Mesh

Mesh is active in Object mode, Edit mode, Sculpt mode, Vertex Paint, Weight Paint, and Texture Paint. Mesh is a commonly used object in creating scenes.

Figure 2-3 shows examples of meshes.

Curve and Surface

Curve and Surface are active in Object mode and Edit mode. Both are expressed in mathematical functions, and if you know Illustrator and Photoshop well, it works is the same as paths. They are defined by control points.

Figure 2-4 shows Curve and Surface examples.

Metaball

Metaball is active in Object mode and Edit mode. Metaballs are not defined by vertices (unlike meshes), and they are not defined by control points (unlike curves and surfaces). Meta objects are literally mathematical formulas that are calculated on the fly by Blender.

Figure 2-5 shows examples of metaballs.

Be careful with metaballs. When they get close to or interact with each other, they tend to blend or merge.

Text

Text creates text objects. It is active in Object mode and Edit mode.

Figure 2-6 shows a text object.

Grease Pencil

Grease Pencil is active in Object mode, Edit mode, Sculpt mode, Draw mode, and Weight Paint mode. Blender objects allow you to draw in a 3D space. This acts as a container of strokes that you can create using drawing tools in Draw mode.

Figure 2-7 shows a Grease Pencil example.

Armature

Armature is active in Object mode, Edit mode, and Pose mode. It is designed to be posed in a static or an animated scene; they have a specific state called rest position .

Figure 2-8 shows an armature.

Lattice

Lattice is active in Object mode and Edit mode. It consists of a three-dimensional non-renderable grid of vertices and its main use is to apply a deformation to the object it controls with a Lattice modifier. The lattice should be scaled and moved to fit around your object in Object mode. Any scaling applied in Edit mode results in object deforming. It should also be noted that if the object is parented with Lattice deform, a Lattice modifier is automatically applied.

Figure 2-9 shows how Lattice works.

Empty

Object mode is the only active mode. Empty is a single coordinate point with no additional geometry. Because Empty has no volume and surface, it can be rendered or used for other purposes.

Figure 2-10 shows examples of empties.

Image

Image is only in Object mode. It is usually used if you want to use an image as a reference.

Light

Light is only Object mode. It defines the light settings.

Figure 2-11 shows examples of lights.

Light Probe

Only Object mode. It is used by Eevee as a support object. It records lighting information locally to light the scene using indirect lighting.

Figure 2-12 shows an example of light probes.

Camera and Speaker

Both only have Object mode. Camera is an object that provides a means of rendering images from Blender while Speaker provides sound in the 3D Viewport.

Figure 2-13 shows these objects.

Force Field

Object mode and Edit mode are the once active. It offers a way to influence a simulation; for example, to add extra movement. Force fields automatically affect everything.

Figure 2-14 shows examples of Force Field.

There are a lot of objects here. I discuss it soon, but let’s proceed to the menus.

3D Viewport ➤ Mode and Menus

As you can see on the list, when it comes to Object mode, they have the same menus but it changes when it comes to the other modes, which by the name of the menu, you already have an idea about the tools. Let’s first discuss the four common menus in Object mode: View, Select, Add, and Object.

What you see in these four menus are the same in whatever objects you are in; the exception is that when you currently select Metaball, Text, Lattice, Empty, Light, Light Probe, Camera, Speaker, or Force Field, the Join under Object Header menu is disabled.

View Menu

The View menu is available at all six modes of 3D View editor with the same set of commands. By default, the toolbar is enabled while the sidebar and tool settings are disabled.

Figure 2-20 shows the toolbar, sidebar, and tool settings after being activated in the View menu.

What you see in toolbar depends on the mode and workspace. The Object mode in the Layout workspace includes Select, Cursor, Move, Rotate, Scale, Transform, Annotate, and Measure. There is a rectangle on the side of Select, Scale, and Annotate. It is a pop-up menu for tools. This indicates more options for the tool. I discuss this more soon. For now, let’s focus on the commands that we can see in the menus.

