Blender Guru/Donut/2022/1

This is the first episode of the updated donut tutorial: Beginner Tutorial - Part 1 by Blender Guru. It helps you in getting familiar with the Blender interface.

* Download the Blender Shortcut Hotkey PDF (Google Doc version)
* Join my free email newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/blenderguru/weekly

This is a transcript of a video, podcast or similar content.

## Intro

If you've just opened Blender for the first time and then you've tried to do things — maybe trying to see how far you can go without getting help — you might have discovered you need help immediately. You can't even move things without a tutorial, but the good news is you don't need to learn everything that you can see, right?

I, for example, have been using Blender for 18 years and I still have not touched some parts of Blender like scripting, never touched it, because I don't need to for what it is that I'm trying to do. This fly is gonna kill me. It's if you're familiar with the 80-20 rule. I think there's really about 20% of Blender's features that you'll use in 80 or 90% of projects, and that's what I want to teach you in this tutorial series. And then since I think doing is the best way to learn, along the way we'll also be building our very own Donut, of course, the donut what I'm known for. This is the third time I'm making a donut tutorial series, every time Blender releases a new version, I make this series. So if you finish this full series, you will end up with a donut that looks very similar to this. So let's get started.

## The basics

This big window that you can see right here opened up, this is called the 3D viewport and it's where you'll spend probably 90% of your time because everything you need to visualize whether it's an animation or an archviz or anything like that. It all happens right here.

So by default, you can see you get three objects. You've got a cube, you've got what looks like a ball on a piece of string, that's a lamp, and then you've got a camera, this little would you call that like a triangle arrow looking thing, it's a camera, okay? And then if you were to render this by going to render render image or hitting the hotkey f12, it would take a snapshot from that camera view.

It looks very similar to what you were just looking at. This one actually has lighting information. You got shadow, you got some light coming off the top here. And if you had textures or materials and everything else, it would all be calculated. Okay, so if you've already used other 3D software, you're already familiar with the concept, but this is one of the basic principles of 3D rendering. What you build in the 3D viewport is sort of like a simplified version of what it is you're trying to create. And then when you're ready for that final image, you hit render and then it uses your CPU or your GPU to crunch all the numbers and calculate the light and the bounces and everything like that to create that final beautiful image. That's the basics, alright?

## Moving objects

But you might notice like okay … can we move this thing, how do we even do something basic like move it? There's two ways you could do it, one would be to use the move tool in your toolbar if you activate that. You can see that over the cube now you get these arrows. And if you were to click and drag on any of those hours you would move it along that Axes if you clicked on the white circle in the middle, then that would just be sort of like free dragging it okay.

Now you could do it that way, but actually I never do it that way because it is far easier to just learn the hotkey. Which in this case is G G for grab okay? So if you just hit G your cursor doesn't have to be anywhere near it. And I'm not clicking my hands are off the the clicker. It's just attached to your cursor basically the moment you hit G. And then if you just do a single left click it will confirm its movement so. G click and my cursor could be anywhere right and I can do it. Which is actually good because you don't have to like think about where is my curtain? I have to like get it on here, and then hit it. No. It's really it just allows you to work really fast. Excuse me while I get a drink of water I? Know I'm only two minutes into the video four minutes all right anyways.

## Axis snapping

Now one thing you're missing with this is those axes lines like being able to move it along a specific axes is actually a really common action you want to use it all the time. And you can do that after you have hit G by typing the letter of the axes. So there are three axes and the axes letters are X. Okay, which is the left and right Y which is back and forwards and then Z which is up and down some 3d software's call The y-axis the up and down, but blenders. It's the the Z the blue the blue one.

Alternatively you can also as you're moving it if you hold down on your mouse on your scroll wheel if you push in that's called The middle mouse button push in until it clicks and just hold that and you can see you get this little Line that draws out, and then you can just drag it to the nearest line Nearest axes and it will automatically snap to that which is really handy. Pretty cool not too bad.

Okay, so that's that's moving things.

## Rotate and Scale

Now the other two actions that are really common is rotate and Scale and you can again you could use the tool just by clicking here, and then you can you know rotate it on a specific Axes you could click in the middle and like do a trackball thing scale exact same thing scale it like that but again, I recommend learning the hotkeys, which you can learn just by hovering over it and Yeah, the hotkey for this one, so where it says shortcut shift spacebar. It's technically true You could activate it from this little menu here if you hit shift shift spacebar But it's the one after that ah really easy to remember ah for rotate.

