25 Useful Blender tricks that aren’t so obvious

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

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.
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!
Changing the camera

Ctrl + NumPad 0. This also works on non-camera objects as well, making it very useful for positioning spotlights.
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’.
Switch to the opposite side of the viewport

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

Select Camera – Shift+F. The blender devs were even nice enough to include the controls in the header:
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.
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.
Reset 3D cursor

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

Alt + M. To speed this up even more, follow it with ‘5‘ to select Collapse from the menu.
‘Beauty Fill’ a hole in your mesh

Shift + F. It’s not always pretty, but it gets the job done.
Select an object behind another

Alt + RMB. No more accidentally selecting the wrong object!
Quickly switch screen modes

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

Press ‘R’ twice
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.
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).
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.
Scroll through frames

Alt + Scrollwheel allows you to quickly scroll through your frames
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.
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
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

68 Responses to “25 Useful Blender tricks that aren’t so obvious”

Alaa El-din Mokhtar

27. Apr, 2009

Tip 3 doesn’t work for me
Its “Ctrl+Numpad 0″ instead of “Ctrl + Enter”
I am using an optimized build of blender 2.48 on windows
Thanks for the great tips
ALLEYCAT

27. Apr, 2009

Very nice. Greatly appreciated. You surely know your Blender. I look forward to future topics from you. Thanks again. Alleycat
Andrew Price

27. Apr, 2009

Thanks Alaa El-din Mokhtar. Fixed
Nowherebrain

27. Apr, 2009

I took pride in knowing most of these, but one or two of them surprised me…good job, keep sharing the knowledge.
Leemstradamus

27. Apr, 2009

Thanks for the great information, I will add this site to my ongoing list of sites to check out on blender! great work!
Jeff

27. Apr, 2009

I knew a good number of these, but the ones I didn’t sure seem helpful.
chotio

27. Apr, 2009

Very good recopilation. Congratulations for your work.

Saludos
adié
3sie3wiel

27. Apr, 2009

Shift-O toggles subsurf mode in 3d view

Alt-Ctrl-Numpad0 moves selected camera to current view

To quickly select between verts faces and edges: Ctrl-Tab while in edit mode
B

28. Apr, 2009

Very helpfull, thank you. Blender impressed me once again.
ideasman42

28. Apr, 2009

But thats not all, a while back I made a video of some more obscure features,

http://download.blender.org/demo/movies/obscure.ogg
Oltarus

28. Apr, 2009

Wow… just wow!

Thanks a lot. I just discovered (by mistake) that your tip number 1 was even more complex, check this out:
“+” increments by 1, “SHIFT +” by 10 and “CTRL +” by 100. With “-” instead of “+”, you decrement…

Oh, by the way… with “SHIFT+B” in the 3D view, you can move the view so that it matches what you’ve selected… Not zoom, move.
Yes

28. Apr, 2009

3. Changing the camera
you can even use “Shift+F” as in Point 8 camera fly for spotlights
chromas

28. Apr, 2009

Tapping L in Edit mode selects the vertex nearest the mouse cursor and everything connected to it.
zapman

28. Apr, 2009

Nr 17 (select all connecting vertices) could need an addendum:

you can also select all connecting vertices just by hovering with the mouse over one vertice and then press L. Add further parts by hover over them as well and just press L again. No need to press any other keys.
Crouch

28. Apr, 2009

On #19: you can save the alpha mask.
- In the render buttons enable ‘do composite’
- In the node editor, switch to composite nodes and enable ‘use nodes’
- Connect the render layer alpha with the composite image
- Render and save the image the way you usually would
Harry Abreu

28. Apr, 2009

I like it if I found more one I”ll send to you
RooL

28. Apr, 2009

In Sculpt Mode, Ctrl+F rotates the brush, useful for textured brushes…. you can add this in tip 7 (I didn’t know about Shift+F)

Nice, I discovered a lot of useful tips, thanks a lot.
lucky

28. Apr, 2009

Useful tips, thanks!
Sandking

28. Apr, 2009

Brush select is also very useful little thing (press b twice).
SaphireS

28. Apr, 2009

After using Shift+F to fill a hole press Alt+F a few times to arrange the faces more pleasingly.
tynaud

28. Apr, 2009

Alt+Shif+RMB under linux work for loop select.

