BLENDER

Even if you’ve never used Blender before, Michael Reed will have you blending like a pro by the end of this tutorial.

Credit: www.blender.org

OUR EXPERT

Michael Reed has been exploring Linux since first trying his hand with Slackware in 1996.

T here’s no doubt about it, Blender is an amazing piece of software. It’s a complete 3D graphics creation application with sections for modelling and sculpting, texturing, animation, physics simulation and many other areas. Whatever area of 3D graphics and animation you’re interested in, once you have Blender installed, you have a professional-level application at your disposal.

However, as good as Blender is, it’s necessarily complicated because 3D graphics is a complicated subject. We’re going to take you though the basics of modelling in Blender and give you an introduction to the program in general.

When you first load the program up, you’re presented with a 3D cube and what seems like millions of icons, menus and panels. So hang around while we stretch that cube, spin it around and make it dance for us.

Understand the Blender interface

1 Viewport.

This is where you interact with objects and scenes within the 3D world.

2 Toolbar.

Look closely, and you can see that it is, itself, subdivided into sections, starting with the selection tools at the top.

3 Outliner.

This tool is handy for selecting objects if the viewport is cluttered. It’s recommended that you rename objects here as you go along to keep things organised.

4  Properties browser

A series of icons down the left-hand side allows you to choose what world or object property you are editing.

5  Access your editors

A series of tabs for switching between different editors. We’re going to stick with the Layout Editor for now.

6  Selection modes

Face, edge, vertex selection mode and a series of drop-down menus followed by the shading mode icons..

Getting started

Let’s start our journey to becoming masters of the cube, and eventually, moving beyond it. When you first load up Blender, you’re in what’s called Object mode. This enables you to select and manipulate objects that you can see in the main area of the screen (called the Viewport). You can orbit the starting cube by moving the mouse around while holding down the middle button, and you can move around the scene by holding down Shift while moving the mouse. Zoom in and out by scrolling the mouse wheel.

Let’s start doing things to the cube. Click the left mouse button on the cube to select it. It should now be outlined in yellow. Hover over the main toolbar (left-hand side of the viewport) until you find the Move icon and click it. You should see red, green and blue arrows coming out of the cube. Click and drag those arrows to move the cube around in each of the three axes.