Blender: The Interface and Other Basics | Douglas R | Skillshare

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Blender: The Interface and Other Basics

teacher avatar Douglas R, Digital Artist

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      4:47

    • 2.

      Navigating and Moving Objects

      4:01

    • 3.

      Layout Tools and Toggling Various Menus

      2:57

    • 4.

      Workspace Tabs and Navigation Bar

      6:11

    • 5.

      Timeline and Customizable Interface

      2:52

    • 6.

      Move, Scale and Rotate

      2:41

    • 7.

      Scale "DOES" Matter!!!

      4:34

    • 8.

      Copy, Flip and Attach

      6:59

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About This Class

In this class I will be demonstrating the basics of using  blender, the 3d open source program.  3d packages such as blender can be extremely complex, thus it’s essential to go over the basics of “how to navigate  the interface”, “navigating 3d space” and some basic fundamentals and small tips and tricks which are applicable to virtually any 3d application.

 

If you are new to working with 3d graphics, and are interested in making 3d models this maybe a good place to start learning.  Having a good foundation is essential for any course of study, This tutorial will cover some good foundations which will help avoid various other issues in terms of working with 3d graphics.   I will describe what kind of issues to look out for and how to accommodate for them.

 

 

Learning 3d graphics can be difficult and complex … fortunately for you we have sources like this to make picking it up faster and easier.  I will attempt to simplify working with blender and 3d graphics.  At the end of this tutorial you should be comfortable enough working with blender you can proceed to learn how to do anything else with blender.

 

Remember “it’s all about the basics”

Meet Your Teacher

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Douglas R

Digital Artist

Teacher

Hello, I'm Douglas;  I’m an artist and a student of the arts. Since much of my work is digital I would like to consider myself a Digital Artist.

I have studied computer graphics for a number of years and though I’ve learned many things, I've found that in this field you can never stop growing and learning new things because the field is always growing and changing.   Have done work for a number of clients and I’ve worked as a Tutor for Art and Digital Media.  

