# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Cool Things

Cool things in Blender that aren\'t that obvious. Useful tips and tricks
in Blender.

## Attribution

Many of The Following Tips and Tricks have been contributed by members
of the CGsociety.org, a Public Society for
Digital Artists. The tips have been extracted from a CGsociety
thread.
They have been roughly edited to improve readability.

## File Browser Functions

### Delete, Move, Rename, and Make Directory

When you are inside a file browser for loading or saving something and
you want to create a new directory, just add the name to the path on top
of the window and confirm \'Makedir\'.

you can also delete(x), move(m), or rename(n) a file. you can do action
on multiple files by seling with right click

### Preview images when loading them as a texture

Whenever you are loading images as a texture, you can hold down **Ctrl**
while clicking on the \'load\'

### Trick for Creating Quick File Revisions

After you have saved a blend file or an image you can then save it in
progression that is:

car .blend. or car .JPG

Next time do \"Save As\" then press the + (plus) key which will advance
the blend file by 1 every time it\'s pressed. example: car .blend
becomes car 1.blend. press again car 2.blend and so on.

The - (minus) key will subtract one. I\'ve gotten into the habit of
saving frequently. Yeah I know there is now the undo feature but I like
this better because it gives you a history in case you need to back a
few levels of a build. You get a saved version at the level you choose.

Note: Blender automatically detects the number\... meaning it does not
need to be in any position. For instance: If you have a file named
001starport.png or .blend or whatever, pressing the + (plus) key will
automatically name it 002starport.png. If you want to name it
starport1.png, it will change it to starport2.png.

Two rules: The filename has to have a number. It can be 0, or 1, or
3.141569.

If the file number is a negative, pressing + (plus) key will increase
the \"magnitude\" of the negative number. I may have used magnitude
wrong, if so, I mean pressing the + (plus) key will make -0.04 drop to
-0.05. The - (minus) key will bring you only to 0, and then it will
start to eat itself up.

### Open Recent

Control O

## Object/Vertex Manipulation

### Constrain Movement to one Axis or to a plane

when moving objects/vertices or set of objects/vertices (**\[G\]** key)
if you move in the direction of the global X axis (Up/Down) and then
press the **MMB**, movement will be constrained to only move in the X
axis, or if you move the vertices in the direction of the Y axis and
then press **MMB** it will be constrained to move only in the Y axis.
The same is true of the Z axis.

You can achieve the same effect by using the X, Y or Z keys while in
grab mode. You simply have to press X key, Y or Z, once to lock to X Y
or Z global axis,\*

To Constrain the Movement to two axes (a plane): Press **Ctrl+X** to
move in the Z-Y-Plane. **Ctrl+Z**=XY, **Ctrl+Y**=XZ.\*

Alternatively, Select scaling mode and select the axis not to scale with
the selecting button at the same time as you hit **Shift**.

-   in every case You can hit the X,Y or Z button again to constrain
    movement to a different set of axes. Normally this different set of
    axes is local. However you can change the identity of this set to
    global, local, normal, or view by pressing **Alt+Space**. which
    cycles through the different identites.

Note: All of these shortcuts work with scaling and Rotating as well

### Shrink/fatten mesh in direction of vertex normals

When you\'re mesh-editing, **Alt+S** will shrink/fatten the mesh
selection in the direction of the vertex normals.

### Vertex Parenting

You can parent object to a Mesh, in that case you are parenting to the
center of the mesh.. BUT if the mesh is translated somehow (let\'s say
by an armature**\'\[S\]** pose) the center remains in the same spot, and
thus the child object doesn\'t receive any transformation at all.

To solve this, you can parent the child object to a vertex (or a face)
within the mesh, and any transformation that the vertex receives is
passed to the child.

There are only 2 options, to parent to any 3 vertex within the mesh or
to parent to just one vertex. If you parent to 1 vertex then only
location information is passed, with 3 vertex all transformations
(rotation, location and size) are passed to the child.

