10 Blender Tricks that Will Save You Time

Blender has so many features that you probably don't know all of them. Some are hidden away in menus that you rarely click, and others you can only access by searching the commands.


The following are some useful things I've found:

Edit Mode

1) Remove Doubles
I'm sure you've used this before, but you probably never looked in the toolbar to see what settings there are. The default setting usually works for doubled up vertices, but you can also use it to merge vertices that are close together:

Before

(press F6) After

2) Separate
Most of us have separated object an single object into multiple objects by selection. Not many people use the other two options. Separate by material and separate by loose parts. Separate by material will split objects up based upon which material they have. Separate by loose parts will separate all parts that are not connected to anything into there own individual objects. For example:

A simple array

In edit mode after applying the modifier

After separation by loose parts

3) Select Nth
Select every nth number of (i.e every other). Useful for saving time when doing repetitive selecting.


4) Select loose Vertices/Edges
Selects vertices/edges that are not connected to anything. Good for deleting hard to find (and non-usable) geometry


5) Select More/Less
Shortcut key is CTRL-+(for selecting more) and CTRL-- (for selecting less).
Selecting more will grow the selection by one vertex. Likewise select less, will shrink the selection by one vertex.

Object Mode

1) ALT-RIGHTCLICK
Few people know of this hidden tool. When you press ALT-RIGHTCLICK, a menu will pop up naming all the objects near the cursor.

This tool is immensely useful in highly populated scenes or scenes with tiny objects.
























2) Randomize Transform
This one is in the menu (Object > Transform > Randomize Transform), it's the next best thing after the grease scatter. As it's name suggests, it randomly places the selected objects throughout the scene.


You have to set the (location/rotation/scale) limits using F6, otherwise nothing will change.


3) Select Random
Another great randomization tool. It's position is Select > Random.


4) Zoom Border
Helpful when you run out of zooming with your scroll wheel. Shift-B.


5) Quad View
Pressing CTRL-ALT-Q will toggle quad view:

Notice that quid view will lock all of its views, except for the camera view. This is sometimes useful if you find yourself setting up side and front views, and continually changing them the angle views, out of habit.


Quad view also helps save space, you only need one toolbar or properties bar, instead of one per view.




Do you know of any good hidden shortcuts? Post them in the comments below!

Holograph VFX Tutorial

This tutorial is way overdue, sorry :( The recording software I was using is not very good so halfway through the tutorial, the screen went black. I had to rerecord four times! I figured out that you have to make separate sections. Sorry again. Here's the tutorial:

I hope it was worth the wait!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year! In this tutorial you will make the text, the champagne and the flares.

A Car Wheel

I made this car wheel a few weeks ago when I was making a Ford Mustang. I thought this wheel would be nice to sell.

As you can see I hard modeld in the tire tread.

Please share your thoughts.

A $5 Cartoon Car

This is my latest 3D model that I am selling on TurboSquid. I made it a couple months ago as a test... it is one of the first cars I have made on Blender.

Rules of Thumb For 3D Work

Here are a couple of rules that you should usually follow, not in just Blender, but in any 3d program.

Modeling:

1. Make all of the polygons roughly the same shape and size.
2. Make sure that you do not have doubled up verticies or polygons.
3. Try not to make a triangles(This applies to Blender - I'm not sure if this applies to other programs. Please comment if I am wrong).
4. Keep good topography.
5. USE A REFERENCE IMAGE!!! This is a must!

Texture:

1. If you are using an image, make sure you are not stretching it. If if is stretching try to UV unwrap it.
2. DO NOT MAKE ANYTHING BLACK!!! This one isn't very obvious but its one that a lot of people mess up on.
3. Don't allow specularity if you have a shiny material.
4. Don't make a busy texture.
5. Look at a reference image.

A Photorealistic Door

    I am selling A Photorealistic Door on TurboSquid. I made this file a couple weeks before I joined TurboSquid. I modeled the door by using a mirror for the X and Y axis.

    To make the doorknob I modeled it using the X, Y and Z axis. Then I applied the mirror modifiers for the door and made a hole on the left side where you see the doorknob.

    Last I textured everything using Ray settings to make the transparency and shiny doorknob.

Here are a few other renders:

Please share your thoughts. 

An Office Thumbtack

Yet another Turbosquid file I made. This one was pretty simple - all I did was make a thumbtack mesh. Then I made the handle clear with the Ray Transparent setting. And made the part on the end shiny with the Ray Mirror setting.

The reason you see the white and blue stuff in the handle is because I rendered the World with a picture texture.

It's pretty simple and very nice looking in the end.

Let me know what you think.

A Crazy Bookshelf

My latest Turbosquid model is an odd bookshelf. You probably won't see one of these very soon... The only hard part of this model is the texture. It looks pretty good, but it took me about ten minutes to make it. The problem I had with the texture was it was way too dark. The trick to fix it was lightening it so that it was just barely a different color than the main material.

I am selling it on Turbosquid for $10.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

7 Reasons Why Your Render Isn't Working

Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model.  This step can be the source of some confusion for new Blender users.  If you are having render problems when using Blender consider the following areas of concern.

1. Ray-Tracing or EnvMap must be set in the Render Panel (if in use).

2. If you are getting funny lines across your render you may have accidentally pushed the Field Rendering Button (Render Panel-->Render Section --> Field button).

3. There must be a Lamp and a Camera in any Scene that will be rendered. If there is not a Camera rendering is not possible.  If you don’t have a lamp your scene will be too dark.

4. Have you selected the correct layer(s)? If not do so!

5. If you are compositing you must allow the composite rendering. Click the Composite button (under the Render button) in the Render Panel.


Other people have pointed out the following issues related to rendering.

6. If Blender is crashing whenever you press F12 then you may have too many vertices in your scene. Try using the Poly Reduce script when you are in Edit Mode.

7. If you are using an alpha version of Blender then it is very likely that Blender will blow up.  Download a more stable version.