Blender 3D Animation

Short Animation Movie done by Blender
http://www.elephantsdream.org


List of places to find models for Blender:

• http://www.3dcafe.com/
  
• http://resources.blogscopia.com/ "Furniture models in the native Blender file format"
  
• http://www.e-interiors.net "Lost of pictures and free models of furniture. Most files are in 3DS or DXF file formats "
  
• http://www.linestudio.com "More furniture models and scenes already in Blender native file format"
  
• http://blender-archi.tuxfamily.org/Models "Collection of models to be used in Blender for Architectural Visualization, all in the Blender native file format"
  
• http://www.katorlegaz.com/
  
• http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse
  

External render engine which can be integrated with Blender:

• Indigo Render: www.indigorender.com
  
• Kerythea: http://www.kerythea.net/
  
• Sunflower: www.sunflow.sourceforge.net/
  
• Pov-Ray: www.povray.org
  
• YafRay: www.yafray.org

Split Area, Join Areas, Add Header

To create Multiple windows in Blender, just simply place the mouse cursor at the border of a window, the cursor will change into a double arrow. Right-click and choose split window from the menu, and a division will be created.

• Vertical: Click on the uppper or lower border of a window to create a vertical division.
  
• Horizontal: Click on the right and left border of a window, to creat a horizontal division.
  

Merge Windows (Join Areas)
Click on Join Areas and a big arrow will show which two windows will be joined together.

Add or Remove Header
When you left-click with your mouse over the border of a window, you will have 2 options: NoHeader AddHeader. To choose the position of the Header and place it at the top or bottom of a window, right-click an existing Header, and a small menu will appear. With this menu, we can choose the position of the Header. There's an option to remove a specifc Header too.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Selecting Object
To Select a single object, just right-click on the object. To add another object to the selection, just press SHIFT and right-click on another object.

• Hit A key to select all objects. This is valid even when we are dealing with the selection of vertices, edges and faces on objects.
  
• Hit B key to select multiple objects with Box Select. (only with 3D View as the active window) After pressing the B Key, click-hold on Left mouse button to drag marquee around the objects that you want to select. Press A key to remove objects from selection. Press B key twice and it will turn on the Pencil Select. Mouse cursor will turn into a circle, which we can use to "paint" the selection. Left-click and drag the cursor to select anything that touches the selction circle. If you right-click and drag the cursoe over any selected object, it will remove this object from the selection. + and - keys will control the size of the selection of the circl similarly to scrolling the mouse wheel. (will not work in Objecy Mode)

Selecting by Name
When more complex scenes come by, the number of objects on your screen will increase dramatically. Therefore selecting one specific object will become more difficult. Name objects with a proper name so that it will be easier for user to search and select them by name. To select objects by name go to a window call Outliner. It will show a list of objects that we can select from. In Outliner, three icons can be found inside the window which allow us to control a few properties of the objects:

• Eye: Control the visiblity of the object. If the eye is open, object will be visible, if it's closed, object is hidden. Right-click to open or close eye.
  
• Cursor: Right-click to turn on or off the cursor, if this cursor is turn off, we wont be able to select the object in the 3D view.


• Landscape: With this control, we can determine if the object will show up in render.

Renaming Objects

To rename an object, use the Panel(F9) called 'Editing'. Then rename. We can use the Outliner to rename objects too. Hold down the CTRL key and right-click on the name object to rename.

Cursor Snap
3D Cursor determines the place where the objects are created. It become the center for object transformations. Eg. Rotation. Cursor Snap works with 3D cursor and selected objects, we can use a Snap options to place cursor in some specific places. (Press SHIFT+S to open CursorSnap) With these options, it's easier for us to place the 3D cursor and the selected objects in specific places.

• Selection Grid: Aligns the selcted objects with the grid lines.
• Selection Cursor: Align selected object with the 3D Cursor. This way, the selected object will be moved, so it's centre point is placed at the center of the cursor.
• Cursor Grid: Aligns the 3D Cursor with the grid lines.
• Cursor Selection: Move the 3D Cursor to the centre of the selected object.
• Selection Center: Move the selected objects to the geometric center of the selection.