From BlenderWiki

Manual - Blender 2.4x

[edit] Introduction

The 3D View is where you perform most of the object modeling and scene creation. Blender has a wide array of tools and options to support you in efficiently working with your mouse, keyboard and keypad. Your flat (two-dimensional) monitor is your viewport into the 3D space.

It is also the oldest, and therefore most feature- and option-rich areas of Blender. Don’t be intimidated! Most of us humans never use all the features here, just like we don’t use all of our diction on a daily basis either. So, take it slow, a few at a time, experimenting to see what they do.

[edit] 3D Window Header

The 3D View window is comprised of a workspace and a header. The header is shown at the top or bottom of the workspace, and can be hidden if desired. The header shows you a menu and the current mode, as explained below.

3D View header.

[edit] View Menu

The View menu.

This menu provides options to control the way the workspace is viewed:

• Space Handler Scripts - This submenu shows Space Handler Scripts; by default, there aren’t any.
• Play Back Animation - This item plays back the animation from the current frame.
• Maximize Window - This item maximizes the 3D View window to fill the entire Blender window, and once selected this menu item will change to Tile Window, if menu entry Tile Window is then selected the 3D View window will be restored to it’s previous size. Note that this feature is available for nearly every window types in Blender. As well as the menu entry, the shortcuts Ctrl↑ and Ctrl↓ can also act as toggles to maximize/tile not only the 3D View window, but also any window which currently has focus. In addition to these shortcuts, it is also possible to maximize/tile the currently focused window with shortcut ⇧ ShiftSpace, making it extremely convenient for laptop users, as they can quickly maximize/tile the currently focused window to work on another window such as the Buttons/Outliner windows, for example.
• View All - This command zooms the 3D view to encompass all the objects in the current scene.
• View Selected - This command zooms the 3D view to encompass all the selected objects.
• Zoom Within Border... - This command allows you define the area you want to zoom into.
• Set Clipping Border - This command allows you to define a clipping border to limit the 3D view display to a portion of 3D space. For more information on this command, see View Clipping Border in this chapter.
• Align View - This submenu allows you to shifts your view to be centered on the cursor (Center View to Cursor, C). Center Cursor and View All (⇧ ShiftC) centers your view and zooms out so that you can see everything in your scene. You can also change your viewpoint to be through the active camera, and center the camera on the cursor (Align Active Camera to View, Ctrl Alt NumPad 0). Instead of the cursor, you can center your view on the selected object (Align View to Selected, * NumPad).
• View Navigation - This submenu contains commands for rotating and panning the view. Using these commands through the menu is not that efficient; however, like all Blender menus, the much-more-convenient keyboard shortcuts are listed next to the commands. Camera Fly mode moves your view through 3D space. Use the keys indicated to orbit your view, or hold down MMB and move your mouse. Use the keypad + NumPad/- NumPad keys to zoom, or scroll your mousewheel. See this page for more about navigating in 3D views.
• Global View/Local View - Global view shows all of the 3D objects in the scene. Local view only displays the selected objects. To switch between global and local view use / NumPad. Accidentally pressing / NumPad can happen rather often if you’re new to Blender, so if a bunch of the objects in your scene seem to have mysteriously vanished, try turning off local view.
• Orthographic, Perspective - These commands change the projection of the 3D view. For more information, see Perspective and Orthographic Projection. Generally you want to stay in Orthographic view.
• Show All Layers - This enable all off the twenty layers in the 3D view, allowing you to see all objects that are in your scene (especially if you combine it with a View All action). When enabled, this item turns to Show Previous Layers, to go back to previous layers selection.
• Cameras - This submenu lists all the cameras in the scene. Selecting one will make it the active camera. There is also a command (Set Active Object as Active Camera, Ctrl0 NumPad) that sets the current object (which doesn’t have to be a camera) as the camera, so you can see what the scene looks like from its point of view.
• Side, Front, Top - These commands change the view to the default side, front, or top views. Pressing the Ctrl key changes to the “complementary” view: Ctrl3 NumPad for right side, Ctrl1 NumPad for back, or Ctrl7 NumPad for bottom-looking-up views.
• Camera - This command switches the view to the current camera view.
• User - This command switches to a user view. In most cases, this won’t seem to do anything, but if you are in the camera view or have orthographic projection on, the view will change to perspective (and leave the camera view, if applicable).
• Grease Pencil... - This command will toggle the Grease Pencil floating panel, see this page.
• Background Image... - This command will toggle the Background Image floating panel, which allows you to load and pick an image to display in the background of the orthographic 3D view, as well as adjust its size and position. This is useful if you have a picture (for example, a face) that you want to model from. Each pane (3D View window) has its own background image settings. Each pane can or cannot use background image independently. So, you can set top view to have one image, but unless you set the others to use an image, no other views will use it. Side view can have another, and front another. They can all be the same image if the image is one big composite of all views you want to reference, just use the offset values in each pane to position the image where you want it. Background images can be stills, movies (avi or sequences) or even a render from another scene. For movies, enable Auto Refresh and Blender will display the appropriate frame from the movie when you change frames in your animation (with an optional offset, Offs field).

