Introduction¶
The 3D View is used to interact with the 3D scene for a variety of purposes, such as modeling, animation, texture painting, etc.
Header¶
The header contains various menus and controls based on the current mode.
3D View header.
Controls¶
- Mode
The 3D view has several modes used for editing different kinds of data:
- Object Mode
- Edit Mode
- Pose Mode
- Sculpt Mode
- Vertex Paint
- Weight Paint
- Texture Paint
- Particle Edit
- Viewport Shading
- Allows you to change the way objects are displayed in the viewport. Read more about the different shading modes
- Pivot Point
Used to change the reference point (or pivot point) used by many mesh manipulation tools.
- Transform Manipulator
These handy selectors allow you to rotate or move objects by grabbing (clicking with your mouse) their controls and moving your mouse in the axis.
- Layer
- The Layers Widget is documented in the Layers page.
- Lock to Scene
By default, the “lock” button to the right of the layer buttons is enabled. This means that in this view, the active layers and camera are those of the whole scene (and those used at render time). Hence, all 3D Views locked this way will share the same active layers and camera. When you change them in one view, all locked others will immediately reflect these changes.
But if you disable this “lock” button, you then can specify different active layers and camera, specific to this view. This might be useful if you do not want to have your working areas (views) cluttered with the whole scene, and still have an ancillary complete view (which is unlocked with e.g. all layers shown). Or to have several views with different active cameras. Remember that you can use
Ctrl-Numpad0to make the active object the active camera.- Proportional Edit
- Proportional Edit.
- Snap
- Controls the snapping tools that help with transforming and modeling objects.
- OpenGL Render
- The Render Buttons render an OpenGL version of the 3D View. See the OpenGL Rendering page for more information.
Tool Shelf¶
The Tool shelf is a context-sensitive region containing tools depending on the current mode (for example, modeling tools in Edit Mode, brush tools in Sculpt Mode...).
For more information on specific tools available, see:
Properties Region¶
The Properties Region contains properties of the active object and selected objects (such as their locations), as well as properties of the editor itself: