegal for people just trying to see what this whole 3D thing was all about. Blender circumvents all those issues because it’s free. And not just zero-cost free, but freedom Free. Blender is open source. A world full of developers and users regularly contribute code and documentation, adding enhancements and improvements at a mind-boggling pace.

Of course, 3D computer graphics is a complex topic, and all software of this type is dense with buttons, options, settings, and unique ways of working. Perhaps more than any other program like it, Blender has carried a pretty heavy reputation for being difficult to understand. Blender wasn’t typically viewed as software for beginners. But, with the updates in the release of Blender 2.80 and if I’ve done my job right, this book will help get you started at a sprint. Blender For Dummies, 4th Edition is not just a book on using Blender. Sure, I explain why things in Blender work in their peculiar Blenderish ways, but I also make a point to explain core principles of 3D computer graphics as they are relevant. There’s no use in being able to find a button if you’re not really sure what it does or how it works. My hope is that with this combined knowledge, you can actually take advantage of Blender’s unique traits to create your own high-quality 3D art as quickly and efficiently as possible. Perhaps you can even become as addicted to it as I am!

About This Book

Blender is an extremely complex program used for the even more complex task of producing high-quality 3D models and animations. As such, I can’t cover every single feature and button in Blender. For a more comprehensive manual, refer to the excellent online documentation available through Blender’s website at https://docs.blender.org/manual.

Because I want to bring you up to speed on working in 3D space with Blender so that you can start bringing your ideas to life as soon as possible, I focus on introducing you to the fundamental Blender way of working. Not only do I show you how something is done in Blender, but I also often take the time to explain why things are done a certain way. This approach should hopefully put you on the fast track to making awesome work, and also allow you to figure out new parts of Blender on your own when you come across them.

Throughout the book, I refer to the Blender community. Blender’s user community is probably one of its most valuable assets. It really is a feature all its own, and I would be remiss to neglect to mention it. Not only do many members of the community create great work, but they also write new code for Blender, write and edit documentation, and help each other improve. And understand that when I make reference to the Blender community, I include you in that community as well. As of right now, you are a Blenderhead — a fellow Blender user and, therefore, a member of the Blender community.

Blender is a truly cross-platform program, running on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Fortunately, not much in Blender differs from one platform to another. However, for the few differences, I’ll be sure to point them out for you.

Foolish Assumptions

I’ve written this book for two sorts of beginners: people who are completely new to the world of 3D, and people who know a thing or two about 3D, but are completely new to Blender.

Because of the various types of beginners this book addresses, I tend to err on the side of explaining too much rather than too little. If you’re someone who is already familiar with another 3D computer graphics program, such as Maya, 3DS Max, Modo, or even an earlier version of Blender, you can probably skip a number of these explanations. Likewise, if you’re a complete newbie, you may notice that I occasionally compare a feature in Blender to one in another package. However, that comparison is mostly for the benefit of these other users. I write so that you can understand a concept without having to know any of these other programs.

I do, however, make the assumption that you have at least a basic understanding of your computer. I assume that you know how to use a mouse, and I highly recommend that you use a mouse with at least two buttons and a scroll wheel. You can use Blender with a one- or two-button mouse or even a laptop trackpad, and I provide workarounds for the unfortunate souls in that grim state (cough … Mac users … cough), but it’s certainly not ideal.

An exception is if you’re using Blender with a drawing tablet like the ones produced by Wacom. Recent updates introduced in Blender 2.80 have tried to make the program more accessible to tablet users, and although tablets are much less expensive these days than they have been in the past, not everyone has one. For that reason, I focus primarily on using Blender with a mouse, although I will occasionally point out where having a tablet is helpful. Because Blender makes use of all your mouse buttons, I stipulate whether you need to left-click, right-click, or middle-click. And in case you didn’t already know, pressing down on your mouse’s scroll wheel typically accesses the middle mouse button. I also make use of this cool little arrow ( ⇒ ) for indicating a sequence of steps. It could be a series of hotkeys to press or menu items to select or places to look in the Blender interface, but the consistent thing is that all these items are used for steps that you need to perform sequentially.

I also assume that you’re working with Blender’s default settings and theme. They have changed substantially with the release of version 2.80. You can customize the settings for yourself (in fact, I still use the presets from previous releases of Blender; 20 years of muscle memory doesn’t go away easily), but if you do, Blender may not behave exactly like I describe in the book. For that reason, and contrary to previous editions of this book, I focus mostly on accessing features through the menu system rather than using hotkeys. Hotkeys are meant to be customized, but the menus in Blender remain a consistent way of accessing features. Bearing in mind the point about Blender's themes, you may notice that the screenshots of Blender’s interface are lighter in this book than you see onscreen because I created a custom Blender theme that would show up better in print. If I used Blender’s default theme colors, all the figures in the book would appear overly dark. I include this custom theme at blenderbasics.com if you want your copy of Blender to match what’s shown on these pages.

Icons Used in This Book

As you flip through this book, icons periodically appear next to some paragraphs. These icons notify you of unique or valuable information on the topic at hand. Sometimes that information is a tip, sometimes it’s more detail about how something works, sometimes it’s a warning to help you avoid losing data, and sometimes they’re images that match icons in Blender’s interface (there’s a lot of them). For the icons that aren’t in Blender’s interface, the following are descriptions of each icon in this book.

Tip This icon calls out suggestions that help you work more effectively and save time.

Remember This icon marks something that I think you should try to keep in mind while working in Blender. Sometimes it’s a random tidbit of information, but more often than not, it’s something that you’ll run into repeatedly and is, therefore, worth remembering.

Technical stuff Working in 3D can involve some pretty heavy technical information. You can usually work just fine without ever having to know these things, but if you do take the time to understand it, I bet you dollars to donuts that you’ll be able to use Blender more effectively.

Warning This icon doesn’t show up often, but when it does, I definitely recommend that you pay attention. You won’t blow up your computer if you overlook it, but you could lose work.

newfeature Blender is a fast-moving target. Quite a bit has changed since the previous edition of this book. These icons point out things that are new or different in Blender so that you can get to be at least as effective (and hopefully more effective) with the current version as you were with past versions.

Beyond the Book

Blender For Dummies, 4th Edition, includes the following online goodies only for easy download:

Cheat Sheet: You can find the Cheat Sheet for this book here: www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/blender

Extras: I keep and maintain a website at blenderbasics.com with additional resources. I have a whole bunch of tutorials, both in written and in video format, specifically for readers of this book. Also, Blender’s a big, fast-moving program. I do my best on that site to chronicle changes in Blender that affect the content of this book (and perhaps share a new tip or two as well).

Where to Go from Here

Wondering where to start? The easy answer here would be to say Just dive on in! but that’s probably a bit too vague. This book is primarily intended as a reference, so if you already know what you’re looking for, flip over to the table of contents or index and start soaking in the Blendery goodness.

If you’re just starting out, I suggest that you merely turn a couple of pages, start at Chapter 1, and enjoy the ride. And even if you’re the sort of person who knows exactly what you’re looking for, take the time to read through other sections of the book. You can find a bunch of valuable little bits of information that may help you work more effectively.

Regardless of how you read this book, though, my one hope is that you find it to be a valuable resource that allows you to flex your creative muscles and, more importantly, have fun doing it.

Part 1

Wrapping Your Brain Around Blender

IN THIS PART …

Getting comfortable with Blender

Customizing the interface

Working in 3D

Starting to create in Blender

Chapter 1

Discovering Blender

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Figuring out what Blender is and what it’s used for

Bullet Understanding Blender’s history

Bullet Getting familiar with the Blender interface

In the world of 3D modeling and animation software, programs have traditionally been expensive — like, thousands-of-dollars-and-maybe-an-arm expensive. That’s changed a bit in the last few years, with software companies moving to more subscription-based ways of selling their programs. The entry cost is lower, but paying each month can still add up pretty quickly. There are some valid reasons for the high prices. Software companies spend millions of dollars and countless hours developing these programs. And the large production companies that buy this kind of software for their staff make enough money to afford the high cost, or they hire programmers and write their own in-house software.

But what about us, you and me: the little folks? We are the ambitious dreamers with big ideas, high motivation … and tight budgets. How can we bring our ideas to life and our stories to screen, even if only on our own computer monitors? Granted, we could shell out the cash (and hopefully keep our arms) for the expensive programs that the pros use. But even then, animation is a highly collaborative art, and it’s difficult to produce anything in a reasonable amount of time without some help.

We need quality software and a strong community to work, grow, and evolve with. Fortunately, Blender can provide us with both these things. This chapter is an introduction to Blender, its background, its interface, and its community.

Getting to Know Blender

Blender is a free and open source 3D modeling and animation suite. Yikes! What a mouthful, huh? Put simply, Blender is a computer graphics program that allows you to produce high-quality still images and animations using three-dimensional geometry. It used to be that you’d only see the results of this work in animated feature films or high-budget television shows. These days, it’s way more pervasive. Computer-generated 3D graphics are everywhere. Almost every major film and television show involves some kind of 3D computer graphics and animation. (Even sporting events! Pay close attention to the animations that show the scores or players’ names.) And it’s not just film and TV; 3D graphics play a major role in video games, industrial design, scientific visualization, and architecture (to name just a few industries). In the right hands, Blender is capable of producing this kind of work. With a little patience and dedication, your hands can be the right hands.

Remember One of the things that makes Blender different and special compared to other similar 3D software is that it is freely available without cost, and that it’s free and open source software.

Being free of cost, as well as free (as in freedom) and open source, means that not only can you go to the Blender website (www.blender.org) and download the entire program right now without paying anything, but you can also freely download the source, or the code, that makes up the program. For most programs, the source code is a heavily guarded and highly protected secret that only certain people (mostly programmers hired by the company that distributes the program) can see and modify. But Blender is open source, so anybody can see the program’s source code and make changes to it. The benefit is that instead of having the program’s guts behind lock and key, Blender can be improved by programmers (and even non-programmers) all over the world!

Because of these strengths, Blender is an ideal program for small animation companies, freelance 3D artists, independent filmmakers, students beginning to learn about 3D computer graphics, and dedicated computer graphics hobbyists. It’s also being used (if a bit clandestinely) more and more in larger animation, visual effects, and video game studios because it’s relatively easy to modify, has a very responsive development team, and no need for the headache of licensing servers.