How to do it? Starting in object mode select the child(ren), hold
**Shift** and select the parent, enter edit mode, select one or three
vertex, press **Ctrl+P**. That\'s it!

### Work around to welding Verts

For Edge loop (Verts) position both loops together as close as possible
then hit W then 4 (not on numkey pad). You can adjust how far the effect
of collapse can go in the Edit window (a button on the right labeled
Limit: \*\*\*, where \* is a number).

As for individual Verts, e.g. Two vertices welded to become one, select
both Verts, scale until they are very close then hit W then 4.

you can also do this with the snap combo

select the vertex you want to weld together **Ctrl+S**, Cur -\> Sel
**Ctrl+S**, Sel -\> Cur **\[W\]**, Remove Doubles

Also, whenever Blender pop up a menu with different options, you can
just type in a number to choose one of the options (use the numbers not
on the **NumPad**)

### Make individual objects the camera and Change them back

If you select certain objects and press **Ctrl+0(zero)**it will make
them the camera. I use it all the time to align spotlights.

Select your camera and hit **Ctrl NumPad 0** to make it the active
camera again

### Ordering Meshes in Vertex Groups

If you are preparing to skin your meshes and you are ready to create the
vertex groups, you should pay attention to the order in which you create
them, because once they are created there is no way to re-arrange them
on the vertex-group list.

That means that if you are a ultra-by-the-book person and you would like
the vertex group alphabetically ordered on the list them you must create
them in alphabetical order.

.. Or, if you would like them to be ordered according to their function
(shoulders, then arms, then forearms, then palms, etc. you must create
them in that order.

This may all sound like a stupid thing to care about, but If you have a
character with 39 vertex groups you may quickly find that when one of
them needs fixing it is a little difficult since they were randomly
created.

### Position and scale along face normal,

\-**Shift V**: Position camera along face normal, **Alt S**: scale
selected vertices along face normal

### Using Fake Users

pressing **Shift+F4** will turn the window into a ¨Data Select Window¨
where you can assign and unassign fake users to almost everything by
selecting the name and pressing the F key

Creating a fake user allows you to keep useful data blocks (materials,
textures, base meshes) at hand even if they are not linked to an object.
You can use it to set a default material that would have the shader you
like best.

### Align a selection of vertices on a plane

If you want to perfectly align a selection of vertices on a plane, you
just have to follow these little steps:

1.) Before you are selecting the vertices you want to align, position
your 3D cursor in the plane that you want to align to (you could select
the 4 vertices of a big plane and hit **Shift+S** / Cursor-\>Selection
for example, but you can position it anywhere)

2.) Now select those vertices you want to align

3.) Choose \"3D Cursor\" under \"Rotation/Scaling Pivot\"

4.) Now with the **\[S\]**-key start scaling mode, hit the key of the
axis you want to move the vertices on (X,Y,Z)

5.) Holding down the **Ctrl-Key**, you can now move the vertices in one
line towards the cursor, until the value for the chosen axis is 0.000.
Alternatively, just enter, using the keyboard, the scale factor you want
(0 in this case) .

6.) Hit LMB. The vertices are perfectly aligned along a plane through
the 3D cursor.

This even works very well while in perspective view mode, so you can
align on the fly and don\'t have to switch to front/side/top view all
the time.

### Welding Vertices

You can weld vertices by selecting them in edit mode and pressing
**Alt+M**.

### View wireframe of hidden Verts

to view the wireframe of hidden Verts, make sure you are in WIREFRAME
MODE and then turn SubSurf on and change the level to 0 If you already
knew about this then

### Select a true loop

shortcut is **Shift + Alt + right Button** of the mouse, serves to
select true loop, in vertices as in edges like in faces.

### Selecting one object from a single mesh comprised of multiple objects

If you have more than in Edit Mode, you can place your mouse cursor next
to one of the Verts in the desired object, then press the \"L\" key to
select all of the Verts linked to that one. \"Alt+L\" reselects in the
same manner.

### Precise Zoom and Select/Deselect

Selecting: If you Hold down the **Ctrl+LMB** (left mouse button) and
drag the mouse, it will allow you draw a selection as opposed to using
the B button which gives you a square.

