2.5 Tip: Setup the 3D Manipulator to allow Single Click Interaction

In Blender 2.5, the default interaction of the 3d Manipulator requires you to drag the controls with the left mouse button. The transformation is confirmed when you release the mouse button.



We can change this by adjusting the keymapping for the 3d Manipulator.


Start by creating a new scene using Ctrl-N, or selecting New in the File menu.



Load the User Preferences dialog by pressing Ctrl-Alt-U, or selecting User Preferences... in the File menu.



Locate the Input tab.



Locate the 3D Manipulator keymap setup within the 3D View section.



Click the Edit button for the 3D View section to enable editing of the keymaps.



Locate the Confirm on Release option and set it to be Unchecked.






Go to the 3d View and test the manipulator's interaction. Now, you can simply left-click the controls to engage them and left-click again to confirm the transformation.



If you like this type of interaction, save the settings as the default. (Remember that you'll be saving the current scene as the new default scene. You can restore the default cube to its original state by undoing everything. Or, you can press Alt-G, Alt-R, and Alt-S to clear the Translate, Rotation, and Scale transformations, respectively.)



That's it!

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

Tip (v2.5x): Displaying Only Renderable Objects in the 3D View

A new feature added to the developing Blender 2.5 allows you to easily display only renderable objects. This is very helpful when you want to isolate only those objects designated as renderable, or when you want to quickly hide things like the Grid, Cameras, Lamps, Empty objects, etc.

(You'll need a recent build of Blender 2.5. You can download the latest builds of Blender from graphicall.org.)

From within the 3D View,


press the N-key to display the Properties Panel.


Scroll down to the Display section


and enable the Only Render option.


Done!


You can control which objects are renderable by going to an Outliner view and toggling the "camera" icon to the right of the listed object. Of course, objects like the Camera, Lamps, etc. are non-renderable by default so no need to adjust their renderable option.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

3D Mesh Topology Tip: Quads vs. Triangles

So, what's the big deal about whether you use quads or triangles in your 3D mesh? It's really a very simple issue but, it does cause some confusion for beginning modelers. Let's take a look at some of the issues.

First, let's make sure we understand the terms.

A triangle, of course, is a polygon that consists of three sides. In 3D modeling, you also have to consider that those three sides (called Edges) are connected by three vertices.

A quad is a polygon, but with four sides and vertices.

In 3D modeling, the issue with using quads or triangles revolves around subdividing, edgeloops, and smoothing. Generally, this would include organic-type modeling (faces, bodies, animals, etc.), things that have potential for movement (bending and flexing) or are designed with an organic aspect to their style (sport cars, overpriced uncomfortable furniture, etc.). These are generally modeled with mostly quads.

Subdividing

This one's easy. You can see the issue in basic math.

Quads: Four divided by Two equals Two. Very nice. Balanced.

Triangles: Three divided by Two equals One-and-a-half. Yuck. Unbalanced. How do you resolve the half-part that's left over?

This becomes an issue with 3D modeling because the purpose of subdividing a mesh is to allow for more detail to be added to the model. This is much easier to do when you have quads because the results are predictable. With triangles, subdividing can become tricky because the balance of the flow of vertices gets interrupted. A particular flow of vertices in a mesh is called an edgeloop.

Edgeloops

Edgeloops in a mesh allow you to control how things bend and fold when the mesh is animated. They also provide the foundation for adding mesh details like wrinkles, skin folds, muscles, edge sharpness, etc.

Normally, you can expect to be able to follow an edgeloop until you return to where it began. However, when a triangle is encountered, the edgeloop must terminate because there is no corresponding vertex to allow it to continue.

This isn't always a bad thing. Triangles can play an important part in modeling, but their use should be sparse and, if possible, hidden in an area where they won't cause problems when animating the mesh or smoothing the surface.

Smoothing

Triangles will often create visible anomalies on the mesh surface when smoothing (using Set Smooth) and when using a Subsurf modifier. It all comes down to the fact that a triangle has an odd number of vertices. When placed in the midst of quads (even number of vertices), the triangles cause a "blemish" on the surface and when animating the mesh, they often cause pinching effects. This is why it's best to try and eliminate or hide any triangles in your organic modeling.