Blender, like many other 3D computer graphics applications, has had a reputation for being difficult for new users to understand. At the same time, however, Blender is also known for allowing experienced users to bring their ideas to life quickly. Fortunately, with the help of this book and the regular improvements introduced in each new release of Blender, that gap is becoming much easier to bridge.

Discovering Blender’s origins and the strength of the Blender community

The Blender you know and love today wasn’t always free and open source. Blender is actually quite unique in that it’s one of the few (and first!) software applications that was liberated from proprietary control with the help of its user community.

Originally, Blender was written as an internal production tool for an award-winning Dutch animation company called NeoGeo, founded by Blender’s original (and still lead) developer, Ton Roosendaal. In the late 1990s, NeoGeo started making copies of Blender available for download from its website. Slowly but surely, interest grew in this less-than-2MB program. In 1998, Ton spun off a new company, Not a Number (NaN), to market and sell Blender as a software product. NaN still distributed a free version of Blender, but also offered an advanced version with more features for a small fee. There was strength in this strategy and by the end of 2000, Blender users numbered well over 250,000 worldwide.

Unfortunately, even though Blender was gaining in popularity, NaN was not making enough money to satisfy its investors, especially in the so-called dot bomb era that happened around that time. In 2002, NaN shut its doors and stopped working on Blender. Ironically, this point is where the story starts to get exciting.

Even though NaN went under, Blender had developed quite a strong community by this time, and this community was eager to find a way to keep their beloved little program from becoming lost and abandoned. In July of 2002, Ton provided a way. Having established a non-profit organization called the Blender Foundation, he arranged a deal with the original NaN investors to run the Free Blender campaign. The terms of the deal were that, for a price of €100,000 (at the time, about $100,000), the investors would agree to release Blender’s source code to the Blender Foundation for the purpose of making Blender open source. Initial estimations were that it would take as long as six months to one year to raise the necessary funds. Amazingly, the community was able to raise that money in a mere seven weeks.

Because of the Blender community’s passion and willingness to put its money where its metaphorical mouth was, Blender was released under the GNU General Public License on October 13, 2002. With the source in the community’s hands, Blender had an avalanche of development and new features added to it in a very short time, including somewhat common features like Undo (a functionality that was conspicuously missing and highly desired since the initial releases of Blender by NeoGeo).

Nearly two decades later, the Blender community is larger and stronger than ever. Blender itself is a powerful modern piece of software, competitive in terms of quality with similar software costing thousands of dollars. Not too shabby. Figure 1-1 shows screenshots of Blender from its early days to the Blender of today.

FIGURE 1-1: Blender through the years: Blender 1.8 (top left), Blender 2.46 (top middle), Blender 2.72 (top right), and the major changes apparent in the Blender of today (bottom).

Making open movies and games

One of the cool things about the programmers who write Blender is that many of them also use the program regularly. They’re writing code not just because they’re told to do it, but because they want to improve Blender for their own purposes. Many of Blender’s developers started as artists who wanted to make Blender do something it hadn’t been able to do before. Part of the programmers’ motivation has to do with Blender’s open source nature, but quite a bit also has to do with the fact Blender was originally an in-house production tool, built for artists, based on their direct input, and often written by the artists themselves.

Seeking to get even more of this direct artist feedback to developers, the Blender Foundation launched Project Orange in 2005. The project’s purpose was to create an animated short movie using open source tools, primarily Blender. A team of six members of the community were assembled in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, to produce the movie. Roughly seven months later, Elephants Dream premiered and was released to the public as the first open movie. This means that not only was it created using open source tools, but all the production files — 3D models, scenes, character rigs, and so on — were also released under a permissive and open Creative Commons Attribution license. These files are valuable tools for discovering how an animated film is put together, and anyone can reuse them in their own personal or commercial work. Furthermore, if you don’t like Elephants Dream, you’re free to change it to your liking! How many movies give you that luxury? You can see the film and all the production files for yourself at the project’s website, www.elephantsdream.org.

Due to the success of the Orange project, Ton established the Blender Institute in 2007 for the expressed purpose of having a permanent space to create open movie and game projects, as well as provide the service of training people in Blender. Since then, the Blender Institute has churned out open projects (most codenamed with a type of fruit) every couple of years. Like with Elephants Dream, both the final product and the production files for each project are released under a permissive Creative Commons license. More recently, the Blender Institute has spun off a separate entity, the Blender Animation Studio, a Blender-based animation studio with the goal of producing and releasing a feature-length animated film. Table 1-1 summarizes each of the Blender Institute’s open projects.

TABLE 1-1 Open Projects from the Blender Institute

JOINING THE COMMUNITY

Congratulations! As a Blender user, you’re a part of our community. You’re joining a diverse group that spans all age ranges, ethnicities, professional backgrounds, and parts of the globe. We are a passionate bunch: proud of this little 3D program and more than willing to help others enjoy using it as much as we do. Have a look at Chapter 21 for a list of community resources that are invaluable, not only for discovering the intricacies of using Blender, but also for improving yourself as an artist.

