Datasheet
Navigating the 3D Space n 9
In this book, the term window usually refers to a window with a specific editor type
active. For example, the term 3D view window will mean a window with the 3D View edi-
tor type selected. It’s perfectly possible to have more than one instance of the same editor
type open in separate windows doing different things at the same time. For example, you
can have two or more 3D view windows open at once looking at your 3D scene from dif-
ferent directions.
Properties Window
With the Properties editor, you can access a lot of information about many aspects of
Blender’s functionality, and as such, it’s a place where you’ll spend a lot of time. The
information is fairly dense, so it’s worthwhile to get a general sense of what’s going on
there before going much further.
The Properties editor can display any of up to 11 contexts at a time. These contexts
correspond to the icons in the header of the Properties window (not all 11 are available
at the same time). The possible properties contexts are as follows:
Render•
Scene•
World•
Object•
Object Constraints•
Modifiers•
Object Data•
Material•
Texture•
Particles•
Physics•
Which contexts are available depends on what type of object is selected in the 3D
viewport. Throughout the course of this book, you will dip into each of these contexts. In
this book, I will usually shorten the terminology by referring to Render properties rather
than the Render context of the Properties editor.
Context-Sensitive Menus
Blender contains a number of menus that you can access in certain window types and in
specific modes. Throughout this book, you will use these menus to add objects in Object
mode, to perform special operations in Edit mode, and to key values for animation,
among other things.
Navigating the 3D Space
As with any 3D application, you first need to get used to navigating the 3D space in
Blender. The following are the three main tools to do this:
Middle Mouse Button (MMB) Freely rotates the 3D space. By default, the 3D space is
rotated around the origin (in other words, zero point) of all axes. You can choose to have
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