Welcome to Controlling the 3D Editor!
By the end of this video, you'll be able to do the following.
You'll be able to rotate or orbit around any of your models.
We'll be able to pan to the left and the right
and up and down. We'll be able to switch between the standard view
types, so we can look at our models from different angles, and we'll
also learn about the difference between Perspective and Orthographic
Projection. So let's go load up a brand new blend file
and give that a go! OK, so I'm in a brand new blend file
here, and I am going to have my three button
mouse emulation turned on, so I can show you guys it working. I do have
a three button mouse, and I would recommend getting one. They're tiny, they don't have to
be connected to the computer, they work wirelessly. It's great and it saves you a lot of time!
But if you're restricted to space, I understand that, that's fine!
So I'm just going to make sure it's turn on. File and
User Preferences, and, under the Input section, Emulate
3 Button Mouse. So I need to put a tick in that box and Save User Settings.
So we start off with rotating around your
object. So we can rotate by holding down
the Middle Mouse Button. I'm not going to do that too quickly, just in case I make you guys
a bit seasick. If you don't have a three button
mouse, what you can do is hold down Alt,
and then, hold down the Left Mouse Button. Once you've done that,
you can do the same thing. For panning left and right, you have to
hold down Shift and then the Middle Mouse Button. If you
press that down, you'll be able to pan to the left and right and up and down.
Now you might have guessed it, if you want to pan and you don't have a three button
mouse, you hold down Alt and Shift, and then,
you'll be able to left click and move the screen around by panning.
If you want to zoom in and out and you don't have a three
button mouse, once again you hold down Alt and then
Control. Once you've held down Alt and Control, you can press the
Left Mouse Button and zoom in and out. If you do have a three button mouse then,
of course, you can use the Scroll Wheel to move backwards and forwards.
Now, one of the things that I do like in Blender, and I'll show you
how I like setting up Blender, is under the
View and User Preferences, I like taking
control of what I'm orbiting around. And
by Default it kind of orbits around an abstract
point, so I want to change that. So if we go to the
Interface tab, under the middle column we will see
that we can Rotate Around Selection. That
is a very powerful one. That means if that's ticked, and I go and Save
the User Settings, when I've got something selected and that is
it has this orange outline around it, I can orbit
around that object. It doesn't matter where in my view it is,
I will orbit around it, which is very very
powerful, and that's the standard that I have Blender setup with.
Now, in order to switch between the standard view types, there are a couple of options that
you can choose. We can go ahead and go to the View menu,
down on the 3D Editor Header Toolbar down here,
and having a look up here, we've got a series of views. There's
tons and tons of options here. You'll start to get used to Blender having
lots of different shortcut keys. So we can go to the View menu here
and go and look at it from the Left, the Right, the Back, the Front, the Top, the Bottom,
etc. And if we choose to do that, we can see that there's a numberpad
associated with them. So if I press numberpad 1 or go to View and
click Front, it will move around to the Front view, and it's as straightforward
as that. And I can actually go on my numberpad and go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
etc. going through the numbers there. Now, if I press
numberpad 5, or indeed if you've got Numberpad Emulation turned
on, just the number 5 on top of your keyboard; you'll find that
it switches between Perspective and
Orthographic. Now the difference between Perspective and Orthographic
is quite pronounced. You will end up
with... Well when it's in Perspective, if there were two cubes here and one
was in the distance, and they were identical, we would find
that the one in the background would be smaller, because it's further away, that's how
we see things in real life. However, if we switch to Orthographic projection
things look slightly different. In fact, on the cube itself, this has equal
sides but the ones at the back look smaller, because of perspective.
Wth Orthographic projection turn one, it doesn't matter how
far away the object is from your view, and that
basically means that everything is the size it really is, whether it's
right in front of you or, you know, far off in the distance.
Both cubes, if we had two of them set in the distance, would be
identical. OK guys, it's challenge time!
What I'd like you to do is literally go crazy! Zoom in and
out, try panning and rotating around the default cube!
Really get the hang of this control, because you're going to be using it lots
and lots. After you've played about with moving around your view
with the mouse or your trackpad, switch between
various views. Try out that numberpad or turn on Numpad
Emulation, and use the keys at the top of your keyboard. Or indeed use the
View menu, that's a little slower. Sometimes I only use menus and sometimes
I use the keyboard shortcuts, it does depend how I'm feeling. [Laughs]
So switch between the various views, play with that. So pause the video now,
and give that a go!
OK guys, welcome back! Let's just play with that over in Blender!
OK, so I can see I'm in Orthographic Projection at the
moment, because up in the top-left it says User Ortho. If I hit the
Numpad 5, it'll change to Perspective! That's great! And
looking at these arrows here, it looks like I'm upside down, so I'll go
and rotate around. That's looking pretty good! OK,
can we pan around and put this...? Yes we can! And I've got Orbiting
turned on around this object, so it'll stay there as we go around
it. If we didn't have that turned on, by the way, I might as well show you what it looks like
without it turned on, so I'm going to turn Rotate Around Selection to
turned off, and then... Ooh, I made that full screen!
Then, when we're rotating, you see it sort of orbits the mid point of the view itself,
so around here, it's not as easy to control
moving around a particular object. We have to rotate, go here, rotate. Ooh,
I've gone too far! So with that turned on... Let's go back.
Where are we here? User Preferences and
then Rotate Around Selection under the Interface tab. I'm going to Save
my User Settings, so it stays there, and now, I'm rotating around
that cube itself. Brilliant! How did you guys get on?
I hope you're able to move around in Blender now, and I will see you guys
in the next lecture!