Deselecting:To draw an area to deselect, Hold down the **Ctrl+ Shift+
LMB**(left mouse button) and drag the mouse,

Zooming:Hold down the **Ctrl+MMB**. Move your mouse vertically to can
get a more controlled zoom versus scrolling the Mouse wheel.

This feature may not be present in 2.37 or earlier versions.

### Mouse Gestures

Left click and draw:

-   a straight line - moves the selected object.
-   a circle - rotates the selected object (note: this must be drawn
    fairly circle-like).
-   a V - scales the selected object.

### Selecting Obscured or Hidden Objects

Say you are in front or side view and you want to select an object, but
it is obscured or hidden behind other objects. If you press **Alt RMB**
over a group of objects, a menu will be displayed in the 3D window
allowing you to pick the object you wish to select.

### Select or Deselect Multiple Vertices

In Edit mode, when you click the **RMB** near a vertex that vertex (face
or edge)will be selected, **RMB** again will reselect. By holding the
**Shift** key this will allow you to add each selected vertex (face or
edge) in that highlighted group.

Pressing the U key (Undo in Edit mode) will also remove the last
selection you made.

Alternatively, you can Press B and then draw a box with **MMB**.
Anything caught in the box will be deselected. Also works with BB and
the draw selection. Draw with **MMB** and you reselect.

### Selecting multiple items

You can hold **Shift** and use right mouse button to select multiple
items to append.

### Measuring, length, distance on an object.

Hit \"F9\" (editing), you should have split (2) windows. One \"3d\" the
other \"buttons\" go to the Mesh Tools 1 panel and press the Edge
Length, Edge Angles and the dimensions will appear on your selections in
the 3d view.

### Adding Connected Vertices

In Edit Mode, if only one vertex is selected, pressing \"E\" will add a
vertex, on a freely defined place, connected to the selected one. As
will holding **CTR**L and left clicking the mouse where you want the new
vertex to be positioned.

Note: It must be an Image texture and in wireframe mode to be visible.

(2.37a)

### Recalculate Normals

**Ctrl + N** = Recalculate normals outside (you might have to select
faces before doing so) **Shift + Ctrl + N** = Recalculate normals inside

These two hotkeys are useful when you extrude some edges and see a kind
of seam in between (due to normals pointing in different directions).

Then, after selecting an edge, **Ctrl + NumPad(+)** selects the face
associated with this edge. **Ctrl + NumPad(-)** deselect the face.

### Create a Quad from two Tris

**Alt + J** when having two Tris selected makes a Quad.

### Remove Doubles

To Remove Doubles use hotKey: W. You can adjust the \"limit\" option so
that \"Remove Doubles\" has more or less tolerance. This option is
located in editing window under the mesh tools panel, (i.e. weld
vertices that are further?)

### Combine edit levels on a mesh.

When in Edit mode for a mesh (TAB key) you can choose the level that you
wish to edit at. At the bottom of the 3D window, there are four buttons.
Vertex, edge, face & back-face cull.

By default the vertex level is selected, if you hold **Shift** and press
the edge button, you can use both at once.

### Change Select Mode

to change select mode (vertex, edge or face) you can press **Ctrl+Tab**.
But this way you can\'t use the Ctrl+Key to ADD the select modes.. Still
could be useful, if you don\'t have a header for the window you\'re
working in..

### Precision Warping

When using the warp tool (**Shift+W**) you may find that there are times
when you have trouble perfectly closing a 360-degree loop. This is
because Blender will warp based on the total width of the selection,
which may not necessarily be what you want.

Getting around this is simple, just select two verts to denote the new
endpoints, duplicate them (**Shift+D**), scale the two verts times two,
so they are just twice as far apart. Then select what you want to warp
plus those two marker verts, and warp 720 degrees.

