The goal of this lab is to make sure Blender is working. Specifically, we will practice viewing and transformations in Blender. You should complete this on your own in preparation for next week's labs.
Download and Install
Make sure you've downloaded Blender (current version is 3.5.0, so you can download that). When you open it you get something like this picture:
Viewing
The first step is to make sure you can view the image from different angles in three different ways. On a three-button mouse, you do this while holding the middle mouse button, either alone or in combination with the shift or control keys. If you don't have a mouse, you'll probably need to set up emulation mode. The goal is to figure out how to do three changes to the view: pan, orbit, and zoom. Check this reference for how to accomplish that on different systems without a three-button mouse.
Using these moves takes some practice, but is very important for viewing your images from different angles.
Transformations
Finally, test out three transformations, using the icons on the left-hand panel:
- Translate: once the object is selected (orange outline), you should be able to click and drag the controls to move the cube around.
- Rotate: click and drag the controls to rotate the object.
- Scale: click and drag the controls to scale the object bigger or smaller.
Finish Up
That's it, nothing to turn in. We will do our first full Blender lab next time.