My free time is used striving to improve myself and my artwork; learning new things and new applications. When you learn something new, you gain an ability ... a power ... I don't know how else to describe it, it’s a fantastic experience.  Curr... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: I wanted to cover some Blender basics and basic box model. Originally it was only supposed to be a basic box modeling tutorial, but gradually became so big, I had to split it up into two tutorials. This is the first half. Vendor basics. 3d packages can be really complex. So if you're brand new to this, you could easily become lost and confused. So I felt that it was important to cover the basics. The bare-bone basics like the basic interface. First, I will cover navigating and moving objects. Navigating the interface. Secondly, layout tools, toggling things like the properties in the search menu, which is actually incredibly useful to the area toggle. These things are pretty basic and fundamental, but if you don't know them, they can mess you up. Thirdly, the different workspace tab at the layout, the modeling, sculpting, et cetera. And basically working with pipelines, different kinds of pipelines. Seen collections. They're very essential. They list everything you've seen. The name Scene Collection, the navigation bar, which basically contains almost everything else in Blender. So it's really, really important that you're at least aware of it. Next, the timeline, obviously important for animating stuff. Just know that it's here for now. I'm not really going to cover animating. Maybe at some future point in time I'll talk about animating and vendor. The interface is fully customizable. It's good to know how to customize it to your liking and adding assets. And then one of the more exciting parts and probably the most common used because, well, we all want to start building three-day acids and it's three. So then moving and rotating and scaling stuff. In 3D space. This is very essential. Move and rotate and scale. Tools are in every single program. Working with 3D content I've seen. As far as I know. And I need to make note of this. Scale does matter. I need to talk about how and why scale matters, because there's a common misconception with states then since 3D is all vector-based, scale, doesn't really matter. This is a myth. It's only half accurate because you're not only working with vectors and there is no telling what your content is going to be used for. I'll talk a bit about that too. Also. Finally, duplicate, copy and flip. This is useful because you don't want to manually model both halves of your model that doubles your workload. And it's easy to make mistakes. It's faster and easier to just model have been caught Philip and attached to the other half of the model. I'll talk about that to the second half of the vendor basic tutorials. I'll cover various basic box modeling tools available to you in vendor to model stuff. I will also see if I can provide a vendor model that you can use to practice with and get accustomed to working with Blender. So without further ado, let's get started and it's going to be epic. 2. Navigating and Moving Objects: Greetings. I'm online and I'm on the air, bring you another Skillshare tutorial because I strongly believe that it's good sharing time. So what are we waiting for? That shares some skills. Alright. This is going to be my heart. One, I'm Danny, I'm doing two different places, which is the first part of navigating and moving objects. With blender. I'll have to break this to turn it off into two different tutorials. The first covering the bare-bone basics that nobody in 3D space, Navigating the interface, moving objects around in 3D space, et cetera, like stuff like that. I've already supplying parts for the down robot guy that can be tinkered around with for the first bare-bone basics tutorial. The second one is still relatively basic. Boot cover box modeling different parts for our giant robot. Hi, I'd like to read this as an intermediate. The second tutorial. As an intermediate tutorial because although the tools being used, basic box modeling. Box modeling about 300 different parts is actually kind of taxing and time-consuming. So yeah, navigating the interface scanner kind of warn me about doing tutorials kind of like this, like a review of the interface. But the thing about 3D packages, whether it's max or my own vendor or any other thing, is 3D packages tend to be so insanely convoluted. There are more buns and options and switches. Then at 07:47 jumbo jet, you know what that means is you learn how to use Bender. Then you'll be qualified to operate at 07:47 jumbo jet. Now I'm just I'm kidding. I'm joking. Don't don't don't attempt to fly a jumbo jet. Because you learn how to use a 3D package. You know, unless you actually try a jumbo jet, then I guess it's okay. So if you're new, it's easy to be completely overwhelmed and lost. Skillshare. To warn me against doing tutorials like this. But I feel it's useful and it's important to know. So it's all about the basics, right? Alright, so here's the general interface to navigate the viewport and you press the Alt or left, right, or middle mouse button. You alternate between the three buttons. If your controls are a bit different. That's probably because your lender mode. I'm using industry standard settings found under Edit preferences. In Blender mode, neighboring view part is done with B, the middle mouse button, while article alternating between control and shift. 