The Tool settings, as you can see in Figure 2-20, is a bar that holds some of the commonly used tools, like Transform Controls. The arrow inside the box represents the Select tool, and the five small icons beside it are for Selection mode. From left to right, you can

• Set a new selection

• Extend an existing selection

• Subtract an existing selection

• Invert an existing selection

• Intersect an existing selection

Let’s discuss the Sidebar region, which consists of panels. For 3D Viewport, the sidebar consists of three panels. For now, let’s discuss some of the commands under the View menu.

Adjust last operation are a set of operations that appear after modifying an object, like after using the rotate tool on a cube. Figure 2-21 shows how this works.

Frame Selected (Numpad.) and Frame All (Numpad Home key) are for zooming in on an object. If you select one or two objects, use Frame Selected. If you want to zoom in all objects in the scene, use Frame all.

Perspective/Orthographic (Numpad 5) changes the view of the scene. Orthographic is commonly used in engineering to produce objects specifications that communicate dimensions unambiguously appear to have same length everywhere on the drawing. This allows the drafter to dimension only a subset of lines and let the reader know that other lines of that length on the drawing are also that length in reality; however, with perspective mode lines of identical real-world lengths appear different due to fore-shortening. It becomes difficult to judge relative dimensions and size of objects in the distance.

• Local view (Numpad /) is to view a selected object in isolation mode. It is more effective if you have a lot of objects in the scene and you only need to modify one or two objects in it.

• Cameras (Numpad 0) activates your camera in View mode.

• Viewpoint is where you can set the different views for your project. You can have it in Top view (Numpad 7), Bottom view (Ctrl+Numpad 7), Front (Numpad 1), Back (Ctrl+Numpad 1), Right (Numpad 3), and Left (Ctrl+Numpad 3).

• Navigation includes Orbit Left (Numpad 4), Orbit Right (Numpad 6), Orbit Up (Numpad 8), Orbit Down (Numpad 2), Orbit Opposite (Numpad 9), Roll Left (Shift+Numpad 4), Roll Right (Shift+Numpad 6), Pan Left (Ctrl+Numpad 4), Pan Right (Ctrl+Numpad 6), Pan Up (Ctrl+Numpad 8), Pan Down (Ctrl+Numpad 2), Zoom In (Numpad +), Zoom Out (Numpad -), Zoom Border (Shift+B), Zoom Camera 1:1, Fly Navigation, and Walk Navigation.

• Under Navigation is Align View, where you can set the alignment of your view.

• View Regions is where you can set which part of your scene is only rendered or viewed.

• Play Animation is where you can render an image exactly as shown in the 3D Viewport.

• Viewport Render Animation is covered in Chapter 5, where I discuss play animation and viewport render animation.

• In Area, you can choose how to work in your workspace. There are six options: Toggle Quad View (Ctrl+Alt+Q), Horizontal split, Vertical split, Duplicate Area into New Window, Toggle Maximize Area (Ctrl+spacebar), and Toggle Full Screen (Ctrl+Alt+spacebar).

Select Menu

Let’s talk about the Select menu. For the Mesh object, the Select menu is quite different when in Object mode and when in Edit mode. It also depends on the object that is currently selected.

Figure 2-22 shows the difference of the Select menu in Object mode and in Edit mode.

As you can see in Figure 2-22, if you want to select all of the objects in the scene, you need to click A on your keyboard and Alt+A to disable the selection. Press Ctrl+I if you want to invert the selection that currently have. It is easier than going to the Select menu. All are working in Object mode and in Edit mode.

In Edit mode, there is Checker Deselect, which deselects vertices, edges, or faces in checker style, as you can see in Figure 2-23.

Let’s talk about Object mode. Select All by Type is where you can select objects base on what type it is. This is useful if you have a lot of different kind of objects in the scene. This kind of tool is helpful in large productions.

Let’s talk about the Select menu for other objects.