Exceptions

Of course, there are exceptions to the general preference of quads over triangles such as low-poly game models, "hard" surface models, architecture, etc. These types of 3D models generally won't need to be animated across the surface of their mesh like a character's face so, a lot of the potential problems that triangles can cause are not encountered.

Conclusion

Keep it simple. Four verts good, three verts bad...usually.

You usually won't be able to entirely avoid triangles, but it's good practice to simply stick to quads as best you can. However, balance that out with learning to recognize when using a triangle is the best solution. They're not all bad.

Study as many wireframes as you can. You'll start to see patterns of mesh topology after awhile. As you get better at modeling, return to some of your past efforts and you'll begin to immediately see issues that need fixing. It makes a great exercise. Also, download .blend files and study the meshes and practice "fixing" them.

Study everything at this following website, starting with this thread on Poles.
(Yes, it will take awhile before it really sinks in. Stick with it.)

Remember to keep it fun.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

Navigating the BlenderNewbies Blog

I've gotten some questions about how to navigate the site and I thought it might be a good idea to share my response for the benefit of others having similar issues.

QUESTION:

I found your website in the interest of learning blender... and unfortunately I can't figure out how to navigate your site 'easily' (not your fault, I don't have much luck with blog-style sites it seems). Where should one start?

ANSWER:

Yeah, I agree with the navigation issue of blogs. I'll be solving things like that when I finish migrating to the new site. In the meantime, here are some tips that might help.

First of all, the content on the site isn't necessarily progressive in terms of the difficulty level of the material. That was my original plan but, I quickly abandoned that approach.

You can start from the very first blog post and progress through the contents by going to the Blog Archive dropdown listing found in the sidebar to the right. In the dropdown lisitng, start at the bottom with July 2006. Selecting an item from the listing will take you to a page listing all of the posts during the selected month and year. You'll need to start at the bottom of the resulting page and progress upward through the individual posts. Blogs always display posts starting from the most recent.

Another way to get around the site is to use the "Labels" found at the bottom of each post (not the technorati tags). I add these labels to help organize the site's contents so, as you might guess, selecting a label will display all of the posts with that labeling. You can also use the list of labels located to the far right side of the page. The numbers beside each label indicate the number of posts with that labeling.

Another thing you can use is the site's Search feature, found just below the Blog Archive feature mentioned earlier. Just be sure to set the search tool to "BlenderNewbies" using the option controls below the search box.

Well, I hope that clears up a few things about navigating the site!

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

Hidden feature in Blender dramatically reduces render times

This is a great way to dramatically reduce your Blender render times. It's a "hidden" feature in Blender that allows you to reduce the complexity of the render calculations WITHOUT having to change your parameter settings.

The trick is to go to the Scene buttons window (F10) and locate the Anim panel.


Directly to the right of the Play button, you'll see a mysterious little control labeled "rt".


Changing the value of this control does several things (more info on that later in this article), but we're going to focus on the access it provides to Blender's Render Simplification panel.

To reveal the Render Simplification panel, set the "rt" value to 1.


You'll notice that a new panel appears next to the Render panel called, "Simplification".


Simply go to this panel, enable Render Simplification by clicking the option button with the same name.

Now, you can drastically reduce the effects of several time-consuming aspects of rendering your scene! The great part about this is that you can really turn down many of the parameters with minimal change to how your rendered scene appears! Yes, there are some differences but the render still functions very well as a pre-visualization for your final full render. This will dramatically increase your productivity by allowing you to render far more high-quality test renders within the same amount of time, allowing you to try more ideas and designs before dedicating yourself to a more time-consuming full render.

Experiment and have fun with this and it will really have a positive impact on your Blender workflow!