Ctrl+Shift+down or up to get one panel only to full screen. The same to get back.

Thx for the tips
Abhifx

28. Apr, 2009

Glad i knew most of them. But a great collection. It took me years to know all these. But now a newbie can learn in a snap
Jessy

28. Apr, 2009

“In edit mode: Ctrl+L will select every vertice that is connected to that vertice.”

Come on. Why is it so hard to learn the word “vertex”?
ninestein

28. Apr, 2009

Thanks for this. This is really appreciated.
der|

28. Apr, 2009

Good work!. I think the zoom to selection feature (SmoothPreview) is worth mentioning, which animates the view when you frame an object using the numpad dot key.

To enable it, on the User Preferences, under View & Controls, on the Mouse Wheel section, you will Find SmoothPreview, you can set it to 1000 ms (1 sec). The camera will be animated when you switch to it and when you zoom any component such as vertex/edge/face with the numpad dot key.
Reyn

28. Apr, 2009

Hahahaha! Cool! I’ve been using Blender for a long time already and yet I was surprised to see these fantastic “tips” and “undergrounds” of Blender. Thanks a bunch! ^_^
BrianH

28. Apr, 2009

Here’s a suggestion for one of your steps:

At step 19, you explain a “workaround” for saving the alpha mask using print screen. This isn’t really a great way to make the alpha mask, considering the resolution of the original rendering and the screenshot may be off. A much better way is to save the rendering as a PNG and enable RGBA. This will render the image and save it with a transparent background. You can then take the rendering into your favorite photo editor and create the alpha mask easily using some select tools and color fills. If you need a series of renderings alpha masks (for an animation), you could also create a batch script or automator script to handle the job.
Tiago Allen

28. Apr, 2009

I have to translate those tips for portuguese !
Nick

28. Apr, 2009

Ctrl+Shift+C after selecting a face or edge lets you align your transformations on this edge/face. Really useful when the local or normal mode doesn’t give good results.
Antti

28. Apr, 2009

Nice… and big thank you Nick, that was good one!
Admiral Potato

28. Apr, 2009

Tip number 5 also works if you hold Shift and press 1, 3 or 7 on the numpad rather than Control.

Cool list. I’ll definitely be able to use tips 1, 2 and 4 in my workflow.
booga

30. Apr, 2009

the buffer swap hot key is a keeper. thx
Mike

10. May, 2009

Thanks a million again. Great resource.
I just wonder, using blender 2.8 from their website it says on startup “cannot find python”

I have Python 2.6.2 installed and my blender wont cooperate anymore.

I will dig on blenders site too but this seems like a installer problem not allowing me to specify where my python is installed. Is there a way to correct the call in Blender start up?
Andrew Price

10. May, 2009

Hi Mike,
I too have Python installed on my machine, but on startup I get the same message. I think this is due to it being a version that was released after Blender 2.48 so it won’t detect it properly.

I have yet to run into any problems with it so far, so I wouldn’t stress over it too much. If it stops you from doing something in the future, then ask the guys on blenderartists.org and they should be able to help you diagnose the issue.

Hope this helps
Hobbinger

13. May, 2009

thank you a lot! excellent resource.

blender 2.48 was compiled with python 2.5.2 therefore 2.6.2 seems not to work properly. i reinstalled 2.5.2 and all goes well.

is there a way to select only a part of a loop by selecting the first and the last vertex? alt + rmb and then deselecting those not needed is sometimes quite time consuming…
piotao

26. May, 2009

Hey, thank you, I found one hint for me (Ctrl+Load button) and the second as a reminder (Ctrl+Shift+C). So, I’d like to share one more: if you used to use UV mapping, sometimes you have to select a path of vertices in UV map editor and then press s-key, x- or y-key and scale them down to 0 (0-key) in order to align all selected verts in a row. Then you have to press a-key to deselect. This is way to long if one wants to correct a simple network of vertices, because you have to press: Alt+Shift+RMB, s, x/y, 0, Enter, a. And all this for each vertex line. So, ther’s much shorter way: select them and press W in UV map editor, and just 2 or 3 (align to X or to Y axis). This is WAY shorter and really saves time! (And sorry for my poor english)
Peter

