Blender For Dummies. Jason van Gumster

4-14: The Blender File Browser.

      

By default, Blender pops up the File Browser as a child of the main Blender window. Although this behavior is familiar if you use other applications, it breaks the general non-blocking philosophy of the Blender interface. If you want to retain the single-window approach, you can go to the Interface section of Preferences (Edit ⇒ Preferences) and within the Temporary Windows sub-section you can set File Browser to Full Screen rather than its default of New Window.

      Saving after the first time

       After you save your .blend file once, saving gets much quicker. To do a fast save while you’re working, choose File ⇒ Save or, even faster, press Ctrl+S.

On larger projects, however, you may not want to continually overwrite the same file. In those cases, it’s often more favorable to save progressive versions of your project as you work on it. You can open the File Browser and type a new name for each version — but it’s slow. Often, when people save versions of a project file, they usually append a number to the end of the filename (for example, file1.blend, file2.blend, file3.blend, and so on). Blender knows this habit and aims to help you out.

      

The ultra-fast way is with the following hotkey sequence: Shift+Ctrl+S ⇒ Numpad Plus (+) ⇒ Enter. Pressing Numpad Plus (+) while in the File Browser automatically appends that number to your filename for you. And if the file already has a number, it increments it by one. For logical consistency, pressing Numpad Minus (–) decrements that value. How’s that for speedy? If you prefer to use your mouse, you can also perform the same function in the File Browser by left-clicking the Plus (+) and Minus (–) buttons after the filename text field.

      Opening a file

       Opening a .blend file is a straightforward task. Choose File ⇒ Open or press Ctrl+O. The File Browser opens again and allows you to choose which file you want to load. To load the file, left-click the filename and click the Open Blender File button in the upper right corner. If you have a large monitor and you don’t want to move your mouse that far or you’re just interested in speedy shortcuts, you can quickly select and open a file by double-clicking it.

      Blender also gives you the ability to append datablocks from external .blend files. This is a bit of an advanced topic, but if you want to know more, I cover it on this book’s supplemental website (blenderbasics.com).

Part 2

      Creating Detailed 3D Scenes

IN THIS PART …

      Working with vertices, modifiers, and meshes

      Making 3D models with Sculpt mode

      Modifying curves and surfaces

      Manipulating materials

      Constructing textures

      Employing (and enjoying!) lighting