The common tools under the Select menu in Edit mode under all objects are All (A), None (Alt+A), Invert (Ctrl+I), Box Select (Tweak Left) and Circle Select (C). Let’s discuss what the other tools in the Select menu of each object.

The following are under the Select menu for the Armature object.

• Mirror (Shift+Ctrl+M) mirrors the bone selection.

• More (Ctrl+Numpad +) selects the bones connected to the initial selection.

• Less (Ctrl+Numpad -) deselects the bones at the boundary of each selection region.

• Parent ([ ) and Child ( ]) select a bone’s immediate parent/children.

• Extend Parent (Shift+[) and Extend Child (Shift+]) select the selected bone’s immediate parent/children.

• Similar (Shift+G) selects bones by property type.

• Select Pattern selects objects matching a naming pattern.

The following are under the Select menu for the Lattice object.

• Select Mirror selects mirrored lattice points.

• Select Random randomly selects UVW (UV Unwarp) control points.

• Select More selects a vertex directly linked to selected ones.

• Select Less deselects vertices at the boundary of each selection region.

• Ungrouped Verts selects vertices without a group.

The following are under the Select menu for the Metaball object.

• Select Random randomly selects metaelements.

• Similar selects similar metaballs by property types.

The following are under the Select menu for the Curve object.

• Select Random randomly selects some control points,

• Checker Deselect deselects every other vertex,

• Select Linked (Ctrl+L) selects all control points linked to the current selection.

• Select Similar (Shift+G) selects similar curve points by property type.

• (De)Select First/Last deselects or selects first/last of visible part of each NURBS.

• Select Next/Previous selects points following/preceding the selected ones along the curves.

• Select More (Ctrl+Numpad +) selects control points directly linked to the selected ones.

• Select Less (Ctrl+Numpad -) reduces current selection by deselecting boundary elements.

The Select menu under Surface object has Select Random, Checker Deselect, Select Linked, Select Similar, Select More, and Select Less, which are the same as Curve. Let’s discuss Select Control Point Row (Shift+R), which selects a row of control points including active one.

The following are under the Select menu for the Stroke object.

• Linked (L) selects all points in same strokes as the selected points.

• Alternated (Shift+L) selects alternative points in same strokes as the selected strokes.

• Grouped (Shift+G) selects all strokes with similar characteristics.

• Select First/Select Last selects first/last point in Grease Pencil.

• Select More/Less (Ctrl+Numpad+/Ctrl+Numpad -) grow/shrinks sets of selected Grease Pencil points.

Note

Camera, Speaker, Empty, Force Field, and Light Probe only have the Select menu (see Figure 2-22).

Add Menu

The Add menu has different options for different modes at the same time for different objects where it is available.

Figure 2-24 shows the comparison of the Add menu from Object mode to Edit mode and the Add menus from different objects.

As you can see in Figure 2-25, the add menu in Object mode contains the list of all the objects available for you to use while the one in Edit mode is the list of options available for the current object selected. If you have object selected, and you go to Edit mode and add an object, the two objects are counted as one when you go back to Object mode (unlike when you add an object while you’re in Object mode, they considered separate objects).

The Mesh, Vertex, Edge, Face, and UV header menus are in Edit mode under the Mesh object. Most of them are straightforward; the Blender docs explain anything that you are unsure about.

The most noteworthy options are under Transform Move Texture Space and Scale Texture Space, which move/scale texture space.

Figure 2-25 shows texture space.

Texture space is the space that holds or controls your texture. By default, it is attached in the object, like skin to a body. Be careful scaling or moving this because it affects the output of your texture in your mesh or any objects applied by textures.

Most of the tools under the Mesh, Edge, Vertex, and Face menus are on the Modeling workspace toolbar. The one under the UV menu is on the UV toolbar for the UV workspace.

3D Viewport ➤ Transform Controls

These are set of tools for easily transform or modify your scene. Figure 2-26 shows the sets of tools.

At the left are the pop-over menus for Transform Orientation, Pivot Point, Snapping, and Proportional Edit.