Use Lo-Res Proxy:

To improve PC performance when using background images you may have to use lower-resolution proxies. If your monitor resolution is 800×600, then the background image, full screen, without zooming, only needs to be 800×600. If your reference image is 2048×2048, then your computer is grinding away throwing away pixels. Try instead to take that 2k×2k image, and scale it down (using Blender, or Gimp) to, for example, 512×512. You will have sixteen times the performance, with no appreciable loss of quality or exactness. Then, as you refine your model, you can increase the resolution.

• View Properties... - This command toggles the View Properties floating panel, which allows you to toggle the grid and adjust its spacing, adjust the zoom of the camera, toggle specific axes (X, Y, and Z), view and change the specific location of the 3D cursor, adjust several toggles (outlining the selected object, showing all objects’ centers, showing relationship lines), and, lock the 3D view so that it always points towards a certain object or bone. See the View Properties window references for more details.
• Render Preview... - This command toggles the Preview panel, which shows a (relatively) live preview render of whatever it is over.
• Transform Orientation... - This command toggles the Transform Orientations floating panel, which allows you to select the coordinate system you want to use for your transformations. You can do the same with Orientation drop-down menu in the header, but this panel have an extra option, which might be very useful in some situations: you can define others coordinate systems, based on the local systems of selected objects. See also this page.

• Onion Skinning/Ghosting - Selecting keyframe display mode (Show Keys, K) in the Ipo window, and possibly then pressing K again in the 3D View (depending on your PC’s OpenGL support), will display the keyframed locations for an object (mesh, armature, etc.). Showing the ghost past/present keyed positions Ipo Keys is an often overlooked feature that can greatly assist animation visualization. The location of the object at the current frame is shown as a green line in the Ipo window, and as the object in the 3D View. The keyframe selected in the Ipo window is shown in yellow, as is the outline of the object in the 3D View, further helping you visualize the animation. All other ghost keyframed locations are shown as a black outline in the 3D View. Ghosting for armatures is more versatile and thus more complicated; see the Armature Visualization options.

In addition, the * NumPad key orients the view normal to the selected face (in Edit mode…).

[edit] Select Menu

The Select menu.

