Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Layout drop-down menu
Scene drop-down menu
Render drop-down menu
Figure 1-6: The Info editor header
The Node Editor
The Node editor is a multipurpose editor for any-
thing that is (or can be) constructed with nodes.
This includes the compositor, which uses nodes
by default, as well as node materials and textures,
which may or may not be node based. You can
switch between viewing Blender's various node set-
ups by clicking icons in the Node editor's header
(see Figure 1-7). The header's main region displays
the current node setup on a grid, allowing you to
add, delete, or move nodes and to view and edit
their connections.
We'll look at the Node editor in more detail in
Chapter 12 when we create node-based materials for
the Cycles render engine and in Chapter 14 when we
create node trees for compositing.
Other Editors
Blender has several other types of editors. We'll cover
some in this topic, but we'll leave out ones like the
Graph editor, which is tailored to animation, and
the Logic editor, which is tailored to Blender's game
engine. For more on these editors, see the Blender
wiki ( http://wiki.blender.org/ ).
using Blender
Now that we have some knowledge of Blender's UI,
we can learn how to actually use Blender. We'll look
at the default .blend file and then explore working
with objects in the 3D Viewport and the Properties
editor. We'll also examine how Blender files are con-
structed, which will help us when working on our
projects.
The UV Image Editor
The UV Image editor is the 2D equivalent of the 3D
Viewport. Here, you can view images (Image 4 Open
Image from the header or select an already loaded
image from the image selector drop-down menu)
and edit the UV coordinates of unwrapped meshes.
While rendering, Blender displays the current ren-
der in a UV Image editor. Use the drop-down menu
to view the most recent render or to view the viewer
outputs of compositing node trees. We'll discuss the
UV Image editor in more detail in Chapters 3, 8, 10,
11, and 14.
Scenes
There is a hierarchical structure to .blend files (see
“Datablocks” on page 10), at the top of which is
a scene . A .blend file can contain one scene or many.
Each scene is its own separate 3D space where you
can create objects and build your project, and
each scene has its own settings that define how it
is rendered.
The current scene is shown in the info header at
the top of the Blender window, next to the current
layout (see Figure 1-8). To create a new scene in a
Material Nodes
Compositing Nodes
Texture Nodes
Enable Nodes
Figure 1-7: The Node editor header
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