Transform Orientation affects the behavior of the transformations: Locate, Rotate, and Scale. The effect is seen on object manipulators, as well as on transformation constraints, Axis Locking.

Global bases the transformation on the world axis. Local bases the transformation on the object selected. When you choose Normal, the transformation matches the normal of the object selected. For beginners, normal is a direction or line that is perpendicular to something—typically, a triangle or a surface, but it can also be relative to a line, a tangent line for a point on a curve, or a tangent plane for a point on a surface.

Normal states the direction in which an object should face. For example, when you are applying hair particles on your meshes, you need to make sure that the normals are facing upward. Figure 2-27 shows an example of a normal. The ones sticking out of the corners are the normals of the edges and vertices of the cube. There are also normals for faces.

Now, let’s go back to the Transform Orientations. Gimbal uses the Gimbal behavior that changes depending on the current rotation mode. Gimbal is a pivoted support that allows the rotation of an object about a single axis.

View matches its transformation of the 3D Viewport.

With the Cursor, the transformation matches the current defined 3D cursor in the Blender.

The Pivot Point tool allows you to choose the location of the origin point. Depending on your project, changing the location of the pivot point or the origin point helps you easily manipulate your objects.

The Snapping tool gives you the ability to snap objects and meshes to various types of scene elements during a transformation. Increment snaps to grid points, and when you are in orthographic view, the snapping increment changes depending on zoom level. Vertex snaps to vertices of mesh objects. Edge snaps the edge of a mesh object. Face snaps the face of a mesh objects. Volume snaps to regions within the volume of the first object found below the mouse cursor. This one controls the depth of the transformed element.

The last thing I’d like to discuss in 3D Viewport is the Proportional Editing tool, which transforms selected elements (such as vertices) and nearby elements. For example, the movement of a single vertex causes the movement of unselected vertices within a given range. Since proportional editing affects the nearby geometry, it is very useful when you need to smoothly deform the surface of a dense mesh. This tool is typically used in Edit mode but it can also be used in Object mode.

You can see that there are two additional options in the Proportional Editing tool in Edit mode, which are Connected Only and Projected from View. When you use Connected Only, the proportional falloff spreads via geometry rather than using a radius only. This means that you can proportionally edit the vertices in a finger of a hand without affecting the other fingers. While the other vertices are physically close in 3D space, they are far away following the topological edge connections of the mesh. If you use Projected From View, the depth along the view is ignored when applying the radius.

Let’s now discuss the Display and Shading part of the Header region.

3D Viewport ➤ Display and Shading

These tools affect how you can see your object or scene in the viewport. These set of tools consists of Object Type Visibility, Viewport Gizmos, X-Ray, Viewport Overlays, and Viewport Shading.

Figure 2-28 shows these tools closely.

In the Object Type Visibility pop-over menu, the visibility and selectability per type of object can be specified or limited per 3D Viewport. The eye icon beside each object types limits the visibility while the arrow icon limits the selectability. This tool is more efficient for a large production where you have many objects to manipulate.

As you can see in Figure 2-29, the objects are Mesh, Curve, Surface, Meta (Metaball), Text, Grease Pencil, Armature, Lattice, Empty, Light, Light Probe, Camera, and Speaker.

Next is Gizmos . This pop-up menu helps you easily manipulate the settings for some of your tools. It is a bounding box used for manipulating 3D objects. What you can see in this pop-up menu is more on enabling/disabling the basic tools in the 3D Viewport, like move, rotate and scale. When you do move, rotate, and scale an object, there is an arrow pointing the x, y, and z axis, as shown in Figure 2-29. By default, they are disabled, but you can move the object by using a hotkey like Rotate, which is R, or Scale, which is S, or move, which is G, and press the axis letter so that it transforms consistently to the axis you want. For example, if you want to move along the x axis, press G, and then X; the movement is activated only along the x axis.

