Movie Clip Editor: Currently, the Movie Clip Editor is the primary go-to editor for Blender's motion tracking features. Motion tracking is a process where the software analyzes moving parts of a video in an effort to relate them to 3D space. With video that's been successfully motion tracked, you can integrate 3D models into recorded video. Have you ever wondered how they get computer-generated monsters to look like they're in the same room as living actors? Motion tracking!
✔ Text Editor (Shift+F11): Blender's integrated Text Editor is not only handy for keeping notes about your scenes and models, but once you become a more advanced user, it's also a convenient place to write and test your own Python scripts and material shaders in Blender.
✔ Node Editor (Shift+F3): Blender has a Node Editor for materials and textures, as well as for compositing. This editor is where you modify these node structures. Cycles, a relatively new rendering engine that's integrated into Blender, makes heavy use of the node editor for its materials and lighting.
Chapters 7–9 cover Cycles extensively.
✔ Logic Editor (Shift+F2): Blender has a game engine integrated with it, allowing you to create your own custom video games directly within Blender. The Logic Editor is how you control and design the behavior in your game.
The following two editors aren't easily classified in any of the other categories, so they've found themselves at the end of the list. That doesn't make them any less useful, so it's still worth knowing what they are and what they do:
✔ File Browser: This editor allows you to look through the files on your computer. It also allows you to look at the innards of your Blender projects to see how things are structured or for linking to other projects.
✔ Python Console (Shift+F4): The Console is a pretty handy editor that's more often utilized by advanced users to help write custom Python scripts. It's a “live” console where you can use the Python language to directly issue commands to Blender.
Understanding the Properties editor
After the 3D View, the Properties editor is probably the second-most used editor type in Blender. You use buttons and values in this editor to modify the attributes of your scene and elements within it. Because this editor can manipulate so many parts of a scene, it's broken down and organized into a series of subsections.
✔ Render: The Render properties determine what the final output of your scene will look like when you decide to render it to an image or video. Chapters 14 and 15 cover these properties in more depth.
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If you use the Freestyle edge renderer, this section also contains those properties.
✔ Scene: These general properties dictate the nature of your scene, including things like the active camera, units of measurement, and the strength of gravity if you're using simulated physics.
✔ World: The buttons and values in the World properties subsection control the environment that your scene is built in. They have a large influence on the final output of your scene.
✔ Object: Any object in your scene is going to have its own set of properties that you can modify. The Object properties subsection allows you to make changes that affect an object as it relates to the scene.
✔ Object Constraints: When working in 3D – particularly with animation – it's often useful to constrain the properties of one object to that of another. Constraints automate parts of your scene and help make it much more manageable. Chapter 10 goes into constraints more deeply.
✔ Modifiers: A lot of work goes into building 3D models, so it's to your benefit to take advantage of your computer and have it do as much work for you as possible. Let it take care of boring procedural steps like mirroring parts of your object or making it smoother while you focus on the more interesting steps in the process. Modifiers are great tools to facilitate these kinds of healthy shortcuts, and allow for more advanced uses in animation. This subsection is where you manage those modifiers. You can find out more about modifiers in Chapter 5.
✔ Object Data: Like the previous four subsections, buttons and values in Object Data properties change slightly depending on what sort of object you’ve selected, but their primary purpose is to give you the ability to work with the fundamental structural elements of your object.
✔ Bone: The Bone properties subsection is only available if your active selection is an Armature object. Armatures, sometimes called skeletons in other programs, are used for animation in Blender and they consist of a set of bone sub-objects. Bone properties are where you can adjust attributes of a specific bone that you've selected in the armature.
✔ Bone Constraints: Similar to the Object Constraints properties, this subsection helps you manage constraints. The difference, however, is that this subsection is only available if your active selection is an Armature in Pose Mode and it's for managing constraints on bones, rather than objects. Chapters 10 and 11 cover constraints and the use of constraints on bones.
✔ Material: The controls in Material properties allow you to dramatically change the appearance of objects in your scene. Chapter 7 goes into this subsection in much more detail.
✔ Texture: Textures can have a profound effect on how the surface of your 3D objects appear, making smooth, clean objects look rough, gritty, and believable. You can also use textures as custom brushes when painting and sculpting in Blender. This subsection is where you can edit those textures. You can find out more on texturing in Chapter