When done, click a vert on your mesh and type **L** to select everything
linked to it. Then type **H** to hide it. Once you\'ve hidden all of
your mesh, all that remains are the two marker verts. Do a Select All
(**A**) and type **X** to delete them. Now unhide your mesh using
**Alt+H** and you have just the warped mesh, extra guide verts are all
cleaned up.

### Precision Cutting

The Knife Tool can actually be quite precise if you take advantage of
the snap feature. Press **K**, choose **\"Knife(Exact)\"** and then hold
the **Ctrl** key while choosing where you wish to cut and you will find
that the path to be cut will now snap to nearby vertices.

Keep in mind that the vertices being snapped to don\'t have to be the
ones you are cutting. Say you want to cut the midsection out of a UV
sphere and you want the cut to be two grid units in height. While
viewing the side of the sphere, add a plane, and scale it to be two grid
units tall, and wide enough so that it extends beyond the sphere. Now
select the vertices of the sphere (because what we have selected is what
gets cut) and when you cut it, snap to the four verts of the plane. Now
hit **Enter** to apply your perfect cut.

Using guide geometry such as a plane to cut other geometry
\"cookie-cutter\" style can be extremely useful when accuracy is needed.
Remember to align your view before cutting, since your view will
determine the angle from which the geometry is cut.

## Working with Meshes

### Turning Sub-Surfed Mesh into Normal Mesh

If you have a sub-surfed mesh you can turn THAT sub-surf mesh into a
normal mesh. Just select the sub-surfed mesh and press **Alt+C**
(Conversion).

### How to remove (numb) black spots on a Mesh

If a Sub-Surfed mesh becomes (numb) black on some places, that\'s
because of the normals. Select all and press **Ctrl+n** and then
confirm. now it should look prettier!

if the above solution does not work , save your Blend file, Quit Blender
then restart. Use **Ctrl O** to open the last file and your mesh will
have returned to correct shaded state.

### Select all holes in a mesh and fill them

**Shift+M**\* selects all Non-manifold edges/vertices (holes) in a mesh
\*\*. Then all you have to do is hit **Ctrl+F** to auto-fill those holes
with \"beauty fill\".

-   

**Shift+M**is an alternative shortcut for \'Select Non-manifold\'.
You\'ll find this in the select menu when in mesh edit mode. The listed
short cut there is **Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M**. **Shift M** is obviously a lot
more comfortable on the fingers though!

-   -   

Although \'Non-manifold\' usually refers to holes in your mesh, it is
not necessarily only holes e.g., an edge with three faces coming out of
it is also a non-manifold edge!

### Fill in four or fewer vertices

Select the vertices and press **\[F\]**, this will fill in the empty
space around them.

To clean up a filled in space, select all the vertices for the area, and
press **\[F\]**. Choose OK to make FCon. For example: add a plane in
wireframe mode, extrude it several times, select all vertexes, then hit
**\[F\]**.

## Animation

### Animation Preview in all windows at the same time

It is well known that **Alt+ a** is for previewing an animation on the
3D window. But that\'s not all of it. Divide your screen into multiple
3D Windows, each from a different point of view.

Press **Alt + Shift + a**

Enjoy!!!

If you have an Action/Ipo Window and 3D windows open, and you issue the
**Alt + Shift + a** command from the Action (or the Ipo) window, it will
animate both (the action and the 3D) in sync!! Great for visualization
of Ipo\'s effect on your model.

### Choose animation mode, Convert mouse movements to IPO

-T in IPO window: Choose animation mode, i.e., linear, bezier, constant
-**\[R\]** in IPO window: Record mouse movements, and convert to IPO

### Animate procedural textures

To animate procedural textures, press \'i\' with the mouse pointer in
the materials window, and select the type of Key-Frame you wish to set
in the pop up menu. advance a few frames, tweak your materials, and set
another key frame.

## UV Mapping, Particles and Texturing

### Blender color picker

Blender has a PhotoShop-esque color picker. Simply click on the color
preview next to the sliders to use it. Hit enter when you have the color
you want.

### Saving your face groups selections

Regarding UV mapping and Face Groups Selections there seems to be the
general misconception that you can\'t save your face groups selections
on Blender.

