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 Blender Navigation Basics: the how to and where is it thread 
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Post Blender Navigation Basics: the how to and where is it thread
This tutorial will teach you how to navigate the main portions of blender3D 2.49b which you will use for most of your blender game dev.

We will be using an old version of blender, you can find a site all about it here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100222082 ... ender.org/
as well as the download links.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100427203 ... Doc:Manual
this is the official manual. you can probably find info on even things I don't know here.

(This is a work in progress)

Table of Contents:
0: The dropdown menus
1: The 3D View
2: The Buttons Window
3: The Text Editor
4: The UV face and Image editor Window
5: The IPO Curve window
6: The Action Editor
7: The Outliner window

There are other windows, but for the majority of game dev purposes you wont need those.

0: the drop down menus; this is pretty Straight-forwards,

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Spoiler: show
File, contains ways to open and save files as well as import and export to or from other 3D file formats and even some vector curve formats. vector curves however are NOT visible in the game engine, they are visible in animations though. One very important feature on the File menu is the "save rendered image" option which lets you determine an output for any images or animations you just rendered after the fact.

Add, gives you access to spawn all of the default types of objects the game engine supports, it even supplies you with several object builders where you can define the amount of geometry in a circle or sphere, cone or cylinder etc. or you can just whip out your monkey and mess with it. you'll see what I mean. Add>Mesh>Monkey . her name is "Suzanne". Hint: you can also spawn this menu anywhere in the 3D view by pressing the [Space] key on your keyboard. the only objects visible in the game engine are Mesh and Lamp objects. Armatures and Lattices are useful animation tools but otherwise invisible. curves are not visible and difficult to use in the game engine. Meta and surfaces are/were cool ideas that never really went anywhere. Empties are great for a placeholder when you don't want to use extra memory for something like a simple spawn point or ray casting point on the end of a gun. Text, blender's text box, it is curve based and based off of your given font file, you can type what you want and use it in animations but to use it in the game engine you need to convert it to a mesh before starting the game and it will use a shit ton of memory because it's 3D text. this also means that when converting it to a mesh you can no longer edit it in game. (this means in-game text is usually an image or another trick I'll share later) and of course Cameras allow you to have a place other than the WorldView to see from. multiple cameras are only necessary if you are doing a game where you will switch viewpoints, or where you are doing a special overlay render or motion texture. don't worry too much about it for now.

Timeline, ... I kinda wonder why they even put this in, I mean maybe if your keyboard was broken or your arrow keys were hammered from too many roms I could understand a mouse based menu. but.. you're gonna need a fully functional keyboard to test any sort of real industry quality game that you actually want people to like playing.. so yeah.. I never use the timeline menu, but this there if you feel the need to mess with it. alternatively Up and down arrows move forwards or backwards 10 frames, left and right move 1 frame, and combining these keys with Shift can help you hit the start or end of your timeline.

Game, we use this from time to time but only when you'ree ready to see how things are going to look or when you're ready to test graphics, otherwise you'll probably never touch it. the most useful option in this are "Show Debug properties" so that in game you can see the value of a prperty printed on screen, usually for bug testing, and "Blender GLSL Materials" it just makes everything look better, it will mean that some work arounds will be necessary for game dev but whatever don't worry about it.

Render, a great menu for seeing how something looks in movie quality rendering or making images of stuff you can't do in game to paste onto objects. there are also some controls to set the ability to record surface textures to a UV outline. you have no idea what I'm talking about there so just ignore it.

Help, while the articles there are great for a reminder or getting started, my tutorials will answer a lot more questions.

Screen Set-up, you really wont need to change it from "SR:2-Model" for much unless you are doing somting really special with a movie render or something.

Scene List, yup each scene is like it's own universe. not that we can't mix universes or communicate between universes or jump from universe to universe, but typically each game zone should be in a separate scene to save memory. don't worry too much about it yet, you'll need things like a start menu scene, a main game scene and an ingame menu overlay scene and maybe a background scene. but for starters you just need one scene where you'll do ALL your initial work.

