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A Detailed Overview of the Blender Interface

Tutorial Details
  • Program: Blender
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Completion Time: 23 minutes

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.


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Discussion 213 Comments

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  1. bz911 says:

    good tutorial in showing the basics for a beginner like me, but the monotonous tone of the speaker almost made me go to sleep after 10 minutes into the video

  2. Medved says:

    I’m new, and i want to say thank you for this amaizing tutorial :)

  3. JOHNNY says:

    SORRY GUYS, BUT I COULD ONLY UNDERSTAND ABOUT HALF OF WHAT HE SAID.

    • salope says:

      1- go away and learn english
      2- leasting the tutorial few times (it might get through you ears)
      3 – when you finally get it, maybe you could thank the guy who devoted time an effort putting this free tutorial online

      • Albert says:

        You right.

        Thanks to all who are trying to teach us how to use blender.

        If you cannot understand what he said , may be your ears need to be cleaned.

    • Anonymous says:

      STOP USING ALL CAPITALS.

      And, be respectful of him… he put effort into making a tutorial…

  4. Bob Mirror says:

    Wow! I am impressed. I have to hunt and peck for other cad & cam programs to find a through over view of the program. Often times they just did not do a tutorial. This sets a base line for what I now expect of an introductory tutorial.

  5. Rita5M says:

    bz911 – “good tutorial in showing the basics for a beginner like me, but the monotonous tone of the speaker almost made me go to sleep after 10 minutes into the video”

    agree…

    • Krishna Williams says:

      I’ve been trying things as I listen to the tutorial (this breaks it up a bit as the tone is a little sleep inducing but a really good way to start getting a feel for what the programme does

  6. Klaus Doeren says:

    The presentation is not acceptable.

  7. Chris Andrews says:

    The tutorial is good but finding myself going back over bits again and again to try to understand.

    Also it’s great that we’re working with keyboard shortcuts but on a mac these are different which causes MUCH confusion!

    • Daryl says:

      I’m using a Mac, and didn’t have any problems with keyboard shortcuts…

      Thanks for the tutorial.

    • Towfieee says:

      I had problems with MAC. Mostly the shorcuts using “Alt” don’t work. I think they need to add “fn + Alt” istead to make it work.

      I still think Blender is an outstanding free modelling program except for the difficult GUI.

  8. Scott says:

    I thought that this was a very good tutorial. OK, so he’s not Philippe de Montebello, but I could not find any faults in the presentation. I appreciate that he took the time to do this for people like me who are just starting out and are overwhelmed by it all!

    Don’t skip this one!

  9. RobShaver says:

    Great tutorial so far. It’s a thankless job and everybody’s a critic. Me to, I’m afraid.

    On the join areas you keep saying “merge view” but the command says “join area”. The other command is “split area”, not “split view”.

    I just point this out in the interest of clarity. Thanks much for making this.

    Peace,

    Rob:-]

  10. Projektant says:

    Thanks to all contributors for making some effort to make blender easier to use.
    Would be nice to learn how to bring to the screen the monkey used in the tutorial. Also, showing step by step actions in a visible comment or as a separate html file would not hurt.

  11. anonymous says:

    cool,Ioved this! (and I am new to Blender.This Reaaaaally helped :) )

  12. James 1st says:

    It’s a bit difficult for me to understand the negative comments strewn among the positive ones. It’s a good free program, with a good free tutorial. What else do you complainers want? Maybe he should send you a few bucks to help you along. Its a great effort and I for one, am deeply grateful for the presentation.

  13. maya says:

    i will say this now :) this tutorial has helped greatly, i was struggling to know how to start and i think his explanation was clear obviously people doesn’t appreciate anything..after all this tutorial was done for people who can handle few glitches without frowning like little kids…

  14. nova says:

    Wow, this is the most boring tutorial ever. did you get paid to ruin the blender learning experience?

    • Ariel says:

      The tutorial is great. This is for learning how to use a tool, is not entertainment. It could as well been a robot’s voice and be useful anyway. You should be thankful for the time and effort thrown into this tutorial to help us all newbies.

  15. striker503 says:

    Hey, nice tut maybe u guys add some other languages :) maybe german :P

  16. Terry Robson says:

    Excellent introduction for me as potential user, coming in from a simple 2-D CAD & Photoshop background. Very well paced and very clear. Many thanks!

