PHILTECH INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY INC.

SUBJECT: 2D ANIMATION WITH GAME ART

WEEK 6 | 1ST SEM

LESSON 6: BLENDER PROPERTY AND NAVIGATION PANEL

TOPICS: USE OF BLENDER PROPERTY AND NAVIGATION PANEL
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this session, you will be able to:
 Understand the use of Blender property and navigation panel
 Identify different parts of Blender’s property and navigation panel
 Use the Blender’s property and navigation panel in developing 3D models

LET’S START:

THE BLENDER PROPERTY PANEL

As you can see, there are all these different buttons. Some of them look somewhat obvious at first
glance but the others look pretty confusing (or maybe even disturbing to some but hopefully not). Let
us now step through one-by-one with each button and explain what they do!

First, the Render settings. This is where you go when you want to render an image or
animation. You can set the location where you want to store your rendered stuff. You
can also adjust a bunch of values here that will give you the best quality renders for
your scene. Apart from test renders, you would generally come here once you’re scene
is ready with the lights and cameras in place. The result is usually satisfaction from a
beautiful render or tears realizing how much more you need to learn.
This is the RenderLayer settings. This allows you to set up which layers you want to
render. For example, you might have objects in your scene that you don’t want to be
seen in a render. You can put those objects in a separate renderlayer and hide them
during rendertime. You can also add and combine more than one render layer. This is
most beneficial for artists who may want to work with each element in their scene
individually during compositing or something.
In the Scene settings, you set up your 3D world. You can change from the default
Blender unit system to the real-world metric system (the one with centimetres and
metres). You can also set the gravity of your 3D world. The default is -9.8 which is the
real value that keeps us grounded on Earth. The negative value means we are being
shoved towards the ground. A positive value will make us fly towards the sky. If
you change the value to 0, you would simulate space. Good if you’re making a space
movie.
The World settings allow you to define what your sky will look like. Whether you want
daytime, nightime, cloudy or extra-terrestrial, you light up your sky here.
This is the Object settings. This allows you to modify the current object that is selected
in the 3D viewport. You can change things like location, rotation and scale. You can also
change the name of the object, how it should be displayed in the viewport, whether it
should be visible. Pretty powerful object manipulation here!
The Constraints tab allows you to create one or more constraints for your currently
selected 3D object. You get to set laws for your objects and they have to obey! Power to
the artist! You can make your object follow a path, or copy the movements of another
object. You can make another object “stick” to another object. Like a hat being “stuck”
on a person’s head. You can also make an object point at another object. For instance,
you can make your camera point at your character no matter where he/she moves! You
 can really reduce the time needed to animate everything. Pretty cool stuff I reckon!
This is the Modifiers settings. A modifier is used to transform your object without
destroying the original model in any way. There are loads of modifiers in Blender. With
modifiers, you can explode your objects, bend them, and do all sorts of things with
them. If you remove (or hide) the modifier, your original model still remains intact.
This is the Object Data settings. This adds properties to your currently selected object
in Edit Mode. You mainly visit this tab to set Vertex Groups and/or shape keys.
The Materials tab is where you create shaders for your 3D objects. You can define a
very basic shader for your object here. With the Cycles render engine, you have the
ability to create even more advanced shaders (like realistic human skin or translucent
leaves for example) but you would need to go to the Node Editor (yet another Editor) to
customize your shaders. With Blender Internal, you can pretty much create most of your
shaders within the Materials tab.
The Texture tab allows you to import your own image textures or use some of the
procedural textures built into Blender. There are variety of different procedural textures
within Blender with the most popular one being the Cloud texture. This tab isn’t only for
Materials but can also be used for sculpting brushes or defining a normal/displacement
map (images that creates bumps on your object, but you don’t need to know what these
are for now if you’re completely new to all this).
The Particle settings allow you to create fur/hair/hairy stuff that emit from your 3D
object. You can add hair to your character or add fur to your dog. I’m guessing this
would be obvious, lol. Alternatively, you also come here if you want to generate particles
emitting from your 3D object. Particles are great for fireworks or rain for example.
The last tab (phew) is the Physics tab. Here you can simulate real-world physics. You
can make cloth animation here. You can make water/fluid animation. You can make wind
effects. You can also make stuff crash and collide with each other. You would visit this
tab a lot if you were working on an epic car crash scene!

