Introduction to Blender - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering - page 6

options, such as environment lighting and
ambient occlusion. (We'll discuss this in more
detail in Chapter 13.)

mapped to an object's surface. (We'll cover this
tab in more detail in Chapter 12.) You can also
use the Textures tab to assign textures to your
world background or to particle systems.

Object The Object tab (see Figure 1-2) lets you set
an object's transformations manually by using
numerical values rather than moving the object
about in the 3D Viewport. You can manage
an object's group membership as well as how
it is displayed. (We'll use groups in Chapter 9
to duplicate multiple objects using particle
systems.)

Particles The Particles tab allows you to assign
particle systems to an object and define their
properties. Blender has two kinds of particle
systems: dynamic emitter particles and hair
particles. In Chapter 9, we'll discuss using
hair particles to create hair, fur, and foliage,
and we'll review the settings for hair particles
in more detail.

Object Constraints The Object Constraints tab
contains an object's constraints stack. This is
useful for animation but not a topic that we'll
cover. (See the Blender wiki at http://wiki.blender
.org/ for more on constraints.)

Physics The Physics tab contains tools for simula-
tions, allowing you to simulate smoke, fluids,
cloth, and rigid and soft body physics. (Learn
more about these options on the Blender wiki.)

Object Modifiers This tab contains an object's
modifiers stack and lets you add new modifi-
ers. Modifiers are procedural, nondestructive
methods for manipulating and generating a
mesh's geometry. As you add new modifiers to
an object, they are applied in the order they
appear in the stack (from top to bottom).
(We'll discuss modifiers in more detail in
Chapters 4 and 5.)

The Info Editor
The Info editor (see Figure 1-6) looks like a regu-
lar menu bar, but it's actually an editor, like the 3D
Viewport and the Properties editor. It's usually kept
scaled down to show just the header, which is its
most important part. The header contains various
menus, including the File menu, the Help menu,
and menus for adding objects and rendering.
The drop-down menu selectors to the right of
these menus let you change the window layout (dis-
cussed above) and the current scene (discussed in
“Scenes” on page 7). Next to these selectors, a
drop-down menu allows you to select which render
engine to use. (See Chapters 12, 13, and 14 for dis-
cussions of Blender's two native render engines.)
After the render engine drop-down menu, you'll
find several pieces of information, including the ver-
sion of Blender you are using and some information
about the scene. From left to right, the scene infor-
mation includes the vertex count (Verts); face count
(Faces); number of objects in the scene (Objects);
number of lamps (Lamps); the scene's memory con-
sumption; and the name of the currently selected
object.
If you drag down the border of the Info edi-
tor, you will see that Blender uses the rest of the
editor to provide a log of your actions as Python
commands. This information provides a glimpse
into the behind-the-scenes workings of Blender's
Python API (application programming interface)
as you work, and it can be most helpful when creat-
ing Python scripts. However, since we won't need
Blender's scripting features for any of the projects in
this topic, it can remain hidden most of the time.

Object Data The Object Data tab lets you set which
datablock the active object uses and exposes the
different sets of data assigned to this datablock
(see “Datablocks” on page 10). The contents
of this tab vary according to the object's type.
For example, in the case of a mesh object, this
tab will display the mesh's vertex groups, shape
keys, and UV coordinate sets, whereas for a
lamp object, it will contain the lamp's color,
energy, and shadow settings. The icon for this
tab also changes to match the active object's
type: For mesh objects, the icon is a cube; for
lamps, a light; and so on. The Object Data tab
will come up throughout this topic.

Material The Materials tab displays an object's
material slots and the materials assigned to
them. Here, you can edit the basic properties
of the materials you create, turn on or off dif-
ferent shading options, and adjust the proper-
ties of an object's material.

Text u re s The Textures tab complements the
Materials panel. It lets you assign textures to a
material, define how textures affect the proper-
ties of a material, and determine how they are