You can find innumerable opportunities for critique, training, discussion, and even collaboration with other artists, some of whom might also be Blender developers. I’ve made quite a few good friends and colleagues through the Blender community, both through the various community websites as well as by attending events like the annual Blender Conference. I go by the name Fweeb on these sites and I look forward to seeing you around!

Figure 1-2 shows rendered images from a bunch of the open projects.

FIGURE 1-2: Open projects from the Blender Institute help drive Blender development (Blender Foundation, www.blender.org).

With the completion of each of these projects, the functionality and stability of Blender significantly increased. Much of the content of this book wouldn’t even exist without these projects. For example, Chapter 14 starts with using Blender’s particle system to achieve exciting effects along with hair and fur. All the content in Chapter 18 is focused on the Compositor, a way of combining and enhancing still images and animations. In fact, nearly all of Part 3 is devoted to features that were enhanced or directly added for one of these open projects.

All these projects continue to exhibit the strength of the Blender community. Each of them were financed in a large part by DVD presales (and now Blender Cloud subscriptions) from users who understand that regardless of the project’s final product, great improvements to Blender are the result, and everyone benefits from that.

Getting to Know the Interface

Probably one of the most daunting aspects of Blender for newcomers and seasoned 3D professionals alike has been its unique and somewhat peculiar interface. For a long time, the interface has arguably been the most controversial feature Blender has had. In fact, at one time, merely calling the interface a feature would raise the blood pressure of some of you who tried using Blender in the past, but gave up in frustration when it did not behave as expected.

Although the interface wasn’t the primary focus, the interface updates to Blender added in the 2.5 series of release made great strides toward alleviating that frustration, and the improvements continue through to today. In fact, with the release of version 2.80, Blender’s interface is more welcoming to newcomers than ever before. As a small example, when you first launch Blender, the splash image provides you with some quick setup options to configure Blender to your liking right from the start. If you’re more familiar with other programs’ hotkeys and mouse behavior, you may want to try using the Industry Compatible shortcuts. If you’re a long-time Blender user like me, you may choose the Blender 2.7X shortcuts. This book is written with the assumption that you’re going with the default choices in this splash screen. Figure 1-3 shows the splash image you’re presented with when you start Blender for the first time.

FIGURE 1-3: The Blender splash screen.

If you click anywhere other than the splash screen, the splash screen goes away, and you’re greeted with Blender’s default General file in the Layout workspace, shown in Figure 1-4. If you’re looking at the interface for the first time, you may think it appears pretty daunting. However, the purpose of this book is to help you get the hang of Blender (and its interface) with a minimum of pain.

This book explains some of the design decisions in Blender’s interface and ultimately allows you to be productive with it. Who knows, you might even start to like it and wonder why other programs don’t work this way!

FIGURE 1-4: The default Blender interface.

Working with an interface that stays out of your way

The first thing to understand about Blender’s interface is its basic organization. Figure 1-4 displays a single Blender window. Your base Blender session consists of a workspace that can be made up of one or more windows. Workspaces are accessible from the tabs at the top of each Blender window. A Blender window can consist of one or more areas that you can split, resize, and join at will. In all cases, an area defines the space of an editor, such as the 3D Viewport, where you actually make changes and modifications to your 3D scene. Each editor can include one or more regions that contain additional features or tools for using that editor. An example of a region that all editors have is a header region that’s generally at the top of the editor; the header typically includes menus and buttons to give you access to features in that editor. Some regions, like the 3D Viewport’s Sidebar, have tabs and panels within them.

Figure 1-5 illustrates the hierarchical breakdown of the building blocks in Blender’s interface.

Knowing this organizational structure, the next important thing to know is that Blender is designed to be as non-blocking and non-modal as possible. Areas in Blender never overlap one another (non-blocking), and using one feature of Blender typically won’t restrict you from using any of the others (non-modal). As an example, some other software packages, if you want to change the material on a 3D object, may open a dialog or sub-window. This dialog is an overlapping window that not only blocks things behind it from view, but in some cases also prevents you from making any changes to your file. This scenario isn’t the case with Blender. In Blender, the Shader Editor never gets in the way of the 3D Viewport unless you explicitly want it to.

FIGURE 1-5: A typical Blender workspace includes at least one window containing areas populated by editors, which in turn incorporate one or more regions sometimes filled with tabs and panels.

Remember At first, working in a non-blocking, non-modal interface may seem to be really restrictive. How do you see different types of editors? Can you see them at the same time? Everything looks like it’s nailed in place, so is it even possible to change anything? Fortunately, all these things are possible, and you get the benefit of never having your view of one area obstructed by another. Having an unobstructed workspace is a great way to be able to see at a glance what’s going on in your file. Furthermore, if you absolutely need multiple windows that can overlap, you can have them. For example, you might have two computer monitors that are different sizes and you’d like a full-sized Blender window in each. I show you how to do this later in this chapter in the "Duplicating an area to a new window" section.

Technical stuff This non-blocking window philosophy, combined with the fact that Blender’s entire interface is written in a standardized programming library for graphics called OpenGL, is the precise reason that Blender looks the same, no matter where you run it. Whether you run it from Linux, Windows, or a Mac, Blender looks and behaves like Blender. An additional benefit to being written in a 3D library like OpenGL is that many parts of Blender’s interface allow you to zoom in on them. Try it! Hover your mouse cursor over the Properties editor (the editor on the right side) and press Numpad Plus (+) or Numpad Minus (-). You can make the panels in this editor much larger or smaller than they are by default. Pretty cool!

