Summary

Published: May 11 2024 by mana vortex Last documented update: Feb 17 2025 by mana vortex

The open source software Blender is huge and intimidating — it is a tool for professionals, and many people consider it as good or even better than paid alternatives.

While it has a steep learning curve, everyone can dabble in Blender (even you! Even your mom!). This page will give you tips that'll make it easier for you.

Interface

Overview

This is Blender's interface. The main action happens in the Viewport. In the default perspective (Layout), it is on the left — you can switch perspectives (workspace layouts) by using the perspective selector (purple) on the file bar.

Read Navigating the viewport for how to move around in it.

General tips

1. Use keyboard shortcuts - they will speed things up by at least 70%. Put a post-it on your monitor and only remove it when you know them by heart.

   • See Keyboard Shortcuts (global) below for a list

   • See Customizing the interface for how to create custom shortcuts (it's easy and you should do it)

2. That being said, use the Search Menu (Hotkey: F3 or Space, depending on your settings) . It gives you access to all of Blender's functions! Click on the link to see it in action

3. The main action happens in your Viewport (the big one on the left).

   • You can use the Perspective Selector (pink) to swap around custom-defined workspaces.

   • Check Customizing the interface for more detes.

4. Understand when to use Object Mode and when to use Edit or Pose Mode. Read View port modes for more detes.

   • You can switch between Edit Mode and Object Mode with Tab (turquoise dropdown on screenshot 1)

5. You can switch the current selection tool with a long click on the tool's surface (shortcut to cycle: W)

6. You can (de)select multiple things by ctrl-clicking on them.

7. The most recently selected thing is called Active (this shows up in many context menus)

   • The Select Circle tool does not set an Active selection.

8. You can toggle X-Ray mode (Shortcut: Alt+Z) by clicking the purple icon in the screenshot above

9. You can hide things (Shortcut: H), Unhide them (Shortcut: Alt+H), or hide everything else (Shortcut: Shift+H)

10. You can undo your last action (Shortcut: Ctrl+Z), and redo an action (Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+Z)

Navigating the viewport

• Spin the viewport by pressing the middle mouse button and moving the mouse

• Zoom with the mouse wheel

• With / (Numpad Divide), you activate Local Mode, which will show you only your selection

• Press Numpad 5 to toggle between perspective and orthographic mode. Try around with them

Customizing the interface

You can easily customize the interface — for example, you can set custom keyboard shortcuts by simply right-clicking on something!

Save Startup File

To make your changes persistent, save your current .blend under File -> Defaults -> Save Startup File.

View port modes

You switch the View Mode in the dropdown on the topleft. Depending on your perspective, there are multiple options:

Here's what they do:

Keyboard Shortcuts (global)

The shortcuts below are shared between Object and Edit mode:

The 3d Cursor

In Object, Edit and Pose Mode, you can use the 3d cursor (Shift-Click or Shift-right click, depending on your settings). You can use it as a Pivot Point or just as an orientation mark.

This is especially handy in combination with Snap Selection:

Object Mode

Object mode is where you select stuff that you want to edit.

Edit Mode

Edit mode is where you actually edit the mesh.

Editing tricks

With any active selection, you can toggle the following actions by hotkey, and then move the mouse:

• Scale (Hotkey: S): Grow or shrink something

• Rotate (Hotkey: R) What it says

• Move (Hotkey: G) Reposition something

Pivot Point

By pressing ., you can change the current Pivot Point:

This is the origin for your transforms:

Read The 3d Cursor on how to make use of the little dude.

Selection tricks

Selection Mode

With the shortcuts 1, 2 and 3, you can switch the Selection Mode between Vertex, Edge, and Face:

There are a couple more modes that can come in handy when you're using the UV Editor.

The first one (highlighted in blue in the first image) is the standard select mode. The second one will be your friend, the extend mode, which lets you extend your existing selection or start a new selection while your previous selection stays put. This is not possible with the standard select mode as it would overwrite the previous selection.

The next mode is the subtract mode, this mode does the opposite of the extend mode we just went over.

Select Linked

With the shortcut Ctrl+L, Blender will select everything up to a certain boundary. By default, this boundary is the same piece of 3d geometry, but in the bottom left corner of the viewport, you can pick the delimiter:

See Seams and Sharps how to make use of this!

Select Loops

Hold Alt and left click to instantly select an entire loop of vertices, edges, or faces.

Select Boundary loops

Select all or part of a mesh then navigate to :

this will instantly select all boundary loops for the given selection, great for marking seams

Select shortest path

Works in Edge, Vertex, or Face Selection Mode. Select at least one element, then Ctrl+click on any other element to select the shortest path of edges, vertices, or faces between them.

Seams and Sharps

In Edge Selection Mode (Hotkey: 2), you can (un)mark edges as seams or sharps via context menu:

A seam (orange line in the viewport) is where the UV map will be split.

A sharp (blue line in the viewport) will cause a sharp crease/fold in the material. This translates to Cyberpunk, so it's neat to highlight your edges!

Proportional Editing

"I'm moving a single vertex, but my entire mesh is affected!"

