Getting started in 3D using Blender

There’s no doubt about it, Blender is an amazing piece of software. It’s a complete 3D graphics creation application with sections for modelling and sculpting, texturing, animation, physics simulation and many other areas. Whatever area of 3D graphics and animation you’re interested in, once you have Blender installed, you have a professional-level application at your disposal.

However, as good as Blender is, it’s necessarily complicated because 3D graphics is a complicated subject. We’re going to take you though the basics of modelling in Blender and give you an introduction to the program in general.

When you first load the program up, you’re presented with a 3D cube and what seems like millions of icons, menus and panels. So hang around while we stretch that cube, spin it around and make it dance for us.

Getting started

Let’s start our journey to becoming masters of the cube, and eventually, moving beyond it. When you first load up , you’re in what’s called Object mode. This enables you to select and manipulate objects that you can see in the main area of the screen (called the Viewport). You can orbit the starting cube by moving the mouse around while holding down the middle button, and you can move around the scene by holding down Shift while moving the mouse. Zoom in and out by scrolling the mouse