Resizing areas

Regardless of the type of editor that’s contained in an area, you modify and change all areas in a Blender window the same way. To change the size of an area, left-click the border between two areas and drag it to a new position. This method increases the size of one area while reducing the size of those that adjoin it. If you have only one area in your Blender window, it’s exactly the same size as that window. To resize it, you need to either adjust the size of its parent Blender window or split a new area into that space, as covered in the next section.

Splitting and removing areas

While working in Blender, it’s pretty common that the workspace you’re in isn’t quite what you need to work efficiently, but you don’t need as extravagant of a change as a whole new workspace. Sometimes you may just need an additional 3D Viewport, or you may want to see the Image Editor in addition to the 3D Viewport.

To create either of these layout changes, you need to split an existing area into two. You can split or join areas by right-clicking the border between two areas and choosing either Split Area or Join Area from the menu that pops up. Most editors also have a View ⇒ Area submenu that provides you options for splitting. However, there’s a faster way. It’s a little tricky to get used to, though. Look at the corners in the bottom left and top right of any area. Notice how the corners are rounded and when you move your mouse cursor near them, the cursor changes from the standard pointer to crosshairs. These are the area’s corner widgets, and they’re a shortcut for splitting and joining areas. To split any area into two, follow these steps:

Left-click one of the corner widgets and drag your mouse cursor away from the area’s border and into the area.

Drag your mouse cursor left or right to split the area vertically.

Dragging it up or down splits the area horizontally.

As you drag your mouse, the areas update in real time so that you can see the result of the split while you’re working.

Tip If you decide that you actually don’t want to split the area, you can cancel the operation by right-clicking or pressing Esc.

If you want to remove an area, the process is similar. Rather than splitting an area in two, you’re joining two areas together. So instead of left-clicking the corner widget and dragging your mouse cursor away from the area border, drag it towards the border of the area you want to join with. This action darkens the area your mouse is in and draws an arrow to indicate which area you want to remove.

When I work in Blender, I find myself constantly changing the screen layout by splitting and joining new areas as I need them.

Duplicating an area to a new window

In addition to splitting and joining areas, you can use an area’s corner widgets to duplicate that area into a new Blender window of its own. You can move that window to a separate monitor (if you have one), or it can overlap your original Blender window. And within this new Blender window, you can split the duplicated area into additional ones as you like. This area-duplication feature is a slight violation of Blender’s non-overlapping principles, but the benefits it provides for users with multiple computer screens make it very worthwhile.

To take advantage of this feature, follow these steps:

Shift+left-click one of the corner widgets in an area and drag your mouse cursor away from it in any direction.

This step duplicates the area you clicked in and creates a new Blender window to contain it.

Tip You can also achieve this effect from the header menu of some editors by choosing View ⇒ Area ⇒ Duplicate Area into New Window.

Close the additional Blender window by clicking the close button that your operating system adds to the border of the window.

Maximizing an area

When working in Blender, you also occasionally need to maximize an area. Maximizing an area is particularly useful when you’re working on a model or scene, and you just want to get all the other areas out of your way so you can use as much screen space as possible for the task at hand.

To maximize any area, hover your mouse cursor over it and press Ctrl+Spacebar. You can toggle back to the tiled screen layout by either pressing Ctrl+Spacebar again or clicking the Back to Previous button at the top of the window. These options are available in the header menus of nearly all editor types by choosing View ⇒ Area ⇒ Toggle Maximize Area. You can also right-click the header and choose Maximize Area from the menu that appears. If the area is already maximized, then the menu item will say Tile Area.

CUSTOMIZING HEADERS

All editors in Blender have a horizontal region called the header that usually runs along the top of the editor. The header usually features specialized menus or buttons specific to the editor you’re using. Here are some ways you can customize the header:

Icon depicting down arrowhead for hiding the header. Hide the header. If you right-click the header, you get a menu with the Show Header check box that you can use to toggle the visibility of the header. When the header is hidden, you’re left with only a small down-arrow icon in the right corner of the editor. If the header is at the bottom of the editor, the arrow icon points up and appears at the bottom right of the editor. Left-click this icon and the header reappears.

Scroll the header’s menus. There will be occasions while working that you make an area too narrow to show all the menus and buttons in it. No worries. All headers in all of Blender’s editors are scrollable. If you have a narrow area where parts of the header are obscured, hover your mouse cursor over the header and scroll your mouse wheel to slide the contents of the header left and right. You could also middle-click and drag the header to do the same thing.

Icon depicting three horizontal parallel lines for hiding menus in header. Hide menus in the header. Of course, maybe you don’t want to be constantly scrolling the contents of your header. You’d rather just save space by hiding the menus. Right-click the header and toggle the Show Menus option to collapse the menus for that header down to a single button with an icon of three lines (sometimes called a hamburger menu).

Change the location of the header. You can also change the location of the header to either the top or bottom of the editor it belongs to. To do so, right-click the header and choose Flip to Top (or Bottom, depending on where your header currently is).

