Wiley Mastering Blender
Contents
1. rame Display ETR Material ShapeKey View Locking enables you to enter an object name and in the case of an armature a bone name and force the view to follow the movement of that object holding the object in the center of the view This can be useful when you re animating detail on moving objects such as when you re animating the movement of fingers on a moving hand Grouping and Selection Objects can be grouped by selecting the object and choosing a group from the Add To Group drop down menu in the Object And Links panel of the Object buttons area Objects that share a group can be appended into other blend files in one step by appending the group When lamps are grouped it is possible to restrict a material s lighting to lamps from the group by entering the group name in the GR field in the material s Shaders tab Groups are one of many criteria by which you can select objects You can select variously grouped objects by selecting a single object and pressing Shift G to open the menu shown in Figure 1 21 You can select other objects based on their relationship with the first selected object You can also select objects based on linked data by pressing Shift L to open the menu shown in Figure 1 22 and selecting the linked datablock upon which to base the selection Using the Select menu in the 3D viewport in Object mode you can directly select objects by type or by layer It is also possible to select a random collection of o2. A view Vit m GIE Add Node DO Load UI View Frame Playback View Sear View image Load UI ct Marker Strip i a GETTING YOUR WAY WITH BLENDER 13 Numerous Blender themes are available online for download A quick Google search on Blender themes will give you the links for several good theme repositories The themes may be downloadable in the form of a blend file or in the form of a Python script In the latter case simply open the script in a Blender text editor window and execute it with Alt P THEME RECOMMENDATIONS Themes are a matter of taste however there s a reason why the two themes included in the default installation are largely gray and muted Bright lively colored themes can distract attention from what you are working on and can lead to eye strain You should have enough contrast between ele ments to see them clearly but large areas of white or very bright colors can quickly tire your eyes Other theme options worth noting are those in the 3D View menu list If you are planning to use Blender for instructing others or for making tutorials you can change the size at which vertices and face dots are displayed AUTO SAVE The Auto Save options context is shown in Figure 1 15 It enables you to set your preferences for how the autosave and backup features work The Save Versions number enables you to select how many previously saved versions you want to keep backed up In the past
3. to cancel out of the transform Mouse gestures can be particularly useful with pen tablets The easiest gesture to use by far is the translate gesture If you spend much time using a pen tablet it is likely that you will soon quit using the G key altogether even without thinking about it The rotate and scale gestures are trickier To be honest although they are referred to as mouse gestures I personally find it nearly impossible to consistently produce distinct rotation and scale gestures when working with a mouse The important quality that distinguishes the rotate ges ture is the smoothness of the curve If your curve is choppy or angular the gesture is likely to be interpreted as the scale gesture It is much easier to do this correctly with a pen tablet although it still requires a bit of practice It may come as a bit of a surprise but the 3D manipulator widgets shown in Figure 1 29 and repeated in the color insert of this book also require a little bit of practice to get a feel for using them properly These can be enabled individually or all at once using the manipulator buttons on the 3D viewport header to select more than one hold down the Shift key while choosing just as in other contexts The easiest way to use the manipulator widgets is to left click on the colored manipulator hot spots the arrows for translation curves for rotation and cube shaped tips for scale and drag The transformations are shown in Figure 1
4. you may have noticed the filename blend1 files in the directory alongside filename blend files These are the default single version backup files and they represent the contents of the previously saved ses sion If you select a value greater than 1 and apply it with Ctrl U the correspondingly num bered backup versions will appear in your directory FIGURE 1 15 The Auto Save user preferences The Auto Save Temp Files option enables numbered automatically saved files to be saved to your temporary directory the default is tmp so ensure that this directory exists on your system or else change the directory to wherever you want the files saved The Minutes value is how often these files are saved The Open Recent button will open the most recently saved file The Recent Files field enables you to choose how many previously saved files are listed in the Open Recent menu entry in the File menu SYSTEM amp OPENGL The System amp OpenGL user preferences context shown in Figure 1 16 enables you to control a variety of display related and miscellaneous values 14 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT FIGURE 1 16 The System amp tiga Fina A Brtied ty Derast OpenGL user je preferences There are three possible OpenGL lights that can be used to illuminate objects in the Solid Draw mode By default two of these lights are activated The first is a key light from the left and the second is a dimmer fill light from the right A
5. are as follows Grab Move causes snapping to the grid when objects are moved Rotate causes snapping to the grid when objects are rotated 5 6 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOURENVIRONMENT Scale causes snapping to the grid when objects are scaled Auto Depth causes the rotation and zoom of the 3D space to pivot around the point directly under the mouse This option automatically calculates the depth of the nearest object under the mouse as the pivot point Global Pivot causes the selected pivot to be fixed over all 3D viewport windows If this option is not selected each 3D viewport can use a different pivot The next column of buttons controls the way the 3D space itself can be navigated and manip ulated The buttons here are as follows Continue causes the view zoom to continue forward or backward as long as the left mouse button is held down and the mouse is moved above or below the center of the viewport The distance of the mouse from the horizontal center of the viewport determines the speed with which the zoom moves forward or backward Dolly causes the zoom to move forward when the mouse movement is downward and to move backward when the mouse movement is upward by default Scale causes the zoom to move forward when the mouse is pulled away from the center point of the viewport and to move backward when the mouse is pushed toward the center point of the viewport Trackball causes the entire view to rotate freely in all di