If you wondered why the bottom of the menu bar has an adjustible edge when you put your mouse cursor over it, you will quickly find out when you do so and drag your mouse down. it's controls for finetuning your preferences and experience while using blender. btw, blender by default is not an internet enabled program. so it doesn't collect data about you or spy on you or try to communicate with any servers or anything. but you might want to set the "undo history" memory to a realistic number of steps. 64 is good. but if it goes too high it'll cost you lotsa memory, I used to set it to 0 on my small computer, but then you litterally cannot do Ctrl+Z, it will say "no undo history available" kinda sux sometimes. use it at your own discretion.
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1: The 3D view; This is where you can make a 3D object and change it and move it around. it also doubles as the game area when testing and playing your games. it's magically the default window you see when you start blender. easy to find. if you ever lose it you can reopen it by selecting the drop down menu at the left of the bottom of whatever window you changed it to and selecting "3D View" from the list.

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Spoiler: show
Some basic Navigation controls in this window are:
left click = drag rotate scale etc. depending on the edit state the object is in.
right click = Select things. Cancel selection/Action!
middle mouse wheel = Zoom
Shift +left click + the object control axis = drag rotate scale etc. on all 3D axis EXCEPT the one clicked. shift+lc on Z axis to drag on X and Y for example
Leftclick + the object control axis + Shift = drag rotate scale etc. in a very small amount.
Ctrl + leftclick + the object control axis = Controlled movement in whole blender units, if you add shift it makes movements in 0.1 blender unit or scale in 0.1 of the current size or rotate in 1 degree etc.
Alt + left click = rotate view
Shift +Alt + left click = Pan the view, move your mouse while doing it and you'll see panning.
Ctrl+ Alt + left click = Zoom
Tab - toggle between object mode and edit mode
Shift + p = preview render window
p = Start game
n = the object control window, this window allows you to set the exact location of an object, the exact scale and rotation of the object as well, and in Edit mode doubles to allow you to set the exact location of any selection of vectors/verticies
and don't forget space for the Add menu.
left arrow = one frame backwards
right arrow = one frame forwards
up arrow = 10 frames forwards
down arrow = 10 frames backwards
Ctrl+Z = undo
Ctrl+Y = Redo
Shift+D = make a copy and have it follow your mouse
Rightclick = set a copy to it's default position (the same position as the thing you copied)
a = select/deselect all
Ctrl+i = select the opposite of the current selection "select everything except what you currently selected and unselect what you had selected"
g = grab the object to move it
r = Rotate the object
s = scale the object
Shift modifier and control modifier or both work on g,r and s
x or delete = delete shit, are you sure? y/n
b = selection tool, left click and put the shit inside the box you draw and select it.
i = add an IPO key, it opens a drop down menu to let you select what type then adds that type of key on that frame, Rot = Rotation, Loc = Location, Scale is scale. You don't typically need other types of keys. in edit mode you can also do a Mesh key which allows you to record the shape and then tween between shapes later.
Ctrl+J = join 2 mesh objects making them one mesh and one object. (the opposite, in edit mode, is p, that will open a menu to convert parts of the mesh into other objects outside the mesh.)
Ctrl+P = Parent this/these object(s) to the last one you selected
Alt+P = remove the parent from the selected objects.
numpad; 4,8,6,2. alternative view navigation. 4 = rotate left, 6 = rotate right, 8 = rotate up, 2 = rotate down, shift + these is pan in that direction.


Advanced: instead of using your mouse to carefully set rotation or location or scale, you can also type the amount of movement, scale, or rotation! oh and you can do fun things like g to grab an object + shift + x,y or z to mute any motion on the specified axis, then input the amount of motion on the 2 other axes. or do "g+x,y or z+ amount of movement on a single axis" the same is possible for scale based on a numeric percent of change from the current scale so -1.0 is backwards 100%, 2.0 is double the current scale, 1.5 is 1 and a half times the current scale, and 1.0 is no change. and the same is possible with rotation where you specify the amount of angle to change by, so 45 is +45 degrees and -45 is 45 degrees the other direction. yes it is important to distinguish between -181 or less and +181 or more as it defines the direction of rotation! this even means that there are in fact rotations greater than 360 degrees and less than -360 degrees but thats just so you don't set an IPO key to record a frame of an object's rotation at 0 degrees, then another key at 180 degrees then 0 again. this is not a full circle in blender's opinion! it's a half circle then back the way it came to 0 again! a full circle is 0 to 180 then 180 to 360, and if you want to continue going the same direction 360+180 etc. it isn't as bad as it sounds because in the game engine we can do additive IPOs, what that means is if you rotate from 0 to 180 via IPO and you set the IPO actuator to play it as "add" then if you play the same actuator again it'll add +180 in that direction each time, no math for you and less headaches. But yeah we'll get more into that later.

