For the love of NOOB!

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hello,

Bunch of Noob questions here, forgive me:

  1. Have a sphere, applied a texture, turned on Ramps, for diffuse and specular. How do I disable them, say if I don’t want a Ramp… can’t figure it out for the life of me. For now I just delete the object and start over again.
  2. In the Outliner, I view the OOPs, can I control the incoming/outgoing or enable/disable the plug strings into existing or new boxes.
  3. If I hide something, is it stored in a visual reference somewhere? Or is it like Illustrator where you have to unhide to see if anything is hidden (meaning no visual reference). Just wondering. I know I could just store objects in the layers, but I was curious about the hide/unhide command.
  4. Shift+S gives me snap options, even if I choose one of the options… it doesn’t seem to do anything when I model, is this so obvious to anyone (again I’m a newbie, so go easy on me).
  5. Lock center point to bottom of geometry? So, say I have a sphere, by default the center point is in the center. If I go into EDIT mode, I can move my geometry, and the center point remains. Is there a way to move the geometry or center point so it moves to the bottom-most point, or top, or side, etc? I wanted to find a more distinct way of doing this since I’m eyeballing it.
  6. When I have an object, I go into EDIT mode, I hit “N” and it brings up the “Transform Properties” what is “Median Crease”?
  7. Here’s the worst question. I was hoping to use the Node Editor window to see my materials after I create intense detailed textures. When I go into Node Editor, and my object is selected, I see no such thing. The window is actually vacant.

Thanks!:ba::p:spin:

And, I’m reading the manual and I just got to Materials.

2
  1. click off the ‘colorband’ button
  2. I know very little about the oops schematic
  3. Hide is only for edit mode. Use it to hide selected faces when your model has lots of polys, and it becomes visually confusing while modelling.
  4. There are various kinds of snapping tools, check the wiki documentation or recent release notes. The kind you want is the kind that snaps your selection to the grid as you model, but I am a little rusty on that.
  5. No idea what that is
  6. Also, no clue.
  7. Did you press the ‘use nodes’ button? and the material nodes option?
3
  1. As far as I’ve been able to find there isn’t a way to change the links in the OOPs scematic, i’ve look everywhere but i couldnt find anything. Doesn’t mean its not there but i dont think so.
  2. There isn’t really a visual reference, although you do have a visual reference for thinks on other layers on the layers buttons in the header bar. and you kind of have a ghost affect when you use the clipping border.
  3. you can move the object center. in object mode on the buttons panel there’s a button called [center cursor] in the mesh panel. that will center the pivot to the 3d cursor.
  4. i had to look it up but the median crease controls the level of smoothness on the creases when you use the subsurface modifier, in other words a cube with subsuf can look like a cube or a sphere if you change the median curve.
  5. yeah Modrons right, you might have to click use nodes on the node window header or, there might be nothing there yet.
4

Modron,

  1. I’m embarrassed, seriously! That was easy.
  2. Had no idea, this is cool. When you go back to object mode, it doesn’t hide anymore. I like it!
  3. Nodes button! I pressed it, and then it shows up in the Node Editor. But, I have to hit the Node button in the Materials everytime I want to see it in a node format. Is there a different way of viewing it besides as a node? Weird! I assumed it would just show up automatically. It seems like a bt#$# to organize your textures if you have to hit the Nodes button all day.
5
  1. Huh?
  2. I looked, couldn’t find it, could you be more specific? It’s not what I’m looking for, but it’s close enough.
  3. That’s awesome. Suppose I could have Google’d that, but it just makes more sense coming from you.
  4. Yeah, got that to work, but, shouldn’t that just show automatically? I think Maya did that, don’t remember. Just seems horrid to have to organize your textures by having to click a button to shoot it into a Node Editor. Am I missing something here?
    :RocknRoll::RocknRoll::RocknRoll::RocknRoll::RocknRoll::RocknRoll::RocknRoll::RocknRoll::RocknRoll:
6

  1. No not in the 2.4X series … maybe in 2.5 …

  2. In the Outliner window . And yes the stuff you hide in Edit Mode reappears when in Object Mode, but you can also hide entire objects as well in Object/Pose Modes as well …

  3. Shift-S is for using the cursor to snap, the kind of snapping you are expecting can be accessed via the 3D header (the little magnet icon - refer to the manual for the various options) or if you just want to snap to grid hold down Ctrl while grabbing/rotating/scaling .

  4. The Shift-S menu is useful here . Select the point or face you want to be the new center then Shift-S -> Cursor to selection then tab into Object Mode and from the 3D header: Object -> Transform -> Center Cursor .

  5. The crease value when used in conjunction with the subsurf modifier can be used to decrease the effect of the subsurf modifier … It is best to just try it out … Add a subsurf modifier to a cube and then select a face and increase the crease value up to 1.0 (or use the Shift-E hotkey) … You only get the “Median” suffix when you have faces selected (in which case one or more of the edges may have a crease weight value - with edges it is called Crease W - for weight) .

  6. Hit the “Node” button next to the material’s name … This is a sort of backwards compatibility thing, from when Blender didn’t have nodes, after the first time you hit the node button all subsequent materials will show up as a node material …