Blender For Dummies. Jason van Gumster

scene in render layers, useful for compositing (see Chapter 15) different render outputs into a final image. The properties in this section give you control over organizing your render layers.

      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.

       “Object Data” is a generic term. Think of this section as properties based on what you've got selected. Even the icon for Object Data Properties changes depending on your selection. For example, if you have a camera object selected, these would be Camera Properties and the icon for this section looks like a camera. If you have a curve object selected, the icon looks like a curve and you'd think of this section as Curve Properties.

      ✔ 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 8.

      ✔ Particles: In computer graphics, particle systems are often used to create special effects or manage the behavior of groups of objects. This subsection of the Properties editor is where you manage particle systems in Blender. Working with particles is a pretty advanced topic. Chapter 13 gives you a brief introduction to the possibilities that they have.

      ✔ Physics: In the spirit of making your computer do as much work for you as possible, having the computer simulate physical behavior in your objects is sometimes helpful. It lends realism to animations and can often help you work faster. The Physics properties subsection gives you controls for simulating physics on your objects. See Chapter 13 for more on these topics.

      Customizing Blender to Fit You

      You can tweak Blender's screen layout to virtually any configuration you can imagine. However, Blender's customization features go much deeper than just readjusting the areas in a Blender window. There are very few parts of Blender that, with a little time and effort, you can't completely overhaul 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.

       Although this section gives you the means to completely bend Blender's interface to your will, bear in mind that unless otherwise specified, this book relies on the default settings that ship with Blender. Unless you can remember your customized behaviors, it may be more helpful to use Blender's default settings (File⇒Load Factory Settings).

Using screen layout presets

You can make a variety of layouts depending on the sort of work you're doing. In Blender, these workspace layouts are called screens, and, by default, Blender comes with nine presets: 3D View Full, Animation, Compositing, Default, Game Logic, Motion Tracking, Scripting, UV Editing, and Video Editing. When you first load Blender, you’re in the Default screen layout. You can cycle through these screens by pressing Ctrl+← and Ctrl+→. If you prefer to use a menu, you can use the datablock (for more on datablocks, see the “Understanding datablocks” sidebar in this chapter) at the top of the window in the Info editor, as shown in Figure 2-2, and left-click the screen icon next to the name of the current screen layout.

       Figure 2-2: The Screens menu.

       You can rename any screen to any name by switching to that screen and left-clicking its name in the Screens datablock. Get used to the idea of naming everything in your projects. Trust me, being in the habit of using a reasonable name makes life infinitely easier. It's especially true when you come back to an old project and you need to figure out what everything is.

       The screens, and therefore the order that they're cycled through when you press Ctrl+← or Ctrl+→, are arranged in alphabetical and numerical order, for fast and logical organization. If you want to cheat a bit, you can give a specific order to the list by putting a number in front of each screen's name (such as 1-Default, 2-Animation, and so on).

      To create a new screen, left-click the plus icon next to the current screen name in the Info editor's header. Upon clicking this icon, Blender produces a duplicate of your existing screen layout. From here, you can make the changes to create your own custom layout, such as a materials editing layout or a multi-monitor layout with a separate window for each of your monitors.

      You can also delete screens (including the default ones that ship with Blender, so be careful) by clicking the button with the X icon to the right of the Screen datablock. When