Hi, I’m new to the course and I have a question about left and right mouse buttons.
Using the right mouse button to select things is very unintuitive, as I’m sure everyone will attest. It’s certainly doing my head in.
I know Michael has said that there are good reasons not to switch the buttons, but doesn’t go into them apart from that’s what he will be demonstrating. Now I’m sure that over time you would get used to it. That is if you plan on becoming a Blender artist exclusively.
However, I’m also a Unity developer, and I will be doing a lot of switching back and forward between Blender and Unity. Under these circumstances it would seem logical to switch the left and right mouse buttons so that both Unity and Blender select objects with the LMB.
I’d be interested on getting people’s opinions on this, particularly those with extensive multi-environment experience.
If I decide to switch buttons at this early stage, what are the pros and cons further down the road?
Whilst I only have experience from the Blender perspective, I’m a right clicker and happy to be. But it’s complete personal preference as to whether or not you switch. However, what I can say is that the human brain really is impressive; once you have Blender down-pat, muscle memory will dictate your clicks and you won’t even realize you’re right clicking in Blender and left clicking in Unity!
It’s just a click of an option, though, and I know a lot of Blender professionals who happily left click to select, so if it bothers you then it’s probably best to change it.
I’ve heard rumors from multiple channels on YouTube that Blender is going to be changing to the left button in further versions, but you can’t always believe what you hear, right? Right clicking is pretty much automatic at this point, but it does interfere when moving between programs as I’m right clicking without realizing and they don’t work that way. It does get my brain thinking early in the morning though! I’d change it, but then the frustration will be the other way around and I use Blender more, so it’s not worth the aggravation. Once I remind myself which program I’m in though, muscle memory does take over after a few minutes, like @McFuzz said, so it’s not really too bad.
Still, I do wish I had changed in the beginning stages, it would make it easier today.
Thank you. That is exactly the answer I was hoping for. I had already swapped them as soon as I figured out it was possible. Michael’s insistence that we use RMB selection had me worried that I would get messed up further down the track.
Thanks for discussing this folks, I’m just at the begginning of the blender course, it was unclear why changing to left mouse button would make things difficult later. If anyone knows the difficulty please share - Thanks. Was the interface designed by a left handed developer? that then maybe would make the right mouse button more intuitive if your left handed. Anyhoo just going off on a tangent …Glad you can choose either way. It seems that you can manipulate the interface to suit you and that is pretty awesome - Sal x.
I know I had been following a tutorial on you tube that was older so that might be why it made a difference but they were a right button select person and when doing rigging they could select the bones but when I tried a left button select person I couldn’t select bones. After googling for answers for a while finally found out there was a way to make it work by using either shift or control, I can’t remember which, while selecting and then it worked. I suppose that is one of the reasons it’s better learning here than trying to do it own your own from various tutorial videos that may be old and out of date, inaccurate, or incomplete. Hoping that when we get to parts where it might make a difference he will let us left click select people know how to get things done.
I’d change it, but then the frustration will be the other way around and I use Blender more, so it’s not worth the aggravation. Once I remind myself which program I’m in though, muscle memory does take over after a few minutes, like 
