This tutorial explains everything about how to move in Blender. We will explain the Blender user interface and we will also cover shortcuts for how to move. The very first thing that you are going to do when you first open 3D software – is move around. Blender here is not an exception. Though movement in Blender can be a bit different from other similar programs. That is why we created this article to help you learn moving around in 3D space of the Blender.
Blender has advanced shortcut possibilities. This means that there is a convenient shortcut way of doing almost anything, even moving around. So we are going firsty to look at basic movement, then moving with shortcuts and end it with some tips on how to better handle the 3D space.
How to Move in Blender Using Interface
When you open Blender – everything that you need to move around is already there. On the top right corner of the 3D Viewport to be exact.
Let’s begin with the colored gizmo and go down from there. This gizmo with the colored axis allows you to rotate your view around the 3D. You just need to click and drag it around.
Also you can click on the colored dots on the gizmo that represent the axis. This will align your view to be directly from the direction of the clicked dot. For example if you click on the “x” dot, you will be aligned with the X axis and view the cube from the front.
Right under the gizmo is the magnifying glass icon. Hold it down and move your mouse forward and backwards to zoom in and out.
Similarly to zooming, If you want to pan your view around you need to hold down the hand icon and move your mouse around.
Camera icon will allow you to change to the camera view and out of it.
The last icon with the Grid on it toggles between orthographic and perspective view modes. Perspective view is the default. And it is how we, humans, see the world around. It is a bit deformed in a way that the further object is from your eye – smaller it looks.
Orthographic view, on the other hand, is a more “real” view of the world. When it does not matter how far are you from something – it will always look the same. This view can be hard to understand at first, but it is really useful when you work on something. Because it allows you to see the proper sizes of something and to align things properly.
How to Move in Blender Using Shortcuts
Now let’s look at the same ways to move your camera but with the use of simple shortcuts.
- Rotating view around – Middle Mouse Button(MMB)
- NumPad 1;3;7;9 and CTRL+NumPad 1;3 are for the front, right, top, bottom, back and left view respectively.
- Zooming in and out – CTRL+MMB or mouse scroll wheel.
- Panning around – Shift+MMB.
- Orthographic view toggle – NumPad 5.
But there are some additional shortcuts, that don’t have an easy way of doing them in the interface. For example – Numpad 2;4;6;8 move your view in equal increments to the bottom, left, top and right respectively.
Another example is the Roll movement. Shift+Numpad4 and Shift+Numpad6 will roll your view around to the left or right side, like this:
How to Move in Blender: Tips
Some additional tips about moving around the 3D view that will improve your experience with the Blender and make your life easier.
First of all it’s to take a look at the View drop-down list at the top left of the 3D Viewport.
You can find a lot of useful stuff here. That includes:
Frame All [Home] – this will transfer your view in the way that all your objects will be in frame
Frame Selected [Numpad .] – one of the most convenient things. It will put the selected object directly in your frame. So you can easily find something or take a closer look at something.
Sometimes you would have a bunch of different objects on your scene that can interfere with your ideas, but you don’t want to delete them or hide one by one.
In this case you can use the Local View [/] function. It takes selected objects and isolates them in the local view, where there would be only selected objects. Pressing the Local View [/] again will return everything to how it was.
And the last tip would be using Zoom Region [Shift+B]. It allows you to select the part of your scene that you want to zoom in.
Conclusion
Reading this article should have explained to you how to move in Blender 2.8+. We introduced moving around with the use of both interface buttons and shortcuts. And also gave you a few tips on the more advanced movement. If you want to continue your Blender journey and learn more about it and to create something yourself – check out our Blender Basics Tutorial series.