Blender 3.2.2 Determining A Proper Manual for One's Operating System / Keymapping

Support Basics & Interface
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So I’m having to reteach myself Blender because I came from a Modo and Maya background. I noticed in the beginning when opening Blender there is a Splash screen that asks which keymap you want to setup (though I cannot find where to take a screenshot) but there was an option to choose a “compatible industry standard keymap” well I used that for a long time thinking it was going to work well, but tutorials online and in the industry people are using the default Blender keymap.

When I go to Help in the File menu, does Blender open the manual for Blender 3.2.2 for the specific operating system, or just an all-around manual for either Windows or macOS?

I’m using macOS, and was curious about how this works.

Sincerely,

Christopher

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It’s just one (online) manual… (also downloadable) → all-around …

1 Like
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Thanks for the reply.

4

Is there a way to have Move, Rotate, and Scale locked to keyboard shortcuts? Modo and Maya have them as W,E,R, and default Blender isn’t doing that for me after I reset the factory defaults.

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Compatible industry standard keymap is an help to discovery of Blender.
Many people did not consider testing Blender because of its “non-standard” default keymap.

Community members have difficulties to agree about what should be defaults.
Current default keymap is a mix of old keymap (mostly based on initials of operators) and more standard ways to try be efficient on a qwerty keyboard.

What is important to retain, when reading manual or following tutorial, is icon button or name of called operator.
When your mouse pointer is hovering a button, corresponding shortcut will be displayed in tooltip.
When you open a menu or use search, shortcut is displayed next to name of called operator.

Compatible Industry Keymap is a preset like Blender 2.7x keymap preset.
It is showing that you can create as many keymap configuration presets as you want.
For example, if you are occasionally using Blender on a laptop or a workstation, if you may change keyboard.

You can create your own keymap from default keymap or from scratch in Preferences window.
When you reset factory defaults, you are resetting default keymap preset as used keymap config.
So, exporing your keymap config as a python script is useful, in case where you would risk to loose custom preset.

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I ever thought… a standard keymap is… not-clever… there may be some like move (G*-rab*?), rotate (R) and scale (S) which could be the same… but the more complex ones will never fit because some apps doesn’t have those features… so in the end someone have to remember which does fit and which not…

(really ?? rotatE and scale aRound ??)

Maybe a special action key pad would be more helpfull with icon for transform, rotate and scale and this would be mapped to the app…

1 Like
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I’m on a macOS Laptop using Blender 3.2.2 without a numpad. I’m learning a lot about how Blender has special circumstances for situations like mine in their preferences.

When I press E nothing happens.

When I press R something is happening but I dont know what it’s called. Looks something like this:

Screen Shot 2023-01-20 at 11.34.25 AM
Screen Shot 2023-01-20 at 11.34.25 AM3774×2346 3.05 MB

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I’m just a bit confused where on Mac you can see if you are in Object or Editmode… ??

Anyway: i guess Object … so you have selected Camera, Cube, Cube.001 and Light and after hiting r you are rotating (top left… Rotation… angle) arround the center of them all (Pivot Point selectabele by . or via icon… which i also doesn’t see here ???)

Some MAC users please :exclamation:

P.S.: … on the left one the T-panel you can hover over th icons and see some shortcuts…

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In preferences window, there is a button to choose if Grave Accent / Tilde Action will call a pie menu to navigate or to show transform gizmos.

That is a way to activate a transform operation.
You can display a permanent gizmo whatever tool is used as active tool, or activate corresponding tool as active tool, or directly call operator.
For each of these 3 ways to do that, you can use a keymap shortcut.

In default keymap, G,R,S shortcuts are directly calling operators. They are initiating a transformation that has an intensity guided by mouse movement.
Press G, then move mouse to move selection. Press G, then X to constraint move on X axis.
Press R, then move mouse to define rotation angle.
Press S, then move mouse closer to origin of object to scale it down, move it away to scale it up.

In industry keymap, W,E,R shortcuts are activating transformations as active tools.
Press W, then left click and drag on an arrow to initiate a movement constrained on an axis, or left click and drag on white circle to make a free move.
Same for E and R.

You can change G,R,S shortcuts of default keymap in Preferences Window, under 3D View > 3D View (Global) section. Or you can use right click menu > change shortcut on items of Object > Transform sub-menu.
If you do that, W,E,R will not display gizmos.

To have W,E,R like in Industry keymap, you have to create a shortcut by a right click on buttons of toolbar.

If a shortcut doesn’t work, that may be because keymap is already used by another one.
By default, W key is used to browse select tools. So, you have to deactivate shortcut in Preference window or remap it, to be able to translate selection with W key.
By default, E is used to extrude.