Don’t know if this has happend to some other Blender users before but, once i was doing allot of stuff in Blender, and suddenly i got that little window that said this:
‘CRASH?
Yes, Please!’
So i had to click on the ‘Yes, Please’…and there goes my work without saving, stupid me :hmm:
Four rather obscure hotkeys:
-Shift V: Position camera along face normal,
-T in IPO window: Choose animation mode, ie., linear, bezier, constant
-Alt S: scale selected vertices along face normal
-R in IPO window: Record mouse movements, and convert to IPO
Originally posted by KotsVlok
[B]Don’t know if this has happend to some other Blender users before but, once i was doing allot of stuff in Blender, and suddenly i got that little window that said this:‘CRASH?
Yes, Please!’So i had to click on the ‘Yes, Please’…and there goes my work without saving, stupid me :hmm: [/B]
This happens when using the beauty fill function in Edit mode for a mesh when using Shift F or CTRL F. There’s some mad Bunny rabbit error message too, but I haven’t come across that one yet.
If you go to the temp folder where you have Blender save it’s temp .Blend files, reload the most recent one and this will save you losing the whole of your work. You don’t even need to save a .Blend file for this to work. You can change the settings for this in the tool window at the top of the Blender screen.
When zooming into the render window, using Z key, Left click will reveal the colour numbers for the pixel below the mouse cursor. ie R 127, G 255, B 13.
Sonix.
To animate procedural textures, press ‘I’ with the mouse pointer in the materials window, and select the type of keyframe you wish to set in the pop up menu. advance a few frames, tweak your materials, and set another keyframe. yup.
Do not watch blender while it renders, go to a different vitual desktop. Blender doesn’t have to keep X informed of what’s going on and rendering speed increases by about a factor of 5.
I like border rendering.
In the rendering buttons find the ones marked “Border” and “Crop”.
If you depress “Border”, you can get a rendering of any part of what the camera sees you choose : go into a camera view using NumPad 0, press Shift+B, then mark the limits of the rendering as you want them using LMB.
Next render the usual way and the section you marked will be rendered first, then it will be integrated to the complete rendering.
If you wish that only the chosen section would be rendered then click on the button marked “Crop” also.
Jean
I like the fake user that allow to keep useful data blocks (materials, textures, base meshes) at hand even if they are not linked to an object.
I used it to set a default material that would have the shader I like best set rather than Lambert & Co.
Jean
Originally posted by jeaninmontreal
[B]I like the fake user that allow to keep useful data blocks (materials, textures, base meshes) at hand even if they are not linked to an object.
I used it to set a default material that would have the shader I like best set rather than Lambert & Co.Jean [/B]
Speaking of the Fake Users, pressing Shift-F4 will turn the window into a ¨Data Select Window¨ where you can assign and de-assign fake users to almost everything.
Originally posted by Apollux
Speaking of the Fake Users, pressing Shift-F4 will turn the window into a ¨Data Select Window¨ where you can assign and de-assign fake users to almost everything.
By selecting by name and pressing Fkey I’d bet 
JM
Now something about editing:
When moving verticies by the x or the y axis press middle mouse button (MMB?) and it will move only along x or y axis (depends on current position of the vertex).
I don’t know does it work with surface CVs.
Originally posted by polygnome
Now something about editing:
When moving verticies by the x or the y axis press middle mouse button (MMB?) and it will move only along x or y axis (depends on current position of the vertex).
I don’t know does it work with surface CVs.
Yes and soon you’ll simply have to press Xkey, Y or Z, once to lock to global axes, twice to lock to local axes.
Jean
Originally posted by jeaninmontreal
[B]Yes and soon you’ll simply have to press Xkey, Y or Z, once to lock to global axes, twice to lock to local axes.Jean [/B]
Those Hot-Keys are already working when rotating bones… real time savers !:buttrock:
This is probably know by all of you, but I found a very useful tool for texturing.
If you have a scene with a hundred mesh objects, say 50 of them have one texture and 50 of them have another.
Say you want to change the texture to the first 50, but don’t want to change each individually. Add a Plane out of the view of the camera. Add your new texture (Material) to the plane. Then use the Copy to material Buffer button in the header of the Material buttons.
Select one mesh object of the same sort that you want to change, open Material buttons and Paste from Material Buffer.
All the mesh objects with the same texture will now have the new texture.
I only add this as a tip because I used to change them all individually, which is very time consuming. This above method, is so much quicker.
Sonix.
This one is REALLY cool.
Say you have a sub-surfed mesh… did you know you can turn THAT sub-surf mesh into a normal mesh? Yeap, a mesh without sub-surf but that has the same density as the sub-surfed one!
Just select the sub-surfed mesh and press Alt-C (Conversion).
or this one: if the subsurfed mesh becomes (numb:)) black on s ome places, that’s becouse of the normals. select all and press ctrl+n and then confirm. now it should look prettier!
Since the few last versions (since 2.28 I think) blender has a built-in all inclusive hot-key list.
Just open a text-editor window, and right besides the option to create a new text-buffer there is a menu option called ¨KEYLIST.intrr¨. Select that option and the full list is loaded in memory 
–Edit: There are many hot-keys missing, specially the newest ones, like M to mirror a mesh, K for the Knife tool, Alt-Z for texturized view… but the list is a good start at least.
Sometimes, accidental pressing of the F Key will result in a shaded mesh becoming completely black.
To rectify this problem, save your Blend file, Quit Blender then restart. Use CTRL O to open the last file and your mesh will have returned to correct shaded state.
Sonix.
I want to mention a funky tool that’s often missed in Blender.
Negative Metaballs. Add>Metaball as usual. Exit EDIT mode and Add>Metaball. This time before you exit EDIT mode, hit the Negative button in the EDIT buttons window. Then leave edit mode.
If you move the negative Metaball around, you can see the effect it has on the positive metaball.
Be careful though as negative metaballs are not displayed in the same manner as positive metaballs, you will only see the Pivot point not a meta-mesh.
This is a little test you can try to see the amazing effects negative metaballs can produce.
Make 1 Metaball, make it big.
Place three spheres (UV) inside, make them emit particles, one 100, one 200, one 300 particles.
Parent three negative metaballs, one to each sphere, and use duplivert on each sphere.
Make the 100 dup metaball quite big, the 200 medium and the 300 small. Hit ALT A to run animation in 3D window.
Sonix.
(Thanks to S68 at elYsiun.com for the example method. Click here for his negative metaball thread @ elYsiun. )
I stumbled upon an interesting technique this morning that also involves particle emmitors:
Render some particles, and make the pic into an alpha mapped tga in gimp, load the image onto a plane, adjust the alpha settings accordingly, parent the plane to the emittor, press dupliverts, and you have one hell of a cluster of particles, and it takes relatively little time to render. Of course it doesn’t have to be an alpha map of particles. That’s entirely up to you.
:applause: