Blender 2.5 Alpha 0

EarthMover

Thomthom, try selecting four verticies of a box and hit the "E" key and choose extrude region. Also use "S" key for scale. Make an obscure rectangular shape by extruding & scaling multiple times, then while still in edit mode, assign a "subsurf" modifier to the mesh and take the levels up to 4 or 5. This is similar to SDS for su. Continue to modify the subsurf and affect the subdivided geometry. Notice the speed.

Also, to select, use the RMB. To add to selection, use Shift+RMB. To quad face loop select, ALT+RMB

"A" to deselect all.

That's about all I remember from the 5 hours of tutorials I watched a few weeks ago.

remus

Thom, couple of tips to help when selecting faces: theres a little dot in the middle of each face, if you click near that its much more likely to select the face your going for. you can also occlude geometry (the SU equivalent of turning off transparency) by clicking the little button one along from the vertex/edge/face select buttons.

thomthom

@earthmover said:

Thomthom, try selecting four verticies of a box and hit the "E" key and choose extrude region. Also use "S" key for scale.

@remus said:

Thom, couple of tips to help when selecting faces: theres a little dot in the middle of each face, if you click near that its much more likely to select the face your going for.

Aaah! Hey - I can build stuff! Thanks guys..

Can't seem to find the Undo though. Not does Ctrl+Z work...

EarthMover

Michalis posted a link to some really good Blender tutorials in one of his early threads. The tutorials included the modeling of a frog. Anyone have a link? I can't seem to find the thread.

remus

ctrl+z works for me...i wonder if it depends on whether your in edit mode or not?

EarthMover

Undo might be broken in the 2.5 release. Ctrl Z works in 2.49. I use the portable version and it works great.

Also another good tip is the "K" key. Use it to knife or loop cut. Since there is no "pencil" tool in quad modeling programs, use the loop cut to divide a face in the appropriate sections and create windows and such. Boolean modifier also works well. Loop cut is also good to add some "weight" to an edge that will be subdivided.

Personally I'd rather use sketchup for architectural stuff any day of the week. Nothing beats the tape measure / line tool combo. For organic shapes, Blender is the best of the "FREE" apps.

Remus, how do you "box" select in Blender? (drag a selection window?)

pilou

Some videos tutorial (for 2.5 and 2.49)

EarthMover

THanks for the tutorial link Remus. Wow, 2.5 looks a lot like Modo.

EscapeArtist

I was just going to start complaining that I'd started to figure out where everything was in the old Blender when I saw the new GUI open up. I looked around and started to find things much more easily (the old GUI was a PITA to figure out, I've been playing with Blender since 1.somethingorother and still haven't got it all right) and was turning that cube into the Venus de Milo in no time flat.

No, not really. But I do think the new layout is much better.

All these improvements and it makes me think that they're going to start charging for this stuff soon.

EDIT: OK, now I'm getting frustrated - where's my space-bar menu? My right/left click menu? My verticies/faces/edges selection? They moved them!

EDIT x 2: Figured it out. I'm loving this new setup! They got rid of the annoying movement selection, and now it extrudes on axis automatically! Fantastic!

EarthMover

Found the tutorials I was referring to. Not specific for 2.5, but a really good run down about blender functionality. - http://www.gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html

Also found the box select option - "B" key - duh! Also tap B key twice to bring up circle select. Scroll wheel to change the size of the selection circle.