10 Tools Every Blender Noob Should Learn 

9. Hit 0 to enter Camera view. Then do SHFT ~ which will then let you move the camera around with the WASD keys with the mouse changing where you're looking. Left click the mouse to stop. And just like in an FPS game, holding shift while moving moves you faster.

Summary, to watch with the video. 1) Apply your transforms before you edit it or it won’t work properly (ctrl+A). 2) Loop cut, quick and easy way to subdivide (ctrl+R). use your mouse wheel to increase and decrease subdivides. 3) Build simple versions of reusable shapes to save time instead of remaking the entire thing (windows, books, etc). 4) Array modifier, use it to duplicate your shapes, and how far they are apart (roofs, stairs, tires, etc). 5) Use constrain by axis(X, Y, Z)to rotate things the way you want instead of leaving it to the camera work. 6) Inset tool to push things in into the object. 7) Extrude (E) works well with inset, the shield to the sword, use it to expand things and use inset to empty things. 8) Use the materials side panel as a substitute for until you can apply your textures. 9) Hit 0 to enter Camera view. Then do SHFT ~ which will then let you move the camera around with the WASD keys with the mouse changing where you're looking. Left click the mouse to stop. And just like in an FPS game, holding shift while moving moves you faster. 10) If you want to render things quickly to see how the final product would look, change your passes to 10 instead of 4000

The “apply transform” and “camera view” tips have instantly changed my life. You are awesome.

Tip number 5: You don't need to be looking straight at an object to rotate it at your desired axis, all you need to do is press x, y or z acter cmd(windows) + R and the object will snap at the GLOBAL axis selected. If you press X, Y or Z twice, the rotation will snap on the LOCAL axis of the object. It's pretty handy ^^

On point 5: Brad, you may try to use constrains by axis (keys X,Y, Z). Double tap to key - constrain rotation in object normals. Pretty useful.

Instead of changing the number of passes I bump the noise threshold. With denoising you can move the threshold to 0.1 or 0.5 instead of 0.01 and it will render much faster, but you are controlling the quality not the quantity by doing so... meaning, shots that the renderer struggles with will get a bit more TLC but the easy frames will fly by quickly. This also means, for animations, that the quality throughout the animations stays consistent (not great or amazing, but consistent to the rest of the render)

Great and useful tips thank you. I may add. -The "." key on the num pad to focus the view on an active object. - file > recover > autosave. To recover your work after a blender crash - shift + C to reset the 3D cursor to its original position

Loved this video! Blender tip, if you go to inset (i) and shrink it down, you'll find it crosses the verts and messes up the mesh, but, if you so an inset, click to set it, and then you resize it (s) it'll shrink as the same size without messing up your mesh. Also, Shift+D to duplicate faces and objects within edit mode is incredibly useful at times. Good luck, and happy modeling!

Have been using Blender for over a year and loved your video so much! You explained the array modifier in a very nice way 😄

For rotating some thing on the axis you want when in Perspective view, you can also hit the key for the axis you want to rotate around (e.g if I want to rotate something on the x-axis, hit R to rotate and then X). Then it will only rotate on that axis no matter if you're looking at it dead on, inside out or upside down! :D

If you select a jagged line of vertices, edges of faces, then press S(resize) + X/Y/Z + 0 it will straighten the vertices along that axis. It's pretty useful

Thank you so much! I’ve been slooowly learning Blender. These tips are so helpful! Also I love your art style. The little pine trees in your renter are so cute! 🌲

Thank you very much for this video, it's exactly what I needed to know for building my own models for my game. All I've done is create some trees a few stylized rocks and some low poly cliffs but I needed to know how make structures and decorations. This is exactly what I need to learn how blender works and help me start modelling.

