Blender Cheatsheet and Notes

Blender Courses Talk
, ,
#1

Hey guys. I’ve been trying to take some notes during the lectures. Here is what I have so far. Maybe it can help you too :grinning:

Feel free to add your own notes and comments to it or make corrections if you see any errors.

Keyboard shortcuts:

  1. While hovering over 3D editor window
  • Z - Toggle wireframe
  • T - Toggle toolshelf
  • N - Toggle properties
  • Tab - Toggle edit mode
  • Shift A - Add (e.g. a new mesh)
  1. While hovering over 3D editor window in edit mode
  • CTRL V - Bring up Vertices menu
  1. While having multiple objects selected
  • CTRL J - Join
  1. While having an edge, face or vertex selected
  • E - Extrude
  1. While having anything selected (entire object, single vertex, face, edge etc):
  • G - Grab or move
  • S - Scale
  • R - Rotate
  1. After having entered a transformation (e.g. Grab, Scale, Rotate) or extrusion:
  • X - Constrain the operation in the x direction
  • Y - Constrain the operation in the y direction
  • Z - Constrain the operation in the z direction
  • Any number (including decimal points) - Apply the operation by the given amount (e.g. scale by 0.5)
  • The keyboard shortcuts can be combined, e.g.: G, X, 0.5 will move the selected item by 0.5 units in the x direction
  1. While in object mode and having object selected
  • CTRL A - Apply transformation
  • ALT R - Clear rotation transformation
  • ALT G - Clear translation transformation
  • ALT S - Clear scaling transformation

Moving around your scene more efficiently
To move around your object more easily, you can enter first-person mode by pressing: Shift+F. Once in FPS mode, use WASD and the mouse to move around as you would in an FPS. The scroll wheel will adjust how fast you can move around. The Q and E keys are used to move up or down. If you point at something and press the space bar, you will move to it. By pressing the left mouse button, you will then move the viewport to where you are in FPS mode.

Viewing normals:

  • Enter Edit mode (press Tab while mouse is in 3D editor window)
  • Open the properties panel in the 3D editor window (press ‘N’ key while mouse is over 3D editor window). This brings up the properties.
  • Scroll down to ‘Mesh Display’ and expand it
  • Under ‘Normals’ you can select e.g. Display Face Normals as Lines. Then adjust the length of the lines to whatever you like to see the normals
  • Under Shading you can also enable Backface Culling. This will make it so that the faces are only rendered if their normals are pointing outwards

Extruding

  • When extruding vertices, the angle that the edges will be drawn at are the angle at which you are looking at the model. So if you look at a model from 90 from the side and extrude vertices to create new edges, you can rotate the model and will then see that the new edges are all at 90 from the side

Insetting

  • Select a face and press I to inset the face
  • You can specify a thickness and a depth in the tool shelf on the left of the 3D editor window (press T to toggle the tool shelf while the mouse is over the 3D editor window)
  • The thickness is a proportional value. If your face has a dimension of 10 x 10 units and you specify a value of 0.2, the inset face will have a dimension of 9 x 9 units. You can remember this because 0.1 means the new face will be 10% smaller (1 blender unit smaller) but that means it will be 9.5 x 9.5 units (the inset insets from all sides). So you have to make the inset with a thickness of 0.2 if you want the new face to be 9 x 9 units since the inset insets from all sides. It’s best to play around with his to understand this.

Edge Loops, Face loops, Loop cuts, loop sliding etc

  • Press CTRL + R to enter the loop cut mode. Left click to enter loop-sliding. Loop sliding is proportional. Try it out on a geometry such as a simple pyramid and view the pink/purple preview of what will be cut. The value (can be seen on the bottom left) goes from -1 to 1 with 0 being in the middle.
  • ALT+Right click selects an edge loop
  • While in face-select, ALT+Right click will select a face loop. It will select the face loop going in the direction of the edge that was closest to where you click. So if you ALT+Click while your mouse is near the top edge, the face loop will wrap around the top of the model. If you ALT+click while near the right edge, the face loop will wrap around the object horizontally
  • While in loop cut mode, use scroll wheel to change the number of cuts
  • Note that you can also find the loop cut and slide modes in the tool shelf (hit T while hovering over the 3D editor window)

Quick Selection (Box and Circle Select)

  • Enter a selection mode (e.g. edge select, vertex select etc)
  • Hit B (for Box Select). Now you can draw a rectangle over your model. Everything that the rectangle touches will be selected. However, only the things that are visible will be selected. The edges/vertices/faces behind the model will not be selected. If you want to select even the hidden edges/vertices/faces, you can enter wireframe mode and do the box select. Box select is a cumulative selection method. Every time you box select something, it gets added to the selection. To de-select, use the middle mouse button.
  • Hit C (for Circle Select) to enter circle selection mode. Use the scroll wheel to change the size of the circle. Left click to select and middle click to de-select.

Snapping

  • Shift+Tab to toggle snapping (or click the magnet in the toolbar at the bottom of the 3D editor window)
  • If you want to automatically merge vertices that are moved to the same location, you can toggle that on using the little icon consisting of 2 arrows pointing to each other that’s located a little bit to the right of the snapping magnet icon in the toolbar. Make sure you are in edit mode, otherwise the merging of vertices button doesn’t appear.

