Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The Outliner panel
The Outliner panel contains a hieratical view of all the objects in the scene. Each
object can be selected by clicking on their name or the object can be hidden, locked,
or excluded from rendering.
Rendering means making a high quality picture from a scene for things
such as animation or presentations. Doing a proper render includes
setting up scene lights, cameras, textures, material properties, and many
other functions that will not be explored in this topic as it does not do
anything that helps produce models for printing. However, exploring
this functionality outside of this topic can be good when trying to show
off the models if printing them is not an option.
The Properties panel
The Properties panel is broken up into many tabs indicated by small icons. Hovering
over the icons will show the name of the tab. For modeling the two tabs that will
be used the most are the object and modifier tabs. Specific exploration of the tools
contained therein will be done as needed.
The Info panel
On the top of the Blender windows is the Info panel. On the left-hand side of the Info
panel there is an easy to navigate menu similar to the menu in most applications.
This menu can be collapsed by clicking on the
+
button next to it and expanded by
clicking the same. On the far right of the Info panel there is data about the current
scene. If the data cannot be seen, hover the mouse over the panel, and use the middle
scroll wheel or click-and-hold the middle mouse button (pressing the wheel like a
button) and moving the mouse to pan the panel until the desired data is visible.
