2013-08-25

A little Blender reward

I've just spent the past couple of hours getting acquainted with the basics of Blender. Not that I'm planning on dumping my use of Mesh Studio any time soon, but getting to know Blender can't hurt. So, having got through the tutorials I wanted to get through, I thought it was time for a bit of nonsense as a reward:


Just don't let on to Auryn Beorn that my reward was exporting and uploading a mesh object when all I'd done is complete her interface basics. Those warnings about running before we can crawl are kind of scary. ;)

7 comments:

  1. I will not tell her... :o)

    (The warnings were so much needed! Blender is quite powerful, but it has so many shortcuts, that even if you sneeze in the wrong direction you may activate one. Anyway, I hope you're following ok, and in case of doubts, PM or e-mail work the best, because I can reply not having to be inworld :-) )

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, I will do.

      So far so good. I think there was one aspect of one exercise that I couldn't quite work out, but I glossed over it and kept going with a view to going back: couldn't for the life of me get the window panes to lay out the way you had in one of the images -- the pane that's normally on the right (that's got a ton of detail about the object you're working on, etc), forgot how or couldn't figure out how to make it go away. But it was getting late so I imagine a fresh look today will sort that.

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    2. It sounds like it is the "Properties" panel of the 3D View. With your mouse over that window, the "N" key should make it to go away. (It works like a toggle, "N" to show/hide it.)

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    3. Ahh, no, my mistake. I've described it wrong. It's not the properties window I was wondering about, it's the one on the right that contains a bunch of other panels. Out of the box for me it as the outline at the top with the properties underneath.

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    4. Ah... Then that's the "Properties" editor window (yes... same names...) Review in that case how to join the editor windows... remembering that if the "separating edges" aren't the same length, you may have to join other windows first.

      Yes, that sounds like a mouthful. Let's see if I can explain a bit better.

      When you start Blender the first time, you have five of those editor windows. One is at top, occupying all the horizontal size (the "Info" toolbar with the "File" menu, etc.) Then at the bottom of the screen you have another one also using all the horizontal size (the "Timeline"). Then in the center, you have three windows in two columns. Left column, the "3D View", right column, the "Outliner" at top, the "Properties" at bottom.

      What I meant before is, suppose you want to join the "3D View" with the other two at the right. You can't do this in just one step. Why? Because the meeting edge, 3D View vs Outliner + Properties, has not the same length. The "3D View" is larger vertically than the "Outliner". And larger than the "Properties". There are the two edges, one from the Outliner and one from Properties, to meet the only one edge that is the 3D View. But what you can do is first join the two windows at the right, bottom (Outliner) and top (Properties). That makes the central section of the whole screen having two windows, left and right, now having the same length in the meeting edge, and now they can be joined, leaving you with the bigger 3D View in the middle.

      I hope that makes a bit more of sense %-)

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    5. Perfect, that was it. I'd missed the subtlety of it being two editor windows within a window, so to speak.

      Having understood that now it's all falling into place. Thanks. :)

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