This article is mostly a reminder for myself, with some useful shortcuts and short explanations on things i use but tend to forget.
General Short Cuts (Edit mode)
Add a vertex / subdivide an Edge
W – Subdivide
Hide vertices in Edit Mode
H hides all selected vertices. This can be used continously, hiding more and more parts of a model.
ALT H returns all objects back to normal.
Rigging
This chapter shows some basic rigging shortcuts and helper.
Automatic Weight Paint
To automatically weight paint your model
- Select the mesh
- Shift + Select the Armature
- CTRL + P – With Automatic Weights
Armatures and Hotkeys
Here are some of the hotkeys for working with bones in edit and pose mode. Some keys may not be listed, such as ⇧ ShiftD, which duplicates a bone in edit mode. It can be assumed that ⇧ ShiftD duplicates bones since it duplicates other types of objects, and Blender typically uses the same key for the same functions, even if the objects or modes are different.
Edit Mode
- Ctrl + N : Recalculates the bone roll angles.
- Ctrl + P : Makes the selected bone the child of the selected active bone.
- W : Opens a menu to either rename bones to the suffix of the opposite side, or to subdivide the currently selected bones (suffix mirroring works on duplicated bones, which will have a number suffix after the L/R suffix).
- M : Opens a menu of options to mirror the selected bones.
- L : Selects all bones connected to the bone currently under the mouse arrow.
- Alt + S : In b-bone display mode, this scales the size of the display thickness. In envelope display mode, it changes the outer envelope size (the Dist value from the Armature Bones panel).
Pose Mode
- Ctrl + Alt + C : Give a constraint to the active bone, targeting one other selected bone.
- ⇧ Shift + I : Give an IK Solver constraint to the active selected bone, targeting the other selected bone.
- Ctrl + C : Opens a menu to copy attributes of the selected active bone, to all other selected bones.
- M : Opens a menu of options to mirror the selected bones.
- L : Selects all bones connected to the bone currently under the mouse arrow.
- Alt + S : In b-bone display mode, this scales the size of the display thickness. In envelope display mode, it changes the outer envelope size (the Dist value from the Armature Bones panel).
- Clear the rotation of all bones by using A twice to select all, then Alt + R to clear rotation. The bones are now reset to their original rotations. You’ll end up using this command a lot, along with the related command Alt + G , which clears location.
Useful tutorials
Good tutorial on character animation
Nice Introduction to cycles in blender. But keep in mind, the results are working fine in blender. Importing to OpenGL will not result in such nice views. At least not with some extra work.
