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Blender Beginners
86 members • Free
6 contributions to Blender Beginners
Aug 20 •
Qs about lighting in blender?
Gonna make a tutorial on lighting soon… hit me with your big questions so I can make sure to cover everything! Comment below!
1 like • 2d
@Martin Kelly Here is what helps me with lights, Martin To aim a light at an object in Blender, use the Shift + T shortcut to make the light follow your mouse cursor or use a "Track To" object constraint for continuous tracking. For direct visual aiming, select the light, press Ctrl + 0 to enter its view, and navigate like a camera using R twice and the mouse to point it. Method 1: Shift + T (For quick adjustments) This method makes the light follow your mouse cursor, which is helpful for quickly positioning multiple lights. 1. Select the light(s) you want to aim. 2. Hover your mouse over the target object. 3. Press Shift + T. 4. The light(s) will instantly point directly at the object. You can select multiple lights to quickly aim all the lights at one time to an object using the Shift+T shortcut. Also, you can select a light and in its properties panel, add a "Constraint" and then "Track to". Then use the eyedropper to select the object you wish the light to point at, and even follow when you move the object. You can also add an "empty"(object) and have the light constrained to that. Then animate the "empty" past an object to create a moving spotlight effect on the object. I hope this helps!
18d •
CAMERA MOVEMENT AND POSITIONING
You all probably know this, but I just found it out and it's been a great help for me when positioning the camera. Select the camera view by pressing NUM PAD 0 Then, go to the view menu, top left, and select NAVIGATION, you can set the navigation type to WALK. The camera then becomes like a first person view which you can move with the W A S D keys, to walk forwards and backwards, strafe left and right, and the Q and E keys take it up and down. You use your mouse to look around, just like in a first person shooting game. When you click with your left mouse button the mode is disabled and the camera position is set. To save going to the view / navigation / walk every time, you can set a keyboard shortcut to in the preferences. Go to EDIT, PREFERENCES, Select NAVIGATION, and under Fly & Walk make sure WALK is selected. Then, still in the preferences, on the left select KEYMAP. (just under navigation) At the top, make sure - NAME - is highlighted in blue. In the search box type WALK In 3D View - View Navigation (Walk/Fly) Click in the box next to 'keyboard' and press a key combination of your choice. I picked Alt C. Then click the 3 little lines, bottom left of the preferences window, and select Save Preferences. I have Auto Save Preferences selected, which is a good idea for me! Hope that's useful. It was for me. Cheers all. Martin.
1 like • 7d
@Martin Kelly Thanks for the link. I'll read up on this. Sounds interesting.
1 like • 5d
@Martin Kelly Good to know that you are able to understand how to use. I read up on it Martin, and it looks great to help with complex camera animation paths. I will look at some youtube videos to see how intense the learning curve is.
11d •
Text and Proper Topology
When generating text in Blender, the faces and vertices are not created optimally for certain types of animation and surfacing. After viewing several YouTube videos it is a very arduous task to fix. Can't Blender be updated to just create proper text when you first generate it?
1 like • 7d
@Greg Dunn Thanks, Greg, for taking the time! I liked your idea of using planes as lights with adding emission. Off topic, but you have a great voice-over talent. Also, your choice of mic works well. Best regards.
1 like • 7d
@Greg Dunn Certainly!
0 likes • 29d
@Casey Faris Yes, Casey, I do. Something I created for a virtual fundraiser, I was using Motion VFX's MO2 plugin for Apple's Motion. I can no longer use that due to the OS update and Motion VFX not supporting it. Trying to accomplish the same thing in Blender involves a larger learning curve. I appreciate your interest. Thank you. https://vimeo.com/1028580176/bdc2a4f2ae
1 like • 26d
@Martin Kelly Thank you Martin!
Aug 10 •
Basics Qs
So glad to see so many new faces here! Post any blender questions here and let’s chat! Maybe we’ll do some videos too!
0 likes • Aug 22
@Martin Kelly I use a Google search which these days uses AI to return the intended information. It is way easier than the Blender manual. I’ve had success using this method to easily learn about HDR Environments in Blender. HDR Environments really help to easily light a scene. You can easily adjust the exposure, turn on or off the HDR’s visibility and if needed, you can add your own lights to complement your scene as needed. The search will point you to some YouTube tutorials.
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@richard-lesser-5560
Richard has over 30 years of experience in videography. From conceptualizing, directing, producing, and editing, to interviewing and marketing.
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Joined Jul 27, 2025