Hi, Gang~

I've spent the year learning how to model in Blender because it is such a powerful, oft-upgraded and improved application. Not being able to afford Modo or 3DS Max, I find Blender to be a perfect solution. Two problems haunt me at present. I'm using the latest release - 2.64a. My biggest problem is this - I model a dress or a pair of pants for V4 or one of her many characters. I've learned that the easiest way to make a belt for these cloting items is to highlight a row of polys around the hip, duplicate it and then scale to size and add a buckle. It works well for me, but when I do this, the row of polys still "belongs" to the original mesh and it makes it difficult to work on it, such as move it to another layer for ease of modeling. Is there a way to do this and segragrate the band of polys from the original mesh so that I have two meshes instead of just one? I am sure there must be a way, but my research and tinkering leaves me with no solution. I am sure someone can steer me in the right direction.

My other problem? I am an old coot, and easily forget all the hotkeys and shortcuts. I have searched for a cheat sheet that lists the hot keys and shortcuts, but I can find nothing of any value. Google isn't much help. I need something I can print out to reference when I have a senior moment and can't for the life of me remember what keys to punch! :D

Any help much appreciated.

TIA

Charlie~

hit P on keyboard, menu opens pick by selected

hope that helps

As Hedd pointed out, P is the key you want to make the belt a separate mesh set - just make sure you have the entire belt selected, which is easier to do in Face mode:

[CTRL][TAB] Face

than in vertex mode. Or, under the Mesh menu whilst in Edit Mode, you can go to:

Vertices -> Separate -> Selection / By Material / Loose parts

@Hedd - many thanks! That was easy enough to do. Blender has a pretty steep learning curve for an old coot like me and if I am not working in it daily, I tend to forget different functions. I've written this down for more easy rememberance.

@LaurieA - It does work the best in face mode, and thanks for the info on vertices. I upgrade Blender at each new release, and have a hard time remembering the changes. What worked for me in earlier versions don't work that way in the newer ones.

You guys are the best - I've been stuggling with this for a week...

C~

I run Blender in Linux Mint 13, which has one really HUGE advantage: PPAs. Linux is different from Windows in that when it does an update, which is quite frequently, not just the OS gets upgraded, but also any software you might have installed.

Now, the version of Blender in the repositories usually doesn't see much of an update - the repositories being something maintained by Canonical - but if you install Blender via ppa, then anytime the ppa (in this case: irie-Shinsuke) is updated, your version is automatically updated as well. Which is really nice, because whilst the version most recently published by Blender.org still had like over 200 bugs, the one from irie has only a little over 100. And all the newest stuff, like OSL support and new shaders for Cycles, would all be included.

I know - probably not enough of a reason to give Linux a try, but you'll have to admit it's compelling! :biggrin:

if your a windoze user like me ;-) and dont have the luxury of PPA's you can keep an eye on buildbot or grapicall for the latest builds. there is(was) a list of shortcuts on blenderguru all nicely laid out to be printed an kept handy, some may have changed recently but its a good place to start, but if this isnt on your list remember it it saves loads of time

ctrl+ V or E or F will open the vertex or edge or the faces menu ;-)

but most of all Have fun

Attached Link: http://www.blenderguru.com/wp-content/uploads/Exclusive/Blender_Cheat_Sheet.pdf

@ Hedd... didn't realise those [ctrl][V] and [ctrl][F] existed (knew about [ctrl][E]... good one!

Also, that one's good to have - thanks, eClark.

so many shortcuts so likkle brain space ;-)   (thats me not ANYONE else lol), I like then shortcuts cos it opens the menu where you are! saves all them bouncing around in the toolbar menus