Most people already know that from within the Face Select Mode (Potato
Mode) you can switch into Edit Mode and whatever selection you do while
in Edit Mode is passed back to Face Select Mode when you exit the Edit
Mode.

Well, Did you ever wonder why Material Index Groups (that are nothing
more than face groups with a common material on them) have those little
\'Select\' and ´Deselect\' buttons there? Sure they come handy for later
modification of the material index but that is not all about them.

Do this: Before starting the UV unwrapping job, cut your mesh by
creating as many material indexes as you need, you can even assign each
one a different color so you can be sure that there is no face orphan.
Once you have the mesh all cut and sliced (so to speak) you enter in
Face Select Mode, then switch into Edit Mode, select the index
containing the faces you want to unwrap, press \'Select\', leave Edit
Mode and Voile! You now have an entirely useful face group waiting for
you to unwrap. No more manual (and imprecise) face selection is needed.

If you later need to change the mapping of those faces, don\'t fear.
Just make sure there isn\'t any face selected on Potato Mode, do as you
did first (enter edit mode, select the index, exit edit mode) and there
are your very same faces selected again with the UV mapping you already
assigned to them.

Note: Another benefit of have precise face selection groups is that,
initially, you don\'t have to worry about UV coordinates overlapping,
since you know have the way to select ONLY the faces you want to. For
example, you unwrap all your faces by groups and when you are done you
can start thinking about scale and position within the texture map, not
like before when you have to solve those things as you go.

### Bulk Texture Change

Consider a scenario in which you have a scene with a 100 mesh objects,
and 50 of them have one texture and 50 of them have another.

If you want to change the texture of the first 50, but don\'t want to
change each individually, do the following. Add a Plane out of the view
of the camera. Add your new texture (Material) to the plane. Then use
the "Copy to material Buffer" button in the header of the Material
buttons. Select one mesh object of the same sort that you want to
change, open Material buttons and Paste from Material Buffer.

All the mesh objects with the same texture will now have the new
texture.

Alternatively, If you have a material that you want to apply to a lot of
objects at once:

1\. Select all the objects you want to apply the material to. 2. Apply a
material. (this only applies to the last selected object) 3. press
**Ctrl+L** \> Materials. (this links the material of the last selected
object to all the other objects)

### Negative Meta-Balls

Add\>Metaball as usual. Exit EDIT mode and Add\>Metaball. This time
before you exit EDIT mode, hit the Negative button in the EDIT buttons
window. Then leave edit mode.

If you move the negative Metaball around, you can see the effect it has
on the positive metaball.

Be careful though, as negative metaballs are not displayed in the same
manner as positive metaballs, you will only see the Pivot point not a
meta-mesh.

This is a little test you can try to see the amazing effects negative
metaballs can produce.

Make 1 Metaball, make it big. Place three spheres (UV) inside, make them
emit particles, one 100, one 200, one 300 particles. Parent three
negative metaballs, one to each sphere, and use dupli-vert on each
sphere. Make the 100 duplicate metaball quite big, the 200 medium and
the 300 small. Hit **Alt A** to run animation in 3D window.

*(`<s>`{=html}Click here for this author\'s negative-metaball
thread`</s>`{=html}\... **oops,** it\'s not there anymore, well, not the
AVI
anyway!)*

*(Click here for this author\'s negative-metaball
AVI.)*

### Maintain the UV layout when moving/scaling/rotating UV co-ords.

When you have the UV image/editor window open and have loaded an image
you want to UV map to a mesh, click on the UV tab in the header bar and
turn off \'Snap UV to pixels\'.

This will help to maintain the UV layout when moving/scaling/rotating UV
co-ords.

## Rendering

### Tricks, related to the view ports and the render buffers

First. Switching among screens

So you have your screen made off the 3D window, the buttons window and
the info window\... but you are doing some fine tunning to the mesh in
two places simultaneously, and they both need to zoom in the 3D window.
You could scroll or zoom out, translate the view and zoom in again. None
of them an elegant solution.

