Blender Master Class: A Hands-On Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering

Introduction

Welcome! This book is designed to teach you how to create models and environments in 3D, using two pieces of software: Blender, for 3D design and animation, and GIMP, for 2D image editing. In each chapter I take you through a part of the process of creating three complete 3D scenes. You’ll learn how to block out and create models, sculpt and detail them, texture and create materials, use lighting, and render finished images. In the course of the book, I discuss the wide array of tools that Blender and GIMP offer and how to use them in real projects.

My goal is to teach you how to approach and finish your own projects in Blender, using three of my own projects to provide the narrative and examples of the tasks required. By the end of this book, you should be able to create your own projects from scratch using the principles demonstrated in the three example projects.

Topics Covered

Here’s a brief summary of each chapter in the book.

Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 offer an introduction to Blender and GIMP. You learn what they are, where you can get them, and what you can do with them. I also introduce you to their user interfaces and the basics of working with them. Chapter 1 focuses on Blender. We look at adding and manipulating objects, saving and loading, and best practices when working on a project. In Chapter 2 we examine creating images in GIMP using its various brushes and filters, as well as how to work with layers and selections.

Chapter 3 covers gathering reference material, creating concept art and using these materials in Blender to make it easier to bring your ideas to life in 3D. I discuss using orthographic references, creating reference sheets, and importing reference images into Blender’s 3D Viewport to use while modeling.

In Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 we move on to blocking in the most important aspects of a scene with simple geometry and then fleshing out these basic forms with more detailed models. We look in-depth at Blender’s 3D modeling tools and how to create models with simple, efficient geometry.

Chapter 6 covers Blender’s sculpting tools and how to combine them with Blender’s Multiresolution modifier to produce a model that can be sculpted like clay—perfect for creating detailed, organic models.

Chapter 7 looks at how to modify the high-resolution, sculpted geometry from Chapter 6 to create simpler geometry. We look at a few of the different methods Blender offers for retopology and how they can be applied to turn our sculpted meshes into final models.

Chapter 8 looks at Blender’s UV unwrapping tools that allow you to map 2D images onto the surface of your models. This lets you paint on them and give them colors and textures.

Chapter 9 covers creating strand particle systems with Blender’s particle tools. These can be used to generate hair and fur, and Blender’s particle mode brushes allow you to comb and cut that hair or fur into many shapes and styles. We look at the various settings for particle systems and how to use Blender’s child particles to generate vast numbers of particles from relatively few parents in order to create complex, thick hair and fur with minimum input.

Chapter 10 looks at texture baking, the process of automatically generating textures based on the geometry of a mesh, while Chapter 11 covers texture painting, which combines the baked textures from Chapter 10 with hand-painted details and photographs using Blender’s texture painting tools and GIMP.

Chapter 12 and Chapter 13 cover Blender’s materials and lighting options. We look at the Blender Internal renderer and the Cycles render engine, and how each impacts the way we set up our lights and materials. In Chapter 12 we learn how to use the textures created in Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 to create materials that give realistic results when rendered. Chapter 13 covers creating lights and how to set them up for both the Blender Internal and Cycles engines to get attractive lighting and shadows that render quickly.

In Chapter 14 we bring together all of the components created in previous chapters, including models, lights, materials, and textures, to render our final images. We discuss the most important render settings for the Blender Internal and Cycles engines, along with how to get the best results quickly. We also examine Blender’s node-based compositor and how to use it to further post-process your final renders. Finally, we use GIMP for some extra touch-ups and for painting backgrounds for our images.

In Chapter 15 we take a final look at the projects covered, and think about what could be done to take things further. I cover adding a few embellishments to the projects and look at them from some different perspectives, before examining ways to take our still images and make them move with Blender’s rigging and animation tools.

What Isn’t Covered

Blender is an extremely powerful 3D design and animation package. It has tools for modeling, texturing, creating materials, and particle systems, as well as tools for rigging and animation, compositing, and scripting; a full-featured game engine; a non-linear video editor; and some advanced fluid, cloth, and rigid body-simulation tools. This book attempts to deal only with the aspects of Blender that are needed to create, texture, and render models as still images. It doesn’t cover Blender’s rigging and animation tools, simulation tools, or the game engine. There are a wealth of other resources out there on such topics. If you’re interested in finding them, try http://www.blender.org/education-help/.

