I am following a tutorial in Blender "Creating an Island Enviroment in Blender" by David Ward. I keep making mistakes.How do I edit my mistakes in Blender? I keep losing my tools at the side and I want to get them back. Most 3d programs I have used have an edit tool.I cannot seem to find one in Blender! Cheers

The Blender toolbar in both edit and object mode can be called using the hotkey "t". I completed that tutprial some time ago, and it was a toughie, mainly because I find the instructors at Blender Cookie often make mistakes or do not call out what they are doing. It is best to watch the screencast keys in the bottom left to get a good idea of what is going on. I find also that the instructors talk way too fast, especially Jonathon. I don't know how many times I have rerun most of his videos to try to interpret what in heck he is trying to say or do, I've also caught him making mistakes - in completing the Blender tutorial for creating a barrel, he saves the file and says "click ctrl W" instead of "ctrl S." I was a member at Blender Cookie for about a year but canceled recently because I was having so many issues with the tutorials due to these reasons. To each his own...

HTH

C~

Many thanks for your reply.The hot key"t" only brings the ui to full screen.What I am looking for is a way to return my tools on the left to they they were before I made my mistakes.I have obviously clicked somewhere I should not have! Cheers.

Guess I am not understanding you. The tool shelf is called by the letter "t" and shows what is available. To review the undo history, click "alt" "ctrl" "z" all at once and you will see the undo history and can go back in time to where you may be able to recover your mistakes. Note that if you have recently saved the file it will erase the undo history. It would be helpful to know what version of Blender you are using and what nistakes you are trying to undo. I would then have a better grasp of the situation.

C~

Thanks again for your reply.I am using Blender 2.67.I am following a tutorial on making a Land and sea enviroment.I am having trouble trying to find a simple tutorial on how to manipulate the camera and lights.There does not seem to be a simple step by step tutorial on how to do this.All the tutorials assume you know how to manipulate the tools. I keep losing my tool bar and cannot find a way to get it back.Cheers

when I first started on blender I had problems with cam/lights too

what I did was move camera and lights to the last layer (select and press M pick layer you want off list)

now add an empty (name it eg cam empty)

now parent lights to camera and use a track to constraint from cam to empty

then when you want to set up the scene for rendering

move the empty to where you want the centre of scene to be , roughly place camera and lights, press 0 on keypad to see view through camera tweak as needed

hope that "A" makes sense and "B" is usefull to you

Hello arrow1

I came across a similar tutorial to the one you are working on but in PDF format that might be a bit easier to follow since it is written out and the PDF builds upon itself meaning it will go from learning how to edit object to then texturing and so forth and teach you several different skill sets building upon the previous. The goal is to build a Lighthouse Cliff scene and I think you will find it very useful

4th Edition of the Blender Basics Book

Hope it helps

@hedheld - I, too, struggle with camera/light placement, and your solution makes sense. However, you lost me when you say "now parent lights to camera and use a track to constraint from cam to empty." I see what you are driving at, but don't get the part about the "track to constraint." Is this accomplished in the constraint panel, and if so, what would the settings be? I am assuming that moving the empty also moves the camera and lamp. Correct me if I'm wrong...

TIA

C~

Here is some info that might help getting around in Blender.  The mouse controls: hold down the midle button/scroll wheel to rotate, shift midle button/scroll wheel to pan up/down and left/right.

The numpad  is very usefull as well.  On the numpad: period/del will center on what ever you have selected and make it the center of rotation.  hitting the 1,3,and 7 will give you the front side and top view. Holding the control key down with 1,3, and 7 gives you the back, the otherside and the bottom. The numpad 5 key togles between perspective and orthographic.