• Grouped - Blender has a few ways of grouping items together. This submenu contains commands to select objects by their various groupings.
  • Children - This command selects all the children of the selected object(s) (i.e. their children, the children of their children, etc.).
  • Immediate Children - This command selects the children of the select object(s); however, unlike the previous command, it does not continue selecting the children of the children, just the direct descendants of the parent.
  • Parent - This command selects the parent(s) of the selected object(s).
  • Siblings (Shared Parent) - This command selects all the objects that share the parent of an object. This means that if you have, for example, several Blender objects that make up one physical object and are all children of one part of this object (like an empty), you can select one Blender object that is part of the physical object, use this command, and all the Blender objects that make up the physical object will be selected (if that makes any sense!).
  • Objects of Same Type - This command selects all objects of the same type (Lamp, Mesh, Camera, etc.).
  • Objects on Shared Layers - This command selects all the objects on the same layer(s) as the selected object(s).
  • Objects in Same Group - This command selects all the objects in the groups that the selected object(s) are in. This can be used for the same purpose as Siblings (Shared Parent) if you have grouped parts of a physical object instead of using parents.
  • Objects Hooks - This command selects any objects that are acting as Hooks for the selected object(s).
  • Object PassIndex - This command selects all the objects that use the same pass index (setting in the Object context → Object sub-context → Object and Links panel → PassIndex numbutton. See also the Render Passes and Convertor Compositing Nodes pages).
  • Object Color - This command selects all the objects that use the same “object color” (setting in the Object context → Object sub-context → Draw panel → color picker, upper right corner).
  • Game Properties - This command selects all the objects that have game properties of the same name as those of the selected object(s).
• Linked - This submenu contains commands that allow you to select objects based on datablocks (Ipo curves, Materials, Textures, etc.) that they share.
  • Object Ipo - This command selects all the objects that share the Object Ipo curves of the selected object(s).
  • ObData - This command selects all the objects that share the ObData datablocks of the selected object(s) (this means, the same meshes, curves, …).
  • Material - This command selects all the object(s) that share the material(s) of the selected object(s).
  • Texture - This command selects all the object(s) that share the texture(s) of the selected object(s).
  • If you use the shortcut (⇧ ShiftL) instead of the menu, you will have two more options: DupliGroup will select all the objects that duplicate the same group(s) as the selected one(s), and ParticleSystem will select all the objects that use the same particle system(s) as the selected one(s).
• Select All By Type - This submenu contains commands that allow you to select all the objects of a certain type (Mesh, Camera, Lamp, etc.)
• Select All By Layer - This submenu contains commands that allow you to select all the objects in a specified layer.
• Random - As you might have guessed, this command randomly selects some objects in the scene. The percentage you have to specify is not the amount of objects that will be selected, but the probability each object has to be selected (subtle, isn’t it? For example, if you specify 50%, this does not mean that half of your objects will be selected, but that each object has a fifty-fifty chance to be selected: you might have only one object, or nearly all objects selected, even though this is not very probable…).
• Inverse - This command inverts the selection (selects all the deselected objects and deselects all the selected objects).
• Select/Deselect All - This command deselects the current selection if there is one; if nothing is selected, it selects everything.
• Border Select - This command allows you to select objects using the traditional rectangle that most programs use. After pressing B or selecting this menu option, click LMB and drag your mouse diagonally through your workspace. When you release your LMB , all objects that were partly or totally within the box will be selected. If you instead click MMB or RMB and drag, all objects within the box will be de-selected.

[edit] Object Menu

The Object menu.

This menu operates on objects as a whole. Many options act on the active object, based on other objects. You indicate that the Blender by RMB clicking on the base object, then ⇧ ShiftRMB clicking on the active object, and then invoking the menu option. In the case of wanting to work on more than two objects, simply click on all the base objects first; the last object selected will be the active object.

• Scripts - This submenu lists available Python scripts written to extend blender’s object handling capability. Of note is the Knife tool that cuts meshes. See each script’s documentation for more information on how to use the script.
• Show/Hide Objects - This submenu allows you to Show Hidden objects (AltH), to Hide Selected objects (H), or to Hide Deselected objects (⇧ ShiftH).
• Move to Layer... - Objects can be organized into 20 Layers, and only a few layers can be selected for display to avoid clutter. This option moves the selected object(s) to a layer. To do so, select one of the 20 layers by clicking on one of the buttons in the popup window and click the OK button. If the layer is not selected for display, the object is removed from view. To view the objects on a layer, click the appropriate layer button (located to the right on the header).
• Convert Object Type... - This command pops-up a menu, different for each type of objects. For example, Curve and Surface objects can be converted to Mesh, and you can apply the modifiers of a Mesh object, keeping or not the original object.
• Join Objects - Joins multiple selected objects into on single object.
• Boolean Operation... - This command, only available with mesh objects, pops-up a menu that allows you to perform discrete operations on the active object based on previously selected objects. Union (OR) extends the object to include all selected objects. Difference (XOR) modifies the active object by cutting away parts where they intersect. Intersect (AND) discards everything except where they intersect. The first three options are destructive. If you use modifiers, they can be undone or applied at any moment.
• Constraints - You can constrain an object based on another object, like a dog on a leash. Various ways to constrain the active object (based on another previously selected object) are by location, rotation, scale, etc.
• Track - You can make an object face, or always point to another object by the Track option. If you move the base object, the active object will rotate so that it always “keeps an eye” on the base object (note that you should use the new “track” constraints, not the old system).
• Group - Grouping is a completely arbitrary way for you to group like things together. If you are making a scene of a park, you can group all the trees together if you like.
• Parent - Use this submenu to designate the active object as the parent of one or more child objects. Then, when you move the parent, the children move with it.
• Copy Attributes - An object is in a certain place, called a location. “Location” is an attribute of the object, as well as its size, rotation, constraints… All selected objects can copy the attributes of active object using this option.
• Make Local - If an object was linked from another scene, this makes a local copy of it for the current scene.
• Make Single User - Make a “local” copy of some of the datablocks shared by the object with others. For example, an 8-ball object can share the same mesh (called “billiards ball”) with 15 other users (15 balls plus the cue ball). Making a local copy assigns a copy (by default suffixed with the first number available, like “billiards ball.001”) of the multi-user mesh to the selected object. You can then edit the local copy without affecting any of the other users.
• Make Links …
  • To Scene... - This is a way to proxy an object to another scene. It exists in the current scene, but will show up (and be modifiable) in the linked scene as well.
  • Object Ipo, Mesh data, etc. - It is a way to make the current object join the multi-user community and share the selected item with the other selected objects (be careful, it means that you assign, for example, the material of the active object to all selected objects).
• Delete - Wipes it out, man. Like totally. If its material and texture were single user and now are not used, they will not be saved in the .blend file.
• Duplicate Linked - Makes a copy of the object, but links their mesh as multi-user, so if you change one (like a table leg), all the other table legs match.
• Duplicate - Makes a xerox copy. Well, a three-dimensional xerox copy, if there is such a thing.
• Insert Keyframe - Records in Ipos the current location, rotation, etc (whatever you select) of the object at that frame. Use this to set up basic animations.
• Snap - This menu allows you to move the selected object to the cursor, grid or vice versa. Very handy in making items share the same space.
• Clear/Apply - Clears (resets to zero) the object’s scale/rotation as selected, or applies current rotation/scale to the object making them default.
• Mirror - Applies a mirror transformation on the object.
• Transform - Use the menu to refresh your memory of the most common hotkeys.
• Transform Properties - Pressing N pops up a floating panel that gives you key information about the active object: location, rotation, scale, dimension…