6. down the Shift key and clicking on the hot spot of the third axis This is analogous to the way axes are constrained by hot key Thus to scale along the X and Y axis as shown in Figure 1 31 hold down Shift and click on the Z axis manipulator hot spot FIGURE 1 31 Scaling along the X and Y axis Keeping Up with the Blender Interface As an open source application Blender evolves at a more rapid pace and in a more organic way than many proprietary applications that you might be accustomed to Releases are not timed to maximize profits or to coincide with other merchandising Rather they come when the develop ers decide that the recent developments are significant enough and stable enough to warrant the extra effort required for an official release When this happens resources are diverted from new functionality and the user community and development team focus on intensive beta testing and bug fixing in preparation for the release By this point many users are already familiar with the new functionality because the code has been open and freely available all along Several websites such as www graphicall org have regularly updated builds of Blender that are as easy to install as the official releases although not necessarily as stable It is no problem to install multiple versions of Blender side by side so there is never a problem experimenting with Blender s bleeding edge functionality The BlenderArtists org forum is always buzzin
7. particularly when you are working on vertices that are not positioned in the middle of the screen The Smooth View value is a great way to visualize the change from one view to another For example if you are using Blender to give instruction to students or to create video tutorials setting this option at 500 half a second makes it much easier for observers to maintain their bearings as you navigate the space For those who use the 3D Transform Widget increasing the size of the hot spot can make it much easier to engage the widget People accustomed to other 3D packages often feel more comfortable using Turntable view rotation as opposed to Trackball However Trackball rotation offers greater flexibility so it s worth getting used to Likewise the temptation to switch the selection button to the left mouse button LMB should be resisted because it will lead to a variety of undesirable side effects For one thing the capability to use Alt LMB as an alternate to the middle mouse button MMB is no longer available to you if you choose this option making it out of the question for people with two button mice 8 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT EDIT METHODS The Edit Methods user preferences context is shown in Figure 1 4 The options in this window are as follows Material Linked To controls whether materials are linked to an object itself or the object s mesh datablock by default Add New Objects options enable you to c
8. the scene is changed in another screen Large Cursors enables alternate mouse cursors if they are installed in your system View Name displays the name of the view Front Back Top Bottom Right Left Orthogonal or Perspective in the upper left corner of the 3D viewport Playback FPS displays the number of frames per second in the upper left corner of the 3D viewport when the animation is playing The next column of buttons and fields includes controls for Blender s menus toolboxes and panels The options you have here are as follows Open On Mouse Over enables menus to open automatically when the mouse is held over them without clicking The numerical values for this option determine how long the mouse must be held over the main menu or submenus before the menus open Toolbox Click Hold Delay values determine how quickly the toolbox opens when the right or left mouse button is clicked and held For immediate toolbox access the spacebar is used Pin Floating Panels causes floating panels such as the Transformations panel or other tool panels to be pinned to the spot in the viewport where they opened last If this option is not activated panels will appear at the spot where the mouse is Plain Menus causes the ordering of the menus to remain fixed rather than reversing depending on whether the menu opens upwards or downwards The next column of buttons controls snap to grid and other 3D navigational controls The buttons here
9. third light is also available which by default is set to provide highlights from the lower right as shown in Figure 1 17 You can enable or disable each of these lights adjust their colors or change their angles by clicking and dragging directly on the preview spheres for the lights FIGURE 1 17 3D view with the default two OpenGL lights activated and the same view with the third solid OpenGL light activated GETTING YOUR WAY WITH BLENDER 15 Returning to the System amp OpenGL user preferences Figure 1 16 the Enabled By Default button under Auto Run Python Scripts when enabled will allow Python scripts to be run auto matically from within a blend file This is convenient in some cases but it is not recommended if you re not sure of the source of your blend files The Enable All Codecs button under Win Codecs appears on Windows machines This option will enable the codecs you have installed on your system to be used for rendering in Blender As the tooltip points out this is not guaranteed to work in all cases because support for some codecs remains experimental The Color Band button under Color Range For Weight Paint enables you to override the default blue to red coloring range for weight painting and to define your own range by using a color band interface The Audio Mixing Buffer buttons enable you to select the amount of memory to devote to audio mixing The Emulate Numpad button enables you to use the number
10. tidily organized in a nonoverlapping way Users can quickly switch between Screen settings to access other nonoverlapping desktop configurations It should use fast efficient and consistent hot keys and interface conventions that are minimally dependent on their context Hot keys menu entries and other interface ele ments should be as consistent as possible across various points in the workflow In Blender this is accomplished in part by having similar or intuitively analogous functionality from different modes such as the select rotate or grab functionality in Object mode and Edit mode grouped logically to appropriate hot keys The various tools should be highly integrated with each other Blender has a wide vari ety of tools under its hood ranging from mesh modeling and sculpting to video editing and compositing to scripting game creation and physical simulation One of Blender s great strengths is the way all of these various tools are so tightly integrated that the transition from one to the next is nearly seamless For individuals and small groups this is a significant time saver over a less integrated pipeline that requires numerous export and import steps WEAKNESSES Although Blender has done a good job of adhering to the preceding well founded principles some areas of Blender s interface as of 2 48 have been weak The chaotic layout of the button areas is one key point that Reynish brings up citing a variety of exampl