Viewing the grid while moving/snapping things:

  • Enter orthographic projection and view the model from the side or the top to see a grid while snapping things.

Limit selection to visible

  • In the 3D editor header bar, while in edit mode, you will see a button ‘Limit section to visible’ next to the vertex, edge and face select buttons. If you toggle this option, you will notice that the models become translucent. Now you will be able to, for example, Box Select an object and have the parts of the object which aren’t visible be selected also. This is helpful when you want to select an entire object.

Array modifier and separating meshes

  • To apply an array modifier, select an object
  • In the properties panel, select the little wrench icon
  • Select ‘Add modifier’ and select ‘Array’ from the list
  • A modifier allows you to kind of preview what the effect of the modifier will be. The modifier will not be applied until you hit ‘Apply’
  • When you apply the array modifier, the result will all be one mesh. If you, for example, use the array modifier to clone a pyramid mesh you’ve made, the result will be 2 pyramids that are inside one mesh. You can now select one of the two pyramids and separate it into its own mesh. To do this, select the pyramid you wish to separate and go to Mesh->Vertices->Separate->Selection

Set the origin

  • Select an object
  • Make sure you are in object mode (and not edit mode, for example)
  • In the tool shelf on the left hand side of the 3D editor window (hit T while the mouse is over the 3D editor window to toggle the tool shelf), under ‘Edit’ you will find ‘Set Origin’. Use that to set the origin of the object

Pivot Points

  • In the header bar of the 3D editor window, you can select the pivot points. The option can be found just on the right of the button to change the method of shading/displaying the objects (where you can select wireframe or solid or rendered etc). This is just on the right of the interaction mode (edit mode, object mode etc)

Subdivision

  • Be careful when subdividing. Don’t increase the number of cuts to too many because otherwise Blender will crash or your computer will hang. It’s better to recursively subdivide faces, e.g.: select a face, subdivide into 4 cuts, select one of the resulting new faces, subdivide that face again etc.
  • To subdivide: select a face, in the tool shelf scroll down to the ‘Subdivide’ option and click it. On the bottom left, you will see the subdivide parameters where you can set the number of cuts, the smoothness etc.

Coordinate system

Export Checklist (NB: It’s always a good idea to test the checklist with whatever target program you plan to export to)

  • What axis is up? How about handedness?
    In Blender, the z axis points up. In Unity, the y axis points up.
  • Does the scale set in Blender come through?
    When exporting to Unity, the scale information is transmitted correctly.
  • Does the model have an appropriate origin?
    When there are multiple models in a single blend file, placed at different positions, only the model placed at the origin in Blender, will also be at the origin in Unity. If you break up the models from a single blend file inside unity, the models placed away from the origin, will remain away from the origin once they’ve been separated. They have their offsets baked into them.
  • Are the meshes grouped appropriately?
    You should only have one blend file per model. Don’t put separate models into the same blend file
  • Is the model closed? How about the bases?

Applying transformations

  • When rotating, scaling, and translating your objects in Blender, be sure to apply those transformations to the objects. Otherwise you may have strange artefacts when adding particle systems, animating, etc. since those systems rely on correct transform data. To see this in action, do the following:
  • Create a new cube
  • In the properties panel (N key while hovering over 3D editor window), note the location, rotation and scale
  • View the model from the front and rotate the cube 45 degrees on the y axis
  • The rotation values in the properties panel change. However, the values in the Dimensions section don’t change
  • Remove the cube and add a new cube
  • Now enter edit mode (hit Tab)
  • Rotate the cube again by 45 degrees in the y axis
  • Now you will see that the values under the dimensions section in the properties panel reflect to show the actual size of the model in its respective axes
  • You can also apply transformations while you are in object mode. To do this, remove the cube again and add a new cube
  • While in object mode, rotate the cube again by 45 degrees on they axis
  • Note that information in the properties panel
  • Now go to Object->Apply (or CTRL A), and select Rotation
  • Note how the values in the properties panel change
  • In the bottom left hand corner, you can apply other transformations as well. Also note that when you toggle the rotation checkbox, the values in the properties panel change
  • You can also clear transformations. Create a new cube and stay in object mode. Apply some transformations (translate it, rotate it, scale it)
  • Now while having the cube selected, hit ALT G. This will clear the translation. Hit ALT R to clear the rotation and ALT S to clear the scaling. You will also find these options under Object-> Clear.
  • To summarise: while in object mode, you have to apply the transformations using Object->Apply. While in edit mode, you don’t have to do this because you are already changing the positions of the individual vertices that make up the underlying mesh. Applying transformations while in object mode only changes the way the object is displayed. Blender will still think the object has the same size, location, rotation as before. Forgetting to apply the transformations can have strange effects when adding hair to a model, for example, because Blender will think the model still has the same size as when you first created it. Keep that in mind.
  • Unless you’ve got a very good reason: always apply your transformations. Be careful with the location transformation though because that can move the origin so you may have to move the origin back to the object afterwards
3 Likes
WIKI - Interesting forum topics, problem solving issues

Privacy & Terms