Blocking In - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering - page 31

Table 4-2: Frequently Used Operators in Edit Mode

Operators Hotkey Description

Delete X Deletes the selected vertices, edges, or faces.

Duplicate

shift -D

Duplicates your selection and allows you to move it.

Extrude E or ctrl -click Creates new geometry by “pulling” new verts, edges, and faces out from the current

selection. The results of extruding depend on what you have selected (see Figure 4-2).
ctrl -clicking in Edit mode with nothing selected will create a new vertex wherever you
click. Doing so multiple times will create a string of connected vertices.

Fill F If two vertices are selected, Fill creates an edge joining them. If three, four, or more

vertices are selected, it creates a tri, quad, or n -gon from them.

Rotate R Rotates the vertices, edges, or faces you have selected. (You can also use the 3D

Manipulator widget in Rotate mode.)

Scale S Scales the vertices, edges, or faces you have selected, allowing you to resize part or

all of a mesh. (You can also use the 3D Manipulator widget in Scale mode to do this.)

Shrink/Fatten

alt -S

Moves the selected vertices along the direction of their normals to inflate a mesh,
almost like a balloon, or to shrink it to make it thinner.

Smooth W 4 Smooth Smooths sharp angles between edges and faces so that the resulting mesh is

smoother.

Subdivide W 4 Subdivide Divides all selected edges into two and faces into four, creating more dense geometry.

Translate (also
known as Grab
or Move)

G Grabs the vertices, edges, or faces you have selected and allows you to move them.

(You can also use the 3D Manipulator widget in Translate mode to do this.)

Dissolve X An alternative to Delete, this deletes the edges or vertices selected but fills the hole left

behind with an n -gon.

Connect J Connects two vertices that are part of the same face, splitting the face in two in the

process.

Cut K Gives you a knife tool that lets you cut the selected geometry along the lines you

draw. Hold ctrl to snap to vertices and the middle of edges.

* Blender almost always has two ways of performing an

discover more operators (or search for an existing
one) using the Search menu (spacebar) or by looking
through the header menus and panels of Blender's
different editors. You can hover over buttons in
Blender to see a tool tip describing what an opera-
tor does and whether it has a keyboard shortcut.

action: through the UI and by using a keyboard short-
cut and/or Search. In many cases, it pays to learn both
because knowing how to quickly perform actions and
switch between modes will greatly speed up your work.

Once in Edit mode, you can select things by
right-clicking them. You can extend your selec-
tion with shift -right-click. To select or deselect
everything in the current mesh, press A . To switch
between selecting vertices, edges, and faces, click
the vertex, edge, or face select buttons in the 3D
Viewport header (see Figure 4-1).
Press L to select all parts of a mesh connected to
the part of the mesh under your cursor. With part of
a mesh selected, you can perform various operations
on your selection in order to edit your mesh.
Table 4-2 lists the operators that you'll use most
often when modeling in Blender. There are many
other ways to interact with a mesh, but I'll cover
those as we go along.
To learn more about an operator in Blender,
search for it on http://wiki.blender.org/ . You can easily

❶ ❷ ❸

Figure 4-2: Extruding faces ❶ , extruding edges ❷ , and
extruding a single vertex ❸ . Extruding operations on different
selections will have different results. Extruding vertices will cre-
ate edges, while extruding edges or faces will create faces.
Extruding an entire closed mesh (not shown) will duplicate
that mesh.