  17. benjamin says:

    Hi there! Thanks for this tutorial.
    I’ve had some trouble with some things though: using the middle-click or alt+left-click to rotate doesn’t work here… Any idea why?
    I’m quite amazed how people seem to be arrogant on this support site though. Obviously most people who made sarcastic comments on the voice of the presentator cannot even speak a second language. If you can’t appreciate the effort of other people they provide for free, then perhaps you should switch to paid programs and support.

    • peteremil says:

      @benjamin your wrestling with rotation may be because you use the keycombos for dollying / moving / panning in the viewport, not rotating the object – to rotate an object use the r-key or the combo crtl + alt + r to get the rotation-manipulator.

      Hopes this clarifies things.

  18. Nicolai Oshka says:

    A friend of mine introduce this amazing program to me, telling how I am able to create 3D animations.
    I am very excited and anxious to learn how to use blender, but I am a “REAL NOOB”, and I am even having a hard time with figuring out what every thing means and what to learn using the tutorials.

    I just want to learn but I dont know what to read. I dont know but is there some sort of link you can suggest to me to learn all the tools and what they do? I just click on one thing like the “Noob to Pro”, and it send me a webpage with tons of more links and stuff like that?

    There must be some thing I am completely missing right? Can you redirect me to what I should be learning first? Do you think you can help?

    Thanks!!!

  19. Thank you very much for the view tutorial!

    If even I can’t get all the content, it have been very useful for me. It will help a lot to put subtitles for all the explanations. The name of the shortkeys, etc will be more easy to understand for non native English speakers (or people who have difficulties to understand spoken English).

    • Swa says:

      I agree!

      I really appreciate the effort, but I often had to go back and repeatedly listen to what he said in order to understand – for example when he pronounced “H” like “edge”, I got really confused, same with mixing up “D” and “T”.

      This is a very informative tutorial nonetheless, and it has given me a great introduction to this program.

  20. enyon says:

    Hello. I am just in the beginning of the tutorial, have installed blender and pytho2.7. Right click on any button on header just pop up header position menu. So I am not able to try split views as shown in the beginning of the tut… hmmm Thinks same with othre menus.

    • Vidar Vidnes says:

      It may be a bit challenging to get the split menu up. Notice his comment that you need to have the mouse pointer changed before having access to the menu. In my xubuntu the mouse pointer changes to an double arrow. This is visible when you are hovering exactly above the boundary between the two panes/windows making you able to resize them. Right clicking then gives you the menu.

  21. jdub says:

    Man, amazing how ungrateful some of these folks are. This guys worked his butt off to put this together. Makes me wonder if any of those people ever had to do something so tedious. I’d hate to do it for money, let alone free…let alone for such a rude audience. Those folks need to take what they can from it and then make a better tutorial, if even possible. Thanks for the effort and a very good starting point for a noob like me.

  22. steve says:

    nice tutorial but please, oh please do a voice over!

  23. Mark says:

    Good tutorial; sure the voice is at times hard to understand if you don’t pay attention but sheesh cut man some slack- if you don’t like it your free to go pay for Autodesk – I didn’t think so. Stop complaining.

  24. salope says:

    Hi there

    very intense tutorial – I found very useful, as it is packed with so much info, to go back to it a couple of time. Thank you so much to ever did this great video.

  25. salope says:

    Hi there

    very intense tutorial – I found very useful, as it is packed with so much info, to go back to it a couple of times. Thank you so much to ever did this great video.

    As per the guy who can’t understand the voice over, why don’t you learn english before taking on a tutorial on a complex software?

    -))

  26. Vidar Vidnes says:

    Thanks for the tutorial. Its great and gave me a kickstart in the right direction. Good blesh! I had no problems following your voice even when following your examples real-time in my own session of blend.

    For those commenting negative on his voice I have this to say. Get a life, travel and widen your horizons!

    • Set says:

      That’s not really fair, while I did eventually manage the use this tutorial and could understand what this man was saying, that wasn’t the problem, It was key points and tips where I had trouble and I found my self fumbling with an oversensitive scroll bar at the bottom of the video. Just a little irritating, that’s all. ^ ^

  27. EL says:

    I neeed a gotdamn translator! lol Other than that, good tutorial.

  28. bob says:

    great video. and in all actuallity, the accent wasnt too bad.