3. Layout Tools and Toggling Various Menus: Okay, The layout tools, here are some common layout tools. They're pretty self-explanatory. They all have shortcuts. When you get accustomed to the shortcuts, you'll probably never touch these things. Again. Probably end up talking about these layout tools again a little bit. Because repetition is actually it's a learning tool. The more times you hear something you practice something, the more likely you will retain it, right? So please don't get annoyed. Stuff like that. Toggling the properties. Let's talk about properties because these properties are important. On the right-hand side, there are various sets of properties that you can inspect and modify. If you're in vendor. In vendor mode. The shortcuts are T and N. Play with them so you can get accustomed to using them. For industry standard mode. It's the control and the two brackets. The search menu. Here's a function that's, it's pretty useful. This is like, when I discovered this function, it was like, Oh wow, this is fantastic. This is just wonderful. Like whenever I'm having trouble finding a function, I just typing into the search function in it just shows up automatically. It's fantastic. You need to know this. You need to know this man. The search menu. This menu functions very useful. Lemon vendor mode, you press F3 and it shows up, but an industry compatibility mode, you press Tab. Now the area toggle. This is also very important to know. It's, it's extremely important to know, especially if you're new to working with a vendor. Because if you accidentally toggle this thing, you're going to have one **** of a time figuring out how to toggle it and just figure out what the heck is happening and how do I get out of this? How do I fix this? I'll change the interface back, blah, blah, blah. Pay very close attention to this. Really. Yeah, I wish I knew this before when I started messing with vendor like I really did. You just talk through the search menu. Basically, if you check the search menu over here, you can see the shortcuts for the search menu. And also, if you're having trouble locating this toggle option, you can actually just type it in through the search menu. We just say it's me three times. Social media. That makes number four. There we go. Where does the char now three times, four times a charm. 4. Workspace Tabs and Navigation Bar: Now there are different workspace layouts. Different workspace tab. There's layouts. Layout, workspace. There's a modelling workspace, sculpting, et cetera. I would like you to take note of each workspace. And take note that each workspace has a different set of tools available to them so they can perform the function of which each workspace has been designated to perform. Like the sculpting workspace is going to have a bunch of sculpting tools. The modelling workspace is going to have a bunch of modeling tools and so on and so forth. I really liked the way they set up, the way they set this up. The spacing to this seems to follow a particular type of pipeline. Now what is a pipeline? You may ask? Well, the pipeline is okay. So like it's like imagine a pipeline basically describes a series of steps. Like a series of systematic, consistent steps that's implemented in order to fulfill a project. Do a project, complete a project, like if you're doing 3D work, maybe the first part of the pipeline, the first step is to box modeling and then the second step would be to sculpted. And then the third step would be to maybe you want to reach apologize it or unwrap it or rig it. And then the next step would be to like maybe you want to animate it and then maybe you want to add, render things out and so on and so forth. There's just various steps of the pipeline. This is your pipeline. I want to focus on layout and maybe modelling. Now. I might make modeling a different tutorial. I don't want this surreal to be too long and convoluted. I'm trying to keep things simple. Kiss right? Now these guys over here on the top right, will affect your overlays and your viewports. General appearance. So if you have things like your compass or like statistics or certain images or symbols, represents different pieces of information in your 3D workspace. Polygons or the your transform gizmo, just like things like that, you can toggle that kind of stuff off and on. This this guy over here, this weird dude you remember when you're kidding, Did you play that game or you like, throw down the balls and you had that kind of looks like one of those jack dice being Zai. Yeah. Well, basically it's your compass. Basically. This will basically allow you to control which angle you're viewing your 3D space from. You can view it from the top, you can infer it from the left side, the back, the bottom, whichever. Alright, let's talk about seeing collections. Now this up here. Maybe if you're coming from a different package, maybe you refer to it as like your Outliner here it's referred to as a scene collection. It lists and basically organizes all the objects in your scene, like the geometry, the lights, the cameras, etc. You can also toggle different parts of your object. You can toggle if you can see the object, if it's visible, being shown or hidden in your 3D view port, you can change whether this object is going to be rendered out, if it's going to show up in your render. And I pull my program recovering rendering here, I just want to focus on basics for now. You can focus on, you can toggle the lights and the cameras, etc. You can even toggle whether something is available or not. Although the default settings, the vendor default settings, the selection option isn't available, so you have to sort of populate on kind of like this. Now the navigation bar, this navigation bar in the right bottom is probably the most convoluted, or at least in my opinion, one of the most convoluted parts of Blender. In my opinion, because it's literally a series of menus nested inside of a series