For more info on the other "hidden" features revealed by the "rt" control, go here.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

Blender Crash Recovery in Windows XP

As stable as Blender may be, it's still possible to experience a crash. And whenever it does happen, the first priority is minimizing the amount of work loss. I recently experienced the rare crash and thought it might be a good idea to share how I was able to minimize the lost.

These steps are specific to Windows XP, but they should easily translate to other platforms.

So, you're staring at this thing:


Great! Now what?

Well, Blender has an AutoSave feature (hopefully, you have it enabled) that will allow you to retrieve at least some of the latest changes in your workfile. However, as a precaution, Do Not click on the "Don't Send" button found in the dialog box shown above. You want to be sure that the latest autosave file isn't "cleaned up" by Windows. Because this is a crash scenario, you really don't want to risk losing that backup file.

So, the next thing you want to do is go to the folder that Blender uses for temporary files. By default, this will be "c:\tmp".



In the temporary files folder, locate the most recent .blend file. This will be the latest autosave file created by Blender. You can click the Date Modified column to have the file listing sorted by the modification dates.



DragDrop (or Cut/Paste) this file to your Desktop.



Now, you can safely click the "Don't Send" button in the dialog box. Blender will be shut down but, you can be happy to know that you've secured the latest autosave file created by Blender!



Restart Blender and load the autosave file that you rescued. Review the scene's contents to figure out what may have been lost, if anything. Save the file using the name of the original scene file however, you might want to modify the name just to be safe and protect your original scene file. That's it!



If the AutoSave feature is new to you, let's take a quick look at it to be sure that you have it enabled. Go to the Auto Save tab located in the Preferences window.



Make sure the "Auto Save Temp Files" option button is pressed. Set the minutes as desired and you're set! If the AutoSave feature wasn't enabled, be sure to set it up as a default setting.

Also, be aware that the "Open Recent" button will not help in a crash recovery. You need to grab the temp file manually in a crash scenario.

Happy Blendering and let's hope you rarely have to use this info.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

Object Selection Tips for Blender

There are many ways to select things in Blender:

• RMB: Select object
• Shift-RMB: Multi-select objects
• B-key: Box select
• B-key (twice): Paint select
• Ctrl-LMB drag: Lasso select

However, here are some other ways that may go unnoticed by beginners:

The Outliner window

The Outliner window is simply another type of window that can be added to the Blender interface via the Window Type dropdown menu. This menu can be found at the leftmost position on the Header Bar of any window type.



In your Outliner window, be sure to go to the View menu and select Outliner. Depending on your defaults, you may be viewing the OOP Schematic (the thing with the boxes and wires).

Selecting objects in the Outliner causes them to be selected in the 3D View as well, and vice versa.

There's a search feature in the Outliner that's very helpful when your scenes contain many objects. Also notice the icons in the Outliner, next to each item. These help you to control an object's visibility in the 3D View, selectability in the 3D View, and renderability. They also have helpful tooltips in case you forget.




Shift-G keystroke

In the 3D View, you can also select objects based on their relationship to other objects. Use the Shift-G keystroke to see the Group Selection options. This works in both the Object and Edit modes. In Edit mode, be sure to check out the different selection options available based on the current selection mode (Vertex, Edge, or Face selection mode). You can switch between the selection modes using the Ctrl-Tab keystroke.


Alt-RMB keystroke

And, another selection tip that really comes in handy is to use Alt-RMB. This will display a menu of objects that are currently underneath the mousepointer. This is helpful when many objects are overlapping or for objects that are occluded by other objects. Be aware that this popup menu will not appear if there aren't any overlapping objects to choose.


Happy Blendering!

Video: Blender's Built-in HotKey and MouseAction Reference

Here's a great info resource that's been lurking right under your mouse pointer! It's a built-in HotKey and MouseAction reference, complete with search capability.

The short story is that it's located in the Help menu - "HotKey and MouseAction Reference".

For full details and how to make it even more accessible check out the short video.

What's covered:

• The HotKey Reference interface


• Creating custom screen layouts for the reference

Watch the tutorial online
(SWF streaming, Length - 2:11)
Or, Download the 5.92MB ZIP file to view it offline (load the HTML file in your browser).
Or, Download via Torrent.