  29. Set says:

    I,m sorry but I’m having a hard time understanding this man, I’ve basically been left out in the cold.
    But I,m getting by.

  30. right2ryhme says:

    Hey guys how’re you all doing im new to the 3d world and i decided to start with blender… i was wondering if i could get useful information and tutorials to help me in my journey into this amazing world of 3D… Tankx

  31. IlluminaZer0 says:

    Want to give a big thanks as well. I honestly avoided this tutorial for quite a while due to many of the common complaints listed, but now that I am actually muscling through it I can truly appreciate it’s value. This is more useful then the vast majority of the University level classes (Computer Science) that I’ve taken. It’s just nice to have someone take the time to show differing features rather then just throwing you to the wolves.

    Thanks again. ^_^

  32. Anonymouse says:

    If I edit together another video with subtitles; Will anybody be willing to watch it? Could it be uploaded here on this url?

    Seriously. I’m willing to make this. I’d even subtitle the correct command names when he misspoke a few times. But I don’t want to put in the effort if no one wants to watch it.

    • Karlo says:

      Yes, I’d use it. Especially if I can step through backwards and forwards. I seem to need to go back a couple of steps often to bang the concepts into my head, and the video scroll bar is touchy and, by the time I get back to the point I wanted, whoosh, the video shoots by the place I was having trouble. Not just a noob but a slooowb, I guess.

  33. ti laprimera says:

    looks good enuf for a beginner like me…thanks! :’)

  34. jcp says:

    I can’t understand what is he saying! Looks like good software but this introduction shows no enthusiasm, I stopped it after 4 minutes. I will read.

  35. mem says:

    Very good tutorial for beginners in blender like me, thanks.

    PS: I had no problems with the indian accent after few minutes (just the time to adapt to it).

  36. Dgap says:

    It was a great tut but in my opinion the video should have captions

  37. Ravi says:

    Dear Karan

    I am new to Blender and wish to start learning from your tut but right now i am working in China and most of the video sharing (and host of other websites) are banned here. Can you kindly tell me from where to download your tut ? Or any other beginner’s tut that you would like to suggest.

    Ravi

  38. Don says:

    First I want to thank the creator/s of this video for making it. This is the best get started in Blender video I have found (so far) for a very intimidating program (for someone who has never seen it or worked with 3D modeling.

    There’s a wealth of information to be had here. All at no expense of your own. It only shows ignorance to those to stop and their life to complain about how someone who spent hours planning and editing and producing this presentation for all of us to benefit from cannot be understood as easily as they like. As far as understanding his accent goes, slow down, be patient and listen closely. It takes practice to be able to adapt to other languages the more languages you learn the better you get at learning them. This also is true for different accents. As other people already have said these people complaining can probably barely speak English much less second or third language. I also see that its the people who are more close minded and quick to judge when people aren’t exactly like themselves. Those people also tend to be angry at those they don’t understand rather than trying to see things through their eyes first to see if they deserve the judgment or not. Most of our worlds problems would be solved if more people would care to understand other people better rather than judge them when they aren’t any better themselves. All of the problems people are describing here are minor compared to most videos especially most free videos. Has anyone realized that they can learn here for free the same skills people are paying thousands of dollars at art colleges around the world. All without entrance exams, having to prepare a portfolio and audition to hopefully be accepted only to then have to pay a lot of money for the honor of being taught at that school. Here you can devote your own time to learning, pay nothing, and hopefully contribute to the cause so others can learn too.

    Also when has any instructional video (at lease one that didn’t involve blowing stuff up or setting something on fire) ever been entertaining? I don’t know anyone who just reads a dictionary or encyclopedia for entertainment purposes.

    All and all good tutorial. I don’t remember any mistakes in the voice overs at all (maybe I was sleeping though that part though) and I haven’t worked with the program yet so there might be other mistakes I haven’t seen yet.

    It is the people who are complaining over this narrators accent that either will not make it in the art industry, or leave a thick black mark on it that will many more people a long time to cover up. (no it can’t be erased just covered up).

    -peace out

  39. Mike says:

    Learned a ton of invaluable information from this tutorial.
    Thanks! : )

  40. Andrew says:

    Really great tutorial. I’d tried to start with Blender by using my normal method with things – jumping head first into the deep end. I did pick up a ton of stuff doing that, but overall I needed this tutorial to pick up everything I missed.

