Introduction to Blender

Welcome to the notes for a 3-hour workshop introducing the basics of Blender, written by Debbie. By the end of this workshop, we'll have covered the basics of: the Blender Interface, Shortcuts, Selecting Objects, Transforming Objects, Moving Objects, Adding and Removing Objects, Adding Modifiers, Creating Diffuse/Specular materials, UV Unwrapping, Lighting, Camera Positioning, and how to render with Cycles (Blender's ray-trace based production render engine). Finally, we will export the image and make it into a 3d pano for google cardboard. ALL IN 3 HOURS. CAN WE DO IT?

Set up your devices

Ideally, you should have a laptop with a dedicated numpad, but if you don't we can emulate it. It is advisable that you have a three-mouse button.

Keyboard

• If you have a laptop without dedicated numpad, you can emulate the numpad by going to Blender User Preferences > Input.
• Blender User Preferences SHORTCUT is Cmd ,

Mouse

• If you don't have a 3 button mouse, you can emulate the three-button mouse by going to Blender User Preferences > Input.
• Blender User Preferences SHORTCUT is Cmd ,

• Selecting 'emulate mouse' will mean that you can simulate the middle mouse button if you press the Alt key while using the left mouse button.
• But please get a three-button mouse with a scroll wheel. Anything else is unnecessary self-torture!

Open Blender - It always begins with a box

• Whenever you open Blender, it always starts with a box.
• You'll notice that if you click around with the left mouse button, nothing moves other than a certain symbol. This is actually what we call the 'cursor' in Blender.
• But if you click on your middle mouse button and drag around, this is what moves your view around.

• If you clicked elsewhere with your left mouse button, your screen might look like this:

Snap Menu

• After

See also

• Blender - My master notes for Blender