Sounds familiar? You've run into Proportional Editing.

• Click the button or press O to turn it off and on

• When it's active, moving, scaling or rotating will have an effect on anything close to your selection. This makes refitting super easy! No more jagged edges!

• When you move (G) or scale (S) your selection, you will see a circle for the area of its effect.

  • By default, that circle might be huge and outside your screen. You might wanna change this and then Save Startup File.

  • You can change the circle's size with your mouse wheel

Face Orientation

Each mesh has an inside and an outside. Most materials don't even show the inside, so it's kinda important to know which is which.

Once you have entered Edit Mode, you can show Face Orientation from the menu at the top right of your viewport:

To turn a face inside out, you can use the Normals menu (Shortcut: Alt+N) and select Flip:

Flipped faces

Sometimes, faces are messed up. To find faces with flipped normals, go into Edge Selection Mode (Hotkey: 2) and use Select -> Select Sharp Edges:

The Scripting perspective

Blender offers a fully-fledged Python environment, which is used by Netrunners to develop plugins like the Wolvenkit Blender IO Suite.

Since you are reading this, you're probably not one of those. Don't worry! Some of our guides tell you to run Python scripts, but we have a dedicated guide for that: Blender: Running Python Scripts

Summary

Published: Feb 08 2024 by mana vortex Last documented edit: Feb 08 2024 by mana vortex

This page will show you how to run Python scripts in Blender. It's not strictly speaking part of the Blender plugin, but I had to put this somewhere, and it's least out of place here.

The Scripting perspective

To run scripts, you need to switch to the scripting perspective. Click the corresponding entry on the perspective toolbar at the very top:

The script panel looks like this:

Running a script

1. Click on the "New Text" button to create a new document:

2. Click into the Text Editor panel directly below it

3. Paste the contents of whatever script you want to run (Hotkey: Ctrl+V)

4. Hit the Play button above the editor panel to run the script (Hotkey: Alt+P)

5. Optional: Look at the Python Console below the 3d viewport to see feedback

Troubleshooting

If your script doesn't work, Blender will have generated an exception. To look at it, toggle Blender's System Console:

Copy the contents of the console window, or pull it as big as your screen allows and take a screenshot. Give this information to the Netrunner who told you to run the script and watch as they fix it.

If you don't have a Netrunner (or if you are that person), this is where you hit up Google or ChatGPT (you can skip the steps 1-5 in the linked guide).

Summary

Published: Dec 14 2023 by mana vortex Last documented update: Mar 18 2024 by mana vortex

This guide will teach you how to execute Python scripts under Windows.

Running Python scripts in Blender

This guide is for running files outside of Blender.

If you want to run a Python script in Blender, you need to switch your viewport to the scripting perspective and click "play".

You can find a dedicated guide on Blender: Running Python Scripts in the 3d editing section.

Step 0: Getting Python

We start by checking if you have Python installed already.

1. Open a Windows command prompt (Hotkeys: Windows+R, type cmd, press enter)

2. In the window that now opens, type the following:

python --version

If you have Python installed, it will now say something like "Python 3.11.3" . In that case, you can go directly to Step 1: Downloading the script.

Otherwise, please keep reading.

1. Close the command window - after installing Python, you need to open a new one.

2. Go to python.org and download the correct installer package for your system - that will usually be Windows installer (64-bit). Take the latest stable release, it will be at the very top of the page.

1. Now, follow this guide until you have installed Python, or google something like install python on windows for dummies and follow that guide until you have installed Python.

2. Proceed to Step 1: Downloading the script

Step 1: Downloading the script

1. Go to mana's github repo and grab the .py script to merge AMM presets:

1. Download the file by clicking the corresponding button. Save it somewhere where you can find it easily.

2. Open the script with a text editor of your choice (we recommend Notepad++ under Windows)

3. Check the top of the file for anything that needs to be adjusted:

   1. Ignore the lines starting with import

   2. Read the lines starting with #. They are comments and will tell you what to put.

4. Once you have everything set up, save the script.

Now it is time to run it. Keep reading!

Step 2: Run the script

1. Open a command window again (Hotkey: Windows+R, type cmd, press enter)

2. Type python " (python, space, quotation mark)

3. Drag-and-drop the script you downloaded on the console window

4. Type another quotation mark and hit enter

That's it - the script will now run and do things

Troubleshooting

It complains about errors!

1. Step the Python version (Step 0: Getting Python, item 1 and 2). As of 2023, the version should start with a 3.

If that isn't it, you made a mistake while editing the script file. Make sure that you don't have single backslashes in strings:

bad  = "C:\Games\Cyberpunk 2077"
good = "C:\\Games\\Cyberpunk 2077"

If it's not that, you can use a Python syntax checker, or ask ChatGPT (I'm not kidding). Good luck!

No module named…

If you are running into this error in Blender, it should be enough to run the program as admin.

Otherwise, you are missing a Python module, and need to install it. You can do that by running the following code from your Windows cmd:

pip install <your_module_name>

If that does not work, google for something like pip install module your_module_name windows.