Blender

Blender

Blender Interface and Workflows

Workspace Layout

• 3D Viewport: Main viewport for modeling and scene manipulation
• Outliner: Hierarchical view of scene objects
• Properties Panel: Object, modifier, and material properties
• Timeline: Animation timeline and playback controls
• Graph Editor: Animation curve editing
• UV Editor: UV mapping and texture editing
• Shader Editor: Node-based material and shader creation

Navigation

• Orbit: Middle mouse button
• Pan: Shift + Middle mouse button
• Zoom: Scroll wheel
• Numpad Views: 1 (front), 3 (right), 7 (top), 5 (orthographic/perspective)
• Frame Selected: Period (.)
• Frame All: Home

Object Modes

• Object Mode: Manipulate entire objects
• Edit Mode: Edit mesh geometry
• Sculpt Mode: Digital sculpting
• Vertex Paint: Paint vertex colors
• Weight Paint: Paint vertex weights for rigging
• Texture Paint: Paint textures directly on model
• Pose Mode: Animate rigged characters

Modeling Tools and Techniques

Primitives

• Mesh Primitives: Cube, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone, Torus, Plane, Monkey
• Curve Primitives: Bezier, NURBS curves
• Surface Primitives: NURBS surfaces
• Metaballs: Organic blobby shapes

Edit Mode Tools

• Extrude (E): Extrude faces, edges, or vertices
• Inset (I): Create inset faces
• Bevel (Ctrl+B): Bevel edges
• Loop Cut (Ctrl+R): Add edge loops
• Knife Tool (K): Cut custom geometry
• Bridge Edge Loops: Connect edge loops
• Merge (Alt+M): Merge vertices
• Dissolve (X): Remove geometry while maintaining shape

Modifiers

• Subdivision Surface: Smooth subdivision
• Mirror: Mirror geometry across axis
• Array: Duplicate geometry in patterns
• Boolean: Combine, subtract, or intersect meshes
• Decimate: Reduce polygon count
• Remesh: Retopologize mesh
• Shrinkwrap: Project mesh onto target surface
• Solidify: Add thickness to surfaces

Sculpting and Retopology

Sculpt Mode

• Brushes: Draw, Clay Strips, Crease, Smooth, Inflate
• Dyntopo: Dynamic topology for sculpting
• Multiresolution: Subdivision sculpting
• Masking: Protect areas from sculpting
• Falloff: Control brush influence
• Stroke Settings: Spacing, jitter, smoothing

Retopology

• Shrinkwrap Modifier: Project new topology onto sculpt
• Snap to Face: Snap vertices to surface
• Poly Build: Manual retopology tool
• Bsurface: Automatic retopology add-on
• Quad Remesher: Automatic quad-based retopology

Blender Rigging and Weight Painting

Armature

• Bone Creation: Add bones to create skeleton
• Bone Editing: Edit bone position, rotation, scale
• Bone Layers: Organize bones into layers
• Bone Groups: Group bones for organization
• IK Constraints: Inverse kinematics setup
• Bone Collections: Organize bones in Blender 4.0+

Rigging Tools

• Rigify: Auto-rigging system for characters
• Auto-Rig Pro: Commercial rigging add-on
• Human Meta-Rig: Humanoid rig template
• Constraints: IK, Copy Rotation, Limit Rotation, etc.

Weight Painting

• Weight Paint Mode: Paint vertex weights
• Brush Settings: Brush size, strength, falloff
• Weight Tools: Normalize, blur, smooth weights
• Vertex Groups: Assign vertices to bone groups
• Mirror Weights: Mirror weights across symmetry
• Weight Gradient: Create smooth weight transitions

Grease Pencil and Animation Tools

Grease Pencil

• 2D Drawing: Draw 2D strokes in 3D space
• Object Mode: Manipulate grease pencil objects
• Edit Mode: Edit stroke points
• Draw Mode: Draw new strokes
• Sculpt Mode: Sculpt stroke thickness
• Vertex Paint: Paint stroke colors
• Materials: Assign materials to strokes

Animation

• Keyframing: Insert keyframes (I)
• Timeline: Scrub and playback animation
• Dope Sheet: Overview of keyframes
• Graph Editor: Fine-tune animation curves
• NLA Editor: Non-linear animation editing
• Action Editor: Edit animation actions

Blender to Unity/Unreal Export Pipelines

Export Settings

• FBX Export: File > Export > FBX
• Scale: Set to 1.00 for Unity, 0.01 for Unreal
• Forward Axis: Set to -Z forward for Unity, -X forward for Unreal
• Up Axis: Set to Y up for both engines
• Apply Transforms: Apply scale, rotation, location before export
• Include Selected: Export only selected objects

Unity Export

• Scale: 1.00 (Unity uses meters)
• Forward: -Z forward
• Up: Y up
• Apply Transforms: Ctrl+A > Apply > Scale, Rotation, Location
• Export Selected: Check to export only selected objects

Unreal Export

• Scale: 0.01 (Unreal uses centimeters)
• Forward: -X forward
• Up: Z up
• Apply Transforms: Ctrl+A > Apply > Scale, Rotation, Location
• Export Selected: Check to export only selected objects

Common Export Issues

• Scale Mismatch: Ensure correct scale factor for target engine
• Rotation Issues: Check forward and up axis settings
• Material Export: Materials may need to be recreated in target engine
• Animation Export: Ensure animations are baked and exported
• Texture Paths: Use relative paths for textures