Blender (2.81) Setting it up.

Set up.

   Blender, a free 3d and 2d software used for modeling, sculpting, animation, drawing, texturing shading and more!

Blender 2.81 launch screen

     Blender is an outstanding free software that continues to grow rapidly and is gaining more and more attention!  Check out my blog on how to get started with blender here.

My Suggested Setup

  This is my start up file for blender 2.81.  Everything is up to personal opinion, though humor me and consider some of these settings.

System Preferences

      When opening blender for the first time I suggest running to your system preferences.    Go to the upper left of your blender and click edit, scroll down to preferences and click that.  Setting changes will vary based on your computer, though I would look at and change these two settings: Cycles render devices and undo steps.  Change your render settings comparatively to your hardware, me I find CUDA with my graphics card selected works best for me.  Next take a look in Memory and limits, change your undo steps to 100.  This may bog down your computer a bit, but if your like me and go and edit an object heavily than need to undo it if it turns out pretty garbage.  You may not be able to undo back to the original mesh with that lower undo count.  (pro tip; SHIFT + D and duplicate the object then hide it from the view port (H) as a backup if necessary (unhide ALT + H)).
 

Blender systems tab

     A very nice quality of life setting is to change your space bar key mapping.  Changing your space bar to the search function is HUGE especially if your are new to blender and are struggling to find your tools.  To change head to the preferences and click the key mapping tab and look over to "Space bar Action", click Search.

Blender key mapping tab

     Something that I use frequency during designing of a house or environment is the walk/fly feature in order to get a proper feel for scale and placement of meshes (I access this by pressing SPACE and typing walk then ENTER then TAB to drop to walk mode).  If you use this feature then I walk suggest changing the walk height to something your used to. AKA your height.  Head over to the navigation tab and scroll down to walk & fly,  click gravity and change the view height to your own.  Changing jump height to 0.4 m also seems to be the sweat spot for me.

Blender navigation tab

Settings

     I have one mandatory request from you in the Blender settings.  That is change your damn units.  It's up to you if you use metric or imperial (I use metric, though you can type ft/in when scaling or moving).  Changing your units helps with real world scale and importing/exporting with other software.  To do this look over to the right in the view port and click on scene.  Click the units drop down and pick your unit system.

Blender view port scene settings (units)

     There is a change that doing this may mess with your viewing distance and you will get weird clipping in the view port.  To easily fix this press "N" to open your properties menu and select the view tab.  I have my "Clip Start" at 0.1 meters and "End" at 1,000 meters.  This works well for me, though with a heavy scene and massive view distance this can bog down your system, but should be fine for most files.

Blender properties tab, view settings

     If you want to know my view port settings and quick favorites tab (to add quick favorites right click a setting and hit "Add to quick favorites")  Hot key for quick favorites is "Q".

Quick Favorites

View port shading

View port overlays

     Lastly, I find it very useful to make two initial collections.  Scene and Meshes.  On your start up file, move the camera and lamp to a new collection.  This will keep those pesky objects out of the way till you need them.  Then new collection and move your default cube there.  Save start up file.

Blender collections tab

Staple Add-ons (Free)

   These add-ons are personal preference, though there are a few staples that most everyone should have enabled, and more that I heavily suggest enabling.

Loop-Tools:  Loop tools is a huge quality of life add-on, adding more functionality for when you are editing a mesh such as the bridge tool.  Found in add-ons tab in system preferences.  Accessed by right clicking in edit mode.

Node Wrangler: I'm not one to work much with nodes, but if you ask anyone they have this enabled.  Node wrangler adding hella efficiency to your node workflow.   Found in add-ons tab in system preferences.

MB-Lab:  MB-Lab I fell is a must.  This add-on gives you the ability to generate and fully customize a character that is rigged and textured.  This can be used as base meshes, place holders, figuring proper scale, scene fillers etc. . .  When installed found in properties tab ("N").  Documentation and download here.  Download in "where to get" section at the bottom of page.

(My full add-on list, descriptions and why to add them to your work flow here.)

Blender add-ons 1

Blender add-ons 2

Check out my Blender resources to jump start your work flow and knowledge, here!


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