Blender For Dummies. Jason van Gumster
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Название: Blender For Dummies

Автор: Jason van Gumster

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Программы

Серия:

isbn: 9781119616986

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ 12.

        Edge Center: Whereas Edge snapping snaps your selection to any close point on an edge, the Edge Center option snaps you to the center of an edge that you move your mouse cursor near.

        Edge Perpendicular: The Edge Perpendicular option is a little tricky to wrap your head around. It works relative to the original location of your selection. When you translate your selection, Blender draws a small X at its original location. You can snap to any edge that makes a perpendicular angle with that X.

      Snapping targets work in both Object mode as well as Edit mode. For more information on Edit mode, vertices, edges, and faces, see Chapter 4.

      

You can quickly change snap modes by using the Shift+Ctrl+Tab hotkey combination.

You can observe the changes made to your object in real time by looking in the 3D Viewport’s header as you transform it. Figure 3-6 shows how the header explicitly indicates how much you’re changing the object in each axis.

Image described by caption and surrounding text.

      FIGURE 3-6: You can view changes in the 3D Viewport’s header.

      

Transform operations are consistent across all manipulator modes in Blender, so you can apply any of these methods of interacting with the Translate manipulator in the Rotate and Scale manipulator modes. And don’t forget that you aren’t limited to working in just the Global coordinate system. You can choose any of the other six orientations from the Transform Orientation menu and the object gizmos adjust to fit that orientation.

      Many Blender users find that the object gizmos obstruct their view too much when working, so they never enable them or even use the transform tools from the Toolbar. But wait, with the gizmos gone, how do I transform my objects? I’m glad you asked. Enter one of the most powerful features of Blender: hotkeys.

      Part of the beauty of Blender’s hotkeys are that they take a lot of pressure off of your mouse hand and shorten the distance of mouse-based operations. The accumulation of these little time-saving actions is what makes using hotkeys so powerful.

      Transforming with hotkeys

      You can access nearly every piece of major functionality in Blender with hotkeys. Transforms are no exception. One of the other terms for moving in Blender is grabbing. That naming has specific significance as it pertains to hotkeys. To see what I mean, follow these steps to Grab/Move your object:

      1 Select the object you want to move.

      2 Press G.Congratulations! You moved your object.

      3 Confirm the move by left-clicking or pressing Enter.Cancel by right-clicking or pressing Esc.

      

To rotate your object, press R. Scale it by pressing S. See a pattern here? Quite a few of Blender’s default hotkeys are easy to remember. Most of them just use the first letter from the operation in question. And just like when using the gizmo, the familiar Ctrl, Shift, and Ctrl+Shift keypresses for snapping and fine adjustments still apply.

      

Also, because Blender tries to maintain consistency throughout its interface, you can use these hotkeys in more than just the 3D Viewport. For example, the same grab and scale operations work when you edit keyframes and motion curves in the Graph Editor. How’s that for convenient?

      

In addition to emphasizing efficiency, Blender is designed to allow you to work for as long as possible while incurring the least amount of repetitive stress. For this reason, relatively few operations in Blender require you to hold down a key. Typically, you press and release a key to begin the operation; you confirm its completion by left-clicking with your mouse or pressing Enter. To cancel the operation instead of confirming, right-click or press Esc. In fact, this keyboard combination even works on some operations that require you to hold down a button. For example, if you try to split an area (left-click and drag a corner widget) and then decide you don’t actually want to split it, you can right-click or press Esc while adjusting the boundary between areas; the operation stops.

      Hotkeys and coordinate systems

      By default, your transformations all happen in the View coordinate system when you use hotkeys. So no matter how you’re viewing the scene, you’re working in the XY plane of the 3D Viewport.

      1 With your object selected, press G.You’re now in Grab/Move mode.

      2 Without canceling this operation, press Z.A blue line should appear that indicates the global Z-axis. Your object is locked to move only along that line. If you press Y, your object moves only along the global Y-axis, and pressing X constrains it to the global X-axis.

      Pretty neat, huh? This method of using a sequence of hotkeys works with rotating and scaling as well (for example, R ⇒ Z rotates around the global Z-axis and S ⇒ X scales along the global X-axis).

      What about any of the other orientations? That’s easy too. All you need to do is set the orientation you want from the Transform Orientations menu as described earlier in this chapter. Even though you’re not using gizmos to transform your selection, Blender still pays attention to the choice you’ve made in this menu. After you choose your preferred transform orientation, just use the standard G ⇒ X/Y/Z hotkey sequence to move your object along the corresponding axis in that transform orientation.

      

Again, this method of using a sequence of keypresses works with scaling and rotation as well. Keying the sequence R ⇒ Y rotates around your chosen orientation’s Y-axis and S ⇒ Z scales along your chosen orientation’s Z-axis.

      

If you keep your transform orientation set to Global, there’s a shortcut to transforming on the local axis. Just press that axis hotkey a second time. That is, if you’re using the Global transform orientation and you want to move your selection along the Local Z-axis, press G ⇒ Z ⇒ Z.

      One of the more powerful features of the transform gizmos is the ability to work in a plane rather than just one axis. You can work in a plane with hotkeys as well. Use Shift plus the letter of the axis that’s perpendicular to the plane you want to move in. For example, to scale your object in the global XY plane, press S ⇒ Shift+Z. For the global YZ plane, press S СКАЧАТЬ