11. understanding the principles be hind its unique design Getting Your Way with Blender As I wrote in the introduction to this book this is a book for people who want to push the enve lope of their Blender abilities people who know how to use Blender but want to know more Likewise this is a chapter for people who know Blender s interface and workflow but want to know it better to understand it more deeply and to learn to use it faster and more efficiently in short to master it This chapter is intended to help you get beyond simply knowing how things are done in Blender and to truly explore the way you do things in Blender In this chapter you ll learn about the preferences you can set to take control of your own working environment You ll learn about workflow tricks and techniques to give you more options for how to get from A to B in your Blender work This chapter is intended to give you the knowledge and the confidence to start telling Blender how you want things done User Preferences When you think about options and customization for any software the first thing that usually comes to mind is the set of user preferences available Like most applications Blender has a vari ety of user preferences that you can adjust The User Preferences window is the hidden third 4 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT window in the default screen configuration shown in Figure 1 1 The bar across the top of the default screen may
12. used it a small group who knew the code inside and out and worked very closely together Unfortunately although the choice of C as an implementation language helped to ensure that Blender would be a fast and lean executable the way that the development proceeded meant that many design decisions about even relatively superficial things came to be hard coded at a low level and difficult or impossible to alter later in a simple way This lack of modularity has been a common source of frustration to coders who are new to Blender For years it was accepted as a fact of life and worked around but over time the problem became compounded by code written in an ad hoc way This is about to change As I write this the Blender Foundation s resources have been entirely devoted to a long postponed ground up recode of the Blender event handling system The event system manages the way in which keyboard mouse and other input output I O events are dealt with and as such it is a crucial point of interaction between the interface and the functionality Until the recode much of the event handling happened directly in the code imple menting the functionality itself In order to change a single hot key for example it might be necessary to do considerable digging into the code of the associated functionality To add such an apparently straightforward and often requested feature as customizable hot keys then was a much thornier problem than many people realize
13. 30 and repeated in the color insert of this book The transformation is finalized when you release the left mouse button To abort the transformation either press the Esc key or click the right mouse button before releasing the left mouse button Another way to use the manipulators is to left click once quickly on the appropriate hot spot It s important that you do not begin to drag the mouse until after you have clicked After you click you will enter the appropriate transformation state and the object s behavior will be iden tical to what it would have been if you had pressed G R or S Right clicking will cancel out of the transformation and left clicking will finalize the transformation The colored hot spots are not the only way to transform the object Each manipulator has a thin orange circle associated with it Clicking on this will enter the corresponding unconstrained transform state For translation and rotation the transformation will be car ried out with respect to the plane of the viewport and for scaling the object will be scaled along all axes FIGURE 1 28 Mouse gestures for top to bottom translation scale and rotation FIGURE 1 29 Translate rotate and scale manipu lator widgets FIGURE 1 30 Translating rotating and scaling with manipulator widgets 4 4 Q IMPROVING YOUR WORKFLOW 23 24 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT Finally you can scale or translate along two axes by holding
14. D cursor at the zero point of the 3D space The slash key on the number pad changes the display to show only the selected object Pressing the same key again toggles back into full scene display mode On the main keypad the Alt B key combination enables you to select even smaller portions of the 3D view for display Pressing Alt B and dragging the box to select an area results in clipping the display of every thing outside of that box selection as shown in Figure 1 19 The resulting displayed selection can be viewed from all angles The View Properties panel shown in Figure 1 20 can be accessed via the View menu in the header of the 3D viewport Here you can control the display and qualities of the background grid the X Y and Z axes and the relationship lines dotted lines between parents and their child objects You can toggle the drawing of textures in Solid Draw mode with the Solid Tex button and toggle between displaying all object centers or only the selected object s center You can toggle the drawing of an outline around the selected object You can change the angle of the view lens adjust the point past which the view is clipped and place the 3D cursor by entering coordinates by hand IMPROVING YOUR WORKFLOW 17 FIGURE 1 19 Clipping the view with Alt B 18 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT FIGURE 1 20 X V View Properties The View Properties panel Outline Selected All Object Centers Relationship Lines
15. GETTING YOUR WAY WITH BLENDER FIGURE 1 10 The Themes user preferences Ve 8 Fa3 Ob 3 1 Let Me FIGURE 1 11 The Rounded theme theres Pain core Serie cpencl A Fens Dodds tid There are too many options to set in the Themes area to describe each one individually here but they are mostly self explanatory You can change the color of almost every element in Blender and in some cases such as drop down menus and pop up panels you can change the alpha value as well If you have a properly formatted Blender icons file you can also change the Blender icons but it requires a small amount of preparation To use alternate icon sets you must create a new direc tory called icons in the blender directory of your Blender installation In Mac OS X and Linux the location is slightly different For these systems you should create a blender directory in your home directory and put the icons directory there Then place the alternate icons files in the icons directory These icons will appear in the drop down menu that s displayed when you choose Icon File in the UI And Buttons user preferences list as shown in Figure 1 12 FIGURE 1 12 Icon File menu Mew amp Controls Edit Methods Language amp Font Themes File Add Timeline Game Render Help 11 12 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT The icon file used throughout this book is shown in Figure 1 13 and repeated in color in this book s color in
