WEBVTT 00:04.000 --> 00:10.600 At this point, I'd like to take a moment to go through the slight tweaks and changes 00:10.600 --> 00:14.840 I make from the default version of Blender that I think is going to help us here. 00:14.840 --> 00:19.560 Let's start with auto depth, and what this is all about is if I just demonstrate the 00:19.560 --> 00:22.540 behaviour without it on first of all. 00:22.540 --> 00:27.080 If I'm trying to rotate around this cube that I've got in the foreground, there's no real 00:27.080 --> 00:30.860 problem with it because I've just sort of framed up on it by hitting the period or full 00:30.860 --> 00:34.280 stop on the numpad, just like that. 00:34.280 --> 00:39.420 If I want to now work on this cube in the background that I have embedded over there, 00:39.420 --> 00:42.040 it's very, very tricky to sort of zoom into there. 00:42.040 --> 00:46.400 In fact, I've actually stopped, I've sort of been locked and can't go any further. 00:46.400 --> 00:48.640 This happens in a lot of 3D programs. 00:48.640 --> 00:52.920 The best way normally to get over there is to hit that period on the numpad, just to 00:52.920 --> 00:57.000 basically frame up into it, just to view the selected. 00:57.000 --> 01:01.400 Now we can sort of rotate around that nice and easily, but we can't get back over to 01:01.400 --> 01:05.760 this one without, again, selecting and then zooming back into it with the period on the 01:05.760 --> 01:07.040 numpad. 01:07.040 --> 01:10.680 This is what this auto perspective option is all about. 01:10.680 --> 01:15.880 We can launch our user preferences with Ctrl Alt and U, and then we can find under the 01:15.880 --> 01:21.560 interface, under the view manipulation, we have auto depth, and I'm just going to enable 01:21.560 --> 01:22.560 that. 01:22.560 --> 01:30.680 What that means is if we try to now zoom over to this one, so we can still rotate around 01:30.680 --> 01:35.600 this one, this is fine, and if we try and take a look at what's going over here, we 01:35.600 --> 01:41.160 can now pan a lot more easily because it recognises the distance underneath the cursor, and now 01:41.160 --> 01:47.600 if I try to zoom in, you can sort of see that we can basically easily zoom back in, and 01:47.600 --> 01:52.720 now it's starting to sort of slow down the responsiveness of the zoom as I get near to 01:52.720 --> 01:54.920 what I'm trying to manipulate. 01:54.920 --> 02:00.360 So again, I find it kind of much easier to sort of navigate through, and I haven't had 02:00.360 --> 02:02.040 to zoom into anything. 02:02.040 --> 02:08.520 The next thing I'd like to change is the way in which we can swap between various different 02:08.520 --> 02:10.200 camera viewing angles. 02:10.200 --> 02:15.800 So for example, if we press number one on the numpad, we can switch to our front view, 02:15.800 --> 02:17.880 and this is a front perspective. 02:17.880 --> 02:23.320 And if we actually go to bring up our user preferences, again with control alt and U, 02:23.320 --> 02:28.600 and let's see, if we enable our auto perspective there, basically this means that if I was 02:28.600 --> 02:33.960 to press one on the numpad again, you can see it's actually assumed that what we want 02:33.960 --> 02:39.560 is an orthographic view, and usually for me at least that's true, so I have that option 02:39.560 --> 02:40.840 enabled. 02:40.840 --> 02:46.220 So if we press seven to go to top view, this is an orthographic view, and if we just start 02:46.220 --> 02:51.120 to rotate out of this view, it snaps us into a perspective view without having to press 02:51.120 --> 02:53.760 the five on the numpad to toggle it. 02:53.760 --> 02:58.440 We can still of course press five to toggle if that isn't what we want at that point, 02:58.440 --> 03:03.360 but for me I find that it reduces an extra couple of key presses that I would almost 03:03.360 --> 03:06.960 always be making otherwise without that option on. 03:06.960 --> 03:09.640 The next thing I'd like to talk about are the add-ons. 03:09.640 --> 03:14.640 So if we just again launch our user preferences with control alt and U, and we come over to 03:14.640 --> 03:20.280 the add-ons tab, we can see these are a bunch of sort of mini programs if you like, which 03:20.280 --> 03:22.720 extends Blender's functionality. 