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💻 Interaction, selections, outliner

Here it's time for a first exercise! Follow the steps given below, which will let you work with Blender yourself and get to know the different methods of 3D scene interaction.

Tip

Summary of 3D view navigation:

  • MMB = rotate view
  • Scrollwheel or Ctrl+MMB = zoom view
  • Shift+MMB = translate view
  • Home = zoom out to show all objects

See the cheat sheet to refresh your memory w.r.t. other view interaction and shortcut keys and mouse actions.

Viewpoints

  1. Load motorbike.blend

    Tip

    This file will be in the data share under data/basics/blender_basics

  2. In one of the two 3D views (your choice) manipulate the view to the following viewpoints:

    • Alongside the motorbike, amongst the streamlines, looking in the direction of travel.
    • From the rider's point of view, just in front of the helmet, looking ahead.
    • An up-close point of view clearly showing the two streamlines that cross near the rider's helmet on his/her right side, one going under the arm, the other going over it.

  3. There is a single streamline that goes between the two rods of the steering column. Does that streamline terminate on the bike or does it continue past the bike? Try to get really close with the view so you can see where the streamline goes.

Individual selection

  1. Select all objects using the A key. As you've seen earlier this will introduce orange outlines surrounding selected objects.
  2. Check the outliner, specifically the color of the object names, to see how the current selection is represented.
  3. In the 3D view deselect only the motorbike using Shift-LMB with the mouse cursor at the appropriate position
  4. Again check the outliner status, do you notice a difference in the name for the motorbike object?
  5. Add the motorbike back to the selection by using Shift-LMB over the bike in the 3D view.
  6. Check the orange outline color of the motorbike (or the corresponding entry in the outliner) to verify that it is now the active object. It should be the only object with a light orange color.
  7. Use Shift-LMB with the mouse over the "floor and walls" object. What changed in the selection? Specifically, what is now the active object?
  8. Once more use Shift-LMB on the "floor ans walls" object. What changed this time in the selection status of the object?

Box selection

  1. Clear the selection with Alt-A (or double click the A key).
  2. Use box select (LMB drag) to select all objects in the scene.
  3. Clear the selection with the Alt-A key.
  4. Now try to select ONLY the motorbike using box select. Check the outliner to make sure you're selecting just one object. You can also check the status line at the bottom of the Blender window, specifically the part that reads Objects: #/#, meaning selected / total.

Outliner selection

  1. Make sure no objects are currently selected.

  2. Test with following actions in the outliner to get a good idea of what actions it supports and how this influences the visual state of the items in the outliner tree:

    • Left-clicking on an item (possibly holding the Shift or Ctrl key)
    • Using the keys A and Alt-A (note how these are similar in functionality to what they do in the 3D view, but in the context of the outliner items)
    • Right-clicking on an item and choosing Select or Deselect

  3. How does the blue highlight of a line in the outliner relate to the selection status of an object in the 3D view?

Last update: 22 April 2024 21:51:33 •