Requirements

To make the most of this book, you will need a reasonably current computer, running a recent version of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. In particular, when it comes to the sculpting portions of the book, some extra RAM (8GB is good) and a reasonably fast graphics card will prove useful. A pressure sensitive pen tablet (for example a Wacom Bamboo or Intuos) will be really helpful when you reach the texturing and sculpting sections of the book, but it isn’t an absolute necessity.

The Projects

In order to provide a common thread as we progress through this book, I’ve chosen to center the discussion on three projects. Each was chosen to provide different challenges and thus provide you with broad, practical knowledge of the tools and options in Blender and GIMP.

The Bat Creature

The Bat Creature project focuses on organic modeling to create a humanoid, if monstrous, creature (Figure 1). For this project we first create a simple base mesh and then sculpt the more complex, organic forms of the body with Blender’s sculpt tools. We complement this by creating fur with Blender’s particle systems. We move on to unwrapping and texturing our creature and then create realistic materials for the skin and fur, which feature subsurface scattering and realistic hair. We render this project with the Blender Internal engine in order to use its highly customizable materials and fast, efficient rendering of hair and fur. Finally we create some dramatic lighting in Chapter 13, where you learn how to get the best results from Blender’s lights and how to achieve realistic shadows when working with fur.

The Spider Bot

In contrast to the organic forms of the Bat Creature project, the Spider Bot project will show you how to create a mechanical-looking, hard-surface model of a robotic spider (Figure 2). This task requires a different approach at each stage of the project when compared with the Bat Creature. We begin by blocking in basic forms with simple geometry, but we use duplication to create the repeated parts of the model, such as the legs. When sculpting we use Blender’s hard-surface brushes to arrive at a smoother, less organic final result. Then we use Blender’s retopology tools to refine the model into something smooth and sleek. Finally, we render this project with the Cycles render engine because it offers realistic rendering of shiny materials and complex lighting.

Figure 1. The Bat Creature

The Jungle Temple

Figure 2. The Spider Bot

The Jungle Temple project centers on an environment instead of a character: a ruined temple deep in the jungle (Figure 3). We look at blocking in a scene and keeping its composition tailored to the camera. We use duplication, particle systems, and Blender add-ons to create varied vegetation. When texturing, we focus on creating multiple seamless textures using GIMP, which can be tiled and repeated across multiple objects to allow a wide variety of materials to be created using only a few unique textures. We render this scene with the Cycles engine (which allows for the quick creation of realistic lighting) in Chapter 14, and then use Blender’s compositor to add some post-processing. Finally, we use GIMP to paint a background for the scene.

Figure 3. The Jungle Temple

How to Follow the Projects

While the projects form the main narrative of this book, I don’t cover every step of creating them. Instead, I focus on the most important or difficult aspects of creating each project at each stage of its development and leave the rest as an exercise for you should you wish to produce a similar result. I hope that this approach will show you how to go about creating all kinds of 3D images with Blender and the thought processes and challenges involved. To help with this goal, most of the chapters in this book also feature supplementary information and tips that offer more general guidance that you should find useful in a wide range of projects.

Let’s Begin

This introduction has hopefully let you know what this book is about and where in the book you can look for the information you need. I’ve outlined the projects we will be working through and what you can hopefully expect to learn from them. Now we can start getting acquainted with Blender and GIMP, before diving into the projects. If you’re already comfortable with the basics of Blender and GIMP, you can skip to Chapter 3. Otherwise, the next two chapters should provide a basic introduction to the workings of the software we will be using in this book.

Chapter 1. Introduction to Blender

In this chapter, we will look at the basics of using Blender in order to build a foundation for our work in later chapters. We’ll explore its user interface, how to navigate the 3D Viewport, and how to add and interact with objects. Throughout this chapter, I’ll point to later parts of the book, where various topics will be covered in greater detail. If you are already comfortable with Blender, feel free to skip to Chapter 2, on GIMP, or Chapter 3, on preparing your projects.

About Blender

Blender is a free open source 3D design and animation package, available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Originally created as an in-house animation package for Dutch animation studio NeoGeo, it was later released under the GNU General Public License when its developer, NotANumber, went bankrupt and the Blender community raised €100,000 to pay creditors to release the Blender source code.

Since then, Blender has undergone continued development by the Blender community, overseen by the Blender Foundation (headed by Ton Roosendaal, one of the original developers of Blender). The current version (Blender 2.6x, as this book goes to press) boasts a wide array of features competitive with many commercial 3D applications and has a committed and enthusiastic community creating art and animation with it.