The best way I have to deal with the camera. rotate and pan the view until you get close to where you want it. Now hit control, alt, numpad 0. This will bring the camera to you. It puts you in the camera view. Now to fine tune it. Hit shif F. This will let you steer the camera. Scrolling in this mode will let you zoom in and out.  Moving the mouse  will cause the camera to swing up/down and side to side.  Hold the midle mouse button down in this mode will let you pan the cammera. When you get the cammaera where you want it just left click the mouse to exit this mode.  Oh yea and hitting the numpad 0 key will toggle you in and out of camera mode.

Hope this helps ya

About the light placement. You can right click to select and then use the red/blue/green manipulator to move it along the x.y.z axis or you can hit g(grab) and move it around with the mouse. The later requires you rotate the view to a position that will allow you to do this affectively. Using the numpad period key will pull you over to the light and let you rotate around it for better position. As for the tool menu T should bring it up. N key brings up the properties panel. It can be useful. as for the panels going missing, Ive had that happen. If nothing else save the scene reload the start up scene and append the scene with the wacky interface. This will bring your geometry in with out the messed up interface.

Many thanks all for your help.I have now have plenty of study to do! Cheers

The best way I have to deal with the camera. rotate and pan the view until you get close to where you want it. Now hit control, alt, numpad 0. This will bring the camera to you. It puts you in the camera view. Now to fine tune it. Hit shif F. This will let you steer the camera. Scrolling in this mode will let you zoom in and out.  Moving the mouse  will cause the camera to swing up/down and side to side.  Hold the midle mouse button down in this mode will let you pan the cammera. When you get the cammaera where you want it just left click the mouse to exit this mode.  Oh yea and hitting the numpad 0 key will toggle you in and out of camera mode.

Hope this helps ya

Also, once the camera is roughly in the postion you want it to be, if you check the 'Lock Camera to view' option in the properties panel (N) and select NUMPAD 0 to view the scene through the camera, you can use the normal 3D view navigational keys to place the camera more precisely.

Opening your file with the 'Load User Interface' unchecked, should load your scene with the default layout.

Just one more question, In the Blender tutorial PDF download link the tutorials are for Blender 2.5/6.I have the latest version which is 2.67.Is there any difference in the learning curve between the these programs? Cheers

@arrow dont think theres a lot of changes, maybe the odd one or two

ps I'm on 2.69 now ;-) (think there was some bug fixes)

@charlie select camera then add "track to" modifier in the target box pick the empty

then set the UP (usually to Y unless you done something to camera )

then pick the TO setting probably be -Z but does depend on what you have set up already

camera will only point to the target it wont move (translate )

ps thanks for the shift+F tip I didnt know that one lol

so many shortcuts!! suprising how quick they are to learn ;-)

Quote - Just one more question, In the Blender tutorial PDF download link the tutorials are for Blender 2.5/6.I have the latest version which is 2.67.Is there any difference in the learning curve between the these programs? Cheers

It should be pretty much the same the occasional tool might be moved to another area but not really hard to follow from 2.5 up to the most current version which is 2.69 and again like always if you run into a roadblock just ask one of us here will usually be able to tell you where something is

Good Luck

The suggestion to chose the PDF tutorial vs the Island one by David Ward was a good one. I did that Island tutorial, and it was a bear. Significantly, it was designed for BI and now, it's all about Cycles, anymore: BI is being shelved. True, the whole bit about particles still applies, but all the materials need to be rethought for Cycles.

Personally, I find that MOST video tutorials for Blender are NOT designed so much to teach Blender to beginners as to show off new stuff "this is how I did it, you can too" for specific things to people who already KNOW not just the basics, but have a pretty decent grasp of where everything is and how it works. The disconnect between Blender Basics and these videos is more consistent than the points where a person learning Blender will find commonalities, those that allow for an "AHA!" moment where things start to gel.

This is unfortunate, and it was something I hoped could be addressed by suggestions Andrew Price had made for UI improvements. Alas, the Luddites have spoken: Blender Shall Remain As It Is.

:blink:

For now.