Okay, so rotate and then you can hit the letter of the axes as well or do that same holding the middle mouse button. Oh, that's weird. Maybe because I did it after tapping that anyways and then you've got a scale, which is hovering over it s for scale okay s x y and z? Like that and if you want to cancel a movement you can hit escape or you can just right-click as well and that will also cancel the movement. But yeah, so you can see you could do quite a lot just with those few little movements there, okay, so that's how you move stuff about now.

## Orbiting

Let's talk about the next thing you probably want to learn, which is like how do I actually move my view like how could I look and explore the rest of the scene and that is also done with your middle mouse button, okay? so if you click in on your scroll wheel until it clicks you are orbiting that is how you orbit and My laptop people with trackpads you are panicking right now because you've just realized you don't have a middle mouse button. Um you can do it in a pinch by going to the top right-hand corner. There's a little gizmo, and if you just click and drag on that you can see that you are able to free rotate around. Alternatively, you can also go edit, Preferences and then underneath input if you click emulate three button mouse this will enable you to holding down alt if you then hold down left-click it just does the same thing as the middle mouse button which is pretty cool. It's not bad.

## Scaling the interface

Whilst you're here, by the way, you might also depending on the size of your screen you might want to change the resolution because by default it's one which on my 4k monitor you can see that my buttons and the text is really small. And if you crank it all the way up you can get to something comfortable. I point four or five is what I would normally go for and by the way, I'm snapping it like as you're dragging something if you hold down control. It's using incremental numbers so it keeps it to like a whole number. I'd normally go like 1.4. If I was using using it myself, but it's a tutorial, so I'll keep it big so you guys could see what I'm what I'm getting at.

Cool and oh another thing just while I'm here, just mentioning some of you are from other 3d software 3ds max Maya that kind of thing you might find it helpful to know there's an industry compatible key map that you could enable which will I'll put them up on the screen here. But it's basically it's more common keyboard shortcuts if you use to other software. But for this tutorial series and everyone else I recommend sticking to the blender one because of course all the hotkeys and everything you'll learn whilst learning blender will be for this hotkey thing.

Anyways, all right, okay, so that is, that's orbiting, okay?

## Panning

Now you can see as I orbit around, it's still, it's like locked on to the middle of my screen here. Okay, if I want to move somewhere else, that is pan which is shift middle mouse button, okay now. I'm shifting my view to somewhere else where I could pan around that place and shift again. And if you're on a trackpad, you could also use this move the view, this little hand icon thing at the top there. Do invest in a mouse, please. You will need it for 3D. You really should get a mouse. It's gonna be tough, oh.

## Zooming

The other thing that I'm doing right now is I'm using the scroller to zoom in and out. You can also use this little magnifying glass up there or control, hold down control, and then again click in on the middle mouse, and that will use a smooth movement rather than the scroll wheel, which is quite jaggedy.

## Focus on object

Okay, cool, so let's say you've moved the cube all the way over there like okay. So you could, if you wanted to go and inspect your cube, you could, you know, work your way over there by using shift middle mouse button to pan over there, but it is far easier to just learn the hotkey, number pad period, which will focus on any selected object. So if I want to go to my camera over there, I can select my camera, and number pad period will take me over to there again, my laptop users going oh, no, I don't have a number pad, all right.

The alternative way to do it is hold down the tilde key, which is that weird key underneath your escape key you've probably never used before. That brings up a pie menu with a bunch of view options, and view selected is Focus view selected will take you there.

## Align View to Axis

Okay, cool, so we've learned orbiting with middle mouse shift, middle mouse to pan, and then control middle mouse to zoom in and out or scroll. The other one you probably want to learn is align your view to axes because it's something that you, like new beginners often end up upside down, and they're like, how did this happen? So you can go to lock it, like bring yourself the right way up, just by clicking one of these letters on your axes up here, okay? So if you click that, I'm now the right way up, am I the right way up? Yes. I'm the right way up. I'm just focused on a weird part of the scene. That's why it's very weird.

Alternatively, instead of these, so there are the three axes that you could snap yourself to, you could also learn the hotkeys, which is number pad one for front view, one for front view, three for side view, and seven for top view that's only number pad. It doesn't work for your keys along the top unless you wanted to enable that over here emulate number pad.