16. Mastering Blender 3D Chapter 1 Controlling Your Environment Chapter 2 Sculpting and Retopo Workflow Chapter 3 Creating Realistic Images with UV Textures and Node Based Materials Chapter 4 Video Compositing with Nodes Chapter 5 Working with the Video Sequence Editor Chapter 1 Controlling Your Environment Blender incorporates a dizzying amount of functionality in a single application and learning to use all the tools as efficiently as possible is a daunting proposition Even after the initial shock that every beginner feels upon seeing the buttons window experienced users often still sense that there is a great deal of potential that they have not fully tapped into Indeed many Blender users use only a small fraction of its capabilities for controlling their work environments These capa bilities include options available in the User Preferences window and a variety of lesser known techniques and workflow shortcuts Furthermore by gaining insight into the design principles behind the Blender interface you can prepare for the ways that upcoming changes in the code base will help to enhance the power flexibility and accessibility of the interface in the future In this chapter you will learn to Set the options available to you in the User Preferences window Use lesser known methods for selecting grouping and organizing 3D elements to speed up your workflow Prepare for changes in the evolving Blender interface by
17. Pan View causes the middle mouse button to pan the 3D view With this option selected Shift MMB rotates the view Invert Zoom causes the view to zoom forward when the mouse is moved upward and to pull away when the mouse is moved downward across the 3D view as opposed to the default behavior which is the reverse of this Smooth View sets a time interval in milliseconds for an animated transition between num ber pad views Rotation Angle sets the degree of rotation used by the 2 4 6 and 8 keys on the number pad to rotate the view incrementally Finally the last column includes settings for the 3D Transform Widget and object center dis plays and settings for six degrees of freedom 6DoF devices such as the SpaceNavigator These values include the following Size Handle and Hotspot values control the overall size the handle size and the size of the clickable area hot spot of the 3D manipulator Object Center Size controls the display size of object centers ndPan and ndRot values control the speed with which the navigation responds to input from a 6DoF input device RECOMMENDATIONS FOR VIEW amp CONTROLS SETTINGS Of course everybody has their own preferences which is why options like the ones described in this section exist Nevertheless a few nondefault options are particularly worth experimenting with The Around Selection option for view rotation makes navigating around selected vertices for modeling much easier
18. URE 1 8 Blender in Japanese owl box RTT ees Ss esto Save Ss System bOpestt File Paths Zm ely sezvetst xx sisceiseene x paesana FIGURE 1 9 The limits of inter nationalization Internal nts Restare te detasit lager Japasese O al Sslsct Font DfFomt Size 12 Init Putten Too bos Rander Currant Frame Render Animation Bake Render Meshes Stow Render Buffer Play Back Rendered Animaties Sat Render Border Render Settings Save Rander Layers t teObject Mote A e 5 o PE Ha a is o ojx Ma w Liab ond Meter iets v Witre a LANGUAGE AND FONT RECOMMENDATIONS It would be very welcome if internationalization was made simpler and perhaps this will become a possibility with the upcoming recode of the event system For the time being however Blender s internationalization is superficial incomplete and largely outdated The only real choice is to use Blender in English THEMES The Themes context shown in Figure 1 10 enables you to create and select themes with various options for the coloring and display of interface elements You can select the theme you want to use from the drop down menu In order to add a new theme to the list click the Add button In addition to the default theme itself another theme is included in the default distribution of Blender the Rounded theme shown in Figure 1 11 The theme used in this book is a variation based on the Rounded theme
19. and it is worthwhile to make a note of the ones that you often find yourself adjusting and to use Ctrl U to set them as you prefer them once and for all The Occlude Background Geometry option in the 3D view header is a com mon option to activate This makes unseen vertices and faces unselectable when not in Wireframe Draw mode creating a sharper distinction between selection behavior in Wireframe and Solid Draw modes If you usually rotate grab and scale using the R G and S keys you may want to dis able the manipulators also in the 3D view header Render settings such as the output format and compression quality are also common places where you might want to customize your defaults 16 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT SAVING THE CHANGES After you have set all the options the way you want them don t forget to set the current setup as your default setup by using Ctrl U Remember Ctrl U saves the exact state of Blender at the moment you press it so be sure you ve put everything in place exactly the way you want to see it when you open Blender Objects materials animations and any other data in the blend file will also be saved The resulting settings are stored in the B blend file in your blender directory To use these set tings with another Blender installation you can simply copy that file into the blender directory of the Blender installation you want to use To save the current theme in the form of a Python scri
20. are available in the User Preferences window including settings for View amp Controls Edit Methods and Themes among others Master It Create your own preferred default starting state and save it so that it will be active every time you start Blender 30 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT Use lesser known methods for selecting grouping and organizing 3D elements to speed up your workflow There are numerous ways to select and group objects and 3D elements that can considerably increase your speed and efficiency when working Master It Use the selection methods described in this chapter to make the face selec tions as shown in the following graphic You should be able to make this selection using a single modified mouse click followed by a single hot key combination There are several ways to do this Prepare for changes in the evolving Blender interface by understanding the principles behind its unique design Blender is constantly evolving It is in your interest to stay informed about developments in particular at a time when the 2 5 release is promising big developments in usability Master It Inform yourself about the status of the 2 5 event recode and GUI update
21. bjects and to inverse the cur rent selection FIGURE 1 21 Select Grouped The Select Grouped menu IMPROVING YOUR WORKFLOW 19 FIGURE 1 22 Select Linked The Select Linked menu ParticleSystem Box CIRCLE AND LASSO SELECTION Pressing the B key once initiates the Box selection state where you can drag your mouse to select whatever falls within the rectangular area you define Holding down the Alt key while doing this will deselect whatever falls within that area Pressing the B key twice will enable the Circle selec tion state where you can drag your mouse to select all that falls within a circular area following the mouse Likewise holding down the Alt key while doing this will deselect the elements Holding down the Ctrl key while dragging the left mouse button introduces the Lasso selec tion state which enables you to define the area to be selected by moving your mouse around the area directly This is a very fast selection method Epit MODE SELECTION Numerous little known selection methods are available for meshes in Edit mode The first option you have is whether to select by vertex edge or face This is chosen by using the view port header buttons shown in Figure 1 23 both default and alternate icon sets Vertex Edge and Face selection modes correspond with the buttons from left to right the rightmost button occludes hidden geometry You can choose more than one mode simultaneously by holding down the Shift ke