That does look interesting indeed RobynsVeil I downloaded the latest test release zip and it has those new tabs looks very promising. I am willing to wager that many Window users might not be fimilar with being able to run Blender right from a zip instead of a full install and you still get the same functionility.

The tabbed thing is a good idea. Grouping things into relavent sections like that will make learning blender much easier.  That's why Wings 3d is a great place to learn box modeling. If you have a vertice selected when you right click it brings up a menu of commands that are only for vertices.  It's idiot proof. It lets you focus on modeling and not navigating a complicated interface. Blender has a lot more going on than Wings but it could take a lesson from Wings on making an intuative interface.

I've also found Blender has some things that seems like a big cluster-fudge until you get a grasp of how some things are useful and then it makes sense. Being able to re-arrange your window layout is one of those things that easily throw people off until you get a feel for it.

However I still do some things outside of Blender. For most object or component modeling, I go with Wings3D because it has a faster workflow for that task. (Some Blender people don't get that though.) It's because of how it changes selections, has a fast way of doing user-defined movements/operations, and lets me re-adjust view mid-operation so I can see how far I need to extrude or whatever. I also prefer the sticky view adjustment (no finger cramp on MMB) and how most hotkeys seem more intuitive too. (Like how view is snapped to planes, X puts me in X view not trying to delete which is redundant to the delete key.)

So most of the stuff I do in Blender edit mode is adjustments after importing. Blender is great for animation and rendering though. Automatic weighting is excellent and UV mapping almost idiot-proofed. And some of the modifiers make a lot of other things easy once you understand what they do.

think your being to hard on blender ;-)

its workflow is odd but once your used to it ! its pretty awesome

hardest thing for me was using both hands all the time (thank god I stopped smoking lol )

all the useful shortcuts are under left hand (so that X is well handy)

want to work on an edge or a face or .. just ctrl+E,F,V (or W if not sure )

want the fancy multiselect or multiwidget (like Hex) just shift select them on menu bar

have fun

ps not knocking wings used it for a while its a nice solid modeler, just not enough shorcuts

Because I cannot select and do things with the left mouse button like I can in every other program I use, I'm with pauljs - modeling in Wings where it's super duper fast and ultra easy and other stuff I can't do in Wings in Blender :P. Until I can switch those buttons that'll be the way it is. Selecting things with the right mouse button is just too - strange.

Laurie

Hi Laurie

Changing the select option for the mouse is actually possible and easy in Blender just go to File>User Prefrences and then to the Input tab and you will see where you can make that change. Yes Blender takes a bit of getting use to in its defualt state but giving it time it will be like second nature. I know there are even tutorials from poeple coming from Maya and showing how to set up the interface to something more like they are accustom to. Hope this helps in some way

I work in quite a few programs as well as two operating systems. Blender is the only software I've encountered where one selects with the right-mouse button. Given that this is such a core function, you would think they would have changed it eons ago to left-mouse like everyone else.

Saying that, though, there are a lot of behavioural characteristics of Blender's I wish others (I'm looking at you, Poser! :blink: ) would adopt, only because they make so much sense. For example mouse-position context sensitive shortcut keys, selecting more than one object at a time, layers... I know, for the price, Poser is pretty good value, but then, Blender is free. Truly isn't a case of "you get what you pay for"!

Quote - ps not knocking wings used it for a while its a nice solid modeler, just not enough shorcuts

Pressing the Insert key and then defining your own in Wings 3D doesn't work? Also keep in mind user defined hotkeys are context sensitive as well. (One defined in vertex operation will be different than one defined in edge, with the exception of some non-mode specific tool menu items or whatnot being hotkeyed.)

I only have a handful of my own I added. And for something like a repeated vertex snap-to operation, having your own hotkey works wonders. (Instead of going through the absolute--move menus, I just hit N or something like that.) I think the dialog also warns you if you're changing a (default) hotkey that's already assigned. The help menu can also give a list of assigned hotkeys, if you're wondering what's what or forgot the ones you made up.