And then it would do that. But yeah, so that's handy as well.

## Orthographic / Perspective View

You might also find, you'll notice sorry that in this view this is orthographic mode, okay, so we can't see the other sides of our cube right now. It's a weird-looking cube, but we can't see the other sides because this is orthographic mode. It's like looking at it with like a focal length of like infinity right, so there's no depth in our scene right now, which is actually really handy, and it defaults to it for this aligned to view thing. Immediately because you usually want that, but the hotkey for that is number pad five and that will take you in and out of perspective mode. You can also do it up there like that, you can see the difference. Oh, and another way that you could see aligned to view because there's a couple of ways, you could also use that tilde key that will take you to the top, the right, the side, etc. You could also use the in the view viewport you could change those. It's also got the hotkeys there if you happen to forget them and the other way is the same as zero.

The other way is the same as Z brush if you're familiar with Z brush.

Oh, I just cleared the location of that with alt G. You don't need to remember that one. That's a weed one.

Similar to Z brush holding down alt whilst middle mouse button orbiting will also snap it to the nearest axes, which is also really handy as well. So if I'm like moving around and I'm like I want to look up just hold down alt and it'll just snap it there, which is really handy, so that's that's kind of the 3d viewport. We'll obviously get way more into this as we delve into the other lessons. But whilst we're here.

## Properties

These other sections over here so on the right-hand side. This is your properties. And as you can imagine, it's the properties of things in the 3d viewport or the scene. You could change render settings or things here ... Look there's a lot here. Like I would strongly recommend not trying to learn all the values, because you're not gonna remember them anyway. We'll go through them as they're needed in this tutorial series. I think the best way to learn is to just do for something that you need to do, so that's what I try to teach.

These options, some of these options will change depending on what is selected so like if my camera is selected you can see I get a camera icon, and then I could change some camera settings if my cube is selected I get some material settings right I could click material. I could change the color to red and I could see a beautiful gray-red color. It's a weird-looking red the reason it's not changing over here in the 3d viewport is that again. This is a simplified view of the final render so there are no material properties in this view. We'll get to the viewport rendering later on but for now, you would see it though if you were in Rendered again f12 to do an actual render.

## The outliner

Now, at the top here, we have got an Outliner, so this is keeping a running inventory of everything that you've got in your 3d viewport at the moment. So we've got three objects, and we've got one collection so collection is just it's like a folder basically. A simple way to think of it so you can like organize things you can rename things just by double-clicking on it, yeah, whatever right and so that'll automatically update as you add things to the scene like if I were to duplicate my object, which I could do by hitting shift D to duplicate you can see there's created another object right up there in the outline. So if I ever like lose something and I'm like ah where's that thing I can just find it on here, and then just you know BAM whoops BAM

## Camera view

Oh by the way, I just accidentally tapped number pad 0 which is how you can look through the camera view. You could also do it by hitting the little camera icon on the right there or by going viewport camera or by hitting the tilde key so there are there are four places to get viewport options depending on what device or whatever it is that you're looking at? Yeah, I deleted something by hitting X. You could also do it by hitting delete, by the way. I'm throwing a lot of keys at you keyboard shortcuts.

## Keyboard shortcut PDF

It's a lot to take in, especially when you're starting, so I created a keyboard shortcut PDF, and the link for that is in the description. It's just a list. It's like three or four pages of the most common hotkeys that you'll need to learn or you might need to reference as you're using blender. So you can basically load it up on another monitor whilst you're working, and you've got it there as reference if you need it. I used to make it like a bonus for signing up for my newsletter, but now I'll just make it free so you don't have to subscribe. You can just click that link, view it, and hopefully that'll make it easier to use blender. You can still subscribe to my newsletter. It's a weekly newsletter on tutorials, artworks, and things that I find in the 3d industry. So if you want to keep up to date and learn new things, you can subscribe to that in the description as well. But that's it for this one because we have covered quite a lot of ground, so we'll keep it simple and yeah, open up a brand new scene in blender and then join me in part two, which is where we'll actually start making that donut now that you've got the basics. So we'll be learning about adding objects, and you know modeling and all that kind of stuff. So click here on the screen, and I hope to see you in the next part. See you there.