Blender is used today by many animation studios, game developers, artists, and hobbyists. It has been used to make feature films, short films, and games. Of particular note are the Blender Foundation’s open movie projects—community-funded short film projects that are used to drive the development of Blender forward by using it in a production environment. To date, four short films and one game have been completed, each yielding significant improvements and new features in Blender’s repertoire. The first short film, Elephants Dream, premiered in 2006. It’s a surreal tale in which two characters travel through a bizarre mechanical world. It introduced particle-based hair and fur rendering, as well as new animation tools and improvements to Blender’s render engine. In 2008, Big Buck Bunny introduced improvements to fur rendering, particles, and the render pipeline, as well as more advanced rigging and animation constraints. In 2010, Sintel, a tale about a girl and her dragon, brought advanced sculpting tools, new simulation tools, and shading and rendering improvements.

The latest open movie, Tears of Steel, focused on adding advanced visual effects tools to Blender. It brought major improvements to the new Cycles render engine and has introduced camera tracking tools, new features for Blender’s compositor, improved simulation tools, and better color management.

Current, stable Blender builds for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X are available from http://www.blender.org/. In addition, you can find development builds featuring the latest updates from http://www.graphicall.org/. These development builds are designed for more advanced users or those who wish to try new features; they can be unstable, so stick with the official builds for important work.

The Blender User Interface

Blender’s user interface (UI) has earned a reputation for being difficult to grasp. In earlier versions, this reputation was somewhat justified, but since Blender 2.5, the interface has seen major updates and is now much more predictable and easier to learn. Plus, with the addition of the search function, if you have trouble finding a particular operator, you can search for it by pressing the spacebar to bring up a search dialog in which you can search for operators by name.

Once you have grasped the UI, you’ll find that Blender is very fast and extremely customizable. Most functions have keyboard commands for quicker access, and the interface is non-blocking, which means that windows and dialogs won’t be layered on top of one another, obscuring your view.

Layout and UI Terminology

When you first start Blender, the default layout should look something like Figure 1-1. The Blender window is broken into areas called editors. These editors include the 3D Viewport, the Properties editor, the Outliner, the Info editor, and the Timeline, as shown in Figure 1-1.

Figure 1-1. Blender’s default UI layout. The window is broken down into different editors (orange), which are then further split into regions (green).

Editors are further broken down into regions. In the case of the 3D Viewport in Figure 1-1, the regions are the Main region (that is, the 3D view), the Header region at the bottom of the editor, and the Tool Shelf on the left.

Regions that contain buttons and properties—like the Properties editor or the Tool Shelf in the 3D Viewport—are further broken down into panels. A panel may contain any number and combination of operator buttons, information, and properties. The panel’s name is shown at the top of the panel (see Figure 1-2) and indicates what sort of properties and information the panel contains.

Figure 1-2. Panels within the Properties editor

Switching Editors and Customizing the UI

Blender’s UI layout is highly configurable. You can switch any editor in the current layout to a different editor type by selecting a new one from the drop-down menu at the far left of the Header region (see Figure 1-3).

You can also resize existing editors and add or remove editors by splitting or merging existing ones. To resize an editor (or a region), click and drag on its border. To split or merge editors, right-click the editor’s border and choose either Split Area or Merge Area. (In later chapters, we’ll use this technique to adjust Blender’s layout to better suit various stages of each project.)

Figure 1-3. Blender’s different editor types

Multiple Layouts

Because different UI layouts are suitable for different tasks, Blender allows you to store multiple UI layouts so that you can switch between them as you work. To switch layouts, click the screen layout drop-down menu in the Info editor header (see Figure 1-4).

By default, Blender includes layouts named Animation, Compositing, Default, Game Logic, Scripting, UV Editing, 3D View Full, Motion Tracking, and Video Editing, each of which is pretty well suited to the task that it’s named for. (Default is the default layout when you start Blender and is good for modeling.) To add your own layout, click the + icon at the right of the drop-down menu to copy the current layout and modify it, or delete the current layout by clicking the X icon. Layouts are saved along with your .blend file when you save your work, so you can return to them when you reopen the file.

