Blender For Noobs – Learn Blender in an hour

 

Common Blender 3.x keyboard shortcuts

 

Common Blender 2.x keyboard shortcuts
By Blender for Noobs!

Mouse Navigation:
Select = Right mouse button (unless you set it to use the left mouse button)
Dolly = Middle mouse button
Pan = Shift + Middle mouse button
Zoom = Mouse scroll wheel

 

Menus:
T = Object Tool Shelf (toggle)
N= Properties Tool Shelf (toggle)
Shift + A = Add object menu

 

Window views:
Numpad 1 = Front view Numpad Ctrl + 1 = Back view
Numpad 3 = Right view Numpad Ctrl + 3 = Left view
Numpad 7 = Top view Numpad Ctrl + 7 = Bottom view
Numpad 5 = Orthographic and perspective views (toggle)
Ctrl + Up arrow = Full screen view (toggle)
Ctrl + Alt + Q = 4 window split view

 

Functions:
Undo = Ctrl + Z
Redo = Ctrl + Shift + Z
Save = Ctrl + S
Object/Edit mode = TAB (toggle)
Select/Deselect all = A (toggle)
Box select = B
Box deselect = B, then Middle mouse button
Circle select = C
Circle deselect = C, then Middle mouse button
Delete = X
Toggle Solid view and Wireframe view = Z
Toggle Solid view and Render preview = Shift + Z
Render = F12

 

Modeling/Object Manipulation:
Extrude = E
Grab/Move = G
Edge Loop = Ctrl + R
Rotate = R
Merge = Alt + M
Scale = S
Duplicate = Shift + D

 

Maya setup in 2.80+
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/130342/maya-viewport-navigation-in-2-80

 

Blender keymap for busy Maya / Unity / Substance Designer users
https://gist.github.com/bitinn/22f6fefe026d8d9e83468864edb8f835

 

Apply/resolve constraints
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1013/kind-of-apply-for-a-clamp-to-constraint
Search for “Apply Visual Transform”

 

Camera movements
https://all3dp.com/2/blender-how-to-move-the-camera/

shift+`
W or S move forward/backwards
A or D move left/right
Q or E move up/down

 

Add keyboard shortcuts
Go to Edit->Preferences
Select Keymap on the left side
Expand 3d View (or interested location)
Expand 3d View (Global)
Scroll to the bottom of the list and click “Add new”

Light emission in Cycles
To make an object emit light you use an emission shader. Go to the materials tab on the properties editor, then add a new material and change the shader from the default diffuse to emission.

 

Avoid rendering in a new window.
You can set the Display Mode for the actual rendering in Preferences under Interface/Temporary Windopes. If you’d like to get the old behavior back, set it to ‘Image Editor‘ or ‘Keep User Interface’ and save preferences.

 

Proportional transformation by numbers
By left-clicking and dragging down on the sliders you can select and edit the values for multiple axes simultaneously

 

Light power emitted through an element in Cycles
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/45209/what-kind-of-units-does-the-cycles-emission-strength-use

https://blendergrid.com/learn/articles/cycles-physically-correct-brightness
The emission shader strength value is Watt/m^2
The unit is Irradiance – radiant flux emitted by a surface per unit area (watt per square meter).

Irradiance is a radiometric “corresponding” unit to Illuminance (also known as Lux), which is a photometric unit measured in lumen per square meter.

Radiometric units are based on physical power, that means all wavelengths are weighted equally, while photometric units take into account the sensitivity of human eye to different wavelengths.
The weighting is determined by the luminosity function (which was measured for human eye and is an agreed-upon standard).

Converting Irradiance and Illuminance:
There is a different conversion factor for every wavelength, so the spectral composition of light must be known to make the conversion.

At the most sensitive wavelength to the human eye the conversion factor is

1.0 W/m2 = 683.002 lumen/m2 # at wavelength = 555nm (green)

That means the irradiance (power) to make 1 lumen is at it’s minimum at this wavelength (just 1.464 mW/m2).
Luminous efficiency is then the ratio between the actual number of lumens per watt and the theoretical maximum.
Incandescent light bulb has a luminous efficiency of 2% which is very poor. It’s because lot of it’s irradiance is only heat which is not visible. The luminosity function is zero for wavelengths outside the visible spectrum.

 

Control text through drivers and the animation node tree
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/31814/how-to-drive-text-based-off-of-a-value

 

Driving custom properties

 

Rendering when using Animation Nodes
import bpy
for step in range(0, 40):

bpy.context.scene.frame_set(step)

bpy.data.scenes[“Scene”].render.filepath = ‘D:/render/image.jpg_%d.jpg’ % step

bpy.ops.render.render( write_still=True )

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