 The terms LMB, MMB, RMB, and mouse wheel (MW)

 Blender has quite a list of controls for changing the view  Try the following mouse manipulations in the 3D area: ◦ MW roll ◦ Shift+MW roll ◦ Ctrl+MW roll ◦ MMB drag ◦ Shift+MMB drag ◦ Ctrl+MW drag

 It can be very difficult to precisely reposition the view with mouse  View menu in the header strip at the bottom of the 3D window that contains presets for top, front, side, and camera views  The View menu, showing view shortcuts

 Custom Window Splitting ◦ Each window has diagonal stripes at the top-right and bottom-left corners ◦ Hold down the LMB, and drag toward the center of the window  Maximizing Windows; To snap any window to full size on demand: Hold the Shift key down and press the spacebar

 Blender has a variety of panels with lots of buttons  Window Type button  Figure : Header strip with the window type set to 3D View (cube icon)  A vertical set of panels at the far right of the screen ◦ The top one is the Outliner window: which displays a tree list of the items in your scene ◦ Below the Outliner is a Properties window

 Split the screen into separate areas for different views  View menu to show top, front, side, and camera angles in each section

 The given layouts are useful for common purposes; one is optimized for animation, and so forth.

 Blender comes equipped with a certain number of primitives, which are basic shapes like cubes, tubes, and spheres  The Cursor: a target symbol appears wherever you LMB-click  it shows where the next object you are going to add to the scene will appear

 Once the cursor is in position, press Shift+A to bring up the Add menu  click Add ➤ Mesh, and select an object  If you open the Tool Shelf (press the T key), extra options appear at the bottom for certain shapes. For example, if you add a UV Sphere, you’ll have options for segments, rings, size, and so on. You can change these properties as you see fit.  A transformation (movement, rotation, scaling, etc.) only happens to the currently selected item. To choose a different object to manipulate, RMB- click the object.

 You can select several items by holding down the Shift key while selecting each in turn.  Press the A key to toggle between “select all” and “select nothing.”  To destroy a selected object, press the X key.  Shift+D makes a duplicate copy of the currently selected object. This new copy tends to follow your mouse around until you LMB-click to drop it.

 Move: Moving a selected object where you want in 3D space  Rotate: Turning an object to face a specified direction  Scale: Resizing an object

 RMB-click the cube to select it  Make sure the cube is selected (RMB-click it)  Make sure the manipulator icon at the bottom of the window is active  Make sure you are in object mode, and that the pivot mode is set to median point or bounding box center. If you need to change either setting, click the appropriate icon, and a drop-down list will appear, allowing you to choose other options.

 Follow these steps to rotate an object:  1. Place your mouse near the edge of the object.  2. Press the R key once.  3. Move the mouse around the object in circles to watch it rotate.  4. LMB-click to release the object in place, or press Esc to cancel

 you can also use the manipulator arrows to rotate objects as well.

 Global coordinates, the x, y, and z directions are given in terms of world space.  This means that z is always up, no matter which way an object is rotated.  However, in local coordinates, z is up only in terms of the object itself.  So if the object were rotated 90 degrees, then local z would be pointing out to the side.

 Exercise: Start with the default cube, and rotate it so it is not straight up and down.  1. Change the manipulator to local, so that the manipulators are diagonal (the same angle at which the object has been tilted).  2. Press G and then X, and you can see the movement is global.  3. Press X another time and watch the movement change to local.  4. Press X a third time to reset the axis movement. Pressing X again just steps through the cycle (it’s like going back to step 3)

 Select the cube (RMB-click it).  1. Place the mouse pointer near the edge of the cube.  2. Press S.  3. Draw the mouse pointer away from the cube (do not hold any mouse buttons) to enlarge it.  4. LMB-click to finalize the scale operation or press Esc to cancel

 The idea with layers is that you can set various objects to belong to different layers (layer01, layer02, layer03, etc.), and then turn those layers on or off to show or hide the objects.  Layers in the header strip

 There are two types of undo in Blender:  Each time press Ctrl+Z, Blender goes back one step. Pressing Shift+Ctrl+Z is the opposite (redo), so if you undo too far back, just redo until you are at the right step  The second kind of undo is more of a refresh  Using the Alt key, we can tell any selected object to reset itself in terms of location, rotation, or scale. Following are the available reset options:  Alt+G: Resets the location to the global center  Alt+R: Resets the rotation so the object stands upright in global coordinates  Alt+S: Resets the scale to the object’s original size

 To save your work, go to File ➤ Save or File ➤ Save As.  The file manager works like it does in many other programs

 Questions ?