Here are tips that will increase your productivity when working on projects on Blender.
#1 Easily select all objects in a collection
Scaling single or multiple objects can be a pain, especially when objects have origins/pivot points that don’t match your desired scaling center.
Since Blender 2.8 there’s a tool that’s hidden and easily forgotten: the Scale Cage tool. Here’s how to use it:
- Select one or more objects you’d like to scale.
- In the Toolbar, press and hold the Scale tool button to get a roll-out. Select the second option: Scale Cage.
- Click and drag any of the Scale Cage points to start scaling the objects from that point towards the opposite point of the cage.
#2 Use the Scale Cage tool for flexible scaling
Scaling single or multiple objects can be a pain, especially when objects have origins/pivot points that don’t match your desired scaling center.
Since Blender 2.8 there’s a tool that’s hidden and easily forgotten: the Scale Cage tool. Here’s how to use it:
- Select one or more objects you’d like to scale.
- In the Toolbar, press and hold the Scale tool button to get a roll-out. Select the second option: Scale Cage.
- Click and drag any of the Scale Cage points to start scaling the objects from that point towards the opposite point of the cage.
#3 Use edge creasing for fine control of polygon subdivision
Polygon subdivision is a powerful modeling method. To achieve sharper features, you need to add supporting edge loops.
This can quickly complicate the editability of your mesh.
To work around this, you can make use of edge creasing.
Crease value can be assigned to any mesh edge in Blender. Once you subdivide your mesh using the Subdivision Surface modifier, the Crease value of one or more edges will reflect in the subdivided shape: the higher the crease value, the sharper the edge will be in the subdivided result.
Value of 1 will cause an absolutely sharp crease – but usually, you’ll want to avoid that, as nothing is truly, perfectly sharp in real life.
#4 Use Bevel Weights for bevels of varying radius
When creating hard-surface, non-organic models such as industrial devices, nice, rounded bevels are essential.
Blender’s Bevel modifier is a powerful tool to achieve this, and if you make use of Bevel Weights, you can achieve fine control over your beveled edges.
You can assign a weight to one or more selected edges via the ‘Mean Bevel Weight’ value in the Item panel of the Sidebar.
The values range from 0 (no bevel weight) to 1 (full bevel weight).
To see the beveled result with Bevel Weight influence, follow these steps:
- Add a Bevel modifier to your mesh
- Switch the Bevel modifier width value to Percentage.
- Switch the Bevel modifier Limit Method to Weight.
Now increase the ‘Width Percent’ value to determine the prominence of the varying bevels.
If you want rounded bevels instead of flat chamfers, increase the Segments value
#5 Change the view orientation to a face selection
Sometimes, you want Blender’s 3D view to be parallel to a face in order to work in the local orientation of the face. This is actually quite easy:
Select a face, then press Shift + a numpad view key. For example, press Shift + 7 to orient the view to the top of a face (you’ll mostly use this), or press Control + Shift + 7 to align the view to the bottom (backside) of the face.
#6 Add objects to face orientation
Continuing where we left off in the previous tip — if you press Shift + S and center the cursor to the selected face, and use Shift + A to add a new object, you can change the settings of the new object (press the F9 key for the settings pop-up) to be created in the view orientation, so it’s aligned to the face as well. You can do this both in Edit Mode or Object Mode.
#7 Roll the 3D view
Adding to the preceding viewport alignment tips, you can press Shift + numpad 6 or Shift + numap 4 to roll the current 3D view clockwise or counterclockwise. This is useful if the alignment of the view to a face doesn’t have the rotation you’d like
In the following example, the view has been rolled to change the angle of the new cube on the same selected face as before.
To update the cube’s orientation after a roll, select ‘View’ from the Align roll-out once more.
Learn detailed tips on the Article by CGCOOKIE.COM
