Blender For Dummies. Jason van Gumster
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.blend
files as reminders so I don’t have to mentally keep track of every random design decision I made while working.
Blender’s annotation feature gives you the ability to leave these kinds of notes in your .blend
files, right in the editor you’re working in. The controls for annotations are at the bottom of the View tab of the Sidebar. Expand the Annotations panel and you should see a button labeled New. Click that button and the panel will expand to look like what’s shown in Figure 2-11.
The list box can hold multiple layers of annotations. By default Blender pre-populates this list box with a single layer named Note. To the left of the layer is a color swatch that dictates the color of any annotations on that layer. Add and remove layers by using the plus and minus buttons to the right of the list box. Below the layer list box is a Thickness slider that controls the thickness of any annotations you make on that layer.
The easiest way to make a new annotation is to use the Annotate tool in the Toolbar. Activate this tool by clicking and you’re instantly able to start writing and drawing in your 3D Viewport on your active annotation layer. If you hold down your mouse button while clicking the Annotate tool in the Toolbar, you also get options to draw lines, polygons, and erase.
FIGURE 2-11: The Annotations panel in the View tab of the Sidebar is where you control how your annotations look in the 3D Viewport.
Technically, you can even animate your annotations (for giving feedback on animated work). You just need to scrub forward on the Timeline and make a new annotation mark. Your annotations will update on playback as you change to those frames. You can adjust the timing of your annotations from the Grease Pencil context of the Dope Sheet.
Don’t know how to do something? Hooray for fully integrated search!
The benefit here is that if you know the operation you want to perform, but don’t know where to go in Blender’s interface to access it, you can simply search for that operator and perform it immediately. How’s that for awesome?
The fastest way to access Blender’s integrated search feature from any editor is to press F3. A blank menu with a search field at the top appears. From here, simply start typing the name of the operator you want, and Blender updates the menu with search results that match what you’ve typed. Furthermore, if a hotkey is associated with that operation, it shows up to the right of the operator name in the menu so that you can remember the hotkey in the future. As an example, open the search menu (F3) and type save. As you type, the menu updates with operations within Blender that relate to saving.
Using the integrated search feature is a great way to familiarize yourself with the way Blender works, even more so if you’re migrating from another program. In that case, you know the terminology for what you want to do; you just have to find out how Blender does it. Figure 2-12 shows Blender’s integrated search menu.
FIGURE 2-12: Blender’s integrated search menu is a great way to get familiar with Blender’s operators.
Customizing Blender to Fit You
You can tweak Blender’s screen layout, known as a workspace, to virtually any configuration you can imagine. However, Blender’s customization features go much deeper than just readjusting the areas in a Blender window. With a little time and effort, you can completely overhaul Blender to be as comfortable of a work environment as possible. This ability to customize is especially useful for people who are migrating to Blender from other 3D graphics programs. I won’t say that you can make Blender behave exactly like any of these other programs, but sometimes little things like using the same keyboard shortcuts help make the transition smoother.
Using preset workspaces
You can make a variety of workspaces depending on the sort of work you’re doing. By default, Blender comes with a variety of preset workspaces, broken up into five major categories: General, 2D Animation, Sculpting, VFX, and Video Editing. Each category has two or more workspaces to choose from, with a few workspaces available in multiple categories. To see all the categories and workspaces available, click on the plus (+) tab at the end of the series of workspace tabs at the top of your Blender window.
Once you click on the plus tab, you should be greeted with a menu like the one shown in Figure 2-13.
The following sections give a quick breakdown of each workspace per category.