numbers (not on the numpad), 0 through 9 allow you to quickly switch from layers 0 to 9. so if everything suddenly disappears, press 0 on the lkeyboard at it'll probably all reappear because you accidentally switched layers. you can make all layers visible too, unlike in flash there is a predetermined number of layers available. but in blender thats really not a problem, we don't really need layers much except for maybe 1 layer for the active scene and 1 layer for invisible shit we want to spawn later and maybe a layer for shit we are not sure we'll ever need but we'll keep it around just in case we need to rework it into something else later and don't want to completely redo it.
You can also control the layer in the bottom of the 3D view, there are 2 boxes of 10 squares each, one or some of which should be clicked or selected, these are your layers, pressed squares mean it's a visible layer, unpressed squares mean they are invisible, clicking them makes them visible. shift+click allows you to make more than one layer visible at a time.

m = move selected objects to another layer (opens a small window to let you select the layer)

lets move more into that bottom menu bar:
Not only layers are here, you can also see;
the window menu, it allows you to change this 3D view into some other window, like the text editor or image editor etc. and to change it back. it does nto lose progress in the window you are in everything is still there so relax.

View, this is a handy menu for view controls you would otherwise not be able to control. here you have some access to open some subwindows which are very handy such as the "view properties" window which allows you to set the 3D cursor location (this will determine where new objects are placed when adding them, and can also be used as a center of rotation, scale or motion! we'll get into that later when talking about mesh editing controls.
other handy options here are things like switching the camera type "Orthopraphic" or "Perspective", as well as telling it what camera you want to look through, or getting a clean top, side or front view. There are other things here which we may use later, but for now you don't need to know them.

Select, it's really as it sounds, a variety of options for different ways to select stuff. we went over some of the hotkeys already. theres one nice one there you might use for modelling "random" it allows you to select random objects, or in edit mode, random vectors/verticies great for making strange stone structures etc. you can also select by object type, so if you want to select all the visible shit select by type mesh. or all the lighting select by type lamp. etc. these controls are just for designing, in game we'll have to control them via code or IPO keys. don't worry too much about it.

Object, we already introduced some of the useful hotkeys here. other things useful are; object grouping. theres otherstuff too. feel free to brows the menus but I rarely use any of it except the hotkeys.

the window Mode, the default is Object mode, it allows you to select and move objects and such. you can change the mode based on the object type you have selected, mesh, lattice and armature objects have an edit mode which allows you to modify how the object looks, a weight painting mode which allows you to graphically see how to apply ability to control the vectors of this mesh to a bone of an armature or a lattice, or generally make vector groups on the object itself. you can also do this in edit mode and apply numeric weight on selected vectors. but we'll get to that later. other modes include the texture painting mode (fun) to use that you need to apply an imagee to the UV layout of the object, then you can use your mouse and select a color and draw all over it, great for making realistic texture distribution for things like moss on rock etc.

ignore sculpt mode, it's just for jackasses who want to struggle to make really high detailed graphics for a quick render with no real control over exact placement of anything and impossible to rig later (meaning using it as anything other than a nonmoving graphic is out of the question, and it probably has way too many polygons for a game. it'd be ok for making a statue to put on a shelf or some other junk art where you don't need perfection. usually people use it for "look at the movie quality of the wrinkles I made on this old guy head I made". Pfft!

vertex painting mode... it's for making vertex groups, but we can do that in weight paint mode too. so.. really it's a useless mode.

the draw type/viewport shading: you can select from wireframe, solid, shaded, and textured. Wireframe is just lines no faces, solid is faces and lines no real shadows or lighting etc. shaded has shadows, reflections, lighting, transparency etc but no images, and textured shows all the lovely everything. the only reason we switch modes is because when working on an object's structure or weight painting it sometimes shadows block our view and make us hunt for shit, so we switch to solid. Sometimes you might switch to wire so you can see through shit easier to see where a problem might be.

the Pivot, this is where rotation scale or motion is centered from when editing shit. so it can be handle to set it to other stuff, normally it should be on "median point". "Individual centers" will attempt to scale or rotate each disconnected thing from it's own center, it's handy for say, if you have 1 mesh with 2 eyeballs in it and you select both and want to rotate both without them rotating from the middle point between them. "3D Cursor": is very very useful as talked about before you san set the location of the cursor and rotate around it, this allows you to make balls and tits and such around a given center. it helps for heads and curves and shit too, or pipes and cylinders and spheres etc.. it has a button next to it so you can nly use the object center even in edit mode.. kinda sorta useful, but.. no because we already have that option in the drop down menu.