22. d It was possible to put off the recode for so long in part because individual requests and fea tures that the current code makes difficult were often fairly superficial Customizable hot keys for example are a common request of users seeking to switch over from some other 3D applica tion But there are arguments on both sides to be made about the actual importance or wisdom of depending heavily on nonstandard hot key configurations Combined with the intractability of implementing configurable hot keys on the old Blender codebase this was enough to ensure that such requests went for years without being acted on Now with the event system recode underway Blender users can look forward to not only many new interface features and customi zability options but more important a new ease with which future adaptations and modifica tions can be made 26 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT DNA AND RNA Blender uses a unique internal format called DNA to store and reference 3D assets The name is an analogy to the biological term with the implication that DNA is a highly compact encoding of all the information necessary to re create the contents of what Blender users know as a blend file scenes objects and all associated datablocks DNA is a binary format which makes it very fast to load and save For example the same data represented in XML may be several orders of magnitude slower to load and save particularly in the case of large fil
23. e in other parts of the world take for granted Nevertheless he identified a glaring need in Blender for true volumetric simulations and took advantage of the open code to study for himself how to implement his ideas in Blender Although he lacked regular access to an Internet connection and was unable to access the Subversion code repository directly participate in chats or take part in regular communication with developers he nevertheless suc ceeded in creating an impressive foundation for true volumetrics He reported about his work sporadically in his blog http farsthary wordpress com including some amazing renders and animations of convincing flame and smoke effects Although initially carried out with very little interaction with others Raul s work quickly began to get attention from the Blender user and developer community After hurricane Gustav devastated his town leaving him without electricity for a week the community rallied to assist him and two core Blender developers Matt Ebb and Daniel Genrich became more actively involved in helping him recode the volumetric simulation to be more consistent with existing Blender code The project is progressing very nicely as you can see from Raul s blog and the exciting new volumetric features will surely be a welcome addition to an upcoming official release The Bottom Line Set the options available to you in the User Preferences window A wide variety of often overlooked options
24. ely neglected One of the reasons for this is the difficulty of creating and incorporating language translation files for the software which like many things in Blender must be done at a low level and compiled directly into the executable FIGURE 1 5 The Language amp Font user preferences ss Kon Methods f Lengusg amp Font elsr2 moas x e scescene x One thing you can do here is to adjust the size of the font that shows up on your buttons and menus To do this click International Fonts and select the size you want from the Font Size menu shown in Figure 1 6 FIGURE 1 6 The Font Size drop down menu The Use Textured Fonts option may result in problems displaying the button labels with some hardware drivers If you have problems seeing the button labels on your computer dese lect the Use Textured Fonts option as shown in Figure 1 7 FIGURE 1 7 Use Textured Fonts disabled You can select international font systems if you have the necessary fonts installed In Figure 1 8 you can see how Blender looks with Japanese selected as the language and a Japanese font 10 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT selected Nevertheless this is of limited usefulness for several reasons First almost all documen tation and learning material is written with the assumption that Blender is in English and second the translations are too incomplete to warrant any other assumption as you can see in Figure 1 9 FIG
25. es of highly arbitrary button placements situations where the button type radio action or toggle is unclear and cases where clutter is brought about by the need to maintain consistently square button tab shapes for ease of vertical and horizontal layout Another area that Reynish s paper homes in on is the difficulty of dealing with multiple objects simultaneously in certain specific ways The example he gives is one of adding the Wire extra draw type to a large number of objects This can be done using Ctrl C to copy settings from one object to the others but not everything can be copied in this way and as Reynish points out this is a distracting extra step Finally Reynish s paper discusses the topic of customizability Blender s interface is notori ous for its lack of customizable key bindings However although customizability is a popular request among new users Reynish concludes that it is a comparatively low priority when measured next to the importance of a good solid set of defaults Reynish argues that customiz ability in itself is an overrated solution it is sometimes perceived that a poor interface can be improved by the user if the interface allows sufficient customizability but this is not in fact the case Nevertheless there are a number of reasons why customizability in key bindings and input options is regarded as desirable Some users may wish to preserve muscle memory habits acquired from other software More impor
26. es with many scene elements This is the main reason why blend files are so flexible and can be used to store large and complex scenes and even collections of scenes RNA is acurrent development that comprises an important behind the scenes component of the 2 5 changes It is also loosely analogous to the biological meaning of the term RNA will serve as a wrapper or low level interface for accessing and setting values in DNA In practice RNA will be used to automatically generate interface elements and the Python API making it easier to keep them up to date and consistent The enhanced access that RNA enables will also have the effect of finally realizing the long held dream of having everything in Blender capable of being animated The Evolution of the Interface With the focus of development being on the task of implementing the new event system and porting the existing Blender functionality over to this new foundation it is an ideal time for a review of the interface itself In preparation for the coming interface paradigm shift William Reynish delivered a presentation at the Blender Foundation s 2008 annual conference in Amsterdam outlining the latest thinking on the direction that Blender s interface should take A 25 page white paper containing a revised version of Reynish s proposals is available from the official Blender website at http download blender org documentation bc2008 evolution_of_blenders_ui pdf Reynish s paper i
