Blender Interface

Author: Karl Kühberger

If you open Blender for the first time it might be a little staggering due to the large number of buttons that appear. For beginners the interface of the programme seems not very intuitional since it can't be compared to popular drawing or graphic programmes. But if you will once get used to this unconventional characteristics you will realize that they are essential for economic, easy and efficient working.


Some of the main unconventional peculiarities are:

  • In Blender you can only open one document at the same time.

  • The Blender surface consists of basically only on large window, which can be divided into several non-overlapping windows.

  • Each of these windows can be changed into another type of window.

  • Choosing objects works with the right mouse button

  • With the right mouse button you don't open context menus as you might do in other programmes.

  • Drag & Drop is hardly used.

  • The dialog for opening, saving etc. of files does not correlate with the usual pattern of the respective operating systems, but it always looks the same, not matter if you use Blender on Windows, Mac OSX or Linux.


Blender 2.47 after the Download (Factory Settings)


The following graphic shows in details how the interface of Blender is structured. In the factory settings you'll find three windows – the large 3D window in the middle, the button-window below and the window with the presettings (called “User Preferences”), from with you can only see the menu list above the 3D window. The windows are only separated through a thin line, the boarders can be changed with the left mouse button. If you click the right mouse button on a boarder between two windows, a menu opens which enables you to divide the winows or connect the “areas”. In this menu you can also reveal or hide headers.

The header of a window can be above or below the window as well. In the basic settings now you can see that the headers of the “User Preferences” as well as the 3D window are below these windows, whereas the header of the button window is above.

If you try you will find out that if you enlarge one of the three windows, the other two will automatically downsize.

Color coded schema

 


You can see the type of each window on the left border of the header. If you click here with the left mouse button, a menu opens in which you can change the window type (e.g. to change a button window into a 3D window).

 

The button window

Button windows contain a large amount of buttons and input fields. They are all divided in context and subcontext ( which can be compared with menus and submenus). In the header of the button window you will find the context symbols on the left. Right beside them you will find the corresponding subtexts. With a click on the symbols you can change them or you can also control this with the buttons on your keypad from F4 up to F10. If you continue to press one of the control keys it activates the matching subcontexts one after the other.

 


Window types


The (sub) contexts are context sensitive, which means that only those buttons that match with the selected object are displayed.

For more clearness the buttons are structured in so called panels. These panels can be arranged in form of stacks. By drag&drop (on the panels headline) you can either seperate them or stack them again together.

A click on the right mouse button on an empty area in the button window opens a menu, which offers you options for a horizontal, vertical or free arrangement of the panels.



Context and subcontext

 

In the header of the window displaying the presettings you will find the following menu items:

  • File (open, save, import, export, etc.)

  • Add (adding objects)

  • Timeline (navigation of the keyframes in animations)

  • Game (commands for the game engine)

  • Render (commands for rendering)

  • Help (links to tutorials in the internet, shortcuts, etc.)

Right beside this you will find the menus for screens (SCR) and scenes (SCE). In the menu for screens you will find preset window-layouts, which are applicative for different fields of work and can be switched easily. Of course you can also create and save your own layouts.

In the scenes menu you can save and manage different 3D scenes in one Blender file. Here you can copy or link several scenes, e.g. for creating different versions of one scene.

The informations displayed at the fair right give informations about the Blender version, number of polygons, memory capacity requirements, etc.)