the manipulator, it looks like a glove, and next to it are the manipulation types you can use one or multiple by selecting them with Shift. the red triangle allows you to move things, the green circle allows you to rotate things, the blue square allows you to scale things. simple eh? theres also a menu next to it which allows us to select what set of 3D axis to work off, global means the XYZ of the whole scene, Local means based off the object's rotation, View is based on where you are looking at it from, and Normal is based on the unique angle of the combined selection of things. Normal is handy for when you select things at an odd angle and want to move them in the direction they are pointing rather than any Global or object based axis location.

Layers, already covered. theres a button next to this which lets you make sure these objects cannot exist in other scenes except as copies. kinda.. "ok, why not for now" next to that is a magnet which controls snapping to a given point. It could help you move things to places or rotate to face something selected etc.

In edit mode more selections become available on this bar, but thats for another lesson.


2: the buttons window, you spend most of your time in the 3D view, buttons window and text editor when making most things so it should be open in most cases. it is open at the bottom of the window by default when you start blender.

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Spoiler: show
lets cover the hotkeys first.
F4 = Logic buttons, it has a pacman like symbol because thats where you will program any given object's game interactions.
F5 = Shading, this is a big one, this is where you make materials to apply effects such as color, shading, colorbands, transparency and mirror reflection, apply textures, modify a good deal of texture settings, and even apply material specific game physics or set an individual material to wireframe!. it gives us Lamp buttons, texture buttons (F6), and the ability to control the color of the world background.
i = in shading you can set color IPO keys to change the color of a material or object in real time in the game!
F6 = Texture Buttons, you may spend alot of time here messing with some modifiable premade repeatable textures, or just applying an image you made to your material.
F7 = Object buttons, the buttons here are largely for the draw type of a specific object in the 3D view, you can also do object grouping here, and add object constraints we'll get to those later.. it gives us access to an additional 3 buttons one gives us access to physics interactions for both games and if you want to do a physics simulator. cloth and softbody are nice for some game applications. but you'll want to keep the poly count low. and another button for particles. while particles are not visible in game you can use them to create fire, hair and a variety of other things then render or bake these to an image or set of images to past onto an object thus including them as a graphic in games afterall.. ha.
F10 = render buttons, this allows you to control things like whether or not to render the background as part of the picture or weather it should be transparent, whether to put a toon edge around the objects in scene, where the render window should be when it opens, what sort of image or movie file to output to and the quality and sound settings and the game screen size. oh lets not forget the Baking buttons which help you record geometry to an image based on the layout of an object's polygon layout (UV layout), thats a crucial skill I will teach in another tut.

and with that thats the buttons window in a nutshell. in edit mode there are editing buttons as well which gives you access to all sorts of neat tricks you can do with any mesh object or selection of vertecies/vectors. we'll get more into that in another tut.



3: the text editor this is your scripting window, you can make python and OpenGL scripts here, and apply them to game objects through the logic buttons., but you can also add in licenses and other stuff and save them here. you can get here by either changing any of the existing windows to the text editor or going to the edge inbetween 2 windows and selecting "Split" and then putting the divider where you want and left clicking. then in the new third window openning the text editor. you can also join windows so after making the game you can close all windows except the 3D view. remember closing a window does not delete it's contents.
Splitting areas:
Spoiler: show
Right Click on the separator
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Move your mouse up (or down) to split the desired window
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Finally left click where you want to split that window into 2 windows
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then change the new window on the right to whatever window you want in this case the text editor:


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Spoiler: show
Hotkeys:
tab = insert an indent to + 1 level, you can even select text and indent the whole selection this way.
Shift+Tab = unindent the selection by one level.
same navigation keys as in other windows, save zoom or rotation, there is no zoom or rotation.

menus;
Text, this menu allows you to save a text externally as a text file or .py python script. you can also import text files this way. If you write a script and start the game and the script is triggered and there is some error, it will automatically highlight the line where the first error occurred.

Edit, this menu has the typical things ctrl/alt+c for copy, +v for paste +x for cut etc. as well as a find and replace feature, very handy for when you want to change the definition name of something you've used 100 times.

