Shortcut for "Occlude background geometry"?

Hi there :). First of all I’d like to introduce me to you :D. I’m new to the forum and also new to blender. I finally decided to take a look at blender and now that I understood how the interface respectively (is alternatively a better word for it?) blender works I can’t wait to get to know more about it :)! I have a little bit 3D experience with C4D at work so I am no 100% newbie at 3D, but also far far far far away from a professional ;P!!!

So here’s my first question: I am missing the possibility to assign a shortcut for “Occlude background geometry” because it’s taking to much time to always click on the button (especially with my small display at home, where I can’t even see the button if four 3D views are openend). Is this possible and if yes, could you suggest me a shortcut key which isn’t used yet in blender? (You know I don’t know about all shortcuts so I also don’t know which shortcuts aren’t occupied :p)

By the way, I’m from germany, so please excuse my english which is probably pretty bad (I took a look at the dictionary three times for this post ;D!) but I guess posting here will be a good exercise :)!

I think that they’re reworking the event system to make this kind of thing easy in the future. Found this:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=138984

While you’re waiting for the Developers to create a hot key, you can use the middle mouse button to drag the menu bar back and forth so you can get to the button even when you have four 3D windows open.

As a time saver, you can set up Blender to start with the Occlude Background Geometry as a default, then you’d only have to touch it when you want to turn it off. (I generally leave it on all the time, and use z to switch to wire frame view when I want to see the hidden stuff)

Use Ctrl+u to save default settings. (Open a new blender file from the file menu, make the one change, then Ctrl+U. Defaults will include everything in your file, so it’s best to start with a new file to avoid changes to the defaults that you don’t want. )

Welcome to BlenderArtists :smiley:

PS: one of the Help menu items is a hot key reference.

Thanks a lot the MMB tip is worth one’s weight in gold :)!!! Switching to wireframe is a good idea, too :)! Thanks a lot :).

May I ask one more question :)? I’m having problems with rotating the camera/view. In Cinema 4D the view-rotation is different. If I hold MMB and pull the mouse to the left or right (just to the right, as if you were moving only one axis) the view doesn’t rotate just in one axis. It’s much more of a rotation with all angles. I’m already getting used to it and maybe it’s better than the way of rotation in C4D, but it’s a little bit confusing rotating to a vertex or whatever. I have to rotate the view at least two times.

I was looking for the possibility to change it in the default settings but I didn’t finde any setting for this? And by the way, one more question (lol sorry ;)!). Is it true that working in orthographic perspective is better? I’m using a video DVD for blender and the autor always tells that you should use orthographic for aligning objects. Is this true. I’m totally used to the perspective view from Cinema 4D.

Its a matter of preference - but yeah, orthographic is good for lining things up (if you’re doing modelling/ precision stuff)
I usually just use that if I’m using a reference photo or something (NUM 5 key toggles ortho / perspective)

also, I think you can change the rotation view by the buttons above the top menu (you actually drag the top menu down to view the buttons - its the user preferences window)

Another tip is to press the ./Del NUM KEY to center the view on the object selected
Also, press SHIFT+C to center the cursor and view onto the grid

oh yeah, the HOME key zooms out to view everything in your scene

If you pull down the top menu, as AMDBCG suggested, and select View and Controls, look for the View rotations buttons. Trackball does the rotation in all axes, Turntable contrains rotation to one axis.

I usually use the number pad (2,4,6,8) to rotate the view, instead of the mouse. Rotates in 15 degree increments.

Hey, thanks a lot guys :). Seems like I can start my first real modelling now :).