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A Detailed Overview of the Blender Interface

on Sep 16th 2009 with 213 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Software: Blender
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Estimated Completion Time: 1 Hour

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

In this comprehensive video tutorial Blender guru, Karan Shah, will walk you through a detailed demonstration of the Blender user interface. From navigation, to modeling, and even animation, this tutorial is a must for anyone who is interested in learning this free, yet very powerful, open source 3d application.

You can find a comprehensive list of Blender keyboard commands here: Blender Keyboard Shortcuts.

Full Video

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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

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Karan Shah is karan81 on 3docean
 
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Karan Shah is a 3D Artist and Animator from India. He is a BFA Graduate with specialization in sculpture (traditional). An inclination towards the digital medium made him a self taught computer artist. He is a currently freelancing..  

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  • HS

    Thank you for the tutorial. Excellent introduction to the interface!!!

  • http://www.teknicallyspeaking.co.cc Richard

    Just like Jenn said, it is a bit difficult to understand what you’re saying at times. But none the less, thank you for your effort in making this excellent tutorial! :D

  • Mark

    sorry, I missed the switch in view at 12:57, how do you do that. otherwise it is a little hard to understand in some parts but a good solid tutorial, obviously a lot of thought and effort has gone into it. thanks

  • joe

    wow man ur accent is terrible i get frustrated trying to understand u

    • blessing

      dude this is free dont go looking a gift horse in the mouth

    • pv

      Joe your spelling, punctuation and grammar are terrible, and so are your manners, but no one is complaining. I’m English and was brought up with lots of different accents around me, and I can understand everything he says. Far Eastern accents, especially from the Indian subcontinent are something you’ll have to get used to.
      You should just blame yourself and try harder, and maybe appreciate that someone has gone to the trouble of trying to help you – almost certainly for free.

      It was on the whole an excellent tutorial.

    • http://www.ublogged.co.cc Ubuntaholic

      Here’s an alternative, DON’T WATCH IT. At least he’s nice enough to make a tutorial for us.

  • Mark

    Thank you for making this so comprehensive! I have been attempting to self-learn 3d modeling and animation for a long time, but haven’t been able to find a program that comes with decent, up to date tutorials. Also, Blender is GNU licensed, so I don’t have to worry about downloading illegal software!

  • katy

    ty for enlightenment

  • blessing

    there is a part in this tutorial that just goes silent.what does he say then

  • Hans

    There’s this one point, after the phase where you tell how to edit the cube, where the object becomes flat. What did you do to get that result?

  • dick

    Thanks For A Great Piece Of Software
    Great Job
    Can You Put A Picture On The Cube?
    Would App. Knowing How.

  • juhi

    i saw d whole video n wud really lyk to thnk u…i help me a lot..d only thing i want 2 ask is whn u added d background…i m not able to upload ny…if u cud help wid d background..

  • Mikheil

    Awful French accent I guess.

    • Andy

      Are you really that stupid that you don’t recognise the accent?

      Hmm, you must be a stupid American I guess.

  • Steve

    1) A classic case of describing the forest by enumerating individual trees. I would submit that “detailed overview” is actually an oxymoron.

    2) I understand that maximally efficient operation of the Blender interface is accomplished through hot-keys; for a beginner, however – if in fact there’s a menu option corresponding to each hot-key – this is not the best way to learn. It is especially not the best way to produce a video tutorial, since the hot-key combinations are invisible to the viewer. Much better would be to start out showing the same operations performed with menu options.

  • dnbx

    men,this is very dificult.cinema 4d have much better controll than this blender.cinema 4d its very user friendly.but this,this is too much.if i want to make a just a sword i make 10 times faster in cinema 4d.this is too much time for making anything in blender.

  • Steve

    This is a GREAT introductory tutorial. After watching it (I always keep it on hand every time I use Blender), I was actually able to start model making right away. I’m currently working on my own version of the original Battlestar Galactica ship, and thanks to Karan’s introductory video, I was able to accomplish a lot more than I’d thought.

    Thank you, Karan Shah for this excellent introductory tutorial. :)

  • http://13andincrediblycut.wordpress.com 13andincrediblycut

    Sexists.

  • peter

    no numpad/ o dear

  • Tiffy Vella

    Thanks Karan for this helpful tutorial. I really appreciate the detail you have gone into, and revisit here whenever I need a refresher. Great job!

  • Mykl

    While I appreciate the effort, the lack of planning out what you want to say (seems like you just picked several areas and just go on about the stuff without any set-up or examples) and the thick accent just doesn’t help me with this one. I keep zoning out and wondering: WTH?

  • http://- Darshana

    Thank you so much for your effort Karan Shah, GREAT JOB! I learned a lot from your tutorial.

  • Andy

    Hey Mr. Shah,

    I am working through your Manga Girl tutorial and it’s looking like if I work through this and a couple of other tutorials I’ll finally be able to create some character models.

    BUT as a newby and learning Blender working through the differences in the interfaces between Blender 2.6.2 and Blender 2.4.6 is rough…

    In particular when you model the hips, head (so far…I’ve done the Body and I’m on the Head after 2 long days), especially the head, you just wave your mouse around and there appears a circle that selects an area of the sphere that you push / pull AND it seems to ‘autosmooth’. Meanwhile you mention select ‘o’ to smooth but I can’t find anything in the shortcuts about smoothing and ‘o’ means something else completely…

    I can’t even figure out auto to select using the mouse and that magic circle you are using let alone autosmoothing…
    …

    Could you make a an updated Blender 2.6.2 of the Blender Interface?

    Thanks.

    Ciao

    • Andy

      I’ve been going to cgartists forums and they’ve been helping me there. Seems ‘Proportional Editing Falloff’ was turned off and so O shortcut didn’t work.

      I’ll play around somemore and see if I can figure out this ‘selection circle’ push/pull that seems to make what you are modeling so much easier…

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