Blender Guru

25 Useful Blender tricks that aren’t so obvious

Posted on 27. Apr, 2009 by Andrew Price in Articles

1. Automatically add a number to the end of your .blend filename

   
   In the ‘Save As’ window, press ‘+’ to add a number to the end of the name. This is very useful if you are saving multiple versions. If there is a number already in the name, blender will automatically increase that number by one.

2. Preview textures

   

   
   The feature you always wanted was right under your nose! Simply Hold Ctrl whilst clicking the ‘Load’ button to take advantage of thumbnail previews. This feature however, is currently in an unstable state (which is why it hasn’t been made official yet), so use it at your own risk!

3. Changing the camera

   Ctrl + NumPad 0. This also works on non-camera objects as well, making it very useful for positioning spotlights.

4. Copy any attribute of another object

   
   In object mode: Ctrl + L brings up a menu that allows you to copy the attributes of any other object. This includes Materials, IPO data, Mesh Data, Lamp Settings as well as copying the object to a different scene. For example, if you wanted to apply the same material to 300 cubes at once, quickly select the cubes using the Box tool (B) then whilst holding down Shift select the object you want to copy, hit Ctrl+L and select ‘Materials’.

5. Switch to the opposite side of the viewport

   Ctrl + 1,3 or 7 will show you the opposite side of the respective orthographic view.

6. Loop Select

   
   Alt + Right Click on the edge that you want to select, Blender automatically finds and selects all vertices in that row.
   UBUNTU USERS: By default Alt + RightClick opens a menu built into the OS. To change this you will need to go to System > Preferences > Windows and change the ‘Movement Key’ to either Ctrl or Windows Key.

7. Change brush size and strength on the fly

   Whilst in sculpt mode, Press ‘F’ to change the brush size and Shift + F to change the Strength.

8. Camera Flythrough

   
   Select Camera – Shift+F. The blender devs were even nice enough to include the controls in the header:
   

9. Quickly compare changes by storing a render in the buffer

   Blender allows you to store one render in a temporary buffer in order to quickly compare changes you have made. To make use of this, render a scene then move your cursor to the render window and press ‘J’ this will switch to the previous buffer, make some changes to your scene and re-render. Now when you press ‘J’ again you will flip between your current render and the past render.

10. Render a small portion of your scene

    
    Only making a slight change to the scene? No problem, switch to the camera and press Shift-B. This will bring up a cross hair allowing you drag a square over the area you want rendered. To turn this off, press Shift-B again, and drag outside the camera window. Alternatively you can go to the scene panel and switch the ‘Border’ button off.

11. Reset 3D cursor

    Lost the 3d cursor? Hit Shift + C. To lock the view to that point, press ‘C’.

12. Change the default blender scene

    
    Tired of having to set up your favourite lighting scheme everytime blender boots? Hit Ctrl + U to overwrite the default scene with your current one.

13. Merge Vertices

    Alt + M. To speed this up even more, follow it with ‘5‘ to select Collapse from the menu.

14. ‘Beauty Fill’ a hole in your mesh

    
    Shift + F. It’s not always pretty, but it gets the job done.

15. Select an object behind another

    
    Alt + RMB. No more accidentally selecting the wrong object!

16. Quickly switch screen modes

    Ctrl + Left/Right Arrow cycles through your screenmode presets in the top bar.

17. Select all connecting vertices

    
    In edit mode: Ctrl+L will select every vertice that is connected to that vertice. This also works in the UV unwrapping screen, making it one of the most useful features ever.

18. Rotate object as trackball

    Press ‘R’ twice

19. Reveal alpha mask

    
    Pressing ‘A‘ in render window reveals the renders Alpha mask. Unfortunately there is no way to save the mask as of yet. But a work around is to copy the image to the clipboard (Alt + PrintScreen) and edit the window border out in an image editor.

20. Select vertices with Lasso Tool

    Ctrl + LMB allows you to draw a lasso shape around the vertices you wish to select. This is a useful alternative to the Box and Brush Tool (B).

21. Resize objects based on their texture dimensions

    
    Alt + V will take the dimensions of the image from the texture slot and resize the object according to those dimensions.

22. Scroll through frames

    Alt + Scrollwheel allows you to quickly scroll through your frames

23. Select more than one editing mode (vertex/edge/face)

    
    Hold Shift while clicking the edit mode selectors to select more than one mode. To change editing modes on the fly, press Ctrl + TAB.

24. Subsurf objects on the fly

    Ctrl + 1 quickly adds a subsurf modifier into your stacker without having to go through the menus. To use higher subsurf levels, use Ctrl + 2, 3 or 4
    

25. Move sliders in 0.1 increments

    
    Hold Ctrl while moving a slider to move it in 0.1 increments (hold Shift + Ctrl to move it in even smaller increments)

Have I covered everything? Leave a comment below if I’ve missed anything!

Tags: list, tips