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[edit] Buttons and Controls

Buttons are mostly grouped in the Button Window. But they can appear in other Windows.

[edit] Operation Button

These are buttons that perform an operation when they are clicked (with LMB , as all buttons). They can be identified by their brownish color in the default Blender scheme (An operation button).

[edit] Toggle Button

Toggle buttons come in various sizes and colours (Toggle buttons). The colours green, violet, and grey do not change functionality, they just help the eye to group the buttons and recognize the contents of the interface more quickly. Clicking this type of button does not perform any operation, but only toggles a state.

Some buttons also have a third state that is identified by the text turning yellow (the Emit button in Toggle buttons). Usually the third state means "negative," and the normal "on" state means "positive."

[edit] Radio Buttons

Radio buttons are particular groups of mutually exclusive Toggle buttons. No more than one Radio Button in a given group can be "on" at one time.

[edit] Number Buttons

Number buttons (Number buttons) can be identified by their captions, which contain a colon followed by a number. Number buttons are handled in several ways: To increase the value, click LMB on the right of the button, where the small triangle is shown; to decrease it, click on the left of the button, where another triangle is shown.

To change the value in a wider range, hold down LMB and drag the mouse to the left or right. If you hold Ctrl while doing this, the value is changed in discrete steps; if you hold ⇧ Shift, you'll have finer control over the values. ↵ Enter can be used in place of LMB here.

You can enter a value directly by holding ⇧ Shift and clicking LMB . You can also enter simple equations, like 3*2 instead of 6. Be sure to enter a decimal point if you want a floating point result; otherwise you get an integer (e.g. 3/2 = 1, but 3.0 / 2 = 1.5). Handy geometric constants to remember: pi is 3.14 and the square root of two is 1.414. Press ⇧ Shift← Backspace to clear the value; Ctrl← to move the cursor to the beginning; and Ctrl→ to move the cursor to the end. Press Esc to restore the original value. You can copy the value of a button by pointing at it and pressing CtrlC. Similarly you can paste a copied value with CtrlV.

Some number buttons contain a slider rather than just a number with side triangles. The same method of operation applies, except that single LMB clicks must be performed on the left or on the right of the slider, while clicking on the label or the number automatically enters keyboard input mode.

[edit] Menu Buttons

Use the Menu buttons to choose from dynamically created lists. Menu buttons are principally used to link DataBlocks to each other. (DataBlocks are structures like Meshes, Objects, Materials, Textures, and so on; by linking a Material to an Object, you assign it.)

You can see an example for such a block of buttons in (Datablock link buttons).

1. The first button (with the tiny up and down pointing triangles) opens a menu that lets you select the DataBlock to link to by holding down LMB and releasing it over the requested item.
2. The second button displays the type and name of the linked DataBlock and lets you edit its name after clicking LMB .
3. The "X" button clears the link.
4. The "car" button generates an automatic name for the DataBlock.
5. And the "F" button specifies whether the DataBlock should be saved in the file even if it is unused (unlinked).

Unlinked objects Unlinked data is not lost until you quit Blender. This is a powerful Undo feature. if you delete an object the material assigned to it becomes unlinked, but is still there! You just have to re-link it to another object or press the "F" button.

[edit] Color Selector controls

Some controls pop-up a dialog panel. For example, Color controls, when clicked, will pop up a Color Selector dialog; see (Color Selector).

[edit] Cascade Buttons

Occasionally, some buttons actually reveal additional buttons. For example, the Ramps panel has a Cascade button called Colorband that reveals additional buttons dealing with colorbanding; see (Colorband before) and (Colorband after).

Colorband before

Colorband after