I think, at this point, we're going to start
getting a lot deeper into Blender, and probably going to start moving
and switching between sections. Let's get right into it by exploring more
of the 3D View header bar down here.
Now, we've already gone over the essentials of what we really need
to know on the View menu.
The Select menu, we can come back a little bit to
a little later.
Next, we've got the Add menu.
Now this menu is basically the same menu
that you can pull up with the cursor in the main view here
with the Shift A hotkey. Once you do that,
you've got our mesh objects that we can add.
For example, there's a cube in the scene already.
We've got the some curves that we can add.
Also we have things like Lamps down here at the bottom.
I realize there's a whole bunch of stuff in here as well.
But let's start to get two sidetracked right now.
With that, we have the Object menu.
This Object menu is actually related to, or at least this final menu
that you get in the 3D view here, is related to what mode
you happen to be in. We're in the Object Mode.
Now, these are all things that we can do on object level.
For example, if we add a second object,
we could combine those two objects together.
Or we could separate them, or any of the things that happen
to be in this list really.
If we switch the Object Mode,
we can switch to Vertex Painting Mode.
You'll notice that, the items within the tool shelf changed,
also, we now get some different menu items down here at the bottom.
In fact, some different results, even after the this pull down menu.
So if we take a look now,
we've got this Brush menu, we've got this Paint menu.
Now, let's just switch back to Object Mode and continue moving on.
After the Object Mode,
we've got the Viewport Shading Mode. The key ones here
we really need to know about are the Wireframe,
the Solid and the Texture.
With these three, we've got some hotkeys.
We've got Z,
to toggle between our Wireframe and the Solid Shading Mode.
Then Alt Z to toggle between
the Solid Shading Mode and the Texture Mode.
That gives me another opportunity to open up the Properties sidebar.
Then just come over to the where it says Shading,
this is related as well.
This gives us an extra supplementary options
to do with how things are displayed here.
I just wanted to link these two parts together really.
Now almost always, I switch from multitexture to GLSL.
This is going to allow us to be able
to see things like Normal Maps and Specular Maps in the Viewport.
I basically switch that over for that reason.
Also, I believe it should give us a little bit
of a viewport performance increase anyway. Also while we're there,
I just like to switch on Backface Culling.
For example, if we go Shift A and add in a Mesh Plane,
then I'm just going to left click
on this green arrow with the manipulator here.
That's just going to allow me to slide that Mesh Plane out.
We're still in Texture View at the moment,
which is why we're getting the shadowing from the lamp that we can see there.
And then, if we just take a look underneath,
we can see straight through it, basically.
Whereas if we turn that Backface Culling back off,
it gives the back faces some thickness.
I like to read the scene in the way that
again, is going to see in a way
where it's not going
to show me the back faces of what I'm modeling.
It allows me to make sure that I've got the faces
basically facing the right way.
Also, you'll notice an option for some Ambient Occlusion there as well.
I'm just going to leave that off for now though.
If we press Z,
we can toggle back to the Wireframe Mode.
And then Z again for the Solid Shading Mode.
That again,
changes the way in the options that are showing here.
Now we can see that, we've got this Texture Solid Mode,
and we've got Matcap.
Now, Texture Solid Mode is going to allow us
to show some textures that happen to be loaded
onto the individual faces in the Image Editor.
We'll have to come back to that a little bit later on to fully absorb that.
Otherwise we have these Matcaps.
That’s like another way of being able to see our models
in the scene without having to just look at
these grey slight purplish hue
we get to the lighting of the normals here.
What we can do is, we can switch on Matcap,
and then click on the Matcap itself.
Then we get to see some other options here,
so we can click through various different ways
in which models get displayed.
I'm just going to disable the Matcap for now though.
Then let's move on to the other things in the 3D View.