As you can see in Figure 2-29, when you enable the scale under Object Gizmos, there are three arrows showing in the cube pointing toward different direction. One to the x axis, one to the y axis, the other one is to the z axis. This is the same when you enable the move function except that there is difference in the tip of the arrow. In scale, the tip of the arrow is in square while in the move the tip of the arrow is in cube. When you enable rotate, a half-circle indicates a turn in direction. This is how Object Gizmos work, but we also have Viewport Gizmos. What are they and how do they work?

If you notice the x, y, z that seems for navigation in the top-right part of the 3D Viewport editor, that one is part of Viewport Gizmos. Figure 2-30 shows these tools.

The one shown in Figure 2-30 is the Gizmos for Navigation. This feature helps you to easily navigate in the viewport, especially for laptop users (like me) or beginners still learning the hotkeys to navigate the 3D Viewport. I can say that this new feature is quite helpful.

Let’s talk about Viewport Overlays. This pop-over menu is also for disabling/enabling tools regarding things for modeling like

Now, let’s move on to Viewport Shading. Figure 2-31 shows the icons that represent Viewport Shading tools.

Show X-Ray is the overlapping square icon. It renders the scene as transparent, as shown in Figure 2-32.

In Figure 2-32, the difference when you use the Show X-Ray or Transparency tool. Where Show X-Ray is active, you can see the other side of the sphere and cube. On the right side, you can only see the side of the object facing the screen. This feature can help you easily select vertices, edges or faces without accidentally selecting the vertices, edges or faces from the other side of an object.

Let’s proceed to the Wireframe mode, which is the first circle beside the Show X-Ray. This mode shows the full scene by only displaying the edges and vertices of the objects. Figure 2-33 shows the settings that you can adjust in this mode.

Figure 2-34 shows the Studio, MatCap, and Flat settings at work.

We can see in Figure 2-34 the differences of the three lightings. In Flat, it was too bright. You can’t see any shadows at all while in Studio, shadow isn’t that visible unlike in MatCap. But since this can only be seen in view mode and is not seen in the actual render of an image, this might help you in some way.

Before I proceed to the next shading mode, I’d like to briefly discuss this Backface Culling. What is Backface Culling? Backface Culling is an important part of how a 3D software or engine determines whether a polygon of a graphical object is visible. It is a step in a graphical pipeline that tests whether the points in the polygon appear in counter-clockwise or clockwise order when projected in the screen. If not visible, the polygon is culled from rendering process, which increases efficiency by reducing the number of polygons that the hardware has to draw.

That’s all for that topic. Now let’s look at the enhanced Material Preview, which is the LookDev mode. This mode is located beside the solid mode. Coming from the left side, it is the third circle. In Figure 2-35, you can see what it looks like.

LookDev mode, or Look Development mode, is the enhanced version of Material Preview from 2.7 version of Blender. They said this mode is the equivalent of Material Preview with better shading and more advance features so for me, I’d like to introduce it as the enhanced version of the Material Preview. It is the same. In this mode, you can see how your material works in your meshes, as shown in Figure 2-35. You can see the shadow and lighting at work but the lighting is not native lighting or the lighting you use in your scenes, instead it overrides scenes lamps and scene world with a generic user configurable environment lighting, which is more neutral on your materials and quicker to render.

In the LookDev settings, there are two options for lighting: the Scene Lights and Scene World. When you activate the Scene Light, you see how your lighting in the scenes affects your materials. The lamp you choose or sun, whatever lighting you have in your scene. If you choose Scene World, you see is the effect of the light coming from the World Scene. You can also change the direction of your lighting by changing the Rotation. This means you can also use your scene lamps or scene world lighting to test in LookDev. But that makes the process a bit slower.

Let’s now move to the last Shading display, the Render mode. In this mode, you can see what your project looks like in the final render. You can check the mesh, materials, and lighting, as you can see in Figure 2-36.

