Blender For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with Blender

Chapter 1: Discovering Blender

Getting to Know Blender

Discovering Blender's origins and the strength of the Blender community

Making open movies and games

Getting to Know the Interface

Working with an interface that stays out of your way

Resizing areas

Maximizing an area

The menu that is a pie

Chapter 2: Understanding How Blender Thinks

Looking at Editor Types

General editors

Animation editors

2D editors

Utility editors

Understanding the Properties editor

Customizing Blender to Fit You

Using screen layout presets

Setting user preferences

Using custom event maps

Navigating in Three Dimensions

Orbiting, panning, and zooming the 3D View

Changing views

Selecting objects

Taking advantage of the 3D cursor

Extra Features in the 3D View

Quad View

Regions

Don't know how to do something? Hooray for fully integrated search!

Chapter 3: Getting Your Hands Dirty Working in Blender

Grabbing, Scaling, and Rotating

Differentiating Between Coordinate Systems

Transforming an Object by Using the 3D Manipulator

Switching manipulator modes

Using the manipulator

Saving Time by Using Hotkeys

Transforming with hotkeys

Hotkeys and coordinate systems

Numerical input

The Properties region

Chapter 4: Working in Edit Mode and Object Mode

Making Changes by Using Edit Mode

Distinguishing between Object mode and Edit mode

Selecting vertices, edges, ...