Blender notes

I use Blender so rarely I keep forgetting some of the commands, so I thought I'd create a small summary for myself. These are mostly relevant for low-poly stuff I sometimes work with.

The first thing I always forget: creating new panels is done with the weird triangle in the corner of an existing panel.

Play a sliding puzzle game while you model!

Removing panels is done by pulling a panel from the triangle to the panel that shares the complete edge with that panel. I didn't find a way to remove the right-most panel in the image above, because this rule could not be fulfilled.


Some keys:

TAB = switch between object / edit mode

CTRL+hold left mouse = draw a freehand selection area

A graphic doohickey shows whether vertices, lines or faces are selected. The box with the highlighted corners adjusts whether back-face elements are selectable. The magnet thingy can be used for snapping the vertex movement to other vertices among other things.

Left: point, line, face selectors. Middle: transparent selection, Right: Snap to ...

a = select all / none

g = grab = move

e = extrude

shift+d = duplicate

r = rotate

s = scale

CTRL+r = loop cut X,Y,Z

alt+m = merge selected vertices

In "Cycles Render" mode, shift+z switches between cycles render view.


Direct texture painting

I bothered to learn the basics of painting directly on textures, so here are the notes:

-Drag two new windows into existence, the UV/image window and the Node Editor window (tick "use nodes").

-Use Cycles Render, otherwise the following material stuff won't work.

-Remove the existing material, create a new one, which will become visible in the Node Editor.

-Create new image in the UV/Image window.

-In edit mode, use 'u' to produce a smart UV map for the object. A tiny bit of island margin can help.

-Use shift+a in the Node editor to add texture image node, connect it to the material color and select the previously created texture map.

The mandatory first attempt weird-face

Texture mode should now allow painting directly into the chosen object.

Key 'f' works as a shortcut for resizing the brush, whereas 'shift+f' changes the effectiveness. The usual mix/color/blend/multiply options are available, as are some smearing tools.

The image has to be either stored separately, or using the Pack PNG option. I sometimes lost work because this was a bit ambiguous, so it might be better to store separately. In any case with Blender, save early, save often,

Once the setup is in place, painting directly to objects is strangely intuitive