BLENDER NAVIGATION

The 3D “world” in Blender is made up of 3 axes (X-axis, Y-axis and Z-axis). If you look in the bottom
left-hand corner of the 3D viewport, you will see a red, green and blue thingy with XYZ letters on
them. These are the axes. The blue axis represents the Z-axis, the red axis represents the X-axis and
the green represents the Y-axis. Your 3D object is mapped to a coordinate (X,Y,Z) on these axes. So
for example, the default cube is at (0,0,0) meaning it is at the origin (or center) of the 3D axes. An
object at (3,0,0) means the object is at the center but 3 places to the left of the X-axis.

Selecting Objects

To select an object (like the default cube), you just have to hover your mouse over the object
and right-click.
To select a few objects at a time, you can either circle select or box select. To circle select,
press C and then scroll in-out to get the circle size you want. Once you’re happy, left
click and drag around to select the objects you want. This should feel like painting a little bit. Once
you’re done selecting, right-click again. To box select, press B (you’ll see a grey square looking thing
which follows your mouse everywhere it goes), then left-click and drag until you’ve covered all the
objects you want selected. To de-select objects, use the same method with circle select or box select,
but instead of left clicking, do middle-mouse click instead. (Another way of selecting is using the
lasso tool. You can do this by Ctrl + left click dragging around your objects. This method isn’t that
popular, though it can be useful to some. Just thought I’d put this out there.)

To select all the objects in your scene, simply press A (Make sure your mouse is in the 3D viewport
and not somewhere else like the Timeline for example). You can also de-select all the objects in your
scene by pressing A again.

Transforming Objects

There are 3 ways to transform an object. You can move an object, rotate an object, and scale an
object. By the way, cameras and lights cannot be scaled in Blender.

To move an object, first make sure your object is selected (by right-clicking) and then press G and
move anywhere to your heart’s desire. To rotate an object, press R and then rotate the selected
object anywhere. To scale an object, press S and then move the mouse in and out and see your
selected object grow and shrink. Press Enter once your happy with your transformation.

You can do a bit more than that. Like in our example above, if you want to move the object 3 places to
the left of the X-axis, just press G and then X. Now you can only move along the X-axis. To get exactly
3 places to the left, just press 3 and then hit Enter. NOTE: You can also click on the colored arrows
(which represent each axis) that are visible on the selected object and drag to move along the axes.

Modifying the View

Cool, we know how to do some basic stuff with objects in Blender. Now let’s learn some basic stuff
about navigating the 3D viewport.

To rotate around the 3D viewport, just middle-click and drag anywhere. To zoom-in and out,
just scroll in and out (Ctrl + middle click dragging also does the same thing). To move your
viewport, press Shift and then middle-click and drag.

Let me recap that:

Rotate viewport – Middle-click + drag.

Zoom in and out – Scroll in and out.
Move around – Shift + middle-click drag.

You can also navigate via the numpad on your keyboard. Here’s a summary:

Numpad 2 – Rotates
Numpad 1 – Front view
downwards

Numpad 4 – Rotates Numpad 6 – Rotates

Numpad 3 – Left view.
rightwards leftwards

Numpad 5 – Orthogonal
Numpad 7 – Top view. Numpad 8 – Rotates upwards
view

Pressing Shift + 1, 3 or 7 will give you the opposite view. In other words,
Shift+ Numpad 1 – Back view
Shift + Numpad 3 – Right view.
Shift + Numpad 7 – Bottom view.

Toolbars
To do some awesome modeling stuff in Blender, you can use the toolbar. Pressing N and/or T will
open up toolbars on either side depending on which one you pressed. Press them again to hide them.
As a short exercise, open up the right-toolbar (pressing N) and then move an object like a cube (using
G). Observe the top panel called ‘Transform’. You will see these values being changed as you move
your object. You can also type in here directly. Type 3 in the X box. Like in our example earlier, this
should move the object 3 places to the left of the X-axis.
Don’t know the right shortcut key?
Most of these shortcut key functionality can be done by pressing the right corresponding button
somewhere within Blender. For example, with the numpad view switching above, you can do the same
thing by going to the View menu in the 3D viewport and changing the view there.
If there’s some other functionality you want to carry out but don’t know how and where to look, you
can search it. This may be the most important shortcut key to remember. Press Ctrl+A to find any
functionality you want.

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
Reference(s):
https://thilakanathanstudios.com/2015/10/the-blender-property-panel/
https://thilakanathanstudios.com/2015/10/basic-blender-navigation/