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So how do we navigate Blender? This may seem intimidating at first, but it's actually pretty simple.

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Let's start with the 3D viewport. The first thing you'll be curious about is how to select things.

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Simply left-click any object to select it and left-click empty space to deselect.

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You can also press A to select all and Alt A to deselect all.

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Some users may be interested in right-click select, which is arguably better for your health,

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so we made a separate video about that if you are curious.

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The next thing you'll want to learn is the basics of navigation,

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how to rotate, how to pan, and how to zoom your perspective of the viewport.

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To do that, all you need are these buttons right here.

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So let's say we want to rotate around our cube.

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Luckily, we have a very handy gizmo in the top right of our viewport that looks like this.

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Notice how it responds to our cursor floating above each axis.

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Go ahead and hover over the blue Z axis indicator and left-click.

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You'll notice that it brings you directly into what's called top orthographic view.

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This can be done for any axis to snap to its corresponding perspective.

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However, if you instead click and drag the same gizmo,

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you'll find a much more flexible way of rotating your view of the world.

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It's important for some to know that you can also middle-click drag to achieve the same effect,

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but from any cursor position.

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Now, you'll notice that our view seems to pivot around a particular point in the viewport,

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that being the center or origin of our grid.

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This also happens to be where our cube is at the moment.

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However, what if we didn't want to look at the cube?

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What if we wanted to look over here or something?

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Well, now all you have to do is click this hand icon and drag to where you want to have centered.

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From there, you'll notice your pivot has changed when you rotate your perspective.

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For hotkey users, simply hold shift and middle mouse drag to achieve the same effect,

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but from any cursor position.

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But let's say I want to focus back on my cube again.

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How do we do that?

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Well, for that, I want to quickly show you the frame selected tool, which can be found under view.

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This will reframe your perspective to focus on the object or objects you have selected.

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This can also be achieved by using the period key on a number pad.

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Now that we're this close to our cube, you may be asking, how do we zoom in and out?

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But it's pretty self-explanatory.

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We have a magnifying glass here.

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Click and drag it to zoom in and out, or you can use the scroll wheel or plus and minus keys on the numpad

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to accomplish the same task.

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And that's basically it for the basics of navigation.

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But you may have noticed that we haven't used the other two buttons in this area, the camera icon and the grid icon.

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The camera icon will bring you into the eyes of your camera.

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This is very helpful for setting up camera angles and previewing what will eventually be your output image.

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Alternatively, you can also use zero on the number pad.

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The fourth button here is a grid.

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This may confuse you at first, but this switches your viewport between orthographic mode and perspective mode.

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I went ahead and set up a scene here to make it more obvious to you.

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But you may be asking, what's the difference between these two modes?

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Well, perspective mode is a realistic view of the 3D objects in your scene, which takes into account how far away objects are from you into how it displays the object.

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The further away something is, the smaller it gets visually.

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However, orthographic mode ignores all of that and flattens your world so that no perspective is seen.

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Everything is angle perfect.

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This is an unrealistic view, but helps immensely with making models accurate, especially in relation to, say, a 2D concept sketch.

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But that's just the viewport.

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In the next video, I'll be talking about all the different windows we see here, what they do and how to navigate them as well.