I loved this, I may no longer be a complete Noob but still found it really good fun and nodded through every one of the tips - brilliant

Just today I posted a blog about some beginner tips I've picked up, and Apply transform was the first thing on the list. Nice. Thanks for the video- very clear

this helped so much. after some advanced tutorials and self exploration i was all over the place. i knew a lot about some things while i knew nothing about other basics. thank you

To those who are wondering, why their ctrl+r might not be working. You can't actually cut everything, the face has to be a quad (A face that has 4 vertices). Topology is a rather difficult thing to learn, but in the beginning everything that you should really know is that you should try to keep almost everything as a quad (a face that has 4 vertices). PS! This is for the people, who have started to use alot more editing in their workflow.

I'm a blender noob and i'd be sure to come back to this from time to time as its easy to forget some of the basic stuff when you're trying to learn more complex stuff. Thanks for sharing

Hey Brad, thank you for sharing this useful tips and tricks! It was so fun to watch your video I see my self when you are reacting somethings on Blender :D keep posting more Blender vids!

Thank you so much for this great video, I'm a bonafide noob, have only just started playing around with Blender a week or two ago and am starting to get the hang of it from the various tutorials I've watched and applied, your video has a number tips I've not seen in the other videos I watched, will definitely download your video and use it for reference!

5:28 u can use combination R+X/Y/Z to rotate in any specific axis

On #10, I suggest increasing the noise threshold rather than decreasing the passes. Just leave it at 4096, but set the noise threshold up from 0.01 to 0.5. This tells blender that more noise is acceptable to call it good and move on to the next frame. I find that with 0.5 my renders rarely go above 30 passes. Another great speed up for rendering is to decrease the light paths. if you have no volumetrics, set those to 0. Under volume settings if you nave no reflections or refractions just turn those off so it doesn't waste time calculating. Someone did a video comparing render times of the same frame with various of these done and they were getting significant speed gains. Like 20x or more per frame.

I like to bind the middle mouse button to spacebar, Coming from drawing programs it is more natural to change that key bind. I have been using blender for a number of years but I don't use it enough to know what im doing, This video was actually was really helpful :)

I am just now starting on blender and this helped SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much. Especially the tip for rotating one axis at a time.

for number 5 if you use the tool on the left to rotate instead of just pressing R you get some handy circles to rotate along a specific axis, i also highly recommend getting the lazy viewport add on that makes it so those tools get selected automatically when pressing the tool shortcut, works for rotating, scaling and moving (R, S and G respectively)

Came here for the reviews on pen displays, stayed for the high quality Blender content, Go Brad! One tip that I havent seen anybody mention in the comments: you can organise your blender editor panels/windows (dont know correct name) very easily by clicking and dragging the corners of said windows/panes/panels. I always have several square viewport panels for top/side and camera views, 1 larger shader editor (nodes) etc. Also, you can add a new window that you can use on another monitor (if you have multiple monitors), or just stretch the main window. Looking forward to a top 10 tips on the grease pencil....or geometry nodes :P

Very enjoyable video. Out of the seven different software programs I’ve learned this year blenders by far has been the hardest. thanks for the tips I actually will apply them!

The "frame selected" command changed my life. It not only adjusts your view's zoom to fit your selection, it also changes the center of your view's orbit, do that when you rotate your view, it revolves around you selection. It's also very handy when switching between working on very large objects vs very small objects because it fixes how zooming works to be scale appropriate

To cut down on render time you could do less passes then take the image into something like Lightroom and add your own noise reduction and sharpening. Also making sure you know what resolution you want your final image to be because a larger image resolution is gonna take longer to render. I personally like to render at a 25%-50% larger resolution than I need just so I can make sure the image is sharp when it’s scaled down or cropped. You never want to have to scale up an image if you can help it.

Apply Transforms is something I learned very early on is just necessary and saves so many headaches. Great tip to point out something that really is so simple, but also not so obvious for beginners.

Im not even half way through this and love how you do tutorials. Appreciate the work put into this, you even went above and animated yourself XD

Great video! Been working with Blender full time for about 4 years now and yeah, great tips for beginners!

one of the most helpful things i learned was that for easier viewport navigation, you can use shift ~ to enter first person wasd controls.

