In this lesson video, we are going to familiarize ourselves with blenders user interface. Learners UI is unique compared to other software you have seen before. Unlike other software, the UI consists of multiple areas that can be tiled as you wish. But before we get into the nitty gritty, let's talk about what the default has to offer. When we first launched vendor, we will see this splash screen, you can close this splash screen simply by clicking outside the splash screen window. Now, if you use Blender in a public computer, such as in classroom or library, you may have different UI layouts from what I have here.

If that is the case, you may need to go to the File menu up here, defaults and then click on this load factory settings. This will set everything to the defaults. This is important. So we have the same starting point and avoid confusion along the way. Okay, up here we have the menu bar, we have File menu in here where we can save an open file. Then we have the Edit menu where we can undo and redo, but most importantly, it is where we can access the preferences down here.

We also have render menu where we can render image and animation. We have a window menu, where we can toggle blender to full screen or to create a new Blender window. This is helpful for example, if you have multi monitors set up, okay, after the main use, we can see we have so many tabs in here. These tabs are used to store workspaces. What workspace means in blender is UI layout preset. By default lender already provided sufferer workspaces such as layout, modeling, sculpting, UV editing, and so on.

Now, you may notice they don't have some of the workspace tabs clipped or hidden like this. This is because I use standard 720 HD resolution to record the video. I don't use Full HD or 10 ATP resolution, because I know that a lot of my students like to watch the lessons in small sized mobile devices. A full HD resolution video will make the mouse cursor and the UI buttons look too small in those devices. Anyway, if you use Blender in small sized resolution, you may also experience this UI clipping. Now don't worry.

To access the hidden UI, simply hover your mouse over the area and then just rotate the mouse scroll wheel. This method also works with other clips or hidden UI in blender. If you have full HD or larger screen resolution, you really don't need to do this. Okay, let's get back to discussing the workspaces. To switch between these workspaces quickly, we can use keyboard shortcuts. To switch to the next workspace, we can hold CTRL and then page down.

To go back to the previous workspace, we can hold CTRL and then press page up. Okay, later we will learn how to create customize, add and remove our own workspace. For now, let's use the default workspace which is laid out in here okay. At the right side we have seen pull down lists and also the fuel layer pull down lists. We will discuss both of these when the time come. The middle area we see in here is the three viewport editor.

This is where we can see our 3d objects from different angle. At the bottom, we have the timeline editor, where we can play and pause animation set, the starting and the ending frame, etc. This timeline editor will be very important later when we are doing animation. And the right side we have two editors. The top one is the Outliner editor where all objects in our scene are listed. In his editor, we can select object, we can also hide and show objects by clicking on this is symbols.

Last but not least, is the property editor. This is where we set parameters, whether it be global parameters that affect everything, or contextual parameters which will affect only the selected or the active object. Okay. When working inside blender, some time we want to escape from the UI complexity and focus Only on one editor, we can maximize an editor to take up the entire Blender window by holding CTRL and then press spacebar. But you must remember, this shortcut works in conjunction with your mouse cursor position. So for example, if your mouse cursor is over this 3d viewport editor, pressing CTRL spacebar will make that 3d viewport editor maximized.

Press Control spacebar again, we will return the editor to its original area or size. Notice if I hover my mouse cursor on this outliner area, pressing CTRL and spacebar key will make that outline or editor to fill up the entire window Ctrl spacebar again to minimize it. So important lesson that I want to explain first here is that all blenders shortcuts work based on where your mouse cursor is located. Okay, I repeat again, as this is very, very important. All blenders shortcuts work on the editor where your mouse cursor currently positioned. So just remember that when you try to execute a certain shortcut, you need to place your mouse cursor in the correct editor that you want to target.

Otherwise, the shortcuts won't work or it will work but in another way, meaning it may produce a different result which you are not expecting at all. We will learn a lot of shortcuts in this course, as in my experience, as far as I know, blender is the most shortcut oriented software in the world. You may feel a bit discouraged to learn Blender at first. I feel that way too The first time I learned blender, but trust me, after knowing how Blender works, you will want all the software to work like blender, so just bear with me now and keep Moving forward