Some basic interface questions

Hello everyone!

I’m just getting going in Blender and am finding a lot of different answers to these questions based on different versions so hopefully someone here can advise me on the best course for 2.73 Thanks for any tips!

  1. How can I switch between translation, rotation, and scale while maintaining the full widgets? I know the G,R,S shortcuts for these operations but don’t enjoy the feel of working that way. I would prefer G,R,S hotkeys bring up the associated widgets so that I can manipulate them with my mouse. The only way I can find to do that at the moment is to manually click on translate / rotate / scale to bring up the associated widget. Can I get those on hotkeys somehow?

  2. When I duplicate an object it defaults into the equivalent of the translation hotkey. I would rather it default to the translation widget. Is this possible?

  3. In photoshop I can hold shift and it will only transform something straight along the X or Y axis. If I grab the center of the translation widget is there a way to hold it to a straight path along the chosen axis?

  4. I think my preferences are influenced heavily by working in Unity for a while. If anyone knows of any presets that are super similar to unity let me know and I would love to start using those!

Cheers!

I’m not sure what you mean by “widget” which you seem to mention allot.

1.Pressing G followed by X,Y or Z will allow you to move the selected “object” in only the selected axis.similarly,pressing R followed by X,Y or Z will allow you to ratate and object in one axis and pressing S followed by X,Y or Z will allow you to scale an object in one axis.

All of the above can be used with the shift-axis combo (example : S>X>Shift+Y will scale the object in the X and Y axis but not the Z axis)

2.Not sure what you mean

3.See “1” to move an object in a straight axis

4.If you’re a beginner,i would advise sticking to blenders default preset for a while.You’re not going to be able to follow tutorials with custom hotkeys unless you know what the tutorial author is doing without seeing what hotkeys he is pressing.

Well, Blender is a shortcut-centric application. This might be unfamiliar, but it is worth getting used to, because it can speed up your workflow (imho) when used correctly. But to answer your questions:

Not exactly sure what you mean by “maintaining the full widgets”.
You can Shift-select the different manipulator types for the widget and Blender will show all at once:


By doing so you don’t even need to hit S, G or R any more.

AFAIK no. But the same keyboard shortcuts apply here: If you hit X, Y or Z after the Shift-D, the duplicate’s movement will be restricted to the respective global axis. XX, YY or ZZ after the duplication moves along the respective local axis and so on and so forth.

I must confess you lost me here. If you want to constrain the movement to a certain axis while using the widget, use one of the three axis arrows of the widget. The center area is explicitly for not having a directional constraint. However, if you still clicked in the center area of the widget and realize you want to limit the movement to a certain axis, you can always use the shortcuts afterwards: While still having the mouse button pressed, press X, Y or Z to… You get the gist.

As DCBloodHound said.

Thanks to you both for the help! I think I wrote this late at night so the language might not have been the best to describe my problem.

for #1 I was meaning I want to hit G,R,S keys and have their respective graphic / widget show up on the cube, like in your image. When I hit G,R, or S at the moment it begins moving, rotating, or scaling the cube relative to my view. I dont want to go straight into move, rotate, or scale mode, I only want it to bring up that widget. Unity operates this way. By widget I mean this:

http://wiki.blender.org/uploads/a/a3/FAQ-Transform_widget-2.jpg

#2 when I duplicate something it immediately goes into grab / movement mode relative to my view of the object. I just want it to bring up the movement widget. The best way around this so far that Ive found is to just not touch my mouse after hitting duplicate on an object, hitting enter immediately, and then clicking on the movement / translate button in the interface.

#3 it looks like I can get close to what I was describing here by holding ctrl + shift + clicking and dragging on X,Y,Z axis on the translation widget.

#4 good advice, ill try to get better at the default controls, however it would be nice if blender also had a Unity preset for controls since I go between those two a lot.

Thanks!

Still looking for a solution to #1 or #2 if anyone has any ideas?


for #1 I was meaning I want to hit G,R,S keys and have their respective graphic / widget show up on the cube, like in your image. When I hit G,R, or S at the moment it begins moving, rotating, or scaling the cube relative to my view. I dont want to go straight into move, rotate, or scale mode, I only want it to bring up that widget. Unity operates this way. By widget I mean this:

http://wiki.blender.org/uploads/a/a3…m_widget-2.jpg

#2 when I duplicate something it immediately goes into grab / movement mode relative to my view of the object. I just want it to bring up the movement widget. The best way around this so far that Ive found is to just not touch my mouse after hitting duplicate on an object, hitting enter immediately, and then clicking on the movement / translate button in the interface.

#1 Add/change a hotkey in Input -> 3D View -> 3D View (Global):

identifier: wm.context_set_value
context attribute: space_data.transform_manipulators
value: either of {‘TRANSLATE’} {‘ROTATE’} or {‘SCALE’} (braces, quotes are important)

#2 Change the shift+d hotkey from object.duplicate_move to object.duplicate. But if you want it to also automatically switch manipulator to translation, you’d need to write a custom operator.

Thank you Larry and Stan! I will try these tomorrow :slight_smile: