Welcome to blender VT and this is a blender video tutorial for the 3D Viewport, Blender version 2.34.
Now we are going to learn about how to navigate in 3D space using the 3D View ort that big box right there. If you never use a 3D program before, you will need to get use to the idea that even though the screen is too dimensional it is very easy for you to place an object in 3D space. All you have to do is just look at that object in different angles and move it. Okay the blender uses three basic viewing directions and you will be able to see that because we have a perfect cube so I am just going to edit that and then add the monkey. Okay, so just ignore what I just did. We’ll talk about that in next chapter.
Okay so we now we have object that we can actually look at a different angles. Okay so we have three basic viewing directions. These are side; front and top these can access through the view menu or you can just be like everyone else and use the keyboard shortcuts. Alright so the keyboard shortcuts are 3, 1 and 7 on the numeric keypad in your keyboard so take a look at those you knows that 3, 1 and 7 around the corners of the keypad so if you press 3 that will give you a side view, if you press 1 you are looking at the front, now if you press 7 now you are looking at the top. One thing that moves when you do, that one icon right there will change, so take a look because they’re changing.
Now you can see that it updates and lets you know what access you are looking down because that is the one that is not appearing. So let us we have our side view and we are looking at the left side, let us say we want to look at the right side. So we want to look down the same access but looking at it a different direction, hold down control and then press 3. So now all we do is just looking down the access in a different direction, holding that control to a one also does that same thing, 7 does the same thing, so that is a useful feature.
Alright, so aside from those you can also rotate a zoom and translate the view anyway you like. So let us start by doing that. Click and drag with the middle mouse button on the Viewport area. Okay remember that middle mouse button, remember how we talk about the interface uses the middle mouse button a lot, well this is one start to realize this. Okay, so hold down the middle mouse button and let us say we start at the center then click and drag and you can see that it rotates the view from the center.
Now let us say I click and drag at the outside and then move around the center so now you can see instead of rotating, the object I am actually rolling, well it still rotating but it is more to roll so that will take you a little bit of getting used to realizing that depending on where you click on, where you start to middle the mouse and drag on the 3D Viewport will change how it is going to drag the view. So you just have to play with that and you’ll get used to it.
Okay, you can also rotate the view by using the, what I like to call the directionals on the numeric keypad if you have a keyboard and has arrows drawn on it, that will help. So if you use the 4, 8, 6, and 2 buttons on the keypad, you notice that you can now rotate the view with discreet increments. Okay now, to translate the view hold the shift and then you use the middle mouse button to drag. Now you can see we are just moving the view like a flat screen with the hand tool and say Photoshop Illustrator. Okay, so you can also translate the view by holding down control and then using the 4, 8, 6 and 2 buttons on the numeric keypad and that will also translate the view in the screen increments.
Alright, now you can also zoom in and zoom out by holding down control and then holding the middle mouse button and then dragging. Okay, you can also use the mouse wheel to zoom in and zoom out and you can even use the plus and minus keys on the numeric keypad to zoom in and zoom out. Now one thing you will notice, it will take you a while to get used to that whole holding out control in the middle mouse button and then drag because it is really easy and really quick to get lost in the scene like right now I can see the scene at all because it zoom out so much and so quickly. Well if you press the home button on the keyboard it will take your current angle a view and then it will zoom in just enough so that all of the objects are conveniently and comfortably now looking in front of you the scene. So that is a good way to help you from getting lost.
Now we can also switch perspective in the 3D view port to switch between perspective and orthographic projection, press the five key on the numeric keypad okay there if you do not know the difference you should be able to see it immediately. Since our eyes are use to seeing objects that are farther away appeared to be smaller, orthographic view may appear strange you first which is what this is and that is because object that is farther away are exactly the same size as object are close to you.
This view is very helpful for modeling and also accurately placing objects and the 3D scene that is because it gives a more technical insight of the scene. Alright let us press zero on the numeric keypad that brings you to camera mode which is essentially what are you seeing right here is the view point of the camera. Alright, so this is the rendered image, it will contain everything within this outer dotted line. That inner dotted line that you see right here, that is the— as some of you may recognizes that TV safe margin or line, and that lets you know that anything that is within this border right here, is not guaranteed to be viewable on a TV set. And that’s just because about TVs are designed that it will crop off some of the image.
Alright, now zooming in and zooming out is also possible in this view. But if you want it to change the view point of the camera view you have to actually move the camera and we will talk about that in the object mode section. Now depending on the speed of your computer, the complexity of your scene and the type of work you are currently doing, you can switch between several different drawing modes. The drawing mode can be selected with the appropriate menu button on the header.
