Title: Blender Project (I)

Date: 2012-11-06 16:32:08

Today I will officially initiate a new project: Using Blender to build 3D animation to visualize some awesome topological deformation processes. It is something I expect to do for a long time, and it is also planned in my educational reformation proposal.

more

There are some brand new  video tutorials on YouTube. By far my fav are: Blender Tutorial Beginner: Coffee Cup 1 and 2.

Blender is easier to be used with a 3-button mouse and a full-sized keyboard. Unfortunately, the only mouse and keyboard I have are the mouse and keyboard come from my Macbook Pro laptop. Using them to changing view, selecting, zooming, rotating, panning the view are painful. So, let’s remember the shortcuts for Macbook Pro users.

  • Usual left mouse click = click the trackpa

  • Usual right mouse click = command + click the trackpa

  • Rotating the scene = alt + one finger dra

  • Zooming the scene = control + alt + shift + click the trackpad   = control + alt + one finger dra

  • Panning the scene = two-finger touch and moving around = shift + alt + one finger dra

  • More …

BTW: One should enable the “Emulate 3 button mouse” and “Emulate Numpad” options from menu: File > User preferences > Input tab.

Since the keyboard of Macbook Pro does not has a Numpad. Blender uses Numpad strokes to change viewports. For example:

  • 1 = Front vie

  • 3 = Right vie

  • 7 = Top vie

  • 5 = Switch between Persp and Ortho mode in any viewports modes

  • More …

That’s why we should choose the Emulate Numpad options.

(To be continued…)

UPDATE 1: I’ve found a wiki for blender 2.6x version. See wiki.blender.org.