Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Tutorial Syntax

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As you go through these tutorials, you will find yourself running into cryptic codes quite often. These codes refer to keys you need to press on the keyboard and buttons on the mouse you need to press. They are pretty standard throughout the Blender community at this point. You may wish to print this page for quick reference throughout this book.

Contents

[edit] Keyboard

Most keyboards have number keys in two different places: in a row above the letters and in the numeric keypad on the right of the keyboard. While many computer applications use these two sets of keys interchangeably, Blender does not: It assigns a different set of functions to each set. If you don't have a numeric keypad ("numpad") see Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Non-standard equipment for information on emulating the keypad's functionality.

(If you don't understand the manual, please e-mail your request to: Blender-easy@live.co.za)

Special and Function
Abbreviation Key
ALT Alt key
CTRL Ctrl (Control) key
CMD Command key[1]
F1 through F12 F1 through F12
SHIFT Shift
SPACE Spacebar
TAB Tab
ENTER Enter
ESC Escape
FN Function[2]
Alpha-numeric and Numpad
Abbreviation Key
AKEY through ZKEY corresponding letter on the keyboard
0KEY through 9KEY corresponding number (above the letters) on the keyboard
NUM0 through NUM9 corresponding number on the numpad
NUM+ and NUM− corresponding key on the numpad

[edit] Mouse

Blender uses all three mouse buttons. If you don't have a three-button mouse (a one-button Apple mouse, for example), see Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Non-standard equipment for information on emulating a three-button mouse.

Mouse button definitions
Key Description
LMB the left mouse button (typically)
RMB the right mouse button (typically)
MMB the middle mouse button or mouse wheel (clicked, not spun), or you can use ALT + left click
SCROLL refers to scrolling the wheel of the mouse

[edit] Path menu

SPACE → Add → Mesh → UVsphere

means:

hit SPACE, and, in the menu that comes up, choose Add, then Mesh, then UVsphere.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^  On an Apple keyboard, the key with the Apple logo, and on a Windows keyboard, the key with the Windows logo on it. These are also called the "Super" key in other manuals.
  2. ^  FN is generally found only on laptops, and often in the lower left corner of the keyboard. (Some "ergonomic" keyboards use the laptop-style pseudo-numpad to reduce the distance between the normal keys and the mouse. On these, the FN key is often in the top row.)