Shall We Learn

In this lesson, we will navigate the 3D space together in Blender3D. We will zoom in, move, and rotate a 3D cone. We will also view a blender 3D building.

 

Step1: Delete the Default Cube and Add a Cone

When Blender first starts, there should be a square shown right in the middle of the coordinate system. It’s actually a cube, but you are viewing it from the top.

Let’s delete this cube and add a cone. First do a Right Mouse Click on the cube to select it (the cube’s outline will become pink), hit the “Delete” key on your keyboard, and select “Erase selected Object(s)” to confirm the deletion.

 

Then do a Right Mouse Click on the background and hold until the following menu pops up. Or just hit the space bar on the keyboard. Select “Add”->”Mesh”->”Cone”.

Keep the default configuration and just hit the OK button.

 

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The top view of the cone looks like a circle. Next, we will look at this cone from different view.

 

Step 2: Changing Views:

You can change the view in two ways. The first way is to use the mouse. Click “View” button and then select a view type. There are 4 views: Side, Front, Top, and Camera.

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Camera View:

 

 

Top View:

This is the birds-eye view. Image the viewer is standing on the Z-axis.

Front View:

Image the viewer is standing on the X-axis.

 

 

Side View:

Imagine the viewer is standing on the Y-axis.

You may also switch views using the number pad. First click the “Num Lock” key on your keyboard, and then hit 3 for side view, 1 for front view, 7 for top view, and 0 for camera view.

Step 4: Rotate and Zoom In/Out

To rotate, do a Middle Mouse Click on the coordinate plane and drag it to rotate. Or press Alt key (keep it down), do a Right Mouse Click, and drag the coordinate plane to rotate. To zoom in or out, do a Middle Mouse Click, and drag the plane in to zoom in, out to zoom out. Or you can use the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ keys on the Number Pad to zoom in and out.

Step 5: Navigate through a 3D Building

First go to Scopia site to download this building or any other building you like. Unzip the zip file and double click the blender file. If the building is in wire mode, it would look like this.

 

 

To change it to solid mode, change to “Object Mode” and click this button, then select “Solid” type.

Now the building is in solid mode.

Practice the navigation technique from last step. Try zooming enough to go “inside” the building. It’s just a shell but pretty cool nevertheless.

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