    True, the accent was a bit of a problem and I agree with the poster who suggested making a subtitled version. On the other hand, if you really want to learn to use this program, do what most people are doing – ignoring that and just getting on with it.

  41. Jenn says:

    I can’t understand him. Thanks for the tutorial but I can’t do anything with Blender because I have no idea what I am doing because I was unable to understand. :(

    • Sparrow says:

      watch it again…or watch another tut if ur completely unable to comprehend something as trivial as an accent! playing damsil in distress will get u nowhere in life, either suck it up, make another plan or just would everyone please please please just stop complaining…gosh….

      i wonder to myself why ppl arent just more happy? …tis a mystery i tell you :)
      Props to Karan for the tut, most of us appreciate the time and effort:)

  42. Aberbotimue says:

    I started looking at blender some time ago, but couldn’t get my head round the interface, and the concepts. I decided this weekend, i was going to try again…

    Karan has created a great introduction to the software, a great tutorial, and the planned route through the features, has let me figure getting from simple placing of objects to taking an item into edit mode, something that’s important, that I hadn’t got my head round before.

    I thank you so much for the tutorial, and recommend anyone who is learning to use blender should defiantly listen to this tutorial.

    I would suggest pausing after each instruction, and trying it for your self in the product..

  43. Pedro says:

    I’m starting a class on college which works with Blender, and this helped me LOTS! Thank you for your work!

  44. Jason says:

    i am new to both linux and blender i have proficient training in maya all the way up to maya 9, is this going to be a drastic change or am i looking at easy as pie program to learn?
    thanx

  45. EM says:

    This is a great tutorial full of information. I have been watching several tutorials over the last week and this one covered a lot more information on the basics that any newbie (like me) would need to be taught and a lot of other tutorials expect you to know already…

    yes it is monotone (did you expect a tutorial to be an action movie?)

    yes he has a thick accent, which is sometimes difficult, i particularly had a problem with the hotkey to change back from triangulated to quads, was it J or alt J or RJ, i couldnt tell what he said, so for that i will have to investigate through trial and error, but otherwise if you listen carefully you can make out pretty much everything he said. If there was anything to suggest to the creator, it would be to add pop-up text just showing each command function or hotkey so it would add a visual clarity to those important terms

    I am still searching for “modeling” tutorials that cover all the ways to manipulate a mesh,and WHAT the modifiers in the button screen do like multires, because NONE of the “beginner” tutorials i have seen yet cover this info…glad i took the time to watch this tutorial i got another 2 whole pages of notes out of this one, time well spent

    Definitely advise this one to anyone wanting to learn blender from the beginning like me…

  46. karm says:

    wile i thank him for the time and effort Mr Karan Shah put into making this and i mean no disrespect. BUT
    i simply can not understand about half of what he is saying.
    Sadly this only added to the confusion of learning use the system.

    I am disabled and have problems understanding a people with heavy ascent or people who talk really fast. wonder how hard it would be to get a English speaking person ( possibly a student ) with out a heavy accent to do a scripted voice over?
    guess ill go read a book on it or somthing

  47. LogicHound says:

    Some of you folks who are complaining that you can’t understand the accent really need to get out more! This is a global economy! Wake up! I’m from the South (of the US) and yet I can understand people of just about any accent simply because I’ve worked with and communicated with people from all over the world. Oh yeah! If you can only speak one language, how can you criticize someone who speaks more than one language? I’m multilingual myself…. after all this is a global economy!

  48. Daemon says:

    A good basic tutorial. But, is this guy eating while talking? He is hard enough to understand without the eating sounds.

  49. Golden says:

    well…I’ll be…..I can’t believe I finally learned a few shortcuts. Along with a few other things….besides sitting here and stareing at the box. Laughs.. Thankyou so much for your time and effort for making this tutorial. It was just the kick in the pants that I needed to shove me a few feet forward.

  50. Shawn Irwin says:

    I would admit to falling asleep during the tutorial, but that reflects nothing on the quality of the tutorial; I just watched it a second time, and I have to say that dispite all the things some others complained about, this tutorial is superior to many other tutorials I have seen, because it teaches you a lot of things in a very short time. I use to use Maya, and after seeing what Blender can do, I wonder why anyone would choose Maya over Blender . . .

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