Blender Video Tutorials - Get Into Blender! by Jason Welsh

[Chrisp-3DT]

‘Get Into Blender! Introduction, Menus & Views, Navigation & Components’ is the latest set of video tutorials for Blender by Jason Welsh:

[Mampir]

Jason Welsh, I have watched your tutorials and felt the need to correct you on various points you made or you forgot to mention.

I am doing this with intention of helping you make better quality Blender tutorials in the future - not to just bash your work.

I realize that making tutorials for Blender is not easy, since it has a lot of undocumented features. You can start by watching the video tutorials at http://blenderunderground.com/ and build you knowledge on top of theirs.

1. When you split a window, you can toggle between horizontal and vertical split with the middle mouse button.
   
2. You can hide a window's header, or move it either to top or bottom. You can do this by right mouse clicking on the header. This is especially useful with the four view layout.
   
3. By default you already have a "User Preferences" window created. It is topmost and only its header is visible, you just need to pull it down. This is the same header where the "File, ..., Render, Help" menus are at.
   
4. "User view" and "perspective view" are not interchangeable. A "user view" can be both perspective or orthographic. The same goes for "top view", "side view" and etc. "User view" stands for a view that was created by freely rotating a view.
   
5. You did not mention that there are even more view points than the 5 listed in the menus (side, front, top, camera and user). You can hold the CTRL key and then press the top view menu button or the hot-key, and instead of a "top view" you will get a "bottom view". The same goes for "side(left or right) and front (back).
   
6. The ALT+LeftMouseButton navigation scheme was created as a way to emulate the middle button of a 3+ button mouse, when you do not have one. It is much easier to use middle button for navigation instead. That means, MMB for rotation, CTRL+MMB or MouseWheel to zoom and SHIFT+MMB to pan. In a 3d window, the left mouse button is mainly used only for confirmation and moving the 3d cursor.
   
7. You did not explain how to save you settings and layouts.
   
8. You did not explain how to navigate in the buttons window.
   
9. There are manipulators for rotation and scale too, just like for moving.
   
10. You can move stuff by pressing "G"(as in grab). A lot of Blender users do not use the manipulators and turn them off because it is faster to use the hot-keys G, R and S (grab (move), rotate and scale).
    
11. You CAN scale and rotate a single vertex. Scaling in Blender means - a translation of one or more objects or vertices towards a point in space. This "point in space" by default is the median point between all selected objects or vertices.
    
    The way Blender refers to this "point in space" is the "Rotation/Scaling Pivot". It can be changed to various other points in space, like the 3d cursor. When you scale a single vertex with the 3d cursor selected as a rotation/scaling pivot, this vertex will translate towards the 3d cursor.
    
    When you rotate a single vertex with the 3d cursor selected as the pivot, it will rotate around the 3d cursor.
    
    
12. The "L" hot-key (link select) in edit mode is not used the way you described. You do not need to highlight anything before pressing "L" to select a hole part of a mesh. You only need to move your mouse cursor over the part of the mesh you want selected and press "L".
    
    On the other hand, you can use the CTRL+L hot-key to select a hole part of a mesh based on your selection.
    
    
13. Moving your objects in edit mode is NOT AT ALL the same as moving them in object mode. This is a big mistake. There countless reasons why you should not move, scale or rotate your objects as if edit mode and object mode are interchangeable.
    
    This can effects animation, materials, texture coordinates, modifiers, game logic, physics, particle systems and various other tools and options.

[Mampir]

I hope my post will reach the author of this tutorial, I was not able the find any contact info on him.

[Lynette-3dt]

Hi Mampir, thanks for your comments, I have dropped Jason an email with a link to this thread so he can check out your thoughts. Thanks for taking the time to comment.