Blender: Tricks of the trade #2

A couple weeks ago I published "Blender: Tricks of the trade #1", which showed you some tricks to help you with blender. In this post, I will show you how to use hotkeys to speed up making animations in blender.

Hot Keys are Your Friend!

One major hotkey is “Shift”, you can push this key with just about everything to make your life easier. For example, when clicking on almost anything in Blender using the shift key, you can select more than one thing. You can select layers, manipulators, or selecting anything in the 3D View Window (Faces, edges, you get the idea). Selecting objects can be much easier when holding down shift. Also, the shift key works a lot like the "ctrl" key when rotating, grabbing, or scaling, although shift locks the movement to smaller increments. There are many more basic things you can do with the "shift" key in blender, such as duplicating or "copying" objects with shift+d. You can see more info ont the shift key here.

Another unique hot key in Blender is the "Alt" key. I think of this key as the second "undo" key in blender (aside from ctrl-z). For example, pushing "alt+ g" will clear the location of you object. Likewise, pushing "alt+r, alt+s, and alt+p" will clear rotation, scaling, and parents.

In general, hot keys can be very useful in blender. You can increase your time-management in blender tenfold if you get used to using them. For reference, here is a hot key map for use in blender, but I find it easiest to just experiment with pushing different keys - you might be surprised with what you find!

More tips and tricks coming soon. Feel free to comment!
-Drummeralec

Blender: Tricks of the trade #1

Whether you are a Blender mastermind, or your just learning blender, you will enjoy this post. Here is a list of different blender tricks that some people don't know about. Some of these are useful, and some are just fun, so i suggest you try them for yourself. :)

I will try to post different Blender tricks about once a week. If you subscribe or just read regularly, you can really master the "Art" of Blender.

1.Camera Fly Mode
Enter blender and hit Shift-f. Watch what happens. Blender has a built in "Flight Simulator!" Well, not really, but camera fly mode is kind of cool. You can use your mouse wheel and mouse to aim your camera and move around. It can be useful when animating or positioning the camera, but hey, you have to admit, it's pretty fun. ;)

2. Zoom In/Track The Camera
While in Camera View (NUM 0) select the camera, and push "G" then "ZZ" (Press z twice). This will let you grab the camera on the local "z" axis. You can also do this for the y and x axis to rotate the camera. If you play around with it, it can become really useful when positioning the camera.

That's it for today. Come back later for more blender tips. Thanks!
-Drummeralec