03:22.720 --> 03:27.480 And in particular, the one I'm looking for for now is the layer management, which happens 03:27.480 --> 03:29.840 to be the fourth one down in this case. 03:29.840 --> 03:33.380 Basically what we're looking at here is on the left hand side there's some filters, so 03:33.380 --> 03:36.820 it's initially divided up into supported level. 03:36.820 --> 03:40.860 So these are official add-ons, these are ones developed by the community, and these are 03:40.860 --> 03:45.060 ones considered to be in testing stage, which aren't showing right now, but if we shift 03:45.060 --> 03:50.220 selected that one, we would have those included in what is showing up on our right hand side. 03:50.220 --> 03:55.340 And then a little bit lower, we have categories, and this is showing all categories, but you 03:55.340 --> 03:59.460 could sort of filter them down to ones just to show the 3D view related add-ons if you 03:59.460 --> 04:00.460 like. 04:00.460 --> 04:03.380 And as I say, the one we want is the layer management. 04:03.380 --> 04:08.100 But if we open this up, we can get a little bit more information about it. 04:08.100 --> 04:14.220 And in particular, what might be quite important for us is to see a link to the documentation 04:14.220 --> 04:18.140 or to see where this will show up basically. 04:18.140 --> 04:22.180 So we want the location and we'll find it in the tool shelf, and it'll be under a layers 04:22.180 --> 04:23.180 tab. 04:23.180 --> 04:28.440 So all we need to do is just enable it by checking the icon on the right hand side, 04:28.440 --> 04:30.960 and then that's that, we can just close. 04:30.960 --> 04:36.560 So if we press T to bring up our tool shelf, we can see, if we take a look on our tabs 04:36.560 --> 04:39.440 at the bottom now, we have this layers tab. 04:39.440 --> 04:42.600 And if we just pull this out a little bit more by left clicking and dragging it out 04:42.600 --> 04:47.880 where the border of the tool shelf is, and then just click on the down arrow for the 04:47.880 --> 04:52.160 layer management, we can basically see that what this is going to do is it's just going 04:52.160 --> 04:55.360 to represent all the layers in our scene. 04:55.360 --> 05:01.400 And the layers are actually found elsewhere by default, which is in the header of the 05:01.400 --> 05:02.400 3D view. 05:02.400 --> 05:05.720 And we can see the 20 layers that we've got at our disposal there. 05:05.720 --> 05:12.320 Now the necessity I feel for this add-on is just to give us some description to our various 05:12.320 --> 05:13.320 different layers. 05:13.320 --> 05:16.960 So it's very easy to forget where we were when coming back to an old file. 05:16.960 --> 05:22.160 But in this case, we can say this is where we put our main items in the scene or something 05:22.160 --> 05:23.160 like that. 05:23.160 --> 05:27.200 We've got a few extra options here to be able to clean things up by just hiding the 05:27.200 --> 05:29.580 empty layers, for example. 05:29.580 --> 05:33.840 So that's an add-on that I would recommend having enabled and definitely encourage you 05:33.840 --> 05:38.360 to go through there and see what else you might find is a cool addition. 05:38.360 --> 05:40.600 One more thing to tweak in our user preferences. 05:40.600 --> 05:47.520 So again, Ctrl Alt U is in the final tab, the system tab, and this is the VBOs. 05:47.520 --> 05:49.880 So I'm just going to enable that option. 05:49.880 --> 05:54.080 And basically, this means that we'll get much smoother viewport performance once the 05:54.080 --> 05:56.160 poly counts really start to rise. 05:56.160 --> 06:02.480 And it's not on by default simply due to incompatibility with some older graphics cards, but in most 06:02.480 --> 06:04.280 cases, it should work okay. 06:04.280 --> 06:05.600 So I'm just going to enable that. 06:05.600 --> 06:10.440 And then once we've made all our preferences, if we want to be able to save them so that 06:10.440 --> 06:16.320 the next time we open Blender, it's remembered all of that, we want to come down to here 06:16.320 --> 06:20.280 where it says Save User Settings, and then just click Save User Settings. 06:20.280 --> 06:22.440 And then we can just close our user preferences.