Hide or show Tool Settings. This one is specific to the 3D Viewport. If you right-click the header for the 3D Viewport, there’s an additional check box that you can use to toggle the visibility for settings on your active tool and regain a bit of screen real estate.

Tip You may notice another option in the View ⇒ Area menu, Toggle Fullscreen Area. This option gives you even more screen space by hiding the menus and workspace tabs at the top of the Blender window. The hotkey to toggle this is Ctrl+Alt+Spacebar.

The menu that is a pie

newfeature There’s a recent addition to Blender’s user interface that’s worth mentioning. That addition is a feature called pie menus. Technically, they existed in previous releases of Blender, but weren’t enabled by default. Contrasted with the more conventional linear, list-type menu, a pie menu lists your menu options radially around your mouse cursor. This setup has a few advantages:

Each menu item has a much larger click area. With a typical list-type menu, after you find the menu item you want, you need to precisely click a relatively small area. Having a small click area can be especially frustrating if your primary input is with a pen tablet like many artists have. With a pie menu, you need only to have your mouse cursor in the general area around your menu selection (its slice of the pie). Because you don’t need to be as precise with your mouse, you can navigate menus faster with less stress on your hand.

Menu options are easier to remember. As humans, we tend to naturally think about things spatially. It’s much easier to remember that a thing is up or left or right than to remember that it’s the sixth item in a list of things. Because the menu items are arranged in two-dimensional space, pie menus take advantage of our natural way of recalling information. Also helpful for memory is the fact that any given pie menu can only have as many as eight options.

Selecting menu items is a gestural behavior. A gestural interface relies on using mouse movement to issue a command. Pie menus are not purely gestural, but by arranging the menu items spatially, you get many of the same advantages provided by gestures. Most valuable among these advantages is the reliance on muscle memory. After working with a pie menu for an extended period of time, selecting menu items becomes nearly as fast as using hotkeys, and for essentially the same reasons. You’re no longer thinking about the direction you’re moving your mouse cursor (or which key you’re pressing). You’ve trained your hands to move in a specific way when you want to perform that task. Once you get to that point (it doesn’t take very long), you’ll find that you’re working very quickly.

Technical stuff Before you get too excited about pie menus, they have a couple of limitations:

Pie menus are basically limited to a maximum of eight menu items. (It’s possible to have more items, but if a pie menu has more than eight items, it becomes cluttered and the speed and memory advantages of pie menus are lessened.) Blender has a number of very long menus; therefore, they don’t all translate nicely to the pie menu model. This means that some menus will be pies and others will not. Hopefully, as development continues on Blender, these menus will migrate to being more pie-like.

Some pie menus aren’t enabled by default. A number of hotkeys are bound to pie menus already, but you can enable even more as add-ons from Preferences. (Read more about Blender add-ons in Chapter 2.)

The process of enabling additional pie menus is easy:

Open User Preferences (Edit ⇒ Preferences) and go to the Add-ons section.

Icon depicting magnifying glass for search field. On the search field on the upper right of the window, type pie menu.

The add-on list should have one choice available: 3D Viewport Pie Menus.

Enable the pie menu add-on you want by left-clicking its check box.

Additional pie menus are now enabled.

That’s it! By default, Blender automatically saves what you set in Preferences, so additional pie menus will be automatically enabled each time you start Blender.

To try out pie menus, you don’t have to actually enable any add-ons at all. With your mouse cursor in the 3D Viewport, press Ctrl+Tab to show the Mode pie menu. You should see a menu like the one in Figure 1-6. Throughout this book, you’ll see what each of these modes can be used for. The point here is to recognize pie menus and know how to use them.

FIGURE 1-6: Your first pie (menu)!

With the menu still visible, move your mouse cursor around the screen. Notice that the highlighted area of the circular slice indicator at the center of the menu points to your mouse cursor. Also notice that as you move your mouse cursor, individual menu items highlight when you enter their slice of the menu. This highlighting is how you know which menu item is currently ready to be picked. Press Esc to close the menu without selecting anything.

You can choose menu items in a pie menu in two ways:

Press, release, click: This can be considered the standard method:

Press and release the hotkey that activates the menu.

In this example, press and release Ctrl+Tab.

Move your mouse cursor to your desired menu item’s slice.

Choose that menu item by clicking anywhere within its slice.

The current active slice is indicated by the circular slice indicator at the center of the menu, as well as the highlighting of each menu item as your mouse cursor enters its slice.

Press, hold, release: I think of this method as the fast way.

Press and hold the hotkey that activates the menu.

In this example, press and hold Ctrl+Tab.

Move your mouse cursor to your desired menu item’s slice.

Release the hotkey to choose that menu item.

Even without enabling any add-ons, pie menus are still used throughout Blender’s interface, so it’s worth getting used to them. One of the advantages of the add-ons is that they enable you to configure which hotkeys have an associated pie menu, so you can disable some of those pies if you’d like.

Chapter 2

Understanding How Blender Thinks

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Familiarizing yourself with Blender’s windows

Bullet Working in three-dimensional space

Bullet Using the regions in the 3D Viewport

Bullet Adjusting Blender’s interface to fit the way you work

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.

Looking at Editor Types

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.

newfeature In fact, with the introduction of Workspaces in Blender 2.80, there’s a much greater emphasis on having Blender’s workflow cater to users familiar with other specific applications. So, for example, if you’re familiar with common interfaces for non-linear video editors, Blender’s Video Editing workspace will make use of many of the same interface paradigms that you’re used to. Likewise for the Animation or Sculpting workspaces. The Blender developers have worked very hard to balance Blender’s internal consistency with the expectations of people migrating from other applications.

That said, once you’re in a workspace, you still have the ability to re-organize and adjust it, adding and removing areas and editors as you see fit. As noted in the previous chapter, 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.

FIGURE 2-1: The Editor Type menu.

Each editor type serves a specific purpose, but you can organize them into four basic categories, as shown in the menu: general editors, animation editors, scripting editors, and data editors. The following subsections give you an overview of each editor, organized by category.

General editors

The editors covered in this section are usually the most common way of interfacing with objects in your 3D scene and actually creating things in Blender.

Tip You may notice that the same hotkey combination gets listed for multiple editors. The reason for this re-use of hotkeys is because those editors often get used together in a particular workflow or have a similar work paradigm, so having the same hotkey allows you to quickly toggle or shuffle through those editors.

MENUS IN BLENDER

There’s a somewhat unique quirk of Blender’s menus. Because editors and their headers can literally be just about anywhere in a Blender window, depending on how you’ve split it, menus will either roll down or up from wherever you click, depending on where there’s the most available space. Furthermore, the menus are 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 Viewport (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.

These are editors you use to make things in a Blender scene:

Icon depicting 3D Viewport. 3D Viewport (Shift+F5): Arguably the most-used editor in Blender, the 3D Viewport shows you the three-dimensional view of your model or scene and provides access to many of the tools you can use to modify it.

Icon depicting Image Editor. Image Editor (Shift+F10): With the Image Editor, you can do basic image editing, masking, and digital painting.

Icon depicting UV Editor. UV Editor (Shift+F10): To apply images to the surface of your 3D objects, you often need to go through a process called unwrapping to edit the texture coordinates for your models (see Chapter 9). The UV Editor gives you the bulk of the tools necessary to complete that process.

Icon depicting Shader Editor. Shader Editor (Shift+F3): Blender has a node-based editor for creating and modifying materials and textures. Both Cycles and Eevee, Blender’s two integrated render engines, make heavy use of the Shader Editor for materials and lighting.

Chapters 8 to 10 cover materials, textures, and lighting extensively.

Icon depicting Compositor. Compositor (Shift+F3): Similar to the Shader Editor, Blender uses a node-based system for compositing, or mixing images after they’ve been rendered. To find out all about the Compositor, have a look at Chapter 18.

Icon depicting Texture Node Editor. Texture Node Editor (Shift+F3): The Shader Editor is a great place to generate materials for your 3D objects, but sometimes you need a specific interface for building textures. That’s what the Texture Node Editor is for. Think of it as a Compositor of image data before you render. I get into the Texture Node Editor a little bit in Chapter 9.

Icon depicting Video Sequencer. Video Sequencer (Shift+F8): Blender’s Video Sequencer is a lightweight video editor. The Video Sequencer isn’t as powerful as some other programs created specifically for editing video, but it’s quite effective for stringing a sequence of scenes together and doing basic effects, overlays, and transitions. See Chapter 17 for more on the Video Sequencer.

Icon depicting Movie Clip Editor. Movie Clip Editor (Shift+F2): The Movie Clip Editor is the primary go-to editor for Blender’s motion tracking features. Motion tracking is a process where the software analyzes moving parts of a video in an effort to relate them to 3D space. With video that’s been successfully motion tracked, you can integrate 3D models into recorded video. Have you ever wondered how they get computer-generated monsters to look like they’re in the same room as living actors? Motion tracking! Chapter 19 is all about motion tracking in Blender.

Animation editors

The following editors relate specifically to animation:

Icon depicting Dope Sheet. Dope Sheet (Shift+F12): The Dope Sheet is where you create and adjust your overall animation using actions or keying sets. You can use actions to animate all of a character’s movement in a scene, or you can mix them together in the NLA Editor. Keying sets give you the ability to group together a bunch of different animatable attributes.

Icon depicting Timeline. Timeline (Shift+F12): If you’re working on an animation, the Timeline editor offers you a convenient way to quickly jump from one moment in your animation to another as well as play back the animation. You can also do some simple keyframe editing from this editor.

Icon depicting Graph Editor. Graph Editor (Shift+F6): Blender’s Graph Editor shows a graphical representation of animatable attributes in your scene as they change over time.

Icon depicting Drivers. Drivers (Shift+F6): Drivers are a bit of an advanced rigging topic. Simply put, drivers give you the ability to control one animatable parameter with the values of another. For example, you could control the Z-axis rotation of one object with the Y-axis location of another. The Drivers editor is what you use to map and define that relationship.

Icon depicting Nonlinear Animation. Nonlinear Animation: The Nonlinear Animation editor allows you to mix pre-animated actions on a single character (such as mixing a waving hand animation with a walking animation to have your character walk and wave her hand at the same time).