Figure 1-4. Switching layouts with the screen layout drop-down menu

You can make a layout available by default by saving it as part of the default .blend file, the file that is loaded upon starting Blender. To do so, load the default .blend file (CTRL-N) and then create the layout you want using the methods outlined above. Use CTRL-U to save the current file as the new default start-up file. (To restore the original default .blend file, select Load Factory Settings from the File menu and then save the default .blend file again.)

Figure 1-5. Blender’s 3D Viewport in detail

Editor Types

Each of Blender’s editors offers a different functionality. Not all editors will be useful to us in the course of this book, so I will discuss just those that are relevant to the projects we’ll tackle.

The 3D Viewport

This is Blender’s most important editor type. The 3D Viewport (see Figure 1-5) is where you can view your scene and its objects and then move, manipulate, and organize them.

The 3D Viewport has four regions: the main 3D view; the Header, which is found either at the top or bottom of the editor (usually the bottom); the Tool Shelf; and the Properties region, the last two of which can be hidden with the hotkeys T and N while the mouse is over the 3D Viewport editor.

Navigating the 3D Viewport

It’s very important to learn to navigate the 3D Viewport, and there are several ways to do so. The simplest is with the mouse. Scrolling the mouse wheel zooms in and out, holding the middle mouse button rotates the view, and SHIFT-middle mouse button pans the view. To center the view on the currently selected object, press NUMPAD. (period), and to reset the view to center on the scene’s origin, press SHIFT-C.

Note

Blender treats the number pad keys and the corresponding keys on the keyboard differently. For example, the number pad (numpad) numbers are used for navigating the 3D view, while the character key numbers are used to toggle visibility of different scene layers.

You can also snap the viewpoint to specific angles using the number pad. NUMPAD 7 snaps to top-down view, NUMPAD 1 snaps to front view, and NUMPAD 3 snaps to side view. NUMPAD 5 switches between a perspective view, where objects in the distance appear smaller (as in real life), and an orthographic view, where objects appear the same size at all distances. When combined with the top, side, and front views, orthographic view is most useful for aligning objects precisely.

The 3D Viewport has multiple display modes that can be selected from the 3D Viewport header (see Figure 1-5). These viewing modes include the default solid view; wireframe; bounding box, which represents objects as simple boxes instead of displaying their geometry; and textured view, which can display shading and texturing. In later chapters, we’ll look at customizing the 3D Viewport for different purposes, including using different textured shading modes and working with layers and hiding objects.

Coordinates in 3D and the Grid Floor

If you haven’t dealt with 3D graphics before, you may not have thought about how to define a point in space. Of course, 3D models are essentially created by connecting points in space. Thankfully, French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes gave us a solution to this problem several centuries before we got around to inventing computers and 3D graphics.

To define a point in 3D space, we need information about the point’s position in each spatial dimension in relation to a reference point. In Blender, this information comes in the form of the point’s x-, y-, and z-coordinates, which indicate the point’s position along three axes that run perpendicular to one another. These are called Blender’s global coordinates. The reference point we use is called the scene’s origin—the point whose coordinates for each of the axes is zero.

By convention, we generally think of the x-axis as being the left–right axis, the y-axis as the forward–back axis, and z-axis as the up–down axis. (The different viewpoints given by the keyboard shortcuts mentioned above conform to this convention—the top-down view looks downward along the z-axis, and so on.)

You can see the x- and y-axes in Blender’s 3D Viewport as red and green lines, respectively. Extending from these lines in light gray is the grid floor, which we generally use as the ground height of the scene when placing objects. The divisions of the grid are all 1 Blender unit apart by default, giving you a guide to use for placing objects and judging their size. The x- and y-axes and the grid floor are also useful when orienting yourself in Blender’s 3D Viewport.

The Properties Editor

The Properties editor is where you can define the settings and properties for a scene or a selected object. The Properties editor is divided into Header and Main regions, with the Main region being split into tabs (as shown in Figure 1-2). Each tab contains a different set of properties that relates to either the current scene or the active object. In order of appearance, the tabs are as follows:

Render. The Render tab contains settings for rendering your scene, including render dimensions, shading options, and output formats. (We’ll discuss this in more detail in Chapter 14.)

Scene. The Scene tab lets you set the properties of your scene, such as the active camera, certain sound settings, and the scene’s units (arbitrary Blender units, imperial, or metric).

World. The World tab lets you define the scene’s background, as well as the world lighting options, such as environment lighting and ambient occlusion. (We’ll discuss this in more detail in Chapter 13.)

