From start to render: A blender quickstart
by Vincent Stoessel

Download the blend file

This is a newbie tutorial to introduce you some
basic terms and operations in Blender. Fortunately
the Blender GUI is pretty much identical on all
platforms so that makes my job easier. When you start blender
a very good explanation of the interface can be found at
at the
Blender site

OK. Launch blender. You should have a default scene.
It should look something like this

I know there are a lot of buttons. Don't worry you don't
have to press them all to do cool stuff.
OK, just a quick overview of what you are looking at:
the first pane on top is called an info window.
The next pane with the grey window with the grid
and the row of purple buttons purple buttons is
called the 3d window. The last pane with the pretty iconed
buttons and a ton of buttons below is called the buttons
window. The 3D and buttons window are the most important
in this tutorial.

OK, let look at what's going on in the 3D window.
The purple square in the center is called a plane.
The circular cross-hairs inside the plane is the 3D cursor.
the triange on the bottom is the camera. We are currently
in the top view. Using your numberpad o your keyboard
(which you may not have on a laptop) press the 1 key.
You are in the front view. Hit the 0 button and you will
be looking from the camera's view. this is what gets rendered
to an image or animation. Ok hit 7 on the numpad, we are
back to the top view. Using the rightbutton of your mouse,
if you have click on a border of the square to select it. It
will turn purple when it is selected. Dragging your mouse in
the 3D window with the middle button depressed rotates the
view.
Use alt-left button if you have a 2 button mouse. Please
buy a 3 button mouse, you'll thank me. You can also rotate
the view with 2, 4, 6 , 8 on the numpad. + and - will zoom
the view in and out.

Ok, press the s (for scale) button. You can now scale
(adjust the size of) the plane by moving the mouse, double
size of the plane and press the left mouse button. that will
set the new size for the plane. If you had clicked the right
button or pressed the escape key, the plane would return to
it's original size. Now look very closely at the plane.In it's
center you will see a little tiny sphere. This is the pivot
point in some programs. every object you create will have one
of these little spheres. When you rotate a mesh it will
rotate around this tiny sphere.

Okay let me explain some confusing terms.
At the root of everything is the Blender's object
blocks.The object block can have a mesh block. A mesh is
the represenation of a geometrical shapes like a sphere,
cubes and planes. The mesh is what you can see in the 3D
window. Mesh blocks can have a material block, a material
block can have a texture block.

OK enough talk let's make something!
hit the 3 button (side view). Left click a little above
the plane. The 3D cursor should now be over the plane.
hit the 7 key to make sure that it is centered. I often
toggle between 1, 3, and 7 keys to make sure things are
aligned. You can press the 5 key in those views to get
an orthoginal (non perspective) view to make alignment
easier. Hitting 5 again toggles the view back to perspective
mode. Any object you add to a scene will appear centered
around your 3D cursor, so always know exactly where it is in
3D space. Hit the space bar, a pop-up menu appears
select ADD->MESH>>CUBE
Now we have a cube object with a mesh. Let's add
a material to to it.

Hit F5 to access the materials buttons.
Because there is no materials associated with this
cube's mesh. Material buttons will look like this
There is a slider on the buttons menu that I've indicated
that will create a new material block.

You should now have a bunch of buttons to play with.
Play around with the controls. Find the primary
r(ed) g(reen) b(lue) slider and make the material blue.
In the 3d window, toggle the z key. What happens?
Let add a texture block to the material block. Please
hit the F6 key. Again use the slider to create a texture
block for the selected object->mesh->material. Choose
cloud for now. Make adjustments of noise size to your
liking. Nowe would be a good time to save this file.
Hit F2. save it as bmania.blend if you like.

OK, we only need one more thing to create an image,
some light. hit the space bar or shift-a and ADD->Lamp.
Put it somewhere nearby but not behind the cube. Two lights
spaced apart will give a better contrast.

Now hit F10 to access the render controls. Pick a file type
that you want on the right side buttons (targa, jpeg...etc).
hit the big render button or F12. A seperate render window
should pop up with a picture. To save the image hit F3
and it will save it in the format you chose. That's it.
You created, edited, rendered and save an image in Blender!