Datasheet

ChaPter 1
Blender Basics:
Interface and Objects
The first hurdle in learning any complex piece of software is to become
familiar with the interface. In the past, this was especially true of Blender, which had
until recently garnered a reputation for an idiosyncratic and often perplexing interface.
With the release of the long-awaited Blender 2.5, this reputation may change. Blender 2.5
is the result of thousands of hours of designing, debugging, and coding, from a complete
recode of Blender’s low-level event-handling system to a top-to-bottom redesign of the
graphical user interface (GUI). Users coming from other 3D software will feel especially
welcomed by the improved organization of the interface and by its high degree of
customizability.
Much of this customizability is the result of an overhaul of Blender’s Python API,
which enables advanced users to have near total control over all aspects of the inter-
face (as well as access to most 3D data) via the Python scripting language. For users
familiar with the ideas behind object-oriented programming, many aspects of Blender’s
organization will be especially intuitive, such as the use of objects, function overload-
ing, and the reuse of datablocks. Getting a good feel for these ideas and how they are
implemented in Blender will greatly increase your proficiency at accomplishing what you
want. Going further to master Python scripting will give you a great deal of added power
over your Blender environment. Nevertheless, it’s not necessary to be a programmer to
use Blender, and this book doesn’t assume any programming knowledge.
Blender 2.5’s strengths begin with its interface, and so will this book. Mostly, you’ll
learn by doing over the course of this book, but in this chapter, you’ll take a quick look
at the most salient points of the Blender interface.
Work Areas and Window Types
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Navigating the 3D Space
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Objects and Datablocks
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User Preferences
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