of menus, nested inside of a series of menus. Sort of like Inception. And each menu has a unique set of functions and controls like tools and workspace settings, rendering properties, output, layer seen program, the list goes on. One of the most common thing that you'll probably be using would be the, the modifiers. So you might want to take note of that the modifiers just know that it's there for now. So in the future events when you need to access modifier, apply a certain modify. You have some vague idea of where to find the modifiers. And at some point, something else that's pretty common to use would be like the rendering tools. So just know that that's there too. 5. Timeline and Customizable Interface: Okay, The timeline, I'm going to go over the timeline very briefly, but I'm not actually going to do much, if anything at all with the timeline. We go, Let's see what the timeline dips into animating stuff. And it's not really a subject I wanted to cover in vendor right now. So it's useful for playing stuff. But as in animating, animating stuff, modifying animations. There's a graph editor function, and I forgot what you call it a dope dope sheet. We can manipulate the different timelines and stuff like how long is there an animations take and just stuff like that. But again, it's all enemy shin related stuff and it's something I don't really want to just know that it's there and it's useful for when you want to animate. So just know that it's there for now. The interface is fully customizable. The interface is basically a series of cells or Windows displaying different pieces of content of information. All of these windows can be scaled and split and merged or changed to display a completely different set of content. Adding assets. Go to the Add menu on the top left, somewhere up here. And mesh. Various objects can be added to the scene. You can experiment if you like. We'll focus on mesh objects. Now. Everything will be added to the location of your 3D cursor. Here, 3D cursor is is Target looking thing over here. It's kind of like in those Word documents, you know how you have the cursor and where it's come up with the letters that you typed come out of the Caribbean. It's kind of like that, but only for like 3D assets in 3D space. I've never seen 3D cursor and other 3D applications. I've only seen it in vendor. So I think this might just be unique blender. As far as I know as I understand it. You can see the X, Y, and Z location of your cursor. Under the two properties, view to the right. Every object location is defined by the objects roots or pivot point. You see that dots in the selected object. That, that dot right there. That's the x, y, z location of that object. 6. Move, Scale and Rotate: Then there's default key map for a moving, rotating, and scaling objects in 3D space is G For Grab, S for scale, and R for rotate. Every other 3D package. And game engine out there uses W for move as opposed to grab. Basically the same thing for scale. And our coroutines. There probably the tools you will use the most. So you'll naturally accustomed to using those shortcuts. If you are new to 3D, comprehending objects in 3D space on screen can be a little bit confusing. I wish I could come up with a good example here. But if you were to try to move an object to a position in 3D space on the screen. It might look like it's close, but then if you rotated it actually far off in space until you get accustomed to working with in 3D space in where these 3D packages, it might be in your best interests to like new things in separate viewports. Kind of like this. Now, if you have a lot of objects and you're having a little trouble navigating through different objects and whatnot. What you can do is use the FQ, F2 or the number pad. Thought. That's more period. Depending on what the key map you're using default or industry standard. I'm using industry standards, so it will be F for me. You can use the F to frame selected just like an object and help you navigate the 3D view port. 7. Scale "DOES" Matter!!!: Now before we get started with things like 3D modeling, I'd like to enforce an idea, a concept into your mind, because it seems to be some debate on this subject. I'm speaking from personal knowledge and personal experience. Size does matter. Scale does matter. It, it really does. It really does. I wish I could find some way of demonstrating. This. Doesn't demonstrate very well with Blender. Blender is a bit different like I had this issue with a different 3D package. I'm going to demonstrate rendering some normal maps with a mesh at different sizes and will basically show you the normal maps. I really wish I had a better example of what I'm trying to describe. Here. As I stated before, I use a separate set of programs to get this scaling issue. Many like to think that it doesn't matter because 3D is vector-based. This is partially correct. But the issue here is when you're working with 3D stuff, 3D isn't only working with vectors. That's the issue here. With 3D content. You actually have to do, you also have to deal with textures and texture map, right? You also have to do with rigging and you have to deal with who knows what else. There are a lot of different things that go into 3D stuff. So in this example, depending on what programs or applications you're working with, if you're baking texture maps on a mesh. I had this problem before with a different set of packages with a mesh that is way too big. Your texture map definitions could end up not registered. But if you're dealing with complex rigging and scaling, that complex rigging, scaling could break your rig. If you're meshes two huge, then the computer will have to work harder to crunch larger numbers to work with it. There