31. May, 2009

Lasso is with ctrl+RMB !!!
Peter

31. May, 2009

Lasso is with ctrl+RMB, but the rest is very usefull!
piotao

31. May, 2009

That’s not true. In my standard blender installation on linux, lasso works in Object Mode as Ctrl+LMB. The other one, RMB with Ctrl does nothing. I’ve just checked a second ago.
luke

02. Jun, 2009

piotao is right, I have blender on both windows and linux on my laptop and they both use ctr+LMB
Traquerdani

05. Jun, 2009

WOW! I love blender tricks ^^

Thank you for the tutorial, very useful!!
Emanuel

08. Jun, 2009

Veeeeery usefull thank’s a lot !!!
Jim

08. Jun, 2009

Re: Tip 5.

On a Mac, in any given view pane, Alternating pressing ctrl-1 & Option-1 toggles between left & right side views.

Ctrl-3/Option-3 toggles front/rear view.

Ctrl-7/Option-7 toggles top/bottom view.
miso

10. Jun, 2009

thank you for “ALT” for Ubuntu users
Tobey

29. Jun, 2009

Very helpful, very nice !!!

Thanks.
veefwoar

30. Jul, 2009

I don’t know if this is documented or not, I’ve just discovered it. If you hover your pointer near a group of vertices and tap “L” on the keyboard it will select all vertices that are linked to the nearest vertex. It is similar to Ctrl + L but you don’t have to make a selection first, it assumes the nearest vertex to the pointer to be the selection.
Spirou4D

07. Aug, 2009

Excellent Travail! Thank very much!
RAPPEL de BASE too!
Pour sélectionner en mode Objet(bouton droit de la souris).
Pour sélectionnez les points/segments/faces: entrez en mode édition (TAB) et après le mode choisi (CTRL+Tab), sélectionnez (bouton droit de la souris) ces éléments un à un. Pour enlever un point, resélectionnez-le.

Ou en fenêtrage rectangulaire (TOUCHE B) et cliquer-glisser la diagonale de la sélection. Pour enlever des points(ou autres) à votre sélection, TOUCHE B et juste après ALT+Fenêtrage rectangulaire des points à enlever.

Ou par pinceau circulaire(TOUCHE B deux fois) en changeant le rayon par la molette centrale de la souris (sortir du mode par ESC ou ESP)et clic gauche sur les points(ou autres). Pour enlever de la sélection en mode pinceau, cliquer TOUCHE B deux fois et ALT+clic gauche sur les points(ou autre) à enlever.

REMINDER BASE
To select Object mode (right mouse button).
To select the vertex/edges/faces: enter edit mode (TAB) and after the chosen mode (CTRL + Tab), select (right mouse button) these items one by one. To remove an item, reselect it.

Rectangular windowing (B key) and click-drag a diagonal selection. To remove items (or other) of your selection, (b key) and just after ALT + Windowing rectangular items to remove.

Circular brush (B key twice) by changing the radius from Mouse Middle Wheel (out with ESC or SPACE) and left click on items (or others). To remove with the brush selection mode, click B key twice and ALT + left click/drag on items (or other) to remove.

ByBy
Spirou4D

07. Aug, 2009

I forgot :
When you have selected several elements, you could convert this selection in vertex or edge or face mode from CTRL+TAB chose mode, you know that but if you type CTRL and chose the mode with the mode button, this convert your selection with sharing mode. Try to see.
Example: 4 vertex make 1 face with normal mode but 9 faces with sharing mode.
veefwoar

07. Aug, 2009

Nice one Spirou4D but it’s SHIFT not CTRL. Pressing SHIFT and then selecting the buttons for vertex, edge and face will allow you to use multiple element selections simultaneously.
Spirou4D

08. Aug, 2009

You don’t understand my words! Read slower, please!
I am not talking about multiple selections but conversion selection.