Blender Things I Did Not Know (Part 1)

Blender has a lot of techniques, for doing the same thing. It's great, in some ways - multiple paths to find a solution. There are faster techniques, there are more accurate techniques. If you're like me, you watch tutorials on YouTube when you're considering a problem.

At two years into Blender, I know some things. It means that tutorials will typically cover 95% of what I already know, and...I have to watch the whole thing to squeeze out 5% of the value.

This starts sharing my reading list of things that I didn't know.

Joining, Merging, and Filling Holes:

Repairing a Mesh

I've used his first two methods. "(F)ill" has always been "(f)ace" in my head. His second method, he chose a single edge to make a face from. I usually (f)ace from two opposing edges, or the 4 vertices. A single edge? Well, saves me small amounts of time.

His third method, eek. I didn't know the "alt"-when selecting an edge helps with edge loops. (Saves me button clicks of Select>Edge Loops.) And I didn't use J to join to vertices to make an edge within a plane...I've been using the Knife Tool. The Knife tool has some cool benefits to it, but J is fast.

Jimmer's 4th method, not covered...I would have extruded a vertex along a x/y/z axis to get a corner, and get the x/y/z axis correct by inputing the numbers in (make sure you are in Global, not Local). Create edges to the other axis vertices (f). Subdivide the edge a correct number of times, make faces. You only need to get coordinates right for that corner, and subdividing is a fast Ctrl-E away...you can add more than one cut as needed.

Reading the YouTube comments, there was some slightly more complex things to get vertices lined correctly, using the third method. Change the Pivot to Active Element (this is found on the bottom bar), grab the vertices you want to line up, and the final one is what you want them to align with. Then (s) for scale, (y) for the y-axis, (0) to zero them. Interesting and fast.

Normals

A friend asked me how to fix normals when importing things in from Maya. I wasn't familiar with it, so I basically just pointed to Mesh>Normals as the solution. Sometimes when working in Blender, I've noticed off-color faces...I had to delete faces, rebuild them...I now understand what those faces mean. And what the Shading/UVs tab in the upper right gets you....and you can Flip Direction on a single face. A much faster and cleaner response to the occasional "Blender doesn't know what you're doing" trigger.