Panda3D Part 7 – Basic Operations in Blender

In the previous part of the Panda3D series we were talking about the Blender GUI. Today we’ll be talking about basic operations in Blender, like selecting and deselecting objects, adding and deleting objects, as well as viewing the object from different angles.

Here’s the video version of this article:

Selecting and Deselecting Objects

Let’s start by selecting and deselecting objects.

To select an object, just left-click on it in the 3D Viewport (A) or Outliner (B). It will then become the active object, which you can tell by its color. So, click on the camera to select it:

Now click anywhere in the empty space between the objects. This will deselect all.

If you want to select multiple objects, just hold down the Shift key while selecting the objects one by one. All selected objects will be highlighted (dark orange), but only the last selected object will become the active object (light orange).

So, go ahead and select the light, then the cube and finally the camera.

If you want to deselect one object, also hold down the Shift key and left-click on the object again. You can do it in either editor. If multiple objects are selected, clicking on an object (with the Shift button held down) which is not the active object, will not deselect it, but rather make it the active object. Here’s what happens if we hold down Shift and left-click the Cube again:

As you can see, now the Cube is the active object. To deselect it, you must hold down the Shift button and left-click on it one more time:

Now the Cube is deselected.

Selecting and Deselecting All

Sometimes you may wish to select or deselect all the objects. It’s easy to do. If you want to select all the objects, just hover your mouse over the 3D Viewport and hit A on your keyboard. This will select all the objects:

To deselect all in the 3D Viewport, hover your mouse over the 3D Viewport and hit Alt + A. This will deselect all:

An even faster way to deselect all is to click anywhere outside the objects in the Viewport, as you already saw.

There are other ways of selecting objects like for example the circle select or box select tools, but we’ll be talking about them when we need them. And now let’s see how to add and delete objects in Blender.

Adding and Deleting Objects

If you want to add an object, you can do it from the Add menu or using the Shift + A shortcut. Here’s what the menu looks like:

And here’s what you will see when you press Shift + A:

If you use the shortcut, the menu will open at the location of the mouse cursor. As you can see, there’s a long list of objects you can add, but before we start adding objects, let’s think for a while about where the object will be added.

The 3D Cursor

Probably you’ve noticed the so-called 3D cursor already. It’s the widget that currently is at world origin, so at the coordinates (0, 0, 0):

The cursor determines the location where an object will be added. So, let’s add another primitive shape that we get out of the box, the UV sphere.

So, hit Shift + A, select Mesh (A) and then the UV sphere (B):

The new shape will be added at the location of the 3D cursor:

But you can only see its outline because after we add an object it becomes the active object. The sphere is inside the cube. Let’s delete the cube to see the sphere. To delete an object you must first select it and then hit X and Delete:

After deleting the Cube you will see the UV sphere:

Now what if you want to add a shape at a different location? Well, you just have to place the 3D cursor at that location first. Let’s move the cursor near the top right corner of the 3D Viewport editor. We can do it by holding down the Shift key and right-clicking at the new location. We can do it also by selecting Cursor in the toolbar (A) and left-clicking at the new location (B):

In the latter case don’t forget to select Select Box in the toolbar after you position the 3D cursor in order to be able to select objects:

If you now create a new object, it will be added at the new location. Let’s add a cone:

And here it is:

Deleting Objects

You already know how to delete a single object. Deleting multiple objects at once is pretty simple, you just have to select the objects you want to delete first and then hit X and Delete. So, let’s add some shapes first and then remove some of them. You can hold down the Shift key and right-click somewhere in the 3D Viewport to move the 3D cursor to that location each time and then add a shape. I’ll add a torus (A), an ico shere (B) and a cylinder (C). You can try whatever you like. Here’s my scene:

Now, to delete the UV sphere, the cone and the cylinder, I just have to select the three shapes:

and then hit X and Delete. Now the selected objects are gone:

This is pretty much it as far as adding and deleting objects is concerned. And now let’s see how to pan, orbit and zoom in the 3D Viewport.

Panning, Orbiting, Zooming

We often want to view the objects from a different angle or distance. Here’s our scene:

Panning

Let’s start with panning. You can easily pan horizontally or vertically over the objects in your scene by holding down the Shift key and dragging the mouse over the screen with the middle mouse button pressed: 

Orbiting

Orbiting is easy too. You orbit around the objects in the scene to view them from different angles. Just hold down the middle mouse button and drag the mouse over the screen:

Zooming

You can zoom in or out if you want to view an object form a different distance. You can use the mouse wheel to do that. If you scroll the mouse wheel, the zooming effect will be pretty choppy, though. If you want it to be smoother and more precise, you can hold down the Ctrl key and drag the mouse with the middle mouse button pressed in one direction or the other:

In the next part of the series we’ll be talking about transformations in Blender.