I've been using Blender on and off for over a decade now and have been constantly amazed at the quality and scope of improvements the team have made. In the past few years I've found myself becoming more and more productive in Blender, in no small part due to the very welcome UI overhaul that came in 2.5, so I wanted to create some tutorials that will help new users get up to speed and introduce more seasoned users to shortcuts/tools they may have missed.

In this tutorial I'll show how to model, unwrap and texture a low poly mesh from scratch in under 20 minutes. Some of the things demonstrated are; edit mode advanced selection tips, knife tool, Array modifier, optimizing UV layouts, baking ambient occlusion, multi-texture material blending, texture painting and more. I've also included all keyboard shortcuts used in this tutorial below.

3D View Shortcuts

For all numerical shortcuts to work on keyboards without a numeric keypad (such as Macbooks), the "Emulate Numpad" option must be checked in the Input section of User Preferences.

• SHIFT + F

  : FPS camera controls (Tab enables physics allowing you to walk on geometry)

• 1

  : switch to front view (hold CTRL for back view)

• 3

  : switch to right view (hold CTRL for left view)

• 7

  : switch to top view (hold CTRL for bottom view)

• 5

  : switch between orthographic and perspective

• T

  : display/hide tools panel

• N

  : display/hide propeties panel

Edit Mode Shortcuts

• CTRL + Tab

  : opens the mesh select menu (vertex/edge/face)

• A

  : select all/select none

• ALT + RMB

  : select edge/face loop

• G

  : grab (drag) selection, press x/y/z to constrain to axis

• E

  : extrude selected vertices/edges/faces

• K

  : knife tool, LMB adds cut point, Enter confirms cuts

• L

  : select all faces that belong to the UV island of the face under the mouse cursor

• S

  : scale selection, press x/y/z to constrain to axis, type number for exact scale

• R

  : rotate selection, press x/y/z to constrain to axis, type number for exact rotation

• SHIFT + G

  : opens select similar menu (options such as threshold are displayed in the tools panel)

• CTRL + E

  : opens edge menu, (select boundary loop can be found here)

• SPACE, sli, ↓, ↓

  : slide selected edges across face

• SPACE, bou

  : select boundary edges of currently selected faces

• SPACE, dou

  : remove doubles, any vertices within a certain distance will be merged

• SPACE, merg

  : merge selected vertices

• SPACE, seam

  : mark selected edges as seams for UV unwrapping

• SPACE, unw

  : unwrap (options such as margin are displayed in the tools panel

UV Editor Shortcuts

• CTRL + Tab

  : opens the UV select menu (vertex/edge/face/island)

• A

  : select all/select none

• L

  : selects the UV island under the mouse cursor

• G

  : grab (drag) selection, press x/y to constrain to axis

• S

  : scale selection, press x/y to constrain to axis, type number for exact scale

• R

  : rotate selection, type number for exact rotation

• W

  : opens the weld menu (press W again to weld selected vertices)