The 3D view only shows an approximation of the final appearance of the scene. The 3D view is designed to respond to blender reset 3d cursor actions at interactive speeds. You use viewports any time you need an up-to-date view of the scene you're working on. Go on a scavenger hunt and see what you can find in a simple viewport. It is the manipulator, also known as the 3D transform widget. Initially this is the global coordinate system. Press Esc to cancel any tool action. It is the 3D Cursor, which indicates where newly-created objects will appear in the scene. In the Lower Left Corner 4. It is the mini axis, and its orientation matches that of the global coordinate system, with the usual conventions: red for X, green for Y and blue for Z. In the Upper Left Corner 6. This tells you which mode the viewport is in. To the Right of Center 7. A black round thing that resembles a sun symbol This represents a lamp, a light source for the scene. A pyramidal wireframe item This represents a camera, a viewpoint that can be used for rendering. It too, is an object. The camera is looking at the base of the pyramid. The solid triangle attached to one side of the base is to remind you which way is up in the image that the camera takes. blender reset 3d cursor On a small display, the camera might initially lie outside of the viewport and thus be invisible. A dark gray background, divided into squares by lighter lines. Blender lets you choose your scene scale in the Scene tab of the Properties Panel. Three mutually perpendicular coloured lines associated with the grid floor: the red and green ones lying horizontally in the floor and the blue one running vertically. These are the global coordinate axes for orienting your scene. Red is the X-axis, green the Y-axis, and blue the Z-axis. Sometimes it's not obvious which mode is active. This leads to mode errors where Blender will do something you didn't expect because you thought it was in one mode and it was actually in another. It helps to recognize the common modes and how to get out of them. These modes are also indicated by a menu in the 3D View header. You can use this menu to change modes. These modes are a setting shared by all 3D View windows. In other words, when you change the mode in one window, any other 3D View windows change mode also. They do not affect renders. If you're unsure what the difference is, please review and. Note this perspective versus orthographic setting for the 3D viewport is completely separate from the similar setting in the camera properties. So why have a separate setting for the 3D view. Because certain aspects of modelling are easier in one view than another. If the final render will be using perspective, then showing perspective in the 3D view naturally gives you a better idea of how the final render will look. But perspective foreshortening can sometimes make it hard to ensure the model has the proper shape, which is why there is the option to switch to orthographic view. Additional techniques blender reset 3d cursor be covered later in this module. You can increase the magnification, but the viewpoint's location doesn't change. For this reason, you cannot zoom into or through objects in orthographic mode. The viewpoint can pass through objects, but can't pass beyond this point, no matter what you do. Zooming only gets slower and slower and slower. If the center of the viewport is somewhere you don't expect, zooming may appear to be broken. In this way you'll see that it really is a cube, centered on the origin, half above the X-Y plane and half below it. If this is all very confusing for you, don't worry. You'll learn as you get more experience. You may have pressed number keys above the letters instead of the ones on the numpad. If you do, the default cube will vanish. blender reset 3d cursor This is because the scene consists of multiple layers. The default cube is in layer 1, and you've told Blender to switch to the layer of the number you just pressed. The selected object the cube in this case remains in layer 1, which is no longer visible. For instance, 2Key tells Blender to switch to layer 2. To switch to layer 1 again, press 1Key. You can view the different layers by clicking on the little squares on the layer map: The center of the viewport is not marked, i. This can cause unexpected behavior during rotation. This technique will fail if the 3D manipulation widget is enabled and your desired position is too close to it. If this happens, press Esc to cancel the transform operation. The cursor's projected distance along the central line-of-sight remains unchanged. For this reason, any time you reposition the cursor this way you should immediately verify its position using a different viewpoint. Using only tools presented thus far, try positioning the 3D cursor on the virtual camera. When you're done, check your work by orbiting the camera. Perhaps you thought you were done when you clicked on the camera. But the moment you changed your viewpoint, you probably found that the 3D cursor was actually behind or in front of the camera. Using only tools presented thus far, try repositioning the 3D cursor at the origin that is, at the center of the cube. As before, check your work by orbiting the cube. Don't spend too much time on this. To toggle this off, you click on the gray pointing hand in the 3d panel header, or Ctrl Space. I wrote the following before discovering blender reset 3d cursor The problem with this exercise, for me, is that left clicking on the cube selects the cube instead of moving the 3d cursor. If I click on the cube outside of its central white circle I can get the cursor to move there, but only to outside of this white circle, and even then this only works sometimes. When I was too far zoomed out I kept selecting the cube rather than creating an edit point. I made sure I was in object mode, right clicked on the camera to select the camera instead of the cube, and I could then position the edit point in the cube. However, doing this messed up the next part of the tutorial because you cannot switch into edit mode with the camera selected. Perhaps the suggestion of trying to put the 3D cursor in the cube should be dropped as it raises too many questions at this stage. It was the only thing that worked to get the cursor visible again and placed where clicked. You can't set a 3D point on a 2D screen without technique. I am just learning, but take that, at least, away from it. You also can shift the viewpoint up-down or left-right without changing its direction. This is similar to the side-scrolling effect in the classic Mario and Sonic video games. This is calledand it's an important skill to master. You will likely find this to be a distraction in some cases. You could also snap the cursor to the center then press Ctrl + Num. Afterwards, you can rotate, pan, and zoom normally, but the virtual camera will not follow. To go back to your previous view, press Num0 again. Hit N on your keyboard to bring up the transform panel. Because there's no center mark on the viewport, you might have to pan and zoom several times to get the desired view. A crosshair appears in the viewport. By default in Blender 2. In both modes, helpful prompts appear in the header of the 3D view window to remind you of the key functions while the mode is in effect. Hold a movement key down to keep moving. Movement stops as soon as you release it. Make sure there is a floor or other object under you to land on. With gravity on, you can no longer use the vertical movement keys, but you can use V to make jumps. Press the key repeatedly to increase your speed in that direction, or press the key for the opposite thrust direction to reduce your speed. You can roll the mouse wheel up to apply forward thrust, or roll it down to apply backward thrust. Your current velocity vector automatically changes direction with you when you turn. Thus, you can apply a single burst of sideways thrust while facing an object, then, without applying any additional thrust, keep turning to face the object, and you will go right around it. You can use this to render your scene layer by layer, checking each layer separately. Left: Viewing layer 1 only. Right: Viewing all 20 layers. The top row of boxes represents layers 1 through 10, with 1 being the leftmost and 10 being the rightmost. Similarly, the bottom row of boxes represents layers 11 through 20. Press ~ again to return to your previous layer visibility setting. The hotkeys in this section will not work if you've enabled numpad emulation in the User Preferences window. Do not use Shift unless you want to toggle visibility as explained below. Holding down Shift while selecting a layer by keyboard or mouse will, instead of making only that layer visible, toggle the visibility. In this way, you can select combinations or to hide particular layers. The key to press to select all layers at once differs by keyboard layout. After pressing the aforementioned key, holding down Shift while pressing it again will restore the visibility settings you had before you made all layers visible. When only one layer is selected, new objects are automatically assigned to that layer. When two or more layers are visible, new objects are assigned to the most recently visible layer.
