I am in the process of making a tutorial for Blender:!:
Note some picutre have links so as not to slow down loading of the page
What is it?
Blender is opensourced 3d modeling program with a built in render-er
How do you use it?
That what the tutorial is for?
Blender is a very simple program to use but it can be challenging at first becuase of the un-intuituve ui
your default starting screen should look like this
http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/4155/opening7nu.th.jpg
Looking Around
To get the basic feel for blender first make sure ur Num Pad is activate and start using the keys 8,2,4,6 to turn the viewing angle
you will soon see that 7 will bring you a verticle top position(starting position)
9 doesnt do anything regarding the movement
1 and 3 will give you two different side views while 5. will give a perspective view
you got basic movement now
to get the view from different angles hold the middle mouse button(MMB)
and move it around this will move ur viewing angle
to zoom in / zoom out
use the MMB and scroll
What if we want to change the axis of rotation?
If you hold Ctrl and the roll the scroll you will move from left to right moving the center of rotationg left to right
If you hold shift it will move up and down
this works for any viewing angle
Lets say we want to specify our own point in3d space where we want to rotate on?
Well click the view menu button *in picture*
you will se a bunch of items popup
Click the bottom one (View Properties) and a dragable transparent window will appear
To make it easier click
Z-Axis
now to make a point where we rotate on you have a area that says 3d cursor
and you have
x,y,z change these value to something random( under 10)
as you changed those value you saw a little cursor move around'
thats your 3d cursons and one of the most important tools keep this in mind
try moving around...
but wiat ur not rotating on it whats this?
You havent centered ur aixs on it press "C"
now you are rotating it
your 3d cursor can also be moved by clicking the LMB(left mouse button)
anywhere on the screen
but this isnt acurate becuase we are plotting 3d points on a 2d screen many different points can co-incide ...so i suggest using the accurate method
Moving Objects
to move objects is hard and easy
when you start off the cube in the middle is already selected and you can see three axis drawn on it click on any1 of the arrows to move it in that direction
you can also move by LMB and dragging a bit Blender will then recognize what you want to do * this is a bit frustrating at the beggining* drag towards the center this will lock the position of hte cube to ur mouse*mouse can be anywhere
now try clicking again this will place hte cube down
you can do this from any view point
If you draw a small line that follows the contour this will bring it into rotate mode * dont worrthis willb e covered soon enough*
many other mouse movents wil be covered soon
This concludes Part1 of the Blender Tutorial
I will work on getting part2 done some time..
Any suggestions / requests are welcome for future parts
Next part : editing shape!
