While trying to extrude the box downward you do this: click on exclude, which is below the 3d window, and click region. At that moment the model has the focus of your mouse and the extrusion begins.
When you move your mouse down the extrusion heads down also. As it should. However, as you pull the mouse down, you run into the bottom of the screen and can drag the extruded points no farther. And this extrusion is not long enough.
So how do you do it? How do you start the extrusion with your mouse in the 3d window or move your mouse to the 3d window to perform the extrusion. Any mouse movement up, takes the extrusion up the body, in the wrong direction.
Yeah, I tried that. If I was actually building something important and extruding something down I would want to be able to see it close up.
So zooming out doesnt really help anything, since you cannot see what you are extruding.
If you expand the screen, then you cant view the extrude buttons, and you cannot put the buttons on the left or right side of the screen because that makes them unusable, since you cant view all the buttons.
The buttons do not move based on where they are, so spliting the screen vertically with buttons on the right side hides all the left half or more of the buttons. A bug for sure, since the ‘panels’ should adjust to the viewing area and move to a vertical list instead of the horizontal columns they assume.
I thought since blender has been out for so long, nuances like this would be nonexitant. Especially since it grew from inhouse and its use.
I enjoy the fact you dont have to hold a button down while extruding, but I would like to extrude down also. LOL.
1 ) change the scale of your viewport by pressing on - / + on the numerical keyboard
2 ) and may be use the Widget so that it follows the Global axis system
Make sure that your cursor is as close to the center of the region you want to extrude as possible when you hit the extrude key. The extrude will move the same relative distance as the cursor so if your cursor is near the edge of a window you will have less control of the extrude length.
There are many shortcuts and functions you apparently don’t know about yet, and it takes a bit of practice getting around the 3D view too. Blender GUI is built for speed when it comes to modeling.
Buttons: Rightclick in the button window to select horizontal or vertical alignment. If a window header is cut off you middle mouse button (MMB) to drag it over (probably other ways to do it too)
Extrude with the Ekey (I had forgotten a button even existed). Scale with the Skey. Grab and move vertices with the Gkey. Hit X Y or Z keys while doing these will restrict movement to a single axis.
Getting around in the 3D view while modeling: If you can’t extrude all the way in the present view then extrude it as far as you can, Shift + MMB to slide the view around (MMB to rotate the view, MMW (wheel) to zoom). Then grab the (still selected) vertices (Gkey) and place the extrusion where you wanted it.
There are many more timesaving shortcuts to learn. It’ll get much easier for you over time. I remember doing that tutorial and it took me two days to figure out how to put the texture on it. I also used to bash my head on the keyboard cos I couldn’t find buttons (cos I was in the wrong mode -edit vs object mode -watch out for that one).
Here’s a couple tutorials I wish I would’ve had back then.
Thank you very much. Now I understand. I thought the windows were all forms and would adjust to their new placement correctly. Widgets! LOL.
I understand about the being built for speed… which explains the key stroke interface. I will use the E key to extrude.
Im a mouser, my keyboard sits ‘over there’ on the shelf most times…I like it that way too. smile. But for blender it will have to sit in my lap, another reason to spend some bucks for a split keyboard.
Thank you for the tut. It says ‘Even if you have never used blender before you can do this’ so I will start in now and hope it is true.
I just got so tired of reading the wiki and it was all beginning to blur so I thought I ready at least for a beginner’s tut. But the one I was doing expects you to know more about the interface then I do.
Just a small comment(don’t know if you already discovered this or not), but if you make the buttons on the side of the screen, you can right click in the window and choose your alignment(horizontal, vertical, free).
When I run into this situation in an extrude, I simply end the extrude by clicking, move the mouse, then grab and continue moving the extrusion. In fact, all extrude does is create new vertices (edges/faces) then automatically deselects the old vertices, selects the new ones and puts you in a constrained grab along the normal of the stuff you’re extruding.
So when you are moving the extrusion to a new location, you are in grab mode. With any of the basic manipulation modes (grab, scale, rotate) you can simply end and restart if you run the mouse off the screen (or even out of the window.)
But yeah, you’re gonna have to get used to the old “one hand on the keyboard, one hand on the mouse” blender adage.
