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Complete
Blender Tutorial using Blender 3D 2.49
www.blender.org

Absolute beginner to Intermediate

By Brendan Cherry
Lbfilms1.webs.com

NOTE: If this is your first time at using Blender, I suggest that you follow the whole
tutorial. I apologise for the order of how I present each area. It is really hard to tell
when I should tell each part because I want to tell as much as possible.
Covered in this Tutorial
Keyboard Shortcuts
Setting up the screen
Basic editing
Advanced basic editing
Lamps
Texturing (colouring), bump mapping
Object editing
Making an object smooth
Making bones (armature)
Weight painting
Making keyframes
Making a game
Rendering

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1
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3
3
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4
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5
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6
7
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Keyboard Shortcuts
Object Mode
Space
G
Shift D
X
Shift X
Ctrl C
Ctrl V
Ctrl Z
R
S

to add and basically everything else

grab
duplicate
delete
New
copy
paste
undo
Rotate
scale

N
Ctrl J
Ctrl P
A
B
I
Tab

an objects properties
join objects
parent objects
select all/deselect
highlight select
insert key frame
switch to edit mode

Edit Mode
Mostly the same
E
extrude (make area bigger)
W
subdivide

Basics
Setting up the screen
To set up the screen, for an animators perspective, you can right click on the divider
down the bottom between the 3D view and the buttons window.
Click, split area. A line will appear. Wherever you click it will split the area in two.
This way you can have several different angles of the animation. If you click on view,
there is a list of different angles including whether you want it to be orthographic or
perspective. You can also just rotate your angle by pressing MMB or hold shift and
MMB to just pan instead of rotate. I prefer four different views camera, top, side
and front.

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-2If you go to the top of the screen you can drag the barrier down and here you have
some settings. If you click on views and controls, you can click on view name and in
the corner of each view, it will display which angle it is and the type. In this area you
can also change which mouse button selects and a few other personal things. Also,
click, emulate numpad under the System and openGL tab. This allows you to change
camera angles with the numbers on your keyboard.
If you like how it looks, you can click file, save default settings. This will make the
screen how it is at the moment also load that way. Just a quick word of warning,
Blender does not automatically save, so if you click the X, you will lose
everything.

Basic Editing
To add an object, hit space, add, mesh. Here there are some options of different
objects plane, cube, circle, sphere, cylinder, and monkey. The monkey is just sort of
a premade character to get you started. The red and white circle is where the object
will be added. Add an object and just get used to the controls. Hit G to move the
object, R to rotate and S to change the overall size. Zoom in with the scroll and hold in
the MMB to pan and move around your object.
Somewhere on your screen there will probably be a camera. It looks like a funny
pyramid with a triangular flap on the top. If you have a camera view, move the
camera around and watch the angle change.
Somewhere on your screen there will also probably be a light. This is black dot with
and line around with dotted lines around that. If you change to textured mode, in the
camera view, and move the light, you will see the shadows around the cube (object)
changing.

While Im at it, Ill explain the bar below each view. On the far side you have the
view changer. Clicking here will change from timeline, to 3D view, to text editor and
lots more. Clicking changes the view of the 3D view, and other options including
importing a background image to trace around. Select doesnt get used much so I
Blender Tutorial

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-3wont cover it. Object does just about all the things listed in the keyboard shortcuts
area. Under object mode, depending what you have selected, you can change the view
to the area where you edit and other modes covered later. The funny circle switches
the way you look at the object, whether it recognises your textures, the lights and
other things around it. Im unaware what the next area does, so Im pretty sure that it
might be advanced and you wont need it for a while. The next small area says how
everything is viewed on the screen. Turning the hand off will get rid of X, Y and Z
lines if they are in the way. The others just change whether you are moving, rotating
or scaling the object. Where it says global is where you can change to your preference
of the 3D lines (Im wouldnt have a clue what there real name is!). If you MMB
sideways, you can see other options that are hidden from view. These others,
however, arent very important and I wont bother explaining them.
Advanced basic editing
Dont ask what the title of this section means, Im intrigued as well.
To change the basic shape of an object, lengthways and so on, click S. I know Ive
covered this, but if you then click, X, Y, or Z, then it will only alter the object on this
axis. The same happens with grapping and rotating.
(If you have no camera, click space, add, camera.)
Lamps
To add a light, click space, add, lamp. Here you have a choice of different types of
lights. The sun is like a global light and the spot and lamp are more of a specific area
type of light. If you want to change the intensity, RMB (or LMB depending on your
settings) on your lamp. In the buttons window, generally down the bottom, click on
the sphere on the right hand side (this may already be selected). Then click on the
light picture on the right side. Under lamp, you can change the amount of energy
emitted, the colour of the lamp and the shape. To the right, under shadow and spot,
you can change the shadow colour and how soft it is. Dont worry about the far right
area for the moment.
Texturing(colouring) and bump mapping basic to advanced
If you select your mesh(object) and click on the sphere (shadings) in the buttons menu
and then on the red sphere (material buttons) on the other side. Click, add new. Here
you can add texture and colour to your object. To add a colour, go to the materials tab
and click the top of the three white rectangles. Here you can adjust the colour. On the
right of the box that pops up you can also change the amount of the colour and type in
the code if you know one. Still in the materials tab, at the top there are bunch of
buttons you can click. Clicking on the shadeless button will make the object become
unaffected by the lamps.
Under mirror, transparency, you can choose if other materials reflect off your object.
If you click on ray mirror button and adjust the ray mirror amount, it will change the
amount of reflection. For example, if you make the amount 1, then it will be basically
a mirror. To the right is the transparency which has similar controls but just makes it
transparent.
To add a picture to the object, click on the army type of square which is titled if you
hover over it, texture
buttons.. On texture
type, change it to
image. On the far right, click load. A window will pop up in one of your views. Here