[edit] Mode List

The Mode drop-down list.

Blender has a few modes of operation. Working on Objects as a whole, or in Edit mode by allowing you to modify the shape of the object. In Sculpt mode, your cursor becomes a tool to shape the object, while your cursor becomes a brush in Vertex Paint, Weight Paint, or Texture Paint modes.

[edit] ViewPort Shading List

See the previous page.

[edit] Rotation Selector

Pivot point selector.

When rotating or scaling an object or bunch of vertices/edges/faces, you may want to shift the pivot point in 3D space. Using this selector, you can change the pivot point to the location of the cursor, the average center spot of the selected items (median), etc. Pivoting is fully described here.

Use the “Object Center” toggle to switch between multi-point averages or last selected as the center.

[edit] Transform (Manipulator) Selectors

These handy selectors, also featured in other not-to-be-named CG packages, allow you to rotate or move objects by grabbing (clicking with your mouse) their controls and moving your mouse in the axis. Each color stands for an axis.

Click on the little “finger” icon to enable the manipulator. Your object in 3D View will now have the manipulator around its center. The transform manipulator is a 3-axis arrow; the rotate manipulator are three circles, one for each axis; click and drag on the arc to rotate on an axis. The scale manipulator is 3-axis of lines that end in a block. Customize the size of the manipulators in the User Preferences.

LMB click the buttons for a 3D Move, Rotate, or Scale Selector. ⇧ ShiftLMB to activate multiple manipulators at the same time. You can move, rotate or scale according to a Global view, or Local, View, etc. Generally, stick with Global view until you get the hang of things.

[edit] Layer Selector

Layers are pretty well documented here. In particular, selecting layers to see in is covered in that section on Viewing layers, and moving objects between layers is also discussed in this page.

[edit] Render Button

The “Render” button renders an OpenGL copy of the 3D view. It’s pretty much exactly what you see minus the grid, axes, etc., it just shows the objects. It uses the same Draw mode as the 3D view, so it’s rather useful if someone asks to see the wireframe of an object you’re working on.

CtrlLMB or ⇧ ShiftLMB clicking the button will render an animation of the 3D View, making it useful for making preview renders of animations. The animation will be saved in the rendered Pics folder (Scene context [F10], Output panel, top filespec) in the format of an avi file or image sequence, depending on the format you have chosen (Scene context [F10], Format panel), for the number of frames specified in the Start and End fields (Scene context [F10], Anim panel).

Manual