Format, we kinda covered this in the hotkeys, but it also has comment and uncomment features. alternatively you can just #your comment

the next is a handy button, the full screen button. please make note of the hotkey! Ctrl+down arrow, to reverse this effect and return to your multi window display do the opposite Ctrl+Up arrow. oh, a nice hint, this hotkey works in all windows!

Display line Numbers, really important, that way if you get an error and it tells you Line 51, you can find out where that line is without counting.

Enable word Wrap, Do not use this in a code document! it will break your indentation and produce errors, this setting is for how-to articles and licenses and readmes Etc., things you intend a real person to read..

Enable Syntax Highlighting; Yes. do this, that way when you type a known python codeword it will let you know by changing the text color of that word! also;
Python Basic arguments are pink/violet, #comments are green, "Strings are red", and numbers and decimals and floats are blue.

Enable Python Text Plugins, you may want to turn this on when starting with the name of a python module or importing such modules as it will help you with a list of modules which match what you are typing. so; import[space] [drop down menu starting with all python codewords in alphanumeric order.]. I.E. import ra, gives you "random, raw_export, raw import" because they all start with "ra". it also helps you know sub.modules.of.things so if you do import random. it will give you a complete list of all sub modules. sweeet!

next is a drop down menu with all your text and code documents. before publishign a game set this to your License or terms of service or whatever you want the player to see first when they go to modify shit.
##################################################
#Failure to read this does not waive liability or give you a right to steal our shit#
##################################################

because we all know those people are out there.
this menu is also used for making and or opening next text documents.

[x] delete this text file. use with caution!

Screen, don't worry about this at all. it specifies the draw type of the text editor and the amount of memory it is allocated. screen 12 is fine for everything.

[tab], you set how many spaces one tab is equivalent to. it really makes no difference as it still sees it as a tab. no, typing that many spaces in a row does not automatically tab! this is just the graphical distance one tab indents stuff.

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Post Re: Blender Navigation Basics: how to and where is it
this post reserved for overflow and additional info if need be. and is a work in progress.

Part II, 4 through 7

4: The UV face and Image editor Window

This window has the same basic navigation controls as in the 3D view for pan and zoom, the only catch is there are only 2 axis, not 3. X and Y. if you select faces of a mesh and open this window you will see those faces laid over the entire area. It will be confusing trying to figure out what face is what. In order to make it easier to understand you should first go to the 3D view and figure out a few different angles that will be optimal to show all the faces of the object and then select only those faces which match that angle and pressing u to unwrap those faces to the UV image editor based on the way you want, check out this “u” menu fully to see what the options are and what they do, you'll then be able to adequately know which unwrapping method is going to be best to use the most image space while maintaining as close to the right proportions as possible.

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Spoiler: show
Hotkey in 3D View:
u = open the UV face unwrapping menu. Options include “from view” and various others.

What is a UV face? A UV face is an outline that tells blender what part of any given image is displayed on what part of any given object. So if you unwrap a single face of a cube and rotate it in the UV image editor 45 degrees the parts of the image you've opened on the object will be shown at 45 degrees on that selected face.

How do I open an image on an object? Technically we open images on Materials, so it's in the shading menu, first you need to go to the texture buttons, and select “add new” unless there is a default texture already there, if there is select that, and in the “Texture Type” drop down menu on the right of this change it from “none” to “Image” then under the new panels that appear theres a panel called “Image” and a button that says “Load” click that to select the image by file name in a file folder. This image is now on the object. However it is on the object based on World/Default settings. You will need to then go to the Shading Buttons, where if you have or add a material you will see a panel called “Texture” it should have 3 tabs, “Texture”, “Map Input” and “Map To”,

the texture tab lists the images in layered order with the top image in the list being the one beneath all the others. You can change the order of the images here.

The Map Input Tab, gives you display orientation options. Usually it's set to the default “Orco”, while that works fine for animations, in a game only a few of these work, the main one is “UV” so select that. That will mean that the image you put on the object is based off of how the UV faces of the mesh are arranged.

Map To tells it how to interpret the colors of the image, so an image with a transparent background or transparent parts needs to have “Alpha” enabled to remove the face of the object it is on and only show the image. Otherwise it will show the image on the object as it's background. Mess around with these buttons to see what they do. Some material settings may need to be changed for things like transparency. And some texture buttons may need to be used for things like normal maps. But this is all foreign to you so we'll skip it, at least you know where to find it all.

Back to the UV face editor, if you set-up your image right it should now show your image in the UV editor and show the mesh's faces laid out over it (if you are in edit mode in the 3D view) for this reason it's best to work with the 3D view side by side with the UV image editor so split the screen.