Another situation. You are working on a model and are using an image for
reference. You are not tracing over the photo, just take a look at it
often to make sure you don\'t deviate to much from the concept. So you
open the photo in a 2D program and keep switching back and forth from
Blender.. or you have the photo open in an image window and keep
maximizing and minimizing the window\... another hassle

Worry no more!!! Blender can handle multiple virtual screen (ala Linux)
and you can come and go from them with just one key stroke.

Just press **Ctrl+Left Arrow** or **Ctrl+Right Arrow** (for all of you
OS X users, add a **Shift**) and you are switching screens. Go ahead! By
default EVERY .blend file comes with 3 screens \... and of course you
can add/delete as many as you see fit.

the magic button to add or delete screens is right beside the Tools
menu, up there in the info window.

### Using the render buffers

Ok, so you set your scene and press RENDER, a nice window comes up and
you see your hard work coming to existence (that\'s the default
behavior, if your change it on the display buttons then this may not
work for you).

Do you realize that the window containing your render image is also a
render buffer? Actually they are 2 buffers for your to play with.
Whenever the render window is open (and you can re-open it by pressing
F11 without having to wait again for the render) if you press the J key
you can switch from Buffer A and B. (the last active one is what you
save when you press F3). You can even switch buffers in the middle of a
rendering (but I advice against that when rendering very complex scenes,
you have been warned!)

The cool thing about having two separate render buffers is that you can
have instant before-and-after images for things that you change in the
scene. For example you are searching the perfect position for a light
source in a scene, you place it and do a render, place the light in
another position, switch to the second buffer and do a new render. Now,
with the render window open, just press J to see how the change on the
light\'s position influence your scene and that makes your decision
easier.

By the way, the render window can be zoomed (by the normal ways or by
pressing Z ) to do a closer inspection of the image.

### Render window Tricks

To zoom into the render window, use the **ZKEY**.

To find out what the (Red, Green, Blue, Alpha) values of rendered image
are, left click and hold the button of your mouse.this will reveal the
RGBA values of the pixel below the mouse cursor. i.e. R 127, G 255, B
13, A40. The values will appear in the bottom left corner of the render
window. You can also hold the button and drag the mouse around. This
will display the values of the pixels your mouse pointer passes over.

With the render window open, you can press **AKEY** to view an alpha
version of the image. Press **AKEY** again to go back to the normal
colour view.

To do a before/after comparison after making a change, hit **JKEY** to
switch render buffers, then hit **F12** to render. In the render window,
use **JKEY** to alternate between the previous render and the current
one, so you can easily see the differences.

### Working while you Render

If you use a X/X11 based window manager, you do not need to watch
blender while it renders, go to a different virtual desktop. Blender
doesn\'t have to keep X informed of what\'s going on and rendering speed
may increase.

### Border Rendering

In the rendering buttons find the buttons marked \"Border\" and
\"Crop\". If you depress \"Border\", you can get a rendering of any part
of what the camera sees. Just do the following :

Go into a camera view using **NumPad 0**, press **Shift+B**. Then, mark
the limits of the rendering as you want them using LMB. Next, render the
usual way and the section you marked will be rendered first, then it
will be integrated to the complete rendering. If you wish that \*only\*
the chosen section would be rendered then click on the button marked
\"Crop\" also.

### Creating a cluster of particles which takes little time to render

Render some particles, and make the picture into an alpha mapped tga in
GIMP or whatever graphics editing application you use.

Load the image onto a plane. Adjust the alpha settings accordingly.
Parent the plane to the emitter. Press dupli-verts.

You now have a cluster of particles which takes relatively little time
to render. Of course it doesn\'t have to be an alpha map of particles.
That\'s entirely up to you.

### Alpha from render view

When cut & pasting stuff from render window to {insert your favorite
image editor here} using **Alt+ PrtScr**, cut and paste the render
first, come back to render window and press \"A\". It changes the view
to alpha and you get black & white mask to cut the background nicely in
the {again, favorite image editor}. Nice when you do testing in low res.