Object. The Object tab (see Figure 1-2) lets you set an object’s transformations manually by using numerical values rather than moving the object about in the 3D Viewport. You can manage an object’s group membership as well as how it is displayed. (We’ll use groups in Chapter 9 to duplicate multiple objects using particle systems.)

Object Constraints. The Object Constraints tab contains an object’s constraints stack. This is useful for animation but not a topic that we’ll cover. (See the Blender wiki at http://wiki.blender.org/ for more on constraints.)

Object Modifiers. This tab contains an object’s modifiers stack and lets you add new modifiers. Modifiers are procedural, nondestructive methods for manipulating and generating a mesh’s geometry. As you add new modifiers to an object, they are applied in the order they appear in the stack (from top to bottom). (We’ll discuss modifiers in more detail in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.)

Object Data. The Object Data tab lets you set which datablock the active object uses and exposes the different sets of data assigned to this datablock (see Datablocks). The contents of this tab vary according to the object’s type. For example, in the case of a mesh object, this tab will display the mesh’s vertex groups, shape keys, and UV coordinate sets, whereas for a lamp object, it will contain the lamp’s color, energy, and shadow settings. The icon for this tab also changes to match the active object’s type: For mesh objects, the icon is a cube; for lamps, a light; and so on. The Object Data tab will come up throughout this book.

Material. The Materials tab displays an object’s material slots and the materials assigned to them. Here, you can edit the basic properties of the materials you create, turn on or off different shading options, and adjust the properties of an object’s material.

Textures. The Textures tab complements the Materials panel. It lets you assign textures to a material, define how textures affect the properties of a material, and determine how they are mapped to an object’s surface. (We’ll cover this tab in more detail in Chapter 12.) You can also use the Textures tab to assign textures to your world background or to particle systems.

Particles. The Particles tab allows you to assign particle systems to an object and define their properties. Blender has two kinds of particle systems: dynamic emitter particles and hair particles. In Chapter 9, we’ll discuss using hair particles to create hair, fur, and foliage, and we’ll review the settings for hair particles in more detail.

Physics. The Physics tab contains tools for simulations, allowing you to simulate smoke, fluids, cloth, and rigid and soft body physics. (Learn more about these options on the Blender wiki.)

The Info Editor

The Info editor (see Figure 1-6) looks like a regular menu bar, but it’s actually an editor, like the 3D Viewport and the Properties editor. It’s usually kept scaled down to show just the header, which is its most important part. The header contains various menus, including the File menu, the Help menu, and menus for adding objects and rendering.

The drop-down menu selectors to the right of these menus let you change the window layout (discussed above) and the current scene (discussed in Scenes). Next to these selectors, a drop-down menu allows you to select which render engine to use. (See Chapter 12, Chapter 13, and Chapter 14 for discussions of Blender’s two native render engines.)

After the render engine drop-down menu, you’ll find several pieces of information, including the version of Blender you are using and some information about the scene. From left to right, the scene information includes the vertex count (Verts); face count (Faces); number of objects in the scene (Objects); number of lamps (Lamps); the scene’s memory consumption; and the name of the currently selected object.

If you drag down the border of the Info editor, you will see that Blender uses the rest of the editor to provide a log of your actions as Python commands. This information provides a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes workings of Blender’s Python API (application programming interface) as you work, and it can be most helpful when creating Python scripts. However, since we won’t need Blender’s scripting features for any of the projects in this book, it can remain hidden most of the time.

Figure 1-6. The Info editor header

The Node Editor

The Node editor is a multipurpose editor for anything that is (or can be) constructed with nodes. This includes the compositor, which uses nodes by default, as well as node materials and textures, which may or may not be node based. You can switch between viewing Blender’s various node setups by clicking icons in the Node editor’s header (see Figure 1-7). The header’s main region displays the current node setup on a grid, allowing you to add, delete, or move nodes and to view and edit their connections.

We’ll look at the Node editor in more detail in Chapter 12 when we create node-based materials for the Cycles render engine and in Chapter 14 when we create node trees for compositing.

The UV Image Editor

The UV Image editor is the 2D equivalent of the 3D Viewport. Here, you can view images (Image ▸ Open Image from the header or select an already loaded image from the image selector drop-down menu) and edit the UV coordinates of unwrapped meshes. While rendering, Blender displays the current render in a UV Image editor. Use the drop-down menu to view the most recent render or to view the viewer outputs of compositing node trees. We’ll discuss the UV Image editor in more detail in Chapter 3, Chapter 8, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, and Chapter 14.

