Saturday, September 8, 2007

A list of Blender shortcuts

Contexts and Sub-Contexts
Logic : 'F4'
Shading : 'F5' >>> Lamp, Material, Texture : 'F6' >>> Radio, World : 'F8'
Object : 'F7'
Editing : 'F10'


Views
Top view : '7'
Bottom view : 'ctrl+7'
Front view : '1'
Back view : 'ctrl+1'
Side view Left : '3'
Side view Right : 'ctrl+3'
Rotate view : 'drag MMB' or '8','6','2','4' for discrete steps
Camera view : '10'
Perspective/Ortographic view : '5'
Transform properties : 'n'
View animation : 'alt+a'
Undo menu : 'alt+u'

Actions
Actions menu : 'spacebar'
Delete : 'x'
Duplicate : 'shift+d' (new copy of mesh) or 'alt+d' (same mesh, new object)
Extrude : 'e' >>> constrain : 'MMB' or 'x/y/z' >>> in discrete steps : 'ctrl'
Flip : 'm'
Grab : 'g' >>> constrain : 'MMB' or 'x/y/z' >>> in discrete steps : 'ctrl'
Insert keyframe : 'i'
Make Parent : 'ctr+p' (parent=last selected object)
Move to layer : 'm'
Redo : 'shift+u'
Render : 'F12'
Resize : 's' >>> constrain : 'MMB' or 'x/y/z' >>> in discrete steps : 'ctrl'
Rotate : 'r' >>> in discrete steps : 'ctrl'
Save file : 'ctrl+w'
Save image : 'F3'
Slice : 'ctrl+r' ('LMB' to confirm position)
Track : 'ctrl+t' (tracked object=last selected)

Thursday, September 6, 2007

More SynthEdit knob making tips



From the above tutorial I've learned how to use Blender a bit better again :-)
In short here's what I did :

the original image is the texture of a plane with 'shadeless' material, disabled 'traceable' and 'shadow' shades and 'win' map input.

That plane is the child of the camera.

The scene is set to output at the same size as the original image.

The background image in blender is the original image.

A '0.5 alpha' - 'Z-transp' - 'only shadow' shadowplane is put according to the image's floor. It also serves as the floor in the blender 3D set up.

Because I've done something wrong, you can see the shadow of the backgroundplane on the street.

The balls I added to the image with the pink floyd ladies show how it's important to use the right lense for the camera.

If you want to add objects into a piece of movie, that also is explained in
this great tutorial.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

How to turn Blender-rendered images into working SynthEdit knobs

(follow these tips if you don't want or can't use KnobCreator)

Following to the post made earlier , here's how to finish the images from Blender (or any other images) into SynthEdit knobs .

Open the last rendered image ( in my case 0064.png) with the Gimp 2, hit 'ctrl+l' to open the "Layers" dialog. Select the other pictures (0001.png to 0063.png) and drag drop them in the "Layers" dialog.

Select the part you want to render as a rotating knob and choose Image > Slice so only the knob remains . Now choose Image > Canvas size and multiply the height to the number of steps your knob rotates .

Choose the move tool and select layer 1 in the "Layers" dialog, then click in the main window where we will move the layers one under/above the other. (This should be done by a script but I'm not capable of Perl coding to write script-fu for this purpose. With the shortcuts and a bit of patience I get myself through this for every knob or couple of knobs that are horizontally aligned. )

Use '-' and '+' to zoom in/out so you get a view over the strip with the little square image on top.
'Page up' and 'Page down' are shortcuts for selecting the previous/next layer.
The navigation keyboard buttons are for moving the layer, when 'shift' is hold down, the moves go with larger steps.

Now spread the layers over the strip, it's a repetitive job in this sequence :
'page down' > 'shift+down arrow' > 'page down' > 'shift+down arrow' > etc. (repeat 64 times)

Tip: It's faster to spread them first from a very zoomed out view and do the detailed finishing on a larger view.

When the knobs are one under the other, step 1 on top, the image is ready and can be saved as .png or .bmp to be used in SynthEdit.

Monday, September 3, 2007

How to design a layout for SynthEdit with Blender

Step 1: make a simpel knob to start with (to learn make a basic form , check the Blender wiki) .

Step 2: choose the number of steps, press 'F10' in the buttons window and set "sta" to 1 and "end" to the number of steps you want .

Step 3: go to frame 1 and position rotate the knob to it's start position, hit 'i-key' and choose "rot" .

Step 4: go to the last frame you want and set the knob to it's last position, hit the 'i-key' and choose "rot" again . Now the knob will rotate when you go to the previous frames .

Step 5: view the IPO editor window and make the Z rot line straight. To do this select the line, hit 'tab', select the vertex, hit 'shift+s' to snap them horizontal.

Step 6: select another knob and view the IPO editor window .
choose the same IP as the one you already rotated .

If you want lights, make them double so you can switch positions of one light(not lit) and another(lit). It's a good idea to add a text with the number of the light and make it parent of the light . When the synth has more lights or on of buttons, they can also made child of the text by selecting the child first and the parent (text) last and pressing 'ctrl+p' . Every frame where the lights should be lit , they can be moved all together. press 'alt+p' to unchild the mistakes you made.

Now go to the scene view, make sure output is set to .bmp or .png and hit the "animation" button. Blender will now render all frames from the start untill the end frame. The DOS looking window tells you where the images are saved and how much time blender needed to render each one. So you can calculate how much time you'll have for A BREAK !!

**shortcuts**
i : insert action into frame
ctrl+p : make last selected parent of other selected objects
alt+p : clear last selected parent relationship to other selected objects
F10 : in button window go to 'scene' buttons
shift+s : snap
e : extrude selected
ctrl+r in editor window : slice in X or Y direction
r : rotate (use the mouse and left-click to release or type the degrees on the numpad and hit enter)

To finish the rendered pictures, I've written another tutorial named
"How to turn Blender-rendered images into working SynthEdit knobs".