27. g with discussions of all the latest features and you re sure to find somebody to help you with even the most exotic new features Getting familiar with these resources is part and parcel of mastering Blender Most readers of this book have probably already dipped into experimental developmental Blender builds when a particularly attractive feature was introduced KEEPING UP WITH THE BLENDER INTERFACE 25 The Coming Changes Anyone who has participated in recent online discussions about Blender has probably heard about the deep changes afoot for the upcoming Blender version 2 5 in particular as they relate to the interface Indeed this release has taken on an almost mythological status in some circles and opinions some better informed than others have been flying thick and fast There is excited hope that all the things that many people find annoying or counterintuitive about the Blender interface will be fixed as well as apprehension that many idiosyncrasies that Blender users have come to love may be discarded Although this book is written to correspond to Blender 2 48 it is nonetheless worthwhile in keeping with the thinking of Blender as a constantly evolving piece of software to get a clearer idea of what direction the evolution of its interface is likely to take in the next few releases The 2 5 Event Recode Blender began its life as an in house animation tool for a commercial studio It was developed in C by the same people who
28. hoose whether to switch to Edit mode automati cally upon object creation and whether newly created objects should be aligned to the view or should be placed at the 3D space origin with default orientation Transform Drag Immediately enables you to select and move elements with one mouse button If you right click to select an object and drag immediately this option will cause the object to follow the mouse until you release the right mouse button With this option dis abled you must release the mouse button and click again to verify the transformation Undo options enable you to set the number of levels of Undo the amount of memory devoted to Undo and whether Global Undo is used Global Undo requires more memory than regular Undo however regular Undo is limited in that you cannot undo edits made in Edit mode incrementally after leaving Edit mode and reentering Edit mode again Global Undo enables you to do this Auto Keyframe options enable you to automatically set keyframes for selected sets of Ipo curves With this option keyframes are set in a frame anytime an Ipo s value is changed making keyframing with the I key unnecessary Grease Pencil options enable you to determine specifically how mouse movements are used to draw lines with the Grease Pencil tools The smaller the Euclidean and Manhattan dis tances the less segmented the line will appear Duplicate With Object options enable you to select which datablocks will be duplica
29. keys on the main keypad instead of the number keys on the number pad This is particularly useful if you are working on a laptop that doesn t have a separate number pad The System amp OpenGL buttons and fields in the rightmost two columns control a variety of specific values that you can adjust to improve your performance if you are having memory problems or you are experiencing slowdowns in your 3D viewport Disabling Mipmaps or rais ing the Clip Alpha value can speed up the OpenGL drawing in your viewport at the expense of some image quality FILE PATHS The last user preferences context is self explanatory The File Paths preferences shown in Figure 1 18 enables you to define defaults for what the Blender file browser will open first when you import or save various types of assets The default is which is Blender notation for the present working directory that is the directory you opened Blender from For example if you are opening Blender from the Windows Start menu this will be your Blender installation direc tory If you are opening from a file this will be the directory that the file is in The Relative Paths Default button causes the file paths to be read as relative to the present working directory FIGURE 1 18 The File Paths user preferences ia fa i gt Fie Ado Tmeina Gama Rander Hew e sRz mooa x elscEscen x 5 Other Options Many other options are available throughout the Blender interface
30. look similar to the menu bar that lines the top of many other applications but in fact it is the header of the User Preferences window which you can bring into view by left clicking on the window border and dragging downward as shown in Figure 1 2 Seven but tons are located along the bottom of the User Preferences area Each of these buttons displays a different subcontext of User Preferences FIGURE 1 1 The default screen configuration fo oiots HHH e v bate FIGURE 1 2 Dragging the User Preferences win dow into view e ladia 5 ea aea A y herrd robes vreh GETTING YOUR WAY WITH BLENDER VIEW amp CONTROLS The first subcontext of the User Preferences buttons area is the View amp Controls subcontext shown in Figure 1 3 FIGURE 1 3 The View amp Controls user preferences The Display options include six buttons that control how information is displayed through out the interface or in the 3D viewport Those buttons are as follows Tool Tips enables and disables the display of tooltips when the mouse is over interface elements Object Info displays the name of the active object in the lower left corner of the 3D viewport Global Scene causes the active scene to hold constant over various screens If this option is enabled and the scene is changed in any one screen all the screens will change scenes If this option is disabled a screen will continue to display the scene it last displayed even if
31. n buttons have a distinct and intuitively recognizable look improved feedback for when the user is required to wait for something and a preference for vertical layouts for buttons and fields for reasons of visual clarity and efficient screen real estate usage WHAT TO EXPECT Reynish s suggestions will not necessarily be implemented exactly as described in the report Furthermore the timeline for when they will be implemented is not set in stone The 2 5 event recode will set the groundwork for making the evolution of the interface possible Whether the most significant interface changes will be incorporated in that release or subsequently intro duced remains to be seen Users can expect a more flexible workflow and more sensible and consistent organization of interface elements There will likely be a preference for vertical panel configurations rather than the horizontal panel configuration that has been the default for Blender s buttons area in the past Eventually users can expect the buttons area to be radically reworked or phased out entirely Overall the coming interface developments should go a long way to address many of the pet peeves that plague both new and experienced users of Blender and help to make Blender an even more powerful and enjoyable tool to work with As always you should bring yourself up to speed with new developments for each release by studying the official release notes which you can link to from the official d
