Blender Information / Advice Thread

GoldenFrog

Uhm...How's that again? Did you mean pan?

NOLASaintTM

Yeah. Like using the orbit tool in SU to move from the top to the front of an ogject.

GoldenFrog

Oh! Yeah, It's jst the same as sketchup in that way. Shift+MMB is pan. Also, you may want to look at your prefrences. Do this by moving to the top header, and you'll see one of those up/down arrows. Pull it down, and it'll reveal all your prefrences. Tweak it to your liking, (I prefer to have zoom to mouse position checked) and go to file and hit save prefrences. Then it'll save your new updated prefrences at the start of each blender run. Have fun!

alex1811

Yes it is difficult to find the preferences menu in Blender 2.49 and Golden Frog is right to mention where you can find it, but if you are using the 2.5 alpha 2 version you can just find it in the file menu.

A tip for all laptop users, you can go into preferences menu and check emulate numpad, in fact it is indispensable as numbers are used to switch between different views.
I am saying that because so many new users using laptops (like me) got very frustrated the first time using Blender with this and are looking for a solution to be able to work normally with Blender.

GoldenFrog

Ah, yes, thanks for the contribution.

NOLASaintTM

I thought i commented. Thanks. still don't know about it, it seems very hard

GoldenFrog

Well, yeah, itt's rather difficult at first. The interface is scary. It's ok, I'll help you through it. Try this: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D;_Noob_to_Pro

Very helpful

NOLASaintTM

Thanks

GoldenFrog

Absolutly. So how's your learning of blender coming? Any problems?

NOLASaintTM

No progress, but i have decided to not quit SU. I just like SU alot. But i want to learn Blender. So im just juggling the 2 right now

GoldenFrog

Sure, really, tbh who could quit SU?

REGIS

Hi

I was a "Sketchup addict", now I'm a blender (2.5) user

Blender is simply powerful.

cheers

EscapeArtist

You can also select "turntable" style rotation in the preferences menu, along with other selection and pan/orbit/etc. changes. Also, you can change it to LMB select rather than the RMB select. It's a nuisance moving from SU to Blender, for me anyway, to have to remember the difference.

Don't forget that Blender has some great free render software too. Luxrender, Yafaray, POV, and others, though they are not working in 2.5 or 64 bit Blender yet. I just do my modeling in 2.5 and then export to 2.49 for rendering.

REGIS

Yes, Yafaray is very cool, Lux render a little bit more difficult to master and blender internal render is great too.

GoldenFrog

http://www.blenderguru.com/
Visit here for some quality video tutorials.

exvion

@escapeartist said:

Don't forget that Blender has some great free render software too. Luxrender, Yafaray, POV, and others, though they are not working in 2.5 or 64 bit Blender yet. I just do my modeling in 2.5 and then export to 2.49 for rendering.

Yafaray for Blender 2.5 64bit
http://www.yafaray.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3548