I love the Microsoft Intellimouse. It’s actually a very popular one. I bought the 5-button version but I find that I rarely use the 4th and 5th buttons so you might be better with the basic 3-button. The 5-button does have indents in the side though so I find it easier to hold.
The main reason I don’t use the 4th and 5th buttons is that they aren’t recognised by default except in games as I haven’t installed the drivers. I actually hadn’t bothered looking for them before but I just discovered Microsoft have them on their website.
The three buttons and wheel work as soon as you plug in the mouse.
It cost me £17 including delivery from ebay - not second hand but from one of the regulars who sell new stuff. You can get these mice from PCWorld or other local store or the stores on the page. You might want to check out the Microsoft mouse with the wheel that tilts from side to side:
You could even consider the Mighty Mouse. The thing I like about the Apple mice is they are usually low down. The Microsoft mouse has quite a high back and I find it uncomfortable sometimes. The mighty mouse is £35 including delivery, has 4-buttons that are supported natively and a scroll ball that does the same as the tilting wheel but it moves diagonally too. The only problem is it has a short cable. It also has touch sensitive buttons so you don’t get the feedback that actually pressing a button gives you.
Weighing up the factors, I would still go for the Microsoft mouse but I haven’t used mighty mouse so I’m not sure. I do know that when I had my ibook, the Apple mouse cable was too short. Now I have a desktop and my Microsoft mouse is in my keyboard, I find the Microsoft cable too long.
talking about little known features… i learnt those from ton. [i knew some of them before… but that’s just insane, most of it seems to be from the ooooold NaN/NeoGeo days.]
in [rendered] animation playback window:
click+dragging the mouse on the window scrubs the animation. enter starts playback if paused.
numpad + makes the window double size. A forces to draw all frames. P plays back the animation in ping pong mode
and appearently the numpad numbers seem to have some control over the framerate that even ton couldnt recall
edit: numpad4 plays at 25 fps
edit2: num1 plays at 60, num2 plays at 50, num3 plays at 30
A doesn’t really do much for me.
But numpad-0 is quite remarkable. It moves the animation to the starting position and stops it. Then when pressing enter it plays it only once. Looking quite funny in combination with pingpong-mode.
Numpad-dot pauses the playback and each time it is additionally pressed it moves the playback one frame (but ignores pingpong).
In edit-mode If you want to multiple select vertex/edge/face select modes, hold shift and press the corresponding icons in the 3d header.
Connection Mode in Proportional Editing (Hotkey ALT+O)
Here is the tool in action: (Click image for larger image)
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The following tip is a visual debugging tip for the blender windowing system.
Press CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+Z anywhere in the application you will be presented with “Swapbuffers” menu with the following options
Simple - Draws in single buffer mode (Slower)
Debug - Displays the window information etc. the window contents are not drawn
DebugSwap - Same as above but the active window is displayed
Redraw - Redisplays everything (Come out of the above modes)
I mean the more advanced method than the <CTRL>+<0> method for simple switching, I want to try to do it in a quick sucession.
Is there a way to use a sequential camera switch mode? Like if you want to shoot an object and you have 2 or more cameras that you want to use, how can you use one right after the other?
Not a hotkey, but useful to know: when using gestures, the ‘C’ gesture for rotating is often interpreted as a scale request instead. To sove this problem, try making a short spiral, such as a ‘6’ or a ‘G.’ Works more often, I think.
Some useful hotkeys I use all the time:
To hide or unhide layers:
SHIFT-1 (through 0) selects the first ten layers
ALT-SHIFT-1 (through 0) selects the last ten layers
I use this all the time, especially if I have a window full screen.
I thought I had written this tip before, but I didn’t see anything in this thread…
Anybody know the hotkey command (or bug??) that hides the layer toggle buttons in the 3D view toolbar - and HOW TO UN-HIDE IT???
I’ve only used blender for about 2 days and while I’m modeling, alluvasudden the damn thing is gone and I can’t find it anywhere. I’ve tried to use the popup version using the M key but when the the buttons are gone, the only thing that does is “Remove from localview?” - confirm and all objects in the 3D view disappear. It’s also a document tied setting because the header is still hidden after save and re-open.
Frustrated?
To the point of having a coronary!
HELP!