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-4you can choose your picture. As far as I know it accept all picture types including
.psd!(Adobe Photoshop). The two arrows part chooses the drive and the P is basically
the up button. This will make the object have this exact colour and texture.
If you want to bump map, which is making bumps on the object based on a picture.
Load another picture and go back into the material buttons. On the far right side, click
on the texture that you have loaded and then click map input. By the way, by holding
shift when pressing the value of something or the name, you can type in your own
name/value. It helps if you name the texture so that you dont add the wrong things to
the wrong textures. After clicking map to unclick on the col (colour) button. Instead
click on the nor (normal) button. This will map the texture to the bump map of the
object. If you click the nor button twice it will turn yellow which will invert the bump
map. This effect works better with greyscale images. Slightly further to the right, you
can change the amount of (under nor) the bumping. 20 will make massive bumps and
0.5 will make small, almost unnoticeable changes.

Object Editing
This is where you learn to make the actual shape of a character. Click on the object
that you wish to edit. Switch to edit mode (tab).

If you have a basic cube, it will have 8 subdivisions - one in each corner. Press A to
deselect (its selected when the lines are yellow). If you want to make a basic human
or something, or just make something longer, press B and highlight the vertices that
you want to edit. Press E and select region. As you move the mouse away from the
vertices, you will notice that it will sort of grow. This is known as extruding. Then
you can move these sideways and make a curve and other interesting shapes. Another
way of doing this is at the start pressing W and subdivide the layer several times. This
will just make a lot of vertices. A lot of Blender is just trial and error.
If you want to add a completely new object, make sure that you are in object mode or
it will add that new object as part of the current one that you are editing. A bit
confusing, heh!?

Making something smooth

When you have edited everything, the joints in your object will be very straight and
exact and so your object may not look very real. To make your object smooth, click
on your object and in the buttons window click editing
or the
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-5funny square with yellow vertices. On the far right, under modifiers, click add and go
right to the top and click subsurf. This will make the object and little more curvy. If
you make the render levels go up (most is 6, but if you need more {weird!} then just
add the modifier again) it will become slightly more curvy. Note this makes your
computer go quite a lot slower for a tiny bit, so be careful. To make it smooth, go to
the far left under links and materials, and click set smooth.

Making Bones
Making bones lets you control your character in a more natural way. Add you bone
(armature) near your object by pressing space, add, armature. After making sure that
the bone is at the same level as the object, click X-ray in the bones editing area (see
above). This will make it so that you can see through the object to the bone. Dont
worry; you wont see it when doing your final render. Change to Edit Mode and press
E to make another bone connected this one. Move it to another important limb. Do
this until your whole body has bones. Change back to Object Mode and select your
object. Then shift select the bones. Press Ctrl P which parents them. Choose armature
which should pop automatically and then click away. Click on the bones and try
moving them. The whole object should move with it. If it doesnt, maybe you should
(Ctrl Z) undoing it a couple of times and try parenting them again. The next process
which cannot be skipped his weight painting.

Weight Painting
Weight painting is the process of linking bones and an object together so that they
will move fluently. To weight paint, you will have needed to have completed the
Making Bones section. The process of weight painting is linking one part of your
overall bone to a selected part of the object. This way you can move the body using
just the bones and not having to totally edit the object or having separate objects. The
following steps should be followed very strictly as the area pretty much needs to be
exactly right if you want it to look good.
Ok, lets get started. Select your bones (armature) and change to pose mode. It has a
funny smile face (if it isnt there, then you probably havent selected the bones). In
this area you can select an individual bone out of the full bone. Select the bone that is
the most out (as in the furthest one, one with only one other bone touching it [sorry
this is a lot better on a video tutorial, but youre going to just have to bear with me]).
Now change back to object mode and then select your object. Change to weight paint
mode. The whole object should be blue. If it isnt, try clicking the F key which is
painting masking. This seems to work for me. Now paint the area around the bone.
Make sure you do not get any paint on a part that you dont want it. If you do,
you will need to redo it as this is very important when you get to animating. When
you are painting the area should turn red. If you only put a tiny bit of paint there,
then it will be green or orange. Keep painting until it is totally red. This means that
the bone is fully controlled by the bone. Repeat for each bone. Itll tale a while, but I
think its worth it.

Blender Tutorial

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-6Change to pose mode when the bones are selected and try rotating the bone that is
controlling a part that you have weight painted. If you dont see any funny sticky out
bits of the object, then you have weight painted well. If little parts of the object stay
where they are, then you might have to edit your weight paint again. You wont need
to start again because it will have saved it.

Making keyframes
After you have made all your characters and scenery, you will want to make them
move about. Position the camera in a position that you like and then you are ready to
begin. Note: you can adapt all the following things to the camera so you can have
camera movements. Position your character in a place where you like it and make
sure that anything that you dont want in the scene is off the camera view.
Once you are happy with the position of everything, select your
object that you wish to animate. If you have bones, I will cover that
a little later but his part is still relevant. In one of the windows,
change it to the timeline. Make sure the big green line is at frame 1.
Remember 25 frames (30 in America, 24 in film, or if you have altered
this in the rendering area see rendering) is one second. Press I and
press LocRotScale. This will lock the position, rotation and size at
what it is at that moment. If you choose one of the other options, it will just lock the
position or rotation and if you alter other parts it will the change the whole thing.
Move the green line over to about frame 20 or something and then move your
character to a new position. Then click I, LocRotScale again. Repeat this process until
you are happy. Then do the same with other objects in the scene. Once youve done
this, you can render.
Animating with bones isnt very hard. After weight painting, you can do this part.
You need to really make sure that you weight painted correctly and well. After
selecting the bones (armature), change to Pose mode. This is where you will do all of
the animating. Select an individual bone that you wish to move. By selecting a bone
and pressing R or G you can move the bone. The object should move with it. If you
click Auto IK in the bones editing area
and then press G when
moving a bone, it will make the movement of the bone slightly more realistic and
fluent. Just like with normal keyframing, press I, LocRotScale and then move the
timeline onwards. (This time however, it is safer to press A twice so that every bone is
selected and then keyframing it.) After mixing this with normal keyframing, you
should be able to render it. Make sure you check every couple frames to make sure
they worked properly.
An interesting way to animate is by changing one window to the Ipo Curve Editor.
Here you can edit each of your changes of an object to an exact amount. By moving
the curves, you can edit the amount of rotation and so on. By pressing G you can
change the amount. A tip if there are a lot of changes is to zoom in by scrolling MMB.
To go sideways at the zoomed in level, hold MMB down and push sideways. The
same works in the Action Editor, Buttons Window and Timeline.

Blender Tutorial

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By Brendan Cherry

-7Making a game
Making a game isnt hard as you might think. This will be a fairly basic tutorial as I
havent explored the gaming area in great depth. For this tutorial, I will be just using
the default cube. If it isnt there, space, add, mesh, cube. Then add a plane underneath
it. Hit S and scale it up. This plane is because we are going to add gravity, so the cube
needs to land on something. Select the cube and open the logic panel. This is where
you can set all of your controls (the little purple pacman). To add gravity, where it
says static, click to bring it up and select dynamic. Other options such as soft body
make the object bouncy and other interesting effects.
Move to the right a little. It will say sensors. Next to where it says cube, select add.
This is where you decide what you click to create an effect. For now I will just say
how to move around. Where it says always, change it to keyboard. Where it says key,
click on the blank space next to it and it will say press a key. Press the key that you
wish to use. In this case, Im going to press the up arrow key. Then, under
controllers, hit add. In this area, you dont need to change any of the settings. Under
Actuators, click add. In the Loc (location) row, change the second one to 0.1 or 0.2.
This is an appropriate speed. You can easily change this later on. Now link the sensor
and controller together with the yellow button by dragging and clicking and the same
with controller and actuator.
Now up in your 3D view, hit P. This will start your game. Press the up arrow to see if
this works. If it does, play around for a bit and then press the exit button on your
keyboard to exit the game. Adapt the same idea for going backwards, except instead
of typing 0.1, type -0.1. So now it will do the opposite to the forward arrow. Of
course, remember to change it so it is the backward arrow key. For left and right, the
best way to do it, is to adapt the same thing, except in the actuators area, change it to
the third rotation one. For turning left, it is a positive number and obviously turning
right is a negative. You can muck around with these settings and I believe that by
changing the actuator type to camera, you can the camera to follow the character. This
however, I have not tried and cannot guarantee that it will work.
Thats about all there is to basic game making. If you want textures, you will need to
change to textured mode for it to work.

Rendering
Still Frame Rendering
There are two basic areas of rendering, still frame rendering and a whole movie of
rendering. Rendering is basically exporting something so that it can be viewed
elsewhere without Blender or when you want to see what is really happening on your
screen. Even rendering one frame could stuff your computer, so I at the very, very
ultimate least, have 512MB ram and a good processor. The best is to have about 4GB
ram. When you render something, it will bring up the current frame from the cameras
perspective. That is why it is good to have the camera has one of your views. If there
is no camera, space, add, camera. The reason that you would still frame render is to
see if a texture has been loaded correctly or if the reflection of an object is working.

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-8The below two pictures are the same frame, just rendered and non-rendered. The right
one is the rendered one as it has shadows, reflections, correct lighting and not funny
lines in the way.

To do a still frame render as shown above right, click F12. A window will open
depending on the size of your render. It may take a couple of minutes to render this
frame, depending on the amount of elements. Note, you cannot click the escape button
until it has finished. The only one to close is to force close. Ctrl Alt Del, Task
Manager for windows users and end task. If you havent had experience with task
manager, then I think this tutorial may be a bit advanced for you or you just have a
really good computer.
If you want to change the size of the render, click on scene, or the funny scenery type
button.
To the far right under format, you can change
the size, frame rate, type and whether it is colour or black and white (RGB and BW).
On the right even further are some presets. I use HD or PAL 16:9 because I live in
Australia and 16:9 is my preferred ratio. HD is high definition for anyone who doesnt
know and NTSC is what American people use. If anyone doesnt know, 16:9 (PAL:
1280:720) is what most films are shot in today. HD comes standard as 16:9
(1920:1080).
(The size in the below settings is just what Im using for this demo project to save rendering time.)

Movie Rendering
To render a full film

(although hopefully it isnt really over one hour [90,000 frames!] or you will have a

month of rendering probably more),

you will need to have already made some keyframes.

After choosing your preferred format, you can get some other settings ready. AVI
Raw is the best file to use that Ive come up with, but it makes a very large file and so
you may need to compress it later on. Other formats include Quicktime and various
different image formats to export each frame to a separate image (JPEG, PNG, BMP
etc). Choose if you want the animation to be Black and White (BW) or colour (RGB).
Im sorry to say that Im not sure what RGBA is but RGB is good enough.

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-9Now move over to the far right where it says Output. At the top folder, which
probably says /tmp\, click on it and a folder browser will pop up. Choose where you
want to save. For help with using this window read the texturing area above. Name it
and click Select Output Pictures. This should load immediately, so if doesnt dont
worry about clicking it again. If it still doesnt change, you may need to wait.
Remember, Blender doesnt automatically save. The other settings are personal per
person that you will probably never even glance at.
Under the Render tab there really arent any things that you need to change unless you
want to have motion blur. I am unaware if this works though, as it never works for
me. Finally under Anim choose the first and last frame that you want to render. It will
automatically end at 250 so you may need to change it down to something like 100.
Depending on your quality, each frame could take from one to five minutes to render,
so make sure someone else doesnt need the computer! Finally click the big button
that says Anim. Sit back and watch your animation rendering (very slowly) or go to a
mates or something to keep you occupied. Make sure that you dont minimize
Blender: Render because it may pause rendering. And this could be annoying.
Thats about all there is to rendering in Blender.

This is about all I know from beginner to intermediate in Blender. Continuing things
worth checking out include water and fire simulations and figuring out what other
hidden buttons do. Thanks for looking at this tutorial; I hope that you have learnt
something. Check out lbfilms1.webs.com for more info.

Blender Tutorial

lbfilms1.webs.com

By Brendan Cherry