The video starts at 0:16 and is provided by Blender Academy on YouTube.
To begin this lesson, we start by creating a new Blender scene with the default cube. Press Ctrl + N and select “General” from the New File pop-up. If you are inside the scene from the previous guide, select your mesh and delete it. The hotkey for this operation was and is SHIFT + X and ENTER to confirm the deletion.
Let’s add the cube if it’s not already inside the viewport, by using the hotkey SHIFT + A, then selecting ‘Mesh’ and ‘Cube’ from the Add Menu.
So, the mesh (like the cube) is just another object type, similar to cameras, lights, and so on. Categorised, we also define meshes as objects in Blender…just for the sake of giving a child too many names. These objects can also be transformed, just like the camera and light.
By transforming, we move, rotate, and scale objects within Blender’s active viewport. That’s what we will practice in this lesson.
Tools for transformation – Move
We will likely use hotkeys for this operation. To the left in your viewport, there is a floating panel where your Select Box is already highlighted in blue. If we hover over the button below, we find the 3D cursor. Below that, we see the following essential tools: Move, Rotate, and Scale. So all these have their own hotkeys, or shortcuts, where:
- Move is hotkey G (for grab)
- Rotate is hotkey R (to rotate)
- Scale is hotkey S (to scale)
If the cube isn’t selected yet, please select it by left-clicking on the object to highlight it. Then press G on your keyboard and move your mouse to move the cube. Reset the cube’s location by clicking the right mouse button or pressing the Escape (ESC) key.
To place the cube in a different location in 3D space, press G again, move your mouse, and left-click to position the cube.
To do this more precisely, you can orbit your viewport so it’s more aligned with the grid floor. Press G again, move your mouse away from you to move the cube upwards, and left-click to place it. Pssst! To orbit inside the viewport, we hold down the middle mouse button.
Rotate
To rotate the object, we use the R key as the default hotkey. Press R with the cube selected, and move your mouse to rotate. Confirm the rotation by left-clicking, or cancel by right-clicking or pressing the ESC key. You may also orbit your view and see how this affects the rotation.
Scaling
To scale the object, we use the S key as the default hotkey. To simply reset the cube’s rotation before scaling, locate the ‘Rotate’ panel in the lower-left corner. Then, right-click in the ‘Angle’ field and select ‘Reset to Default Value’. Now, you can simply press S on your keyboard and move the mouse to scale the object.
As with other transformations, this operation can be cancelled by right-clicking or pressing the ESC key.
Scaling occurs from the orange dot in the middle of the cube, which represents the object’s point of origin, or the object’s center point, in other words. The same applies to rotation and movement.
Clearing transformations
Clearing transformations if not using Undo (Ctrl + Z) can be done by using the following hotkeys:
- Move – ALT + G
- Rotate ALT + R
- Scale ALT + S
Doing this several times, we’ll have the cube exactly reset back to the state it was in before performing these transformations. If that doesn’t work out, you can simply delete the object and add a new cube to practice transformations again.
Locked transformations
The combination of hotkeys for this one will expand. So to quickly list these here, we can lock movement, rotate and scale in XYZ directions:
- G + X (Y or Z) to only move the selected object in the X (or Y or Z) direction, and then move the mouse.
- R + X (Y or Z) to only rotate the selected object around the X (Y or Z) axis, and then move the mouse.
- S + X (Y or Z) to only scale the selected object in X (Y or Z) direction, and then move the mouse.
Please continue watching the video for more information.