Installing Blender
You can install Blender from several different sources, even on the gaming platform Steam
! I'm going to go into how to do it on Mac OS
below and link to the official documentation for the other operating systems.
Blender
's documentation is actually pretty good and thorough. I link to it throughout below.
First thing first, make sure your machine can actually run the program. System requirements are available online, but I pasted them below for convienence.
Minimum
- 64-bit dual core 2Ghz CPU with SSE2 support
- 4 GB RAM
- 1280×768 display
- Mouse, trackpad or pen+tablet
- Graphics card with 1 GB RAM, OpenGL 3.3
- Less than 10 year old
Recommended
- 64-bit quad core CPU
- 16 GB RAM
- Full HD display
- Three button mouse or pen+tablet
- Graphics card with 4 GB RAM
Optimal
- 64-bit eight core CPU
- 32 GB RAM
- Full HD displays
- Three button mouse and pen+tablet
- Graphics card with +12 GB RAM
NVIDIA: GeForce 400 and newer, Quadro Tesla GPU architecture and newer, including RTX-based cards, with NVIDIA drivers (list of all GeForce and Quadro GPUs)
AMD: GCN 1st gen and newer. Since Blender 2.91, Terascale 2 architecture is fully deprecated, try using 2.90 (albeit not supported, it might still work) [list of all AMD GPUs]
Intel: Haswell architecture and newer. [list of all Intel GPUs]
Mac OS
For Mac, you'll need Version 10.13
or newer with supported hardware. Official Installation documentation for Mac OS is available here.
If you use homebrew
and homebrew cask
, you can easily install and maintain Blender
through brew. This is how I installed it.
brew install --cask blender
Otherwise you can just download the DMG from the official downloads page. Then just double click that, and drag Blender.app
to your Applications
folder.
Linux
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/getting_started/installing/linux.html
Windows
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/getting_started/installing/windows.html
Steam
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/getting_started/installing/steam.html
Preferences & Settings
You can open Blender Preferences
a few ways. You can use the mouse and just navigate to Edit > Preferences
. The quicker way hit F3
, this brings up the search window. This is how you can find pretty much every option or feature of the program, especially if you can't remember where it is. So hit F3
the type pref
in the search and click on Edit > Preferences
as seen in the screenshot below. Command + ,
works on Mac OS too.
So first thing I do is click on System
then change Undo Steps
to a higher value. I use 128 at the moment, but the more memory (RAM) your machine has, the more you can safely raise this.
Next, under File Paths
in the sidebar, I set my Render Cache
to go to a secondary harddrive; personally don't want that on my main hard drive. You can also set a default image editor here if you'd like.
Another setting, which is purely stylistic, under Themes > Node Editor
, set Noodle Curving
to a value you like. I use 5. This will produce:
Lastly, let's configure auto saving, so we don't lose our work. Set Save Versions
to 0
. This basically disables the temporary file save system they use and will trigger auto saving once you save your Blender file, keeping computer clear of a lot of temporary directories and files and junk. Under Save & Load
, expand Blend Files
then Auto Save
. Check Auto Save Temporary Files
and set the Timer to something reasonable. You can see the settings I use below:
That's it for changing settings. We'll be back later for Add-ons
though.
Basics
Let's get started with actually using the program. I've compiled a list of the commands I most use below (and I'm a relative beginner/intermediate user). I won't overwhelm you with all of them.
Mouse Commands
You're going to want a three button mouse with the scrollwheel being the third button ideally.
Wheel Scroll
- Zoom In / OutWheel Scroll Click
- Pressing the Scroll Wheel down will let you 'drag' the view of the stage around
Keyboard Commands
I'm using Command
here, but that's just Control
on non Mac systems.
Command + Shift + Z
– Redo A lot of people don't know this command, it works in almost every program too. Just thought I'd include it just becuase.
Function Keys
F1
– Help
F2
– Rename the currently selected object
F3
– Operator Search - My favorite button.
F4
– File Context menu
F5-F8
– Reserved for user actions
F9
– Adjust the last operation
F11
– Show render window
F12
– Render the current frame
Animation
I
– Insert a keyframe.
Alt-I
– Clear the keyframe.
Shift-Alt-I
– Clear all keyframes (removing all F-curves).
https://www.katsbits.com/codex/blender-basics/
Addons/Plugins
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/preferences/addons.html
YouTube Channels
- 3DGreenhorn
- Blender Guru
- CG Cookie
- CG Fast Track
- Ducky3D a little more advanced, he goes quick
- Jonathan Kron
- Official Blender
- Polyfjord