32. ownloads page at www blender org You can learn more about the focus of the changes to come in 2 5 at http wiki blender org index php BlenderDev Blender2 5 Focus THEBOTTOMLINE 29 cn Real World Scenario THE DEVELOPING WORLD As development on each Blender release intensifies the blendercoders IRC channel and the vari ous development related mailing lists are filled with developers communicating their ideas and intentions with each other The 2 5 event recode and the huge task of porting existing Blender functionality over to the new base requires a high degree of organization and coordination as does every release The smooth progress of Blender s development is all the more remarkable considering what a truly global project Blender is According to the open source software resource Ohloh net Blender s regu lar committing developers are spread all over the globe in Europe North America South America Oceania and Africa If you count script contributions and recent coding that has not made it into the official trunk the area is even wider with recent code contributions beginning to come from Asia as well Some of the stories of Blender development around the world serve as inspiring reminders of the power of open source software The work of Raul Fernandez Hernandez farsthary on true volu metrics for Blender is an excellent example As a student living in Cuba Ra l has had limited access to many of the resources that peopl
33. pt go to the File menu and choose Export gt Save Current Theme The resulting script can then be executed in another instance of Blender to import the theme Improving Your Workflow Setting and saving your user preferences is the first step in optimizing your workflow This sec tion presents a variety of miscellaneous tips and tricks that you may find helpful for increasing your efficiency and improving your experience working with Blender View Hot Keys and Properties The 3D viewport has a number of hot keys and properties associated with it that enable you to view your work You are no doubt familiar with the most commonly used number pad short cuts for Front view number pad 1 Side view number pad 3 and Top view number pad 7 Pressing these keys with Ctrl will show you the reverse view Ctrl number pad 1 yields the rear view of the object and so on Number pad 5 toggles Orthogonal and Perspective view and 2 4 6 and 8 rotate the 3D space by the amount determined in the Rotation Angle field in the View amp Controls user preferences window The decimal key on the number pad centers the selected object in the 3D viewport Related keys on the main keypad include the C key which shifts the view so that the 3D cursor is cen tered the Home key which displays and centers the median point of all the objects in the scene and the Shift C key combination which does the same thing as the Home key with the addition of placing the 3
34. rections analogously to the motion of a trackball Turntable causes the entire view to rotate strictly around the three spatial axes resulting ina more constrained rotation than the Trackball option Auto Perspective causes the view to enter Perspective view whenever it is rotated out of Front Side or Top views and to enter Orthogonal view when it enters those views by means of hot keys on the number pad Around Selection causes the view to rotate around the median point between selected elements The next column of buttons controls the way you can use your mouse There are also buttons to control the display of the mini axis in the 3D viewport These buttons are as follows Left Mouse causes the left mouse button LMB to be used for selecting Right Mouse causes the right mouse button RMB to be used for selecting Emulate 3 Button Mouse enables Alt RMB to emulate the behavior of the middle mouse button MMB Paste On MMB causes the middle mouse button to paste from the clipboard in the text editor Mini Axis controls the display of the miniature axis in the lower left corner of the 3D viewport GETTING YOUR WAY WITH BLENDER 7 The next column includes buttons and fields that control the behavior of the middle mouse button and view changes made with the number pad These buttons include the following Rotate View causes the middle mouse button to rotate the 3D view With this option selected Shiftt MMB pans the view
35. s an excellent overview of the thinking behind the Blender interface past present and future and a good read for anybody who would like to better understand why the interface is the way it is and how it is likely to evolve The paper describes Blender s inter face strengths its weaknesses as of the official 2 48 release and a number of design goals for the 2 5 release STRENGTHS Reynish outlines four main principles that have informed Blender s interface These are long standing deliberate design decisions that have made Blender extraordinarily fast to work with for experienced users These principles are as follows The workflow should be as nonmodal as possible Modality in software means that cer tain functions work in certain modes and not in others Although Blender does make use of explicit modes for editing and object manipulation the overall interface is comparatively nonmodal in its behavior Users have the option of having almost all of Blender s functional ity laid out simultaneously before them for immediate access at any time KEEPING UP WITH THE BLENDER INTERFACE 27 The window organization should be nonoverlapping For regular users of Blender this is one of the main strengths of the interface With functionality as complex as Blender s over lapping windows could very quickly become a nightmare of digging around to find buried windows on the desktop This never happens with Blender because its windows are
36. sert It was created by BlenderArtists org user jendrzych and the icon set itself can be found on that website at http blenderartists org forum showthread php t 84971 The file is also included on the CD that accompanies the book Although this is not the official default icon set for version 2 48 it is a nicer looking and widely used alternative Furthermore it has already been adopted as the official default icon set for Blender version 2 5 so getting accus tomed to it is a small and painless way to prepare for the changes of that version In Figure 1 14 also repeated in the book s color insert you can see the default icons and the alternate icons as they appear in all the headers of the various window types in Blender This should give you a good reference for which icons correspond to each other in case you are using a different icon set from the one used in this book Throughout the book in cases where there might be some confusion both default and alternate icons are shown in the appropriate contexts FIGURE 1 13 ACPA PROBST C gt REBEDSSS4O An alternate ANMNAA MAOCCOHH A Bory ek z G9eDOGB gt g z 8F99 icon set DE AaAGFIISAI ONSA AZ xv S RS GRVEeG S8NRSRR A A gt yn veOuv BS P A4BDBEENS oG oeo xp xE AAAESAG B Ye ano BE B GRMSOQBOBEASEE BOSC FIGURE 1 14 Default and alternate icon sets in headers S F Y 9S5 A PH a PER BEUSOP gt mms BEBOOO GoO6O4 HPHSREHSe qa Frame Playback
