Blender 101

I'm slowly catching up and trying to learn blender so I'm just writing down a few things that frustrate me as an old maya/houdini user, and answer it as i go.

Resources

• Cool cards/non-video tutorials. Would be great to have them in a normal scrollable page! https://www.3dbestie.com/
• French Studio Les Fées Speciales' blender tech blog: https://lacuisine.tech/
• Maya to blender in 30 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C0njghXPAI

Some shortcuts

Will sort! Trying to be a GoodBoy and learning the blender standard. God it's hard not to hit the Alt key for navigation and the marking menus are so baked in muscle memory.

function	key	equivalent to
Add objects	shift-a	Tab-drop node (houdini)
Frame/focus object	. (numpad)	f (maya)
Make active camera	ctrl-num0	mmb drag and drop cam from outliner to VP (maya)
Toggle object/faces edges/vertices	tab 1 2 3	Maya F8 F9 etc...
Search for function	F3	Maya's Find Menu but actually looks nice
Change sudbdiv	ctrl+0,1,2...(top row keyboard digits)	Maya's numpad 1 2 3
Select Linked	ctrl-L	double click in maya to select shell
Select Edge Loops/Rings	alt-LMB, ctrl-alt-LMB	double click in maya to select loops, marking menus
Select More/Less	ctrl-Num+	Maya's grow/shrink selection </>
Proportional Editing	o / scrollwheel (while using it)	Soft selection in maya (B/shift MMB)
Isolate Selection	Numpad-/ or Alt/Shift-H	Shift-i in Maya

Some Blender Concepts

Collections

Is kind of like maya's set+renderlayer on steroids. You can have an item in several collections (ctrl drag).

Groups

No such thing, but use a null object

Asset/References

So this one is super weird. When you import an asset, or link it (like a reference in maya or .hda in Hou), you're note linking a .blend file but a subset of the file, could be a mesh/object/material. Kind of tedious TBH, but the blenderheads seem fine with it. It helps if you work with collections, so you just append/link a specific collection.

Help & Community

Amazing how many people have created tutorials. Make sure to search for your version of Blender as I feel it's a 'move fast, break things' software so shortcuts and things might work differently, unlike maya (you can still safely import files from maya 5.0).

Pretty cool that people can vote for what they wish to see: https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/?sorting=hot (not in the community enough to know if it has some say into newer versions though).

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/ kind of terse, but works well. Big up to most software packages that take care of their documentations. (<3 Houdini)

Specific Tips

to be sorted once I get a few

Where can I edit the pivot point, what's with the weird cursor that looks like a lifebuoy ?

The cursor which is a bit jarring is actually quite useful. Shift + right click to move it around, Shift + s to send it places (like the origin)

For pivots, top of the viewport, shortcut is '.' dot but apparently not on a french keyboard. Still don't know what the first box does, I'll remove this line once I know ;)

Rendering

• Material Override per render layer https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/154321/material-overrides-for-view-layers-per-object
• Alpha in render toggled on in 'Film>Transparent'
• You can't use maya's <scene>/%s or houdini's $HIPNAME or write custom python directy in a string field. See the bottom for the Loom extension.

Modeling

• Bake transforms: Ctrl-A
• Extract a Curve from an edgeloop:
  • Select your edge loop, duplicate(Shift-D)
  • Extract using P (separate)
  • Go back to object mode, RMB convert mesh to curve. Done

Rigging/Skinning

• To apply armature: select objects, select armature, parent (Ctrl P), should create a modifier
• To access weight painting, it's kinda weird. Select bone that you want to move in Pose mode, select mesh in object mode somehow (doesn't work with shift here), access weight paint mode (Ctrl Tab wheel)
• To reset bones when moving around when skinning alt+g,r,s
• Methods for smoothing skinning: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/58913/simple-methods-to-smooth-out-weight-paints (editing brush in tool tab works too)
• Mirror skin weights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha_YU5xJsSc in any situation. Sometimes when painting mirrored weights, you'll need to be on the PosX side to work.

How do I animate text ?

Apparently you can't keyframe text easily. That sucks. However you can open up a python script, it seems you have to relaunch the script at every session.

# assumes you have a text object called 'Text'
import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
obj = scene.objects['Text']

def recalculate_text(scene):
    text = '--'
    cf = scene.frame_current
    if cf < 1800:
        text = ' '
    elif cf < 1920:
        text = 8
    elif cf < 2030:
        text = 5
    elif cf < 2180:
        text = 1
    elif cf < 2300:
        text = 2
   
    obj.data.body = f'{text}'

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(recalculate_text)

Will modify this if I find a more user friendly way of doing this.

How do I switch cameras during my animation

You can add markers (M in the timeline) and then bind the current camera (Ctrl B in the timeline too)

How do I lock camera to view

This is kinda hidden amirite ? Shortcut to twirl/untwirl that little menu is 'n'

Hair

Right-click and object, Curve>Fur. Check modifiers. Missing attributes (like length) can be added from the Asset Browser (Shift-F1).

Other random notes

• The outliner forces sorting by alphabetical name ? Not by creation order.

Add-ons

It's been 5 seconds and I'm already adding add-ons :0

• Loom: https://github.com/p2or/blender-loom