With this out of the way, lets continue;
View, this menu helps you zoom and center on stuff and gives you access to the image properties window which can help you control the image width, height and move the image off center AND control the vectors of the UV faces! So it's important for careful movements or UV faces to make sure they match with other connecting faces.

Select, the hotkeys are the same as in the 3D view, a for select deselect all, b for border select, etc. the UV face movement, rotation and scaling hotkeys are the same too. This menu lists some of these.

Image, it allows you to save, open, or reload an image from file (if there have been changes) or even make a new image and select texture painting so you can draw on it in the UV Image editor or in texture paint mode on the mesh. Sweeet!

UVs, the most useful things on this menu are the bottom 3 to be honest. That and stitch could be useful to force things to link together. But yeah snap to pixels is exactly what it sounds like it means that the vectors will refuse to move anywhere other than exactly on the line's of the grid of pixels in the image. Layout Clip to Image size, is handy for when you want to exactly make a face hit the edge of the image and not go outside it. Then again you might want to turn Layout Clipping off if you want to make the image really small in the center of a face or have the Image repeat 10 times on that face or such, you can accomplish that by scaling the UV face to much larger than the image.

Pin, the pin button locks the selected image in the next image dropdown menu as the only imagee that will show in the UV image editor, it's very handy if you're going to be working for a while on what UV faces should be where on the image and you don;t want it to suddenly forget what image you are trying to apply those faces to.

The image name box, this is a drop down menu containing all the images currently in your file and especially the one on the object you have selected.

[x] delete links this image on this object.

Present button = pack this image into the game file. So you can just send the game file and the person you send it to can see the image otherwise they will see nothing except the file folder location of the image and a message saying it could not be found..

Pivot, we covered this in the 3D view, it's a little different here but not much, the same things can be done, there is a 2D cursor you can use as the center of motion rotation or scale in the UV editor. Or you can scale/rotate etc. by individual face or by islands (islands are groups of faces disconnected from other faces).

Sync, this button allows you to sync the selection you have in the UV face editor with the selection in the 3D view. Simple really.

Next we have 3 different selection types, by vertex, by face, or by island of faces.

Next is a menu which tells it when 2 vertexes should stick together, if this is enabled and you have 2 faces which share vertexes and you place those vertexes on the same spot, they will now stick together and refuse to disconnect. It can be kinda annoying but also can be useful. Use it as you need it. The options are “Shared location” meaning they are in the same XY place in the UV editor, “Shared Vertex” as explained before the 2 faces both connect to that vertex. Or “Disabled” no vertexes will stick together and you can easily move them around as you want to create islands.

Magnet, snapping while Ctrl is held when moving a vertex, the snapping will move it to the next valid vertex on the screen in the direction of motion “closest”, in the middle of the selection of vertexes “median” or “center”.

Next theres a pencil button, yeah you guessed it, enable drawing on the image. While I suggest making your images by other means either baking or rendering or in GIMP, you can have access to simple image painting tools way worse than MS paint in the UV image editor.

The next 2 buttons control weather you can draw alpha transparent pixels or weather you can only draw alpha pixels.

Last is a lock, turn it on and select 1 face in the UV editor and look at that face on your object in the 3D view (in Textured View port, not solid, shaded or wire), now move the UV face around, you will be able to see that the image in the 3D view on your object changes in real time based on where you move shit in the UV editor.

Congrats Fucknut, you now have a working concept of UVs and images in blender and could begin messing with this to make shit immediately.

5: The IPO Curve window
The IPO curve window allows you to use a vector curve to control the intensity or amount of something on an object, such as making a color curve on the Blue channel from 0 to 1.0 to change the amount of blue in the object color from none to 100%. you could then play this IPO animation in the game to make it do just that, change the object color in real time! it'd be great for a lot of applications. you can have more than just a single color change on one IPO, you could change Red Blue and Green and Alpha all at the same time thus going from any given color to any other color you wanted.

again we use the "i" hotkey in the shading buttons to set a color key in the IPO editor

you can also set other object keys like Location keys, so you can make an object move from one place to another and set another location key and then play that IPO in the game engine. you can also control object rotation and scaling so you can do all sorts of fun animations this way.

to set an object animation we use the "i" hotkey in the 3D view in object mode.

