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[edit] What's with all the buttons?!

The Buttons Window is one of the most powerful tools that Blender has. When you have objects selected in the 3D viewport, there will be a number of operations you can perform on the objects by pressing the buttons in the Buttons Window. For example, suppose you have modeled a person. People have different skin colors, eye colors, hair colors, and more, so you will create a material to make the person appear as you would like him or her to appear. The Buttons Window also handles sky color, render settings, animation, and a whole lot more.

There are many groups of buttons available to you in the Buttons Window. The buttons outlined here in red allow you to change the type of the buttons that are currently being displayed. Click several buttons and notice that the entire Buttons Window changes when you choose a different type.

You can only display one type of buttons at a time in your Buttons Window. This may seem like a limiting factor, but keep in mind that you can create as many different Buttons Windows with your interface as you would like and they can all be displaying different buttons, giving you quick access to anything you need to do.

[edit] Mini-Windows

You'll notice that within the Buttons Window there are Mini-Windows (i.e., panels) such as those outlined here. Many manipulations can be performed with these windows, but for now we will only teach you the most important two.

The first thing you can do is click the top of the Mini-Windows with the LMB and drag them around. Try it! Also, try dragging and dropping them onto other Mini-Windows to make them join together (as tabs). You can separate the tabs into individual windows again by dragging the active tab over to an available space. Also if there are too many mini windows and you can't see a certain one, use the MMB (or the mouse wheel, SCROLL) to pan across until the desired window is visible or use ALT+LMB and drag to move the mini windows within the Buttons Window.

[edit] Button Types

[edit] Logic Buttons

Here we have selected the first buttons type, the Logic Buttons. We won't be using these buttons much for a long, long time. They are for use with the Game Engine. Pressing F4 will activate this panel.

[edit] Script Buttons

These permit connecting various events in Blender to scripts, thus extending Blender's functionality. Scripting itself is an advanced topic and the scripts are necessary for good-quality animations.

[edit] Shading Buttons

The Shading button set allows you to apply and manipulate colors and textures on your objects, and control lights and world settings. When you press this button (or the F5 key) you will see five additional buttons appear. These are for lights, general material settings, textures, radiosity, and world settings (handy for giving your renders a quick background). Pressing the F5 key will cycle through these buttons.

[edit] Object Buttons

You can press F7 to cause the Object Buttons to appear. It should be noted that these are not the same buttons that appear when you choose Object Mode in the 3D Window. Some tutorials may refer to pressing the F7 key to change to "Object Mode," and some will say you should press the Tab key to change to Object mode.

The Tab key changes from Edit Mode to Object Mode in the 3D Window, and F7 changes the Buttons Window to show the Object Buttons.

[edit] Edit Buttons

These are buttons used to edit objects in edit mode. You can press F9 to get the edit buttons. To get to edit mode (in the 3D View window) press TAB.

[edit] Scene Buttons

Basically these are for rendering (taking pictures) and animating (making movies). You can press F10 to get the scene buttons. We'll get back to these later.