Get the Free Flash Player: Windows version or Linux version

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials, Blender hotkeys

Computer Upgrade Tips

I was recently asked about what kind of hardware would make a great Blender workstation.

The type of hardware you need is very much dependent upon the type of work you intend to do. You also want to consider the type of work that you might want to do with the equipment.

Now, I can only speak for myself and my situation so, for myself, I knew that I didn't need an absolutely cutting-edge system because computers have become so powerful, with ever-decreasing prices. However, I knew that I could afford to bump up some of the specs to offset the cost of new components that I didn't need (sound card, keyboard, mouse, software, DVD, CD-RW, floppy drive, etc.). I added those parts from other PCs that I have. I never throw out parts that still work, even if their specs are not up-to-date. I have about five old CD drives. If my main drive goes bad, I can just use one of the older ones until I can get a replacement. Also, older hard drives can be used for backups.

So, for me, my concern was with having:

• a faster CPU with multiple cores
  better multi-tasking and faster renders
  

• faster memory
  not necessarily more memory because you can always upgrade that in stages however, the more the better
  

• faster graphics with more graphics memory
  I can only recommend nVidia cards for the most compatibility. ATI is fine but, nVidia is better. PCI Express only - no AGP or PCI cards. 256MB minimum.
  

• an internal memory card reader (installed in a 3.5" floppy drive slot, it puts the ports on the front of the case)
  This allows me to very quickly load any data/pictures from my camera and PDA. It's much faster than going through the device's docking interface because you get almost instant access to the files without having to navigate through "cool" interfaces.
  

• more USB ports, with some available on the front of the case)
  Good for temporary connections to tablets, photo printers, scanners, etc.
  

• a larger monitor

• a larger hard drive

• a stronger power supply
  The power supply is probably the most fundamental component. When I was a PC Tech, I often outsmarted the "more educated" technicians on this one issue. A poor power supply is the cause of many, many different symptoms that a computer can exhibit. They would run all kinds of convoluted tests and procedures, replacing this and that. Only to end up going back out to the customer because the computer started "acting up" again. I always tested the power supply first, often found it to be bad (in a way that matched the problem being experienced), replaced it, and was out of there in less than thirty minutes - no callbacks (unless they had other unrelated issues and then, they usually asked for me by name).
  
  A "bad" power supply is one that doesn't consistently provide the correct amount of power output along any or all of its many power output channels. A channel can provide too low, too high, or erratic amounts of power to the components of your computer system. When this happens, components can wear down much faster than they are rated to last or, they may not function consistently because they aren't getting enough power. Believe me, a new power supply can be a bad power supply. In the past, I've encountered entire orders of computer cases where just about every power supply was not up to par. It made no sense to use that power supply in a new system knowing that in a few weeks or months the system would start to exhibit strange behaviors (lockups, rebooting, internal modem problems, etc.). Most modern motherboards should provide a means to see the power status of each channel output from the power supply. This would be found in the BIOS setup (accessible right before your computer begins the boot process - google "bios setup" for more details). There are utilities to check this but I've found them to be inconsistent. And, there are power supply testers you can buy but, only the expensive professional models provide detailed info.
  
  Also, always check the power rating of the power supply and make sure that it has enough to support your system. With our interest being in 3D graphics, it is imperative that you check the power supply requirements of your chosen video card. Modern video cards require lots of power and if your power supply can't provide it, your system will not function. It's also a good idea to eventually purchase another matching power supply to have as a backup.
  

• a case with room for extra hard drives and other internal components
  

• a case with good exhaust features for keeping components cool
  Don't be enticed by the smaller cases. You need a full-sized case for better airflow and cooling.
  

