Panda3D Part 6 – Getting to Know the Blender GUI

In the previous part of the Panda3D series we were talking about and installed Blender, the 3D modeling program that we will be using to model and animate our game assets. Today let’s have a closer look at the Blender GUI.

Here’s the video version of this article:

Editors

When you open Blender and get rid of the popup window, you will see a few separate areas. These are the so-called editors. Here’s the default layout:

The big editor that occupies most of the available space is the 3D Viewport editor (A). That’s the one we’ll be working in most of the time. It’s used to work on the models and view them in real time.

Next, in the top right corner, is the Outliner editor (B). Here you can see all the objects listed.

Below the Outliner is the Properties editor (C). It has a lot of tabs along its left border and it’s used to tweak all the properties of the objects.

Finally, near the bottom, is the Timeline editor (D). We’ll be using it for animations.

There are lots of other editors. You can change any editor to a different type by clicking on the drop-down in the top left corner of the editor and selecting a different one. For example, to change the Properties editor to a UV editor you just have to click on the drop-down in the Properties editor (A) and select the editor of your choice (B):

Now the Properties editor on the right will change to the UV editor:

Or, if you want to change the big 3D Viewport editor to, let’s say, the Graph editor, which is used for animations, you just have to click on the drop-down in the top-left corner of the 3D Viewport editor (A) and select Graph Editor (B):

And now the Graph editor has replaced the 3D Viewport editor:

Workspaces

Depending on what you want to do in Blender, you may need some editors more than others. To make life easier for us, Blender offers predefined layouts. So, for example if you want to animate, you don’t have to add all the necessary editors manually, but just select the Animation workspace, which contains all the editors that you need. Naturally, you can still tweak the layout, close some editors or add others. The workspaces are at the top of the Blender window:

The default workspace that we’ve been using so far is just called Layout. But there are also other workspaces: Modeling, Sculpting, UV Editing and so on. Click on the Animation workspace for example:

Here you have all the editors that you usually need when working on an animation: two 3D Viewport editors (A, B) using two different views, the Outliner editor (C), the Properties editor (D), the Dope Sheet Editor (E) and the Timeline editor (F).

Feel free to check out the other workspaces. And in the next part we’ll be talking about basic operations in Blender.