Blender For Dummies. Jason van Gumster
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Working in Edit Mode and Object Mode
IN THIS CHAPTER
When working on a scene in Blender, your life revolves around repeatedly selecting objects, transforming them, editing them, and relating them to one another. You regularly shift from dealing with your model in Object mode to doing refinements in Edit mode.
And this process isn’t only for modeling, but also for most of the other heavy tasks performed in Blender. Therefore, you can reuse the skills you pick up in this chapter in parts of Blender that have nothing to do with 3D modeling, such as animating, rigging, compositing, and motion tracking. Even if you don’t know how to do something, chances are good that if you think like Blender thinks, you’ll be able to make a successful guess.
Making Changes by Using Edit Mode
Moving primitive objects around is fun and all, but you’re interested in getting in there and completely changing the primitive objects that ship with Blender (described in detail in this chapter) to match your vision. You want to do 3D modeling. Well, you’re in the right place. This section introduces you to Edit mode, a concept that’s deeply embedded throughout Blender for editing objects. Even though this section is focused mostly on polygon modeling, also called mesh editing, most of the same principles apply for editing curves, surfaces, armatures, and even text.
Switching between Object mode and Edit mode
In Chapter 3, you do just about everything in Object mode. As its name indicates, Object mode is where you work with whole objects. However, Object mode isn’t very useful for actually changing the internal structure of your object. For example, select the cube in the default scene. You know that you can turn it into a more rectangular shape by scaling it along one of the axes. But what if you want to turn the cube into a pyramid? You need to modify the actual components that make up the cube. These changes are made by entering Edit mode.
There are a handful of different ways you can get to Edit mode. To get there by menu, left-click the Interaction Mode button in the 3D Viewport’s header. It should say Object Mode right now, because that’s the mode you’re currently in. From the drop-down menu that appears, select Edit Mode (see Figure 4-1). Be aware that if you’re working with an object other than a mesh, such as an armature, the contents of this menu may vary slightly to relate more to that object. However, with the exception of Empties (see Chapter 11), Lights, Cameras, and Speakers, all objects have an Edit mode.
FIGURE 4-1: On the left, the Mode button allows you to switch between Object mode and Edit mode for a selected object. On the right, the mode selection pie menu.
As Figure 4-2 shows, the Modeling workspace doesn’t really look all that different from the Layout workspace. It’s basically the same area configuration, minus the Timeline at the bottom and with a little more space for the Properties editor. That said, there’s a lot of value in using the right workspace for the job. A good workflow would be to select the object you want to work on in the Layout workspace and then jump over to the Modeling workspace (you can get there by hotkey using Ctrl+PageDown) to edit the components of your model in Edit mode. And after you’re done, you can pop back over to the Layout workspace (Ctrl+PageUp) to pick another object to work on in Object mode.
Selecting vertices, edges, and faces
Regardless of how you get into Edit mode, once you’re there the cube changes color and dots form at each of the cube’s corners. Each dot is a vertex. The line that forms between two vertices is an edge. A face in Blender is a polygon that has been formed by three or more connecting edges.
FIGURE 4-2: The Modeling workspace gives you quick access to Edit mode and a screen layout that’s more specifically geared for modeling.