Okay textured, textured this attempts to draw everything as completely as possible though it is still no-alternative to rendering and notes that if you do not have a light, if you do not have lighting in your scene, everything will turn black okay, then you have a shaded this is similar. This draw a solid surfaces including the lighting calculation as well to texture drawing you would not see anything without lights. This can also create significance slow down on your computer because it does the lighting calculation whenever you move or rotate an object or the camera.
Okay, then it have solid, services are drawing as solids but the display also works without lights and also one thing you will notice with, alright we are changing view modes. Okay, and one thing you know about shaded is that the object is illuminated the way it would be from the cameras so you here you have lights works and there you have the object. Now if I switch back to shaded view, or solid view, now it is going to be illuminated no matter what because the lights sources is essentially just a little bit off from my current view point so you can see all the objects whenever you need to without lights or not.
Okay and then you have water frame. That objects only consist of lines that makes their shapes recognizable and this is the default dry mode and then you have bounding box. Objects are not drawn at all in bounding box mode and set the mode shows only the rectangular boxes that correspond to each object, size, and shape. Now you can use the Z key to toggle between water frame and solid display and you can use shift Z to toggle between water frame and shaded display.
Okay, you also have something called the local view, one on local view the current selected objects are displayed and that’s it. So, I can make editing easier in complex scenes. So to enter local view, first select the object which is the kind of object right, you can tell an object to select if you are in water frame mode because it is purple or if you in solid view it has a purple outline. So go to view and then here you have this options local view or you press the divide key in the numpad that works as well. So now that you can see that everything is gone from the scene—no lights, no camera, no nothing just the monkey because that is what we had selected and there you can go back to global view by selecting that. So that is a good way to simply the scene when you stat modeling or doing other task.
Okay so now, as far as the things I have been talking about, I have only been telling you the hot keys, just remember that everything can be accessed through here even zooming in if you want it too, of course this is a terribly slow way to do zooming, so I will never use it just use the shortcuts and make things easier. But if anything else you can use this is a reference because all the shortcuts will listed, so that’s a good way to remember things.
Alright now 3D scenes often become exponentially more confusing with growing complexity. Now to get this under control, objects can be group into layers so that only the layers you select are displayed at any one time. 3D layers differ from layers you may know from 2D applications. They have no influence on the drawing order and they are except some special functions solely to provide the modeler with the better overview.
Okay Blender provides 20 layers. You can chose which are to be displayed with the small unlabeled buttons and the header right here. To select only one layer, click the appropriate button with the left mouse button and you can see that one layer and that one layer only. Now if you want to select more than one, hold down shift while clicking so there we go. So to select layers view at the keyboard, press the one through zero keys on the main area, the keyboard, for layers one to ten because and if you want to select layers 11 to 20 hold down Alt and the 1, 2, 3 and so on so it is like those layers will draw up and the holding down Shift does the same thing, you can select more than one layer or turn-off one more layers and if you hold down shift and all the same time now you can do the same thing with the bottom rows as well.
Okay now, by default this lock button right here, directly to the right of the layer buttons is pressed. So these means that changes to the viewed layers affects all 3D view ports. To select only certain layers in one window, you deselect locking first. So let illustrate that. I am going to split this area so I can have two 3D view, ports okay, and then you can see that as I select different layer it affects all of the 3D view ports that also have working on as well. So as soon as I make one of those independent by turning lock in off and now as I change you can see that the layers selections are independent, so that’s not a nice feature.
Okay now to move selected objects into a different you can do that by pressing the M key, so I have this monkey selected already and press the M key and now it is going to ask me okay what layer do you want this monkey to be in and I just say oh I want them in layer two. So I click okay and now you can see that in my scene after I join that, okay here we go, you can see that in my scene I have the camera and I have the lights, were where somewhere, oh there is light source.
Okay so I just have the camera in light source and then when I click on layer two and I have the monkey so I can select both of those and now you can see it. One thing you can realize now is not only is the objects I have in a current layer visible in the 3D view also there the only ones are going to be rendered when actually rend to the scene. So, when I going to shaded view you can see that the object it is not completely black because there is no light source and then when I actually rend to the scene you can it there it is not illuminated because there is again no light source.
And this brings up an interesting concept if you press M and then shift left click, you can say okay I want this object to be on more than one layer so you click okay, now you can see as I click on these other layers, the monkey is still there until I reach the layer that I used it in then. This is especially helpful when I do lighting. So let us say I have a bunch of complex objects, now I just have the monkey but I also want to have the same thing lighting conditions, so I say okay, light select the light source now I present I say I want this lights source appear on this first five layers. So you can see the light source appears on all of those. So now I can render that scene with the light source, so another need will function.
So, that wraps it up for the 3D Viewport and next we are going to start talking about the vital functions in blender how you actually save, load, some basic rendering, and changing you user preferences and themes.
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