Blender
Blender Interface and Workflows
Workspace Layout
- 3D Viewport: Main viewport for modeling and scene manipulation
- Outliner: Hierarchical view of scene objects
- Properties Panel: Object, modifier, and material properties
- Timeline: Animation timeline and playback controls
- Graph Editor: Animation curve editing
- UV Editor: UV mapping and texture editing
- Shader Editor: Node-based material and shader creation
Navigation
- Orbit: Middle mouse button
- Pan: Shift + Middle mouse button
- Zoom: Scroll wheel
- Numpad Views: 1 (front), 3 (right), 7 (top), 5 (orthographic/perspective)
- Frame Selected: Period (.)
- Frame All: Home
Object Modes
- Object Mode: Manipulate entire objects
- Edit Mode: Edit mesh geometry
- Sculpt Mode: Digital sculpting
- Vertex Paint: Paint vertex colors
- Weight Paint: Paint vertex weights for rigging
- Texture Paint: Paint textures directly on model
- Pose Mode: Animate rigged characters
Modeling Tools and Techniques
Primitives
- Mesh Primitives: Cube, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone, Torus, Plane, Monkey
- Curve Primitives: Bezier, NURBS curves
- Surface Primitives: NURBS surfaces
- Metaballs: Organic blobby shapes
Edit Mode Tools
- Extrude (E): Extrude faces, edges, or vertices
- Inset (I): Create inset faces
- Bevel (Ctrl+B): Bevel edges
- Loop Cut (Ctrl+R): Add edge loops
- Knife Tool (K): Cut custom geometry
- Bridge Edge Loops: Connect edge loops
- Merge (Alt+M): Merge vertices
- Dissolve (X): Remove geometry while maintaining shape
Modifiers
- Subdivision Surface: Smooth subdivision
- Mirror: Mirror geometry across axis
- Array: Duplicate geometry in patterns
- Boolean: Combine, subtract, or intersect meshes
- Decimate: Reduce polygon count
- Remesh: Retopologize mesh
- Shrinkwrap: Project mesh onto target surface
- Solidify: Add thickness to surfaces
Sculpting and Retopology
Sculpt Mode
- Brushes: Draw, Clay Strips, Crease, Smooth, Inflate
- Dyntopo: Dynamic topology for sculpting
- Multiresolution: Subdivision sculpting
- Masking: Protect areas from sculpting
- Falloff: Control brush influence
- Stroke Settings: Spacing, jitter, smoothing
Retopology
- Shrinkwrap Modifier: Project new topology onto sculpt
- Snap to Face: Snap vertices to surface
- Poly Build: Manual retopology tool
- Bsurface: Automatic retopology add-on
- Quad Remesher: Automatic quad-based retopology
Blender Rigging and Weight Painting
Armature
- Bone Creation: Add bones to create skeleton
- Bone Editing: Edit bone position, rotation, scale
- Bone Layers: Organize bones into layers
- Bone Groups: Group bones for organization
- IK Constraints: Inverse kinematics setup
- Bone Collections: Organize bones in Blender 4.0+
Rigging Tools
- Rigify: Auto-rigging system for characters
- Auto-Rig Pro: Commercial rigging add-on
- Human Meta-Rig: Humanoid rig template
- Constraints: IK, Copy Rotation, Limit Rotation, etc.
Weight Painting
- Weight Paint Mode: Paint vertex weights
- Brush Settings: Brush size, strength, falloff
- Weight Tools: Normalize, blur, smooth weights
- Vertex Groups: Assign vertices to bone groups
- Mirror Weights: Mirror weights across symmetry
- Weight Gradient: Create smooth weight transitions
Grease Pencil and Animation Tools
Grease Pencil
- 2D Drawing: Draw 2D strokes in 3D space
- Object Mode: Manipulate grease pencil objects
- Edit Mode: Edit stroke points
- Draw Mode: Draw new strokes
- Sculpt Mode: Sculpt stroke thickness
- Vertex Paint: Paint stroke colors
- Materials: Assign materials to strokes
Animation
- Keyframing: Insert keyframes (I)
- Timeline: Scrub and playback animation
- Dope Sheet: Overview of keyframes
- Graph Editor: Fine-tune animation curves
- NLA Editor: Non-linear animation editing
- Action Editor: Edit animation actions
Blender to Unity/Unreal Export Pipelines
Export Settings
- FBX Export: File > Export > FBX
- Scale: Set to 1.00 for Unity, 0.01 for Unreal
- Forward Axis: Set to -Z forward for Unity, -X forward for Unreal
- Up Axis: Set to Y up for both engines
- Apply Transforms: Apply scale, rotation, location before export
- Include Selected: Export only selected objects
Unity Export
- Scale: 1.00 (Unity uses meters)
- Forward: -Z forward
- Up: Y up
- Apply Transforms: Ctrl+A > Apply > Scale, Rotation, Location
- Export Selected: Check to export only selected objects
Unreal Export
- Scale: 0.01 (Unreal uses centimeters)
- Forward: -X forward
- Up: Z up
- Apply Transforms: Ctrl+A > Apply > Scale, Rotation, Location
- Export Selected: Check to export only selected objects
Common Export Issues
- Scale Mismatch: Ensure correct scale factor for target engine
- Rotation Issues: Check forward and up axis settings
- Material Export: Materials may need to be recreated in target engine
- Animation Export: Ensure animations are baked and exported
- Texture Paths: Use relative paths for textures