Blender is a fully featured 3D design tool with abilities ranging from CAD through to rendered CGI animation.
Even better, it is completely open and free (both in terms of freedom and beer), and works cross-platform.
As well as the graphical interface, it has a powerful Python scripting feature too.
To get started, let's just learn how to navigate the interface, because it can appear overwhelming when people first launch the application.
Mouse Navigation
Ideally you at least need a 3-button mouse to make the most of Blender.
- Center-Scroll - Zoom in and out
- Center-Drag - Orbit the scene
- Shift+Center-Drag - Pan
Strangely, unlike every other program in the world, right click is used to select and move, but this can be changed in the settings (see below).
So if right click is for selecting, what does the left click do? It is used for setting the 3D cursor, which is something that will make more sense when we come to manipulating objects.
Numeric Keypad
Again, while you can use the View menu, you will find having a numeric keypad more convenient when in the flow.
Views and Panel Chaos
Blender has an eye-bleedingly busy UI, but that is partly where the productivity gains come along ... eventually.
It is just so customizable.
Unlike many apps, where you fit into the developer's way of doing things, Blender affords you a lot of freedom, but that freedom can make many people just plain confused. If you are not careful while clicking and dragging you might end up with a bunch of objects and panels you never intended to display.
Fortunately, you can always get back to the default view.
User Settings
Also check out the preferences view, as a lot of the more annoying elements can be tweaked, right down to emulating a 3 button mouse or how the interface behaves. The preferences would also be where you can configure your hardware GPU.
Unfortunately for me, running on Ubuntu 17.10 I have not been able to get my machine to boot correctly with either an AMD or Nvidia card, but when I get it working the workflow will feel a lot snappier!
Next Up
In the next part we will create a simple scene and manipulate some objects, so follow me to check that out!