37. tant customizable hot keys enable the user to have more freedom in accessing custom made scripts or other nonstandard functionality 28 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT GOALS AND SUGGESTIONS Reynish s paper outlines some key interface goals and some practical suggestions for attaining these goals He argues that the interface should be nonmodal nonlinear logical fast flexible innovative and simple The practical suggestions are far reaching One of the most profound is Reynish s recommen dation for the total removal of the buttons area window as it is currently implemented Instead it would be replaced by a Properties Editor that would enable logical organized access to all the properties of any selected object or group of objects Settings for all Blender datablocks would be accessible in this area Reynish further advocates a reworking of tool workflow Rather than the highly modal work flow of tools such as the loop cut or the addition of objects to the scene in which settings must be decided upon before finalizing the tool action the recommendation is made to increase the interactivity of tools enabling settings to be adjusted after the tool has been used Further recommendations include enhanced context sensitivity to rid the interface of unnec essary clutter when it is not needed improved consistency in button and interface widget graph ics so that distinct interface component types such as radio buttons and actio
38. ted when their owner objects are duplicated with Shift D Duplication involves a new inde pendent instantiation of the datablock being created Datablocks that are not duplicated are shared between the two duplicated objects RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EDIT METHODS Edit Methods options are a little less personal than the View amp Controls options The best options in this case are likely to depend on exactly the kind of work you do If you typically find yourself going straight into modeling when you add a new object you will save a step by setting the default to Switch To Edit Mode upon adding a new option If you do a lot of animation and you are com fortable and confident working with Ipos enabling Auto Keying may speed up your workflow For beginning animators think it s better to set your keyframes deliberately by hand until you are sure you have the hang of it For Auto Keying the Needed option is useful to keep unnecessary keyframes from being set For the Duplicate With Object settings if you find that you rarely want a duplicated object to share an Ipo curve with the original object you may want to select Ipo in addition to the currently set defaults GETTING YOUR WAY WITH BLENDER 9 FIGURE 1 4 The Edit Methods user preferences Cott Methods LANGUAGE amp FONT The Language amp Font buttons context is shown in Figure 1 5 It is no secret that internation alization is an area of Blender that has been unfortunat
39. them all In Face selection mode you can select faces that share the same area share a material share an image have common normal directions or are coplanar meaning that the faces share their normal directions and are located on a single imaginary plane in the 3D space Finally the Perimeter option enables you to select regions of faces that have the same size perimeter or out line as the originally selected region 22 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT Object Manipulation The most commonly used and taught methods of translating rotating and scaling 3D ele ments are the hot keys G R and S These are the easiest to control but using other methods can increase the speed and efficiency of your workflow in some cases Most people are aware of the existence of mouse gestures and the 3D manipulator because both are enabled by default mouse gestures in particular can be a real nuisance to beginners who activate them inadver tently but fewer people understand the correct way to use them Mouse gestures are a way of triggering the translation scale or rotation state which are analogous to pressing the G S or R key respectively This is done by holding the left mouse but ton and dragging the mouse in one of the three patterns shown in Figure 1 28 Almost as important as knowing how to use mouse gestures correctly is knowing when they are being activated by accident and what to do when that happens click the right mouse button
40. y 20 CHAPTER 1 CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT FIGURE 1 24 Choosing a loop from an area FIGURE 1 25 Edge loop and ring selection in Vertex selection mode FIGURE 1 26 Edge loop and ring selection in Edge selection mode IMPROVING YOUR WORKFLOW 21 FIGURE 1 27 Loop selection in Face selection mode Another useful selection tool Select Vertex Path can be found in the Specials menu by press ing the W key over the 3D viewport With exactly two vertices selected this option will select the shortest edge path between the two vertices Selecting Similar Elements The Shift G menu enables you to select all similar elements to the currently selected element based on a variety of possible criteria In Vertex selection mode Shift G enables you to select other vertices that share the same ver tex normal direction as the currently selected vertices vertices that are members of shared vertex groups with the currently selected vertices or vertices that are used by the same number of faces In Edge selection mode the Shift G menu enables you to select edges that are the same length run in the same direction or have the same number of face users as the selected edges You can also select edges based on whether they are part of a seam or crease or based on their sharpness value This is an excellent method for quickly selecting all seams on an object Simply select on a seam edge and then use this selection method to select
41. y when you click these buttons FIGURE 1 23 Buttons for choosing the selection mode Selecting Edges Loops and Rings Many selection options are available independently of the specific selection mode you are in Selection options that deal specifically with edges can be found by pressing Ctrl E in Edit mode The Region To Loop selection option in that menu enables you to choose the edge out line strictly speaking loop here is a misnomer of any selected region of faces as shown in Figure 1 24 this image is repeated for visual clarity in the color insert of this book The reverse selecting a region of faces based on a selected closed edge border around the region is possible with the Loop To Region menu entry Other very useful selection options include loop and ring selection using Alt RMB and Ctrl Alt RMB By holding down the Alt key and right clicking on a single edge in Edit mode you can select the entire edge loop that the edge belongs to By using Ctrl Alt RMB you select the perpendicular ring of faces that includes the edge you clicked on as shown in Figure 1 25 In Edge selection mode the behavior is similar except that the edge ring selected with Ctrl Alt RMB does not include faces as shown in Figure 1 26 In Face selection mode there is no difference between the selections Both hot keys select the same ring of faces as shown in Figure 1 27 These figures are also included in the color insert of this book for visual clarit
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