Scripting editors

The following editors are useful for automating tasks within Blender:

Icon depicting Text Editor. Text Editor (Shift+F11): Blender’s integrated Text Editor is not only handy for keeping notes about your scenes and models, but once you become a more advanced user, it’s also a convenient place to write and test your own Python scripts and material shaders in Blender.

Icon depicting Python Console. Python Console (Shift+F4): The Console is a pretty handy editor that’s more often utilized by advanced users to help write custom Python scripts. It’s a live console where you can use the Python language to directly issue commands to Blender.

Icon depicting Info. Info: The Info editor displays basic information about your scene. It also serves as a report space where warnings and errors are logged. This can be used to figure out what happened if a feature doesn’t work as expected.

Data editors

The following editors are particularly useful for working with data that you want to pull into Blender or that already exists within your Blender session:

Icon depicting Outliner. Outliner (Shift+F9): The Outliner gives a hierarchical view of all the objects in your scene along with the ability to see how they’re related to one another. It’s also a quick way to select objects and do simple manipulations in a complex scene.

Icon depicting Properties. Properties (Shift+F7): You can manipulate nearly all the different attributes for your scene and the objects within it via this editor. You can find out more about this topic later in this chapter in the section "Understanding the Properties editor."

Icon depicting File Browser. File Browser (Shift+F1): This editor allows you to look through the files on your computer. It also allows you to look at the innards of your Blender projects to see how things are structured or for linking to other projects.

Icon depicting Preferences. Preferences: Also available from the Edit menu, the Preferences editor allows you to customize how you interact with Blender.

Understanding the Properties editor

After the 3D Viewport, 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 known as contexts.

Tip You can access each of the various contexts by using the tabs along the left side of the Properties editor. It’s worth noting here that these contexts 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 contexts in the Properties editor can change depending on what your active selection is in the 3D Viewport. For example, if you have a camera object selected, the Modifiers tab 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:

Icon depicting Active Tool. Active Tool: Contrasted with previous versions of Blender, releases after version 2.80 feature the concept of active tools where you can select a tool to work on something in your scene. I cover this more throughout the book, but for the time being, it’s worth it to know that this tab of the Properties editor is where you can find settings and controls for whatever tool you have active.

Icon depicting Render. Render: The Render context has controls that determine what the final output of your scene will look like when you decide to render it to an image or video. Chapter 16 covers these properties in more depth.

Icon depicting Output. Output: Whether you render to a still image, a sequence of images, or a video, Blender needs to know how that image data should be saved to your hard drive. The Output tab of the Properties editor is where you set those parameters.

Icon depicting View Layer. View Layer: You can organize the output of your scene in view layers, useful for compositing different render outputs into a final image (see Chapter 18). The properties in this context give you control over organizing your render layers.

Icon depicting Scene. Scene: The properties in this context dictate the nature of your scene, including things like the active camera, units of measurement, and the strength of gravity if you’re using simulated physics.

Icon depicting World. World: The buttons and values in the World context control the environment that your scene is built in. They have a large influence on the final output of your scene.

Icon depicting Object. Object: Any object in your scene is going to have its own set of properties that you can modify. The Object context allows you to make changes that affect an object as it relates to the scene.

Icon depicting Modifiers. Modifiers: A lot of work goes into building 3D models, so it’s to your benefit to take advantage of your computer and have it do as much work for you as possible. Let it take care of boring procedural steps like mirroring parts of your object or making it smoother while you focus on the more interesting steps in the process. Modifiers are great tools to facilitate these kinds of healthy shortcuts, and allow for more advanced uses in animation. This tab is where you manage those modifiers. You can find out more about modifiers in Chapter 5.

Icon depicting Particles. Particles: In computer graphics, particle systems are often used to create special effects or manage the behavior of groups of objects. This context of the Properties editor is where you manage particle systems in Blender. Working with particles is a pretty advanced topic. Chapter 14 gives you a brief introduction to the possibilities that they have.

Icon depicting Physics. Physics: In the spirit of making your computer do as much work for you as possible, having the computer simulate physical behavior in your objects is sometimes helpful. It lends realism to animations and can often help you work faster. The Physics tab gives you controls for simulating physics on your objects. See Chapter 14 for more on these topics.

Icon depicting Object Constraints. Object Constraints: When working in 3D — particularly with animation — it’s often useful to constrain the properties of one object to that of another. Constraints automate parts of your scene and help make it much more manageable. Chapter 12 goes into constraints more deeply.

Object Data: Buttons and values in the Object Data context change slightly depending on what sort of object you’ve selected, but their primary purpose is to give you the ability to work with the fundamental structural elements of your object.

Tip Object Data is a generic term. Think of this section as properties based on what you’ve got selected. Even the icon for Object Data Properties changes depending on your selection. For example, if you have a camera object selected, the Object Data tab would hold camera properties, and the icon for this section looks like a camera. If you have a curve object selected, the icon looks like a curve and on support forums, some users may refer to it as the Curve Properties tab.

Icon depicting Bone. Bone: The Bone context is available only if your active selection is an Armature object. Armatures, sometimes called skeletons in other programs, are used for animation in Blender and they consist of a set of bone sub-objects. The Bone tab of the Properties editor is where you can adjust attributes of a specific bone that you’ve selected in the armature.

Icon depicting Bone Constraints. Bone Constraints: Similar to the properties in the Object