The video starts at 0:17, provided by Blender Academy on YouTube.
Let’s create a new Blender scene by clicking File > New > General, or by pressing Ctrl + N on the keyboard, and then selecting General from the pop-up menu. For this guide, we will, as usual, use the default cube primitive, which is our 3D mesh objective. So we are going to work backwards and see how we can delete this mesh.
Deleting a mesh (Cube)
If our cube aren’t preselected, we can left-click on the cube to select it. We can also click on the Cube object inside the Outliner Panel, where it is labeled ‘Cube’ and has an orange triangle symbol.
To delete the cube, we use the hotkey SHIFT + X, and a pop-up will ask us if we want to delete the selected object. You can simply click the Delete button or press the ENTER key on your keyboard to finalise the deletion process.
Adding a mesh (Plane)
To add a new mesh, we use the hotkey SHIFT + A, and from the pop-up known as the Add Menu, which is accessed by selecting ‘Mesh’, we choose Plane.
This plane mesh consists of four vertices, four edges, and one face (two triangles), which we learned from the previous guide are the main components or elements of a mesh object, also referred to as a mesh.
We can also refer to these as primitives, but the terminology and naming aren’t of great importance. It’s more about the visual shape of a primitive or mesh and its components. I just noticed that a single-faced mesh like this Plane is considered a mesh.
Let’s go ahead and delete this one as well. What was the hotkey?
Adding a mesh (UV Sphere)
And what was the hotkey for this one?
SHIFT +….
From the same list where we selected ‘Plane’ in the Add Menu, we now choose the UV Sphere. This is a spherical primitive, and also one of Blender’s default meshes.
The UV Sphere consists of square-shaped faces, and by default, it’s displayed as flat-shaded. And this primitive has significantly more vertices, edges, and faces than the cube and the plane, primarily due to its spherical shape.
Now, the teacher in the video uses the word “polygons,” which is the same as “quads” or another fancy term: quadrilateral polygon. A loved child with many names…
In the lower-left corner of the viewport, a small panel labeled ‘Add UV Sphere’ is visible. That’s just a panel for adjusting our last operation, which was to add the UV Sphere into the viewport.
Inside this panel, we can modify specific values, such as segments, rings, the radius (the size of the primitive, which does not affect the scale), and more.
Let’s experiment with the segments’ value a bit, just to see how it affects the shape of the sphere. We have 32 segments by default, and let’s change this to 26 segments.
If we change segments to lower values, the squares in the sphere become more prominent and more rectangular.
If you want to reset the segment’s value quickly, you can right-click by hovering your cursor above the value and select ‘Reset to Default Value’.
To manually enter a segment value, double-click inside the value field and type the desired number of segments.
Rings are to be considered as vertical segments, and we can also adjust this one just to play with values.
The panel used for these operations can be collapsed, and it can also be removed by left-clicking inside the ‘grey space’ outside the UV sphere. If we want that panel back, there’s no other way than to delete the UV sphere and add a new one. Anyway, there are different ways to adjust these values, which will be covered later by the teacher.
As a challenge, you can now delete this mesh and add a new one, and explore each mesh type by adjusting the values inside the ‘Adjust Last Operation’ panel, located in the lower-left corner of the viewport. It’s for your practice in using hotkeys in Blender, and to identify the locations of vertices, edges, and faces on each type of mesh.
To remind you of the hotkeys:
- SHIFT + X to delete a mesh (confirm deletion by hitting ENTER)
- SHIFT + A to add a new mesh (may also be confirmed by hitting ENTER)
So, get used to it, as these are pretty standard user operations performed in Blender 🙂
Please also watch the rest of the video.