Blender

Blender Interface and Workflows

Workspace Layout

• 3D Viewport: Main viewport for modeling and scene manipulation

• Outliner: Hierarchical view of scene objects

• Properties Panel: Object, modifier, and material properties

• Timeline: Animation timeline and playback controls

• Graph Editor: Animation curve editing

• UV Editor: UV mapping and texture editing

• Shader Editor: Node-based material and shader creation

Navigation

• Orbit: Middle mouse button

• Pan: Shift + Middle mouse button

• Zoom: Scroll wheel

• Numpad Views: 1 (front), 3 (right), 7 (top), 5 (orthographic/perspective)

• Frame Selected: Period (.)

• Frame All: Home

Object Modes

• Object Mode: Manipulate entire objects

• Edit Mode: Edit mesh geometry

• Sculpt Mode: Digital sculpting

• Vertex Paint: Paint vertex colors

• Weight Paint: Paint vertex weights for rigging

• Texture Paint: Paint textures directly on model

• Pose Mode: Animate rigged characters

Modeling Tools and Techniques

Primitives

• Mesh Primitives: Cube, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone, Torus, Plane, Monkey

• Curve Primitives: Bezier, NURBS curves

• Surface Primitives: NURBS surfaces

• Metaballs: Organic blobby shapes

Edit Mode Tools

• Extrude (E): Extrude faces, edges, or vertices

• Inset (I): Create inset faces

• Bevel (Ctrl+B): Bevel edges

• Loop Cut (Ctrl+R): Add edge loops

• Knife Tool (K): Cut custom geometry

• Bridge Edge Loops: Connect edge loops

• Merge (Alt+M): Merge vertices

• Dissolve (X): Remove geometry while maintaining shape

Modifiers

• Subdivision Surface: Smooth subdivision

• Mirror: Mirror geometry across axis

• Array: Duplicate geometry in patterns

• Boolean: Combine, subtract, or intersect meshes

• Decimate: Reduce polygon count

• Remesh: Retopologize mesh

• Shrinkwrap: Project mesh onto target surface

• Solidify: Add thickness to surfaces

Sculpting and Retopology

Sculpt Mode

• Brushes: Draw, Clay Strips, Crease, Smooth, Inflate

• Dyntopo: Dynamic topology for sculpting

• Multiresolution: Subdivision sculpting

• Masking: Protect areas from sculpting

• Falloff: Control brush influence

• Stroke Settings: Spacing, jitter, smoothing

Retopology

• Shrinkwrap Modifier: Project new topology onto sculpt

• Snap to Face: Snap vertices to surface

• Poly Build: Manual retopology tool

• Bsurface: Automatic retopology add-on

• Quad Remesher: Automatic quad-based retopology

Blender Rigging and Weight Painting

Armature

• Bone Creation: Add bones to create skeleton

• Bone Editing: Edit bone position, rotation, scale

• Bone Layers: Organize bones into layers

• Bone Groups: Group bones for organization

• IK Constraints: Inverse kinematics setup

• Bone Collections: Organize bones in Blender 4.0+

Rigging Tools

• Rigify: Auto-rigging system for characters

• Auto-Rig Pro: Commercial rigging add-on

• Human Meta-Rig: Humanoid rig template

• Constraints: IK, Copy Rotation, Limit Rotation, etc.

Weight Painting

• Weight Paint Mode: Paint vertex weights

• Brush Settings: Brush size, strength, falloff

• Weight Tools: Normalize, blur, smooth weights

• Vertex Groups: Assign vertices to bone groups

• Mirror Weights: Mirror weights across symmetry

• Weight Gradient: Create smooth weight transitions

Grease Pencil and Animation Tools

Grease Pencil

• 2D Drawing: Draw 2D strokes in 3D space

• Object Mode: Manipulate grease pencil objects

• Edit Mode: Edit stroke points

• Draw Mode: Draw new strokes

• Sculpt Mode: Sculpt stroke thickness

• Vertex Paint: Paint stroke colors

• Materials: Assign materials to strokes

Animation

• Keyframing: Insert keyframes (I)

• Timeline: Scrub and playback animation

• Dope Sheet: Overview of keyframes

• Graph Editor: Fine-tune animation curves

• NLA Editor: Non-linear animation editing

• Action Editor: Edit animation actions

Blender to Unity/Unreal Export Pipelines

Export Settings

• FBX Export: File > Export > FBX

• Scale: Set to 1.00 for Unity, 0.01 for Unreal

• Forward Axis: Set to -Z forward for Unity, -X forward for Unreal

• Up Axis: Set to Y up for both engines

• Apply Transforms: Apply scale, rotation, location before export

• Include Selected: Export only selected objects

Unity Export

• Scale: 1.00 (Unity uses meters)

• Forward: -Z forward

• Up: Y up

• Apply Transforms: Ctrl+A > Apply > Scale, Rotation, Location

• Export Selected: Check to export only selected objects

Unreal Export

• Scale: 0.01 (Unreal uses centimeters)

• Forward: -X forward

• Up: Z up

• Apply Transforms: Ctrl+A > Apply > Scale, Rotation, Location

• Export Selected: Check to export only selected objects

Common Export Issues

• Scale Mismatch: Ensure correct scale factor for target engine

• Rotation Issues: Check forward and up axis settings

• Material Export: Materials may need to be recreated in target engine

• Animation Export: Ensure animations are baked and exported

• Texture Paths: Use relative paths for textures