• a motherboard that will support future upgrades
  a faster CPU, more RAM (at least 2GB), multiple monitors (if the motherboard has onboard video, when you add a video card to the system, you will have at least two video outs on your system)

• a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Source) is a must
  A UPS is an external device that provides power when there is no power. They sound really expensive but, they aren't. The very first time you hear that beep and see the lights in your home flicker (or go out entirely) yet, that 1-hour render that's 98% complete keeps humming along, you'll smile and realize that, no matter what the cost, you're glad you got one. Get one. If you have one, smile.
  

Anyway, those are the types of things I would suggest you think about when upgrading. Again, it really does depend on the types of things you want to do. I can't recommend any brands because they're really all the same inside. There's no component in any brandname computer that you can't put into a generic brandless computer. The only benefit of a brandname computer is going to be the Warranty (maybe) and the optional Service Agreement (more money). Because of my technical experience with computers, I've never had a problem that required outside help. So, for some, maybe the extra Warranty and Service Agreement are a necessary part of the decision-making.

In conclusion, because Blender is so efficiently coded (thanks to Ton and company), you don't need the latest and the greatest computer hardware to get a lot done. Only until recently, I was using Blender on a jurassic Pentium III 1GHz with 512MB RAM, a 40 GB HD, and a 256MB nVidia AGP 4x graphics card! On top of that, I was using Windows 98 (before I started creating videos). Heck, Blender will even run on a Pocket PC!!

If you can only focus on one aspect of upgrading, I would recommend starting by getting more memory. The more, the better. Getting more memory won't actually speed up your computer, however, it will keep it from slowing down due to buffering data to your hard drive whenever all of your RAM is filled.

I'm a PC man so, I can't provide any advice otherwise. I do have Linux (ubuntu) but, I haven't had the time to explore it, yet. I hear Blender runs much smoother with Linux. I've also heard that AMD CPUs are faster than Intel CPUs when it comes to dealing with graphics. I haven't tested that so I don't know if that's true.

Any other suggestions are welcomed, especially from Mac users.

technorati tags: computer upgrade, 3D, graphics

Learning 3D

For the absolute beginners out there, here's a great article about learning 3D in general. There's more to it than just the technicalities of using Blender. Check it out.

Glen Moyes - Articles - To Those Learning 3D: "This isn't a quick-start guide to Blender. I'm writing this to lead people that are new to Blender away from major pitfalls that I see so many fall into. Of course, even those that are more seasoned would benefit from a few good reminders."

technorati tags: 3D, graphics

Organizing your Files

File organization is always important when using any application. With Blender, it's even more important because, over time, this will become an absolute mess if it's not managed from the very beginning.

Over time, you will create countless models, tests, animations, scenes, characters, projects, etc. You will also want to be able to use parts of one project within another. Your ability to do these things will be greatly effected by how organized you keep your files. You will have to address this issue sooner or later so, let's get it out of the way now so we can get to the fun stuff!

Below, you'll see one example way to keep your files organized:



Feel free to modify this to meet your own needs and, don't be afraid to adjust things as your needs grow. Just be sure to keep these things in mind as you create or change how your files are organized:

• Organize your folders and subfolders as logically as possible. As long as it makes sense to you then, you should be fine.
  


• Always ask yourself, "How might I want to use this in the future?". This is very important because you want to think of your files as a type of library. For example, you create a Tire model that's part of a car you're working on. Well, you need to decide if you might need a tire model for something else in the future. If you think you might, then it would be a good idea to save your tire model as a separate file and put it in a subfolder called VehicleParts or Tires. That way you can quickly locate and append it into any new projects without having to create another tire from scratch.


• Be sure to keep "core assets" in a consistent location. Core assets would be things like textures, sound effects, scripts, etc. Moving or renaming the location of these types of files could "break" any Blender files that reference them. You'll then have to go back and re-establish the references manually...ugh.


• Keep your folder and file names descriptive but, not too long. They should be manageable and easy to type.


• Blender already has a subfolder for scripts so, it's best to just use that one.
  


• Always back up your files.

Well, those are the basics of organizing your files for Blender. Next, we'll look at how to tell Blender where to find certain types of files and where to output certain files.

Happy Blendering!

technorati tags:blender, tutorial, 3d, help, graphics