Yes, I’m a complete beginner, not only to Blender but to modelling & animation, but I have looked long and hard through the docs, and this forum, but can’t find the answer I need.
Whilst working through building Gus I’ve finally managed to get my first rendered image (hey! only took me a week, tho’ I have other things to do), but have somehow lost all the materials panels!
How do I get them back, please?
The panels setup seems to be saved with the image file, so every time I reload Gus those panels disappear
The cursor turns into a double-headed arrow at the edge of a shrunken window. Drag it around or press RMB to splilt windows. If this doesn’t help try Ctrl-Up arrow, which toggles a window to 'full screen. ’ Maybe you hit this combination accidentally.
OK, tried those things, nope. The mouse driver on this m/c is cr*p, holding down shift or ctrl and moving it can make it go haywire & register lots of phantom clicks. I expect it closed those panels during it’s last “episode”.
No window edge, until I created one.
Ctrl-Up Arrow makes a (much) bigger empty window.
That gave me the idea to try Ctrl-left and right arrows, that was fun, but still no cigar.
Mebbe I’ll just start with Gus again from the beginning. Each time I get quicker and better
If you have this problem with every new file you open, you could try to delete the file .B.Blend which contains your default settings. The next time it’s run, Blender will re-create the file with “factory defaults.”
In Windows .B.Blend lives in the .blender folder wherever your application is installed.
Nothing special about my setup! Your file’s Materials window is fine for me too. I think a screenshot of the problem would work better than a .blend file here. Please post if you can.
Btw the folder that contains blender.exe also contains a folder called .blender. The .b.blend file will be in there.
I’m still slightly confused 'cos, with some other object selected (eg a camera), I now see some panels when the materials buttons for the shading context is selected, didn’t before, hmmm.
<A few minutes later>Would it be hasty of me to say it’s a minor buglette? Switching the selected object (I’ve tried it via the outliner and in the 3d window) doesn’t alter the sub-context selected. Probably just confusing to the uninitiated.
On the good side, being careful not to let my mouse go haywire I’ve managed to get all the way through the “first 30 minutes”, without losing anything, and have a full colo(u)r Gus! I think I’m gonna go and lay down in a darkened room for several hours.
Or maybe I’ll try the next thirty minutes
I really appreciate your help, thank you very much.
On the not-so-good side, I suspect you gurus are (sensibly) using non-Windoze platforms. On this XP installation, the .blend folder isn’t under the folder with the executable in, it’s under the applications folder for my specific logon. Ho hum. [/b]