Can I use my type of IPO in the game? if the IPO editor shows a stick figure button next to the IPO Type drop down menu, yes, yes you can. you just click that button and it makes it an action which you can then apply to the game object later. I'll go over this in another tutorial. but basic object movements do not need to be set as an action before being applied in the game they are automatically accepted via an "IPO" actuator versus and "Action" actuator in the logic buttons (pac man icon). again I'll cover that in more depth in a tutorial about game logic or animations or animations in games.

Image

The things in the window.

Spoiler: show
Navigation hotkeys for pan and zoom are the same, selection keys aree the same, and each IPO curve has an edit mode! that allows you to move or bend each part of the curve individually. fun stuff.

View, the channel properties, transformation properties window is handy, keep it open, it's hotkey is n that allows you to change a curve or vector location to a specific numeric value. very handy for a precise change in color or location or rotation etc. and very handy for putting such a vertex on a specific frame of the animation. so you can make it blue on frame 1 and black on frame 5 etc. Alt+A = play the animation, this also works in the 3D view, you can then see what it will look like. however, make sure to set the end of the animation in the timeline window before hand or you have to wait for it to hit frame 250...

Select, either select all/none or border select, same hotkeys as in other parts of blender.

Marker, you.. don't really need these. they are just places on the timeline that you can name so you can look at it and be like "oh it's on that frame." it doesn't effect the animation or game at all.

Curve, this is where it shows you all your curve modifying kotkeys and options. remember the curve describes a change in something, so 0 might be no change while 1.0 might be move 1.0 on Z axis. or 1.0 might be 100% Blue. depending on how you added this IPO Key. don't worry you can't mix color keys with motion keys nor can you mix rotation keys with location keys, they are all separate curve lines so you wont get confused. Tab lets you edit a curve, just like int he 3D view it takes you into or out of edit mode while your mouse is in this window. Insert keyframe "i" we covered that. O for smooth IPO curves or Shift O it just means it'll make the change from one point to the next gradual and less jumpy or strange.

the set as action button, set this to be seen in the action editor (your main animation window).

The IPO Type menu, it specifies what type of IPO you are looking at, in the game only Object, Shape, and Constraint IPOs can be used. we'll cover this when we cover IPO programming.

The next drop down menu, this is the IPO file menu it specifies the name of the IPO, you don't really need to do this, in the game you can only have one Object IPO anyways. you'd only need to name it if you were going to make a python script to modify it in real time in game (this actually works and you can use it to let players do things like set a custom color etc.).

the next two buttons copy or paste the curve, so for example if you select a curve you made for "Red" (ColR) and copy it to the buffer with the first button with an arrow pointing down, and then Ctrl+click the "Blue"(ColB) channel and use the paste button (the button with an arrow pointing up) you will have exactly the same curve for blue as you do red. and so if red goes from 0 on frame 1 to 1.0 on frame 101 blue will as well.

on the right side of the whole IPO window there is a list of different curves you can make, you can use the hotkey ctrl+left click to select or deselect these to add a key manually using "i" in the IPO window rather than in the 3D view or Shading Buttons. Neat huh?

the grid button, allows you to view your entire selection of curves cleanly. less work zooming or panning for you. but it can be kinda tough to select small dots on a line if you are viewing 100 frames of the curve at a time.

Lock, just like in the UV editor, changes you do int he IPO window will update in the 3D view in real time.

do remember as in all windows you can grab things with g and move them in whole numbered amounts with Ctrl. you can also specify an Axis to move on (in this case X or Y, and you can specify the amount of movement in frames (left to right) or Curve amount (the change in the value your IPO modifies) please do remember that if something's max value is in example 1.0 any number in the IPO editor higher than that is taken as 1.0. in example, you cannot have 2.0 (200%) blue. it works the same for minimums so it the min is 0 negative numbers are interpreted as 0.



6: The Action Editor
dang my brain feels numb typing all these and double checking in blender to amke sure I get all the names right and hotkeys accurate etc. oh well last one to type I did 7 below.

right the action editor allows you to animate your shit you made. weather you are recording the placement of an object, the shape key on any given frame, or the way a bone in an armature is moving ona bone by bone and frame by frame basis, this window has it all. it even allows you to name your animations and then use those names later in the game engine to play the animation. sweet?! consider this your main animation timeline.

how many times do I have to repeat this? the navigation hotkeys are exactly the same as in every other window. pan and zoom are the same. there is no rotate though. but the selection hotkeys are the same, and they hotkey to set an animation key is still "i". you'll need something to set an animation key on though, such as a channel of an object or bones location or rotation or whatever.