You are straight on the point, Blender is huge and it is impossible to learn everything, all you need to learn is what you need, so learn one thing at the time. I watched Imphenzia anf his 10 minute challenges and even those are not tutorials I learned that you just need to know some few commands to be able to build things, the hard part is the human creativity. My favorite key is F3 that help you search for what you want to do, like "smooth" or "subdivide".

Please do a tutorial series for blender. I really enjoy the pace of your videos and you explain things well

Thanks for the camera tip. Didn't know that one. When I want to move the camera, I've just been moving myself through the scene to where I think I want the camera view, then select View |Align Camera to View (or something like that). Your method seems to do the same but you get the benefit of the framing. Blender: everything you know, you stumbled upon somewhere else.

Dude made the best Blender for dummies video ever. Nice tips, funny, direct to the point. Thanks for this video Brad!

That was an AWESOME video! Thank you!!! Very straightforward, informative, and entertaining!

I love blender I've been using it since they sold on CD at bookstores it even came with a book but I ended up with severe head injuries and can never remember stuff like this love the video

I’ve been using Blender for years and still learned something. Always love your vids

I NEEDED THIS LIKE A YEAR AGO OMG! THIS IS THE BEST BLENDER TUTORIAL I'VE EVER FOUND

This will help a lot later down the road, but a very good thing to jump on earlier: set up your scene settings to operate in measurements that are comfortable for whatever you are making. I tend to use meters, but you can use centimeters if you are making small objects. This becomes important when using the various simulators and when you start messing with tiling in your shaders. Helps to keep your scenes at a consistent scale too if you aren't already. I use many standard measurements, like door widths, in my scenes so it is easy to just type those values in during scale and grab operations.

Thank you for this. I need more of these in my life. I learned so much here than reading the dual documentation.

if you want, while rotating in 3d space, you can tap an 'axis key' after you start the rotation to constrain it. so for example if you hit 'R' to rotate, and then hit 'Y' you can constrain that rotation (also works with scale and transform) to only that one single axis, even while the viewport is in whatever orientation. i use it allll the time in 3d because i want to see some perspective view of the object but still need it constrained

Thanks for the motivation. I wasn't sure if I could do it, but I might try it eventually.

The Array, Camera and Render Cycle Tricks Really helped me out

Expounding on #3 - If time is of the essence then kitbash everything you can - lumber, buildings, even body parts (then in sculpt mode remesh them together and use clay strips/smooth until they join seamlessly). It can save a lot of time and make what would be otherwise bigger projects seem much easier and much more manageable.

I've been using blender for a year almost but still watched the video through Goodluck on your journey Brad

Great tips. Didn't know about applying transform so thats a win!

I love them! Thank you! Finally took the time to explain the basic elements! :D I love the program.

The last blender tip was exactly what i was looking for THANK YOU!

Omg, keep making Blender vids! I love your normal animated style blooped in with the tutorial. Animated Brad made the tutorial different and, interestingly enough, more accessible than standard real-person tutorials. That’s not to say that Real Brad would be bad to see. Animated Brad was just a different take than most. (We still love your real face.)

I'm trying to model exactly what you have here in this video! Some medieval looking stuff. Super cool!

Dude, you are the digital art's lifeboat of the internet. Can you make a video about Grease Pencil someday? A guy called Dedouze has been doing crazy stuff mixing 3D and 2D in Blender. Thanks for the video.

That's so great. Do more contents with blender, please. Thanks Brad

I was just thinking of trying blender again, thanks so much for the video!

Thank you for the video, it helped me a lot. Learning hotkeys also saves a lot of time.

Bro, you're the best, I REALLY needed some tips like these!! Thanks from the heart!!

Like that animated guy during the voiceover, makes the tutorial enjoyable without loosing interest. Cool topics too

this is the type of video I want whenever I'm learning new software. best video I have ever seen.

Great tips, and an even better delivery.