Figure 1-7. The Node editor header

Other Editors

Blender has several other types of editors. We’ll cover some in this book, but we’ll leave out ones like the Graph editor, which is tailored to animation, and the Logic editor, which is tailored to Blender’s game engine. For more on these editors, see the Blender wiki (http://wiki.blender.org/).

Using Blender

Now that we have some knowledge of Blender’s UI, we can learn how to actually use Blender. We’ll look at the default .blend file and then explore working with objects in the 3D Viewport and the Properties editor. We’ll also examine how Blender files are constructed, which will help us when working on our projects.

Scenes

There is a hierarchical structure to .blend files (see Datablocks), at the top of which is a scene. A .blend file can contain one scene or many. Each scene is its own separate 3D space where you can create objects and build your project, and each scene has its own settings that define how it is rendered.

The current scene is shown in the info header at the top of the Blender window, next to the current layout (see Figure 1-8). To create a new scene in a .blend file, click the + icon to the right of the current scene’s name. Blender will ask you whether you want to create an empty scene or copy data from the current one. Although it can be useful to create extra scenes when working with more complex projects, we’ll use one scene per .blend file for each project in this book.

Figure 1-8. The current scene is displayed in the info header.

The Default .blend File

When you first open Blender, you are presented with a single, simple scene (as shown in Figure 1-1). By default, this scene contains three objects: a cube, a lamp, and a camera. These objects are all that is required to get a simple render of something more than a blank background. The camera tells Blender what viewpoint it should render, the cube provides something for the camera to view, and the lamp illuminates the cube and makes it appear as more than a simple black silhouette.

However, a gray cube on a gray background doesn’t make for the most interesting of renders. To create something more interesting, we need to create our own objects to replace these rather dull ones.

Adding Objects

To add an object to your scene, place your cursor over the 3D Viewport and press SHIFT-A to bring up the Add menu. Here, you can add any object type that Blender supports, including meshes, curves, empties, lamps, cameras, and so on. (We’ll discuss these object types as we progress through the book.)

The 3D Cursor

New objects will be added at the location of the 3D cursor, which is Blender’s easily configurable way of quickly defining a point in space. The 3D cursor (shown in Figure 1-9) is where new objects will be added by default. You can also set transform operators, such as rotation and scaling, to use the 3D cursor as the pivot or origin point for the operator.

Figure 1-9. The 3D cursor

By clicking within the 3D Viewport, you can move the 3D cursor to wherever you click (the cursor’s distance from your viewpoint will remain the same). You can also move the 3D cursor by changing its location values in the 3D Cursor panel of the Properties region of the 3D Viewport. (If you lose the 3D cursor or simply want to reset it to the scene’s origin, press SHIFT-C to reset the 3D Viewport’s view and place the 3D cursor at the scene’s origin.)

Selecting Objects

To select an object, right-click it. To select multiple objects, SHIFT-right-click them. Selected objects are outlined in orange by default. The most recently selected object is called the active object and is outlined in brighter orange than the rest of your selection. The properties of the active object are the ones that will appear in the Properties editor. Most operators use or act on the active object, though some act on your whole selection.

Manipulating Objects

There are several ways to manipulate objects in the 3D Viewport. Perhaps the simplest way is to use the keyboard shortcuts: G to move, R to rotate, and S to scale. You can also use the manipulator widget (see Figure 1-10) to manipulate objects by clicking and dragging one of its three handles to manipulate one axis or by clicking and dragging the white circle in the middle to manipulate the object on any axis.

By default, the manipulator appears as three colored arrows. Click and drag on the arrows to move your selected objects in the directions they point (along the global x-, y-, and z-axes by default). Use the icons in the 3D Viewport header to have the manipulator widget let you rotate or scale objects instead of move them (see Figure 1-10).

By default, when in Object mode, Blender uses the object’s local coordinate origin (see Figure 1-11) as the position of the manipulator widget. To change the pivot center of an operator, use the Pivot Center option in the 3D Viewport header. You can switch between using the median point of the selected objects origins (the default), the origin of the active object, the individual origins of each object in your selection, the 3D cursor, and the center of a hypothetical bounding box drawn around all selected objects. This not only moves the manipulator widget but also uses the selected pivot center for any transformations