Figure 2-36 shows lighting at work and material at Render view mode. It does seem a little similar with LookDev but in LookDev, by default, scene lighting and scene world are not used for faster performance, for instant previews and more responsive editing. There are pause button that appears beside the Viewport Shading tools for you to be able to pause or cancel the rendering process.

3D Viewport ➤ Toolbar

The shortcut key for activating tools in the toolbar is spacebar + <the tool’s shortcut key>. These tools are quite helpful because not all beginners can easily adapt to software user interface and shortcuts but if they are familiar with some tools, they can at least easily get started.

Figure 2-37 shows the set of tools available in the Layout workspace.

When you look closely in Select, Scale and Annotate icons, you can see a small triangle. This indicates that there are other options for the tool. On the left side of the figure, there are the other options for the three tools.

Let’s discuss the tools. There are four tools under the Select Box pop-up menu: Select (W), Select Box (B), Select Circle (C), and Select Lasso (L). The Select tool simply selects an element. Select Box tool selects boxes. Select Circle is for circle selection. Select Lasso selects items using Lasso tool. Lasso tool don’t have specific shape when selecting items. Once you click on a space or an element to start the selection, you need to drag the mouse cursor for the selection and it automatically selects or deselects elements around the scene, as shown in Figure 2-38.

Under You Select tool is the Cursor tool (spacebar), which is used for editing for indicating the basis of the transformation that is done to objects. 3D software like Blender works through a lot of calculations and formulas. For example, in order to scale an object, the program needs to know the basis of the scale computation. As in our Geometry subject, we cannot completely solve a problem without a given variable. This is the same with the 3D software. That is the reason we have this cursor tool. Pivot Point is to let the program know the given location of the object for its transformation.

Let’s discuss the Scale tool , which also has a pop-up menu.

When you select Scale (S), you can only scale based on the cursor, pivot point, or center point of a selected element. Scale cage (3) cages a selected element and adds a point there, which you can drag to scale. Figure 2-39 shows a scale cage when it works. Both have benefits. Scale is used if your mesh doesn’t have specific details to scale and for faster processes, like architectural design. Most architectural design doesn’t have much detail, unlike game environment designs.

As you can see in Figure 2-39, there are white points in the edges and corners of the mesh that is currently working on. That is the Scale Cage tool at work. You can scale the edge corner in the direction you wanted without affecting the other edge corner unlike in scale only.

The Annotate tool has four tools under it: Annotate (5) creates a simple note; Annotate Line (6) creates a note that uses a line; Annotate Polygon (7) is the same as Annotate Line but you can click the space, and it automatically creates a line while right-clicking the space to stop it; and Annotate Eraser (8) erases the annotation.

The Annotation hotkey is spacebar+D since the spacebar is the default hotkey for accessing any tools in the toolbar. But when you click the Annotate tool, the Annotate tool hotkey changes from D to 5. Changes to Annotate hotkeys affect other hotkeys, so be aware.

Under Scale tool is the Measure tool (M). This tool can measure more than lines. It also does angles by dragging up the middle portion of the line formed by the measuring tool. If you want to delete the measurement you created, you need to select it and press X in the keyboard or by clicking another tool. It also should be noted that to create new measurement, you need to tweak left anywhere, drag ruler segment to measure an angle and hold Shift while dragging to measure surface thickness.

Figure 2-40 shows how the Measure tool works.

3D Viewport ➤ Sidebar

The Sidebar region is the panel that you can see the right part of your 3D Viewport editor when it is activated in the View menu or when you press N in your keyboard. Sidebar consists of three default tabs: Item, Tool, and View. In the Item tab, you can see the actual values of the location, rotation, scale, and dimensions of an object. You can also use this tab to modify those properties of an object. In the Tool tab, you see the currently active tool displayed, as well as other settings related to the active tool, as shown in Figure 2-41.

In Figure 2-41, aside from the active Select Box tool, you can see the selection modes in the Tool panel.

You can also see the current workspace in the Workspace panel. The View tab is where you adjust the camera settings and the 3D cursor settings.