I like the format, Brad. Nicely done.

Ok so I went into this video thinking "cool, I'm still a noob, this should help me!" but watching it has shown me just how much I've progressed, so keep going and never give up! Here's some additions to your tips: 5. When rotating on axis you can just hit the key of the axis you're rotating on (holding shift and pressing a key rotates on everything but that axis) 6. When you have multiple faces selected and you press i to inset, you can press i again to inset each one individually. 7. If you have multiple faces selected (that are facing different directions) and you try to extrude them you get some weird results, so to extrude them press alt+e and extrude along normals. 8.1. You can add multiple materials to an object by going into edit mode, selecting a face and in the material panel hitting assign. 8.2. If you are having issues with shader nodes, just remember that the colors mean something (yellow is color images, gray is 1 channel images, purple is normals/vector stuff, green is shaders), if you match the colors, then you should be fine. 10. Finally, you have an m1 mac, it has a gpu (albeit not a great one), use it: at the top hit edit - preferences - system, then select whatever is available there and in the render tab in your projects change device from cpu to gpu compute.

--- Shortcut reminders --- Shift+A: Apply transform (or you scale inside 'edit mode' and it won't change the scale proportions of the object) Ctrl+B: Bevel Ctrl+R: Loop cut E: Extrude I: inset

Yes! Lock Camera To View is awesome, I use it all the time. On that little menu in the right, where the checkbox is, you can right click on the checkbox and add the command to your favourites. Then at any time, you can press Q to bring up your favourites menu, right where your mouse pointer is. I use favourites to avoid digging for stuff I use all the time. For the rotating part, what you're doing works perfectly, and if you want to not have to switch to side view or front view, use axis constraint (so you press R and then you press X or Y or Z).

That last tip is going to help me so much with my renders! Thank you so much. 😊 As for my tips in return, I have several that I think will help you a lot. For your assets, I recommend learning to make use of Blender’s “asset browser” once you have your assets in an asset catalogue, you can just drag them into any scene in seconds, without even using the appender. When it comes to rotating on an axis, you don’t even need to bother with rotating the viewport. After hitting Cmd+R, you can press the X, Y, or Z key on your keyboard, and that will lock the rotation to that axis. For the camera, I recommend going into the camera view, selecting the camera, and then pressing G to move it or R to rotate. Then you can press X, Y, or Z twice to transform the camera on one axis at a time relative to its orientation. Also, to make things even easier, you can add an Empty to the scene and then add a “Track To” constraint to the camera (using the Constraints tab in the Properties bar). Select the Empty as a target, and voilà! The camera will always point towards the Empty, and you can move that to wherever you want the camera to point at.

More blender vids please!! Many of these came in handy and I would love another, like expanding your object more abstractly and how to fix common mesh problems. I'm trying to build antlers and there's so many ways but I keep running into the same issues.

Just did experiments on an M1 Mac Mini using Blender 3.1 between using the CPU & the GPU for Cycles rendering and, for the type of work I do, I found that using the GPU cut quite a bit of time off the render. (It has to be turned on in Preferences.) But then I tried your Number of Samples idea, knocking it down to 10 (the interface has changed, you now set the specific number of samples rather than Max/Min), and I found that THAT made an even BIGGER difference. And, also, the CPU was a little faster than the GPU when both were set to 10 samples. It had cut the render time down to a THIRD of what the CPU did in the baseline, which I had been using for months. I saved the images from every test variation, put them all onto one page of AD, and I could tell NO difference between any them. So, THANK YOU. Your suggestion has finally cleared away the main irritation of rendering in Cycles.

great video and tips for a beginner! it's crazy how far blender got.. in the days back then I've had to pay crazy amount of money for Cinema4D and had almost no tutorials, as youtube itself was "fresh" and without any tutorial available.. thanks for contribution!

Thanks, this helped me a lot. Those are definitely tools that will be used very very often.

Nice video man, clear and concise explanation! Thanks a lot!

Thank you for the array modifier tip!

Another way to raise the quality of the final render is to render it in a higher resolution and downscale it. I usually would do a 4k and downscale it to 2k. Another camera tip that I highly suggest is In Preferences - Navigation - Orbit Around Selection, it is much more convenient for me this way.

Great video ! I am definitely going to watch this through and learn from it. Great content

Love your videos! Very well done!

Thank you so much! 😊 This is stuff I wished I had learned right at the beginning of my Blender journey.

Loved these tips!! Great Video ❤

For the rotation thing, you can rotate, translate and scale on a single axis by pressing the letter on the keyboard. For example, for rotating press R and then Y to rotate only on the Y axis.

for point 5 i have also a useful shortcut wich applies to pretty much everything (this means rotating, resizing, extruding and moving objects, vertices, edges and faces). holding down on the mouse wheel and then moving, locks whatever you are moving or rotating to a specific axis depending on wich axis you align your cursor with. just hold down the mouse wheel, move the cursor to whatever axis you want to use and then let go of the mouse wheel. this way you can move it freely along one axis without having to worry abou the others. everyone knows this already i guess but i thought i could mention it incase someone doesnt know. also holding ctrl while rotating, snaps the rotation in 15 degree increments (at least i think its 15, not sure) but that way you can rotate things fast and precise. these two definitely sped up my workflow quite a bit.

thank you for that. you fill a need hole here, a newbie giving tips for other newvies. most tutorials skip so much that its frustrating trying to learn blender so your vid gave me a few pointers. You should expand on this idea and give newbie tips in categories of the app, 10 newbie tips on rendering, on materials, etc.. people like me who has been playing around with it a few days needs it because what we pick up from tutorials and do ourselves has a lot of missing pieces.

This is awesome... also the fact that I'm 8 minutes in and I just realized you've been animating your little dude the whole time to match the voiceover is way cool

you are a life saver with that inset tip. im a noob and i need all the help i can get.

Wow! Such a great teacher! You speak like a regular person starting out in Blender! The problem is after people become experts, they don't remember that people don't know all those things you take for granite

Wooow! You have to do more Blender Tutorials Brad, you're like the Genee of Blender Tutorials, COOOOL!!

The arrays tip is unfathomably helpful wow

Brad, this is amazing, thank you.

Oh dang, I have followed probably 6 tutorials now and 2 of Grant Abbit's courses, and maybe they mentioned it... but Apply transforms has just changed my blender life!

This is the best blender tutorial in existence oh my God thank you! Saved me so much time

Lovely demo. Thanks man.

Thank you thank you thank you for all of these and your fun sense for teaching :)

Alright one thing I'll definitely recommend newbies is for your camera, try having at least one more window open for camera view, you can close it later if you want. Unlike how Brad does it, don't move your camera and then go to the camera view and rendered view. Just open another window, make it rendered view, go to the camera view, and then move the camera. Trust me, it's a better practice than Moving your camera around. The trick brad showed is better for getting the initial camera view. Another little trick is, in your viewport, move your viewport as you like and then just press Ctrl+alt+Num0 or command if you're a mac user. It moves your viewport view to camera view.

Brad, the illustrator + Blender. I sense some good 2.5d grease pencil / 3d sketching coming up and it makes me quite excited!

If you want to make two additional loopcuts on both sides of an existing loopcut, select the loopcut (Alt + left click) then Shift + Ctrl + R (or Ctrl + Shift + R, doesn't matter)

Oh man, I just talked myself out of installing Blender to add yet another creative skill to my toolbox, but this video has me reconsidering.

This is fantastic, thanks for sharing!

Amazing tips. Loved it.

Nice video man! Very creative! Thanks

Shade smooth sometimes messes up sharp edges so go to the little green triangle on the right and find normals then click auto smooth and it will totally fix smooth shading for most stuff, you can also increase the value to smooth more but I find the default value works fine.

Love this content so much man, please do more

Lovely! Bless you and season's grreetings!