Benis. Pingas.

Image

whats available to do here.

Spoiler: show
On the left side of the grid is where you will see the objects or bones that have keys on them or can have keys on them they may have arrows next to them if the key can be on multiple things. scuh as when animating an armature to make your character bend and move, each bone in Pose Mode of the armature might have a Rotation key that can be set "i" > Rot, but what is rotation? is this a 1 dimentional world? no it's a 3 dimentional world so we have X, Y and Z axis rotation. so if you click the arrow next to a bone it'll show this. and you can then delete any extra axis rotation keys you feel will just muck things up for you. it's the same sorta thing with a location key "i" > Loc, there will be Z, Y and Z locations, and if you only want a key for Y axis you can delete the X and Z keys.

well aren't we just special? now whats next?

the main screen shows where the animation keys are on the timeline. if the keys are the same on any 2 frames directly in line with eachother, a yellow bar will connect them. this tells you there is no change for that thing during those frames. if there is no yellow bar connecting the keys it means that the 2 keys are not the same and playing that animation will cause it to progress from key 1 to key 2 etc. and play the change you recorded in those keys.

menus:
View, a bunch of hotkeys and controls for moving around and centering your view on different things.

Select, different ways to select groups of keys. you can also use your mouse and the normal selection hotkeys.

Marker, just like int he IPO curve editor you can place a little yellow arrow at a frame that does absolutely nothing except let you know what frame something is at. you can name it. "tits" works. it does nothing.

Key, all the hotkeys and options for making new keys, grabbing and moving or copying and pasting keys.

the Editor Mode Menu, if editing an armature or object motion, the action editor is what you want. if editing a mesh shape animation the shape key editor is what you want. etc.

The action name menu, you should alsways give your actions a very specific and easy to remember and short action name "running" "walking" "jumping" "punching1" "punching2" etc. this is because the action actuator in the logic buttons allows you to specify what Action you will play. int hat actuator you can set a priority of which action to play if there is a conflict, and if there is not conflict more than one action can play at the same time (so you can have a running animation play on the legs and bow shooting or sword slashing animation play with the arms and shoulders and head etc.) so yeah name your actions!.

next are buttons for copying and pasting keys, a tip, you can make a rotation key for the Right arm and hand forexample, copy them, select the bones of the armature for the left arm and hand and paste them. you can even select what frames of the keys to copy and what frame to paste at. and it will give you a reversed copy of the animation onto the other arm (in example). the only key thing here is that blender has to know that the other arm is the mirror opposite of your right arm, for that reason using a naming convention blender understands is important _L and _R at the end of a bone name let blender know "Hand_L" is the mirror of "Hand_R" so if I copy the key from hand L to hand R I should flip it backwards on the X axis. this way you don't have to do so manually! blender does it for you. this trick is handy for when in example both arms need to be doing exactly the same animation but mirrored from one side of the body to the other. or when you want to copy the rotation of the left leg to the right leg on another frame to make a realistic walking animation that can easily loop.

Auto Snap, snap to nearest frame is good. you kinda want your keys on whole frames not inbetween frames this can happen when you duplicate a frame with Shift+D and then left click and drop it somewhere on the timeline. so yeah auto snapping is good. alternatively you can use Ctrl while grabbing keys to move them in whole frame numbers, that automatically snaps it to a frame number. Agai alternatively like in every window you can g+axis+number of movement., in this case there is only g+number of movement in frames.

Lock, you guessed it if this button is clicked any changes you make to the animation keys will automatically effect the animation in the 3D view.



7: the outliner
I'm actually going to type this one first, but it's last on the list, this window is handy for if you lose an object or have a stack of shit right smack on top of other shit and need to select a specific few of them in a specific order for things like parenting etc. it's a vertical list of scenes> objects followed by things that are thier children and children of children etc.. and any special links an object may have to other objects, such as constraints or animations. so if you are like, "wait... where did.. the thing go?" open the outliner and look for it to ensure it's still in fact there and not deleted or some dumb shit.

Image


Cumgrabspewrelations j00 n00b, j00 just passed blender basics class. You know where shit is and generally what it does and a good dictionary of hotkeys for easy use.

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mepsipax

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got any?

His name is not Robert Paulsen, His name is Gregory Matthew Bruni, he won so hard.

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Thu Oct 22, 2020 4:45 pm
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