Blender Tutorial for Beginners*Note images will be uploaded*

[MihaiG]

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!