### View alpha texture as wire.

**Ctrl+d** in 3d very usefully for preview without rendering.

Also, if you have an object (works best on a mesh plane) with an image
texture, you can use **Alt+V** key outside edit mode. This will adjust
the object\'s size values so that the image won\'t be stretched when
projected.

## Miscellaneous

### Restoring your "lost" work.

If you go to the temp folder where you have Blender save its temp .Blend
files, reload the most recent one and this will save you losing the
whole of your work. You don\'t even need to save a .Blend file for this
to work. You can change the settings for this in the tool window at the
top of the Blender screen.

### Built in Hot-Key List

Since the few last versions (since 2.28 I think) blender has a built-in
all inclusive hot-key list. Just open a text-editor window, and right
besides the option to create a new text-buffer there is a menu option
called ¨KEYLIST.intrr¨. Select that option and the full list is loaded
in memory

\--Edit: There may be many hot-keys missing, especially the newest ones,
like M to mirror a mesh, K for the Knife tool, **Alt+Z** for textured
view\... but the list is a good start at least.

### Un-compiled PlugIns

Blender can load plug-ins for texturing, sequence editor, etc. .
However, Blender comes with a few of such PlugIns un-compiled.

In Linux they are located on the plug-ins sub-directory of the default
Blender install, and all that you need is a Make command to compile
them. I don\'t know how to compile them in Windows, but there they are,
just waiting for you to awake them!!!

### Blender "Easter Eggs" (Weird things included in blender)

All Publisher versions of Blender have been shipping with a Monkey mesh
called Suzanne. Just open the main tool box (**Space Bar**) -\> Add -\>
Mesh -\> and right below the other primitives you\'ll see the Monkey.

Why/What it is for? Only NaN programmers know\*. It is supposed to be a
private joke among the blender developing team. Since then, its
considered as a sort of mascot for blender. However, it is incredibly
useful as a quick complex object for testing textures, shaders, etc..

By the Way, Suzanne isn\'t the only joke included\... but I won\'t spoil
the surprise. You will bump with them on your daily work, that is for
sure.

-   NaN was the company that originally developed Blender

Try this: run blender with the -Y argument (open the command
prompt/terminal, go to your blender executable file folder, and type
blender -Y)

### Weird Error Message

Sometimes, when trying to use a boolean on a tri-based mesh, Blender
gives the prompt: \"Wanna Crash?\" \>Yes Please!

but clicking it doesn\'t crash. This is because Blender is a lot more
stable now compared to when that \'crash\' request was coded. It also
used to appear when using beauty fill after face fill. (**Ctrl+F** in
edit mode)

Blender 2.37 now has a \'widget\', which replicates the red/blue/green
axis symbol in 3DSMax in the 3d windows. Rotation scaling and movement
of objects/Verts/faces etc., can be manipulated using the widget, or in
the usual manner of earlier versions of Blender.

### Turn your blender animation into a screen-saver (Windows)

to turn your blender animation Windows binary file into a Windows screen
saver, rename the EXE file into SCR and right click it and install !

### Discover the FPS rate of a Window

If you hit **Ctrl+Alt+T** key in a window, Blender will tell you how
much time it takes to render a single frame of that window, in
milliseconds. Valuable Benchmark

## ???

using construction widget press **Shift** to get precision mode for fine
tuning. Release left mouse button (LMB) and holding **Shift** down press
it again, then you\'ll get moving along another axis.

## Sculpt Mode Hotkeys

-   F: an interactive brush resize
-   Shift F: an interactive brush strength adjuster
-   Ctrl F: in interactive texture angle adjuster for your brush.
-   Shift B: a rectangular zoom selection for close-up work
-   Alt B: hides all but selected rectangle
-   A: toggles airbrush
-   S: smooth
-   D: draw
-   G: grab
-   L: layer
-   I: inflate
-   P: pinch
-   V: toggles add and subtract in draw mode
-   Use X, Y and Z to toggle axis mirroring.