is no telling who is going to use your 3D assets for what. Maybe they send it into a game engine and it's too big or too small and it's harder to work with. Who knows? I believe the smart approach would be to work within a square meter. For most things that scale does matter. Please trust me on this. I've had this problem with scale before. Please, please listen to me. Please believe me on this building with scaling in mind, it follows a similar principle to working with Photoshop documents at high resolution. You always want to work with a high resolution photoshop document. That way. You can always scale it down. But if it's, if it's scaled down, it has low resolution, It's harder to work with you if you want to change it to a larger resolution, but you can always scale it down. It's a similar concept. You always want to work with 3D. As when you're working with 3D, you gotta try and build while taking into considering, into consideration any kind of issues that could come if I could possibly arise with working with your 3D acid and any kind of anything that you are a 3D asset could end up being, being used for you. You got to try and take into trying to take things into consideration. Scale does matter. It does matter. Please believe me on this. It really does matter. It does. Trust me. Trust me it does. You might not get this issue with the vendor, but trust me, when I say this, it does matter, please believe me on this. Now. So what I like to do is I like to create like a sort of reference objects. So basically, I'll add like a piece of geometry like acute brain and I'll freeze it and sort of hide it and use it as a template whenever I need it. 8. Copy, Flip and Attach: I'm going to fast forward through part of this tutorial so you can kind of see my process is I build this thing. Now. Please open up that the Mecca parts vendor file that I provided. And so we can build our giant robot. This is basically to help you get accustomed to working in 3D space and moving objects around in 3D space. And hopefully by the end of this tutorial, you have like a really cool robot that you can show off to other people. I know that kind of sucks that it's not really something that you built yourself, but you have to keep something in mind here. This robot thing was probably, I'm pretty certain it's around two or maybe 300 different parts. So building this is actually kind of taxing and time-consuming. So the next tutorial, I'll go over the different tools that bag basically used to build this giant robot. And you can try building something like this yourself. The key is a good design. If you have a good design, then you can make something that looks really cool and really awesome and you can really impress people with it. Now take your move and rotate and scale tools. Grab different parts, and assemble your giant robot. I'm sorry about like fast-forwarding through stuff, but like making digital content has a tendency of taking longer than you think it will. So once you have the basic tools, like figure out how to do, use the basic tools. It's just a matter of implementation, and it's the implementation that takes time and energy. Just, just watch him and grab a soda. Children watch and enjoy or something. I may stop at some point and try to explain and describe something that I may not have covered before. The tutorial and I felt was also really important and essential for us to know about in terms of doing 3D stuff. Alright, Enjoy. Okay. Here's something that I felt was like relatively in essential. Duplicating. And copying and flipping objects is pretty essential. At some point in time, you may need to copy and flip over some parts of your model. It's actually a lot easier and faster, cleaner, and more efficient to just build half of your model and just copy it and flip it over as opposed to trying to build both sides simultaneously. Just trust me on this. Please trust me on this. There are a couple of ways of doing this. You can right-click and duplicate or copy, then scaled by the appropriate axis. In this case the x-axis. You can enter the scale numerically. In this instance, minus one should flip it over. This might block always get you the results you want. If the axis of the object has been altered somehow. That may be the reason why. Gear has another method of doing this. Set your objects origin to the center of what you're trying to mirror. The x, y, and z coordinates can be set to the 3D cursor, which you can basically position anywhere you want in 3D space. Here, I have it set to the middle of the 3D space. You can see the XYZ coordinates in your tool panel to the right. Duplicate what you're trying to mirror over and hit Enter. Right-click. Then mirror. Interactive mirror. You may have to play with the interactive mirroring options a little bit to get the mirroring. The fact that you want. Make sure you have the right orientation and axis. There you have it. An awesome giant robot do. Hopefully you've used tutorial and provided parts to assemble something really cool, resembling this. And gotten accustomed to navigating the 3D interface and the 3D space and moving objects around in 3D space and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Which was the original purpose of this tutorial. In the second half of bees basic, these bender basic tutorials. I will be covering 3D modeling. I'll just be going over all the different tools that I use in order to build the different parts for this 3D monstrosity. So that's all for now. If you're new here to Skillshare, make sure to hit the subscribe button. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you drop a like and until next time, keep creating feature muse. And good luck out there. Because I know it can be tough.