Blender Basics for Game Characters - Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity - page 37

Object The panel for this context resembles an orange cube by default. Here you'll find
options for the transformation and display of individual objects.
Constraints The panel for this context resembles two links of a chain. At first it looks like
it contains a simple drop-down. However, that drop-down contains a great many options
that limit the transformations an object can have and how they interact with others.
These will be important when you're rigging models for animation.
Modifiers The panel for this context resembles a wrench. Like the Constraints menu it
at first appears to have a simple drop-down menu. The options within that context can
greatly enhance the look of your model. You will begin working with this context later in
this chapter in the section “Making a Simple Block Character.”
Materials The panel for this context resembles a sphere with a checker pattern on it. This
context contains the options for manipulating shaders to create realistic materials.
Textures The panel for this context resembles a checkerboard. Here you can edit the
options for image textures applied to materials.
As with the editor windows, there are more panels than the ones listed here. However,
the panels listed here will be the most important to your work throughout this topic.
Next, you will explore the hotkeys for other tools and create your own simple 3D charac-
ter with some of what you learned in this chapter.

Know Your Hotkeys
As stated previously, the primary way to use Blender is to have one hand on the keyboard
and the other on the mouse. This allows the user to optimize Blender's extensive hotkeys.
These hotkeys will be important to you as you work in 3D, so they are listed for your con-
venience in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1
Common hotkeys

FUNCTION HOTkEY

Select object Right-click

Select multiple objects Shift+right-click

Box select B

Brush select C

Lasso tool Ctrl+left-click+drag

Select/deselect all A

Select linked L

Inverse selection Ctrl+I

Place 3D cursor Left-click

Orbit Middle-click

Pan Shift+middle-click

Zoom Middle-mouse-wheel scroll

Redo Ctrl+Shift+Z

Toolbar T