Blender User Interface

I am very excited to share that we have a new course coming to BYOL! In spring 2025, we are launching Blender Essentials taught by 3D designer Robin Ruud. Pre-register for the course here and be among the first to hear when it launches.

In this post we are diving straight into Blender’s interface, a perfect starting point as you prepare to take the Blender Essentials course! 

When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to this new Blender course as well as my 30+ additional courses on Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, Figma, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

Ok, sharpen your pencils (or charge them up,  if they’re digital), open your notebooks, get set, go!

Opening Blender for the First Time

Alright, we are all set, comfortably sitting on our chairs, and getting ready to start Blender for the first time. Blender welcomes us with a basic splash screen, usually decorated with brilliant hero images like the illustration you can see in the image below. From the splash screen we can:

• Create a New File

• Open a previous File we’ve been working on

• Recover Last Session (a lifesaver in case of accidents!)

• Open one of the Recent Files we’ve been designing (Well, this won’t be available if we are opening Blender literally for the very first time, but I thought it made sense to cheat a little and show this to you.)

The splash screen is straightforward, there’s nothing here to make us run to the panic button in our head. Donate is there to remind us that Blender is a free and open source software and that we can send a voluntary donation to help keep the project running. What’s New directs us to the Releases page in Blender’s website, so you can scope out updates and learn more about the incredible new things you can create with Blender software. 

Blender’s Top Bar - Menu

After picking an option from the Splash Screen, we land in Blender’s three-dimensional workspace. It’s time to explore Blender’s Interface, starting with the Top Bar. In the Top Bar, to keep things simple, for now, I’ll be showing you Menus and Workspaces.

Menus are standard for most software and apps. In Blender we have access to five menus:

File, as the name indicates, covers File Management. From this menu, we can:

• Create a new file

• Open recent and previously saved files

• Revert a file to its last saved version or recover a file from our last working session if, for example, we closed Blender by accident.

• We can also Save our project

• Import resources

• Export our design to other formats

• And some more advanced options that we will explore in the future.

Edit, from this menu we can:

• Undo or Redo actions

• View Undo History

• Search menus for a specific item

• Access Preference settings, allowing us to customize and manage the Interface, Viewport, Extensions and Add-on, Themes, Navigation, among many other features.

From the Render menu, we can start or view Image or Animation rendering – that’s when we turn our 3D model into a final visual product, with full definition and detail,  realistic texture, lighting and shadow effects.

The Help menu is also self-explanatory. A complex software must have reliable support and a vast collection of information, like manuals, tutorials, and release notes. All of this can be accessed from this menu.

Blender’s Top Bar - Workspaces

There is a workflow to 3D design that spreads across a set of stages. These stages each have their own workspace in Blender. Workspaces – and panels inside workspaces - are context dependent. This means that each workspace has its own set of tools, views, and actions that automatically change, according to the stage or element you are working on.

These are the basic Workspaces you find when you first open Blender (yes, there are more, and like many other features in the Interface, they can be easily customized to best fit your workflow):

• Layout – This is the default workspace for 3D work, like object manipulation and scene setup.

• Modelling – Focused on creating and editing basic 3D models into more complex shapes.

• Sculpting – Provides brushes and tools to, literally, start sculpting your 3D object into organic shapes.

• UV Editing – Sets our 3D model for receiving textures, by flattening its surface into a 2D layout.

• Texture Paint – Allows painting custom textures onto 3D models.

• Shading – Focused on creating and adjusting materials for 3D models.

• Animation – Offers tools for animating objects, set keyframes and motion curves.

• Rendering – Allows previewing and setting up final renders, with lighting and camera controls.

• Compositing – An editor for post-processing and visual effects.

• Geometry Nodes – Focused on procedural modelling (creating 3D models using rules and algorithms instead of shaping them manually) and the creation of parametric objects (defined by parameters, like shape, size, or pattern, instead of fixed shapes).

• Scripting – A built-in editor for writing Python scripts and automating tasks in Blender.

Again, don’t panic! When you’re just starting out, you don’t need to know how all of these features and workspaces work. Right now, I’m just giving you a basic overview of the software. Our 3D designer and instructor, Robin Rudd, will guide you on the exact tools you will need to kick start your journey. Don’t forget to pre-register here! 

For you to have a clear image of how an interface changes when we jump from one workspace to another, here’s a view from Layout:

And a view from Sculpting:

See all the different panels and toolbars, adjusting their settings to give you the tools you need in that specific moment? Blender is pretty powerful! 

Let’s move on to the next item on our Interface!

Blender 3D Viewport

The 3D Viewport is where we spend most of our time in Blender. It’s the window that opens to a Scene. Each scene takes place in a 3D World, the magical place where our 3D objects come to life.

As we’ve covered above, as we switch between workspaces, Blender adjusts its menus, panels, and tools to best fit the work we are focusing on. The Viewport’s header region also adapts to each workspace, but I’ll focus on the default groups:

• Mode – Mode allows us to access a different set of tools for specific actions without having to switch workspaces.

• Menus – Viewport menus present:

  • View (3D navigation tools)

  • Select (3D Object selection tools)

  • Add (A list of different 3D objects that can be added to the scene)

  • Object (A set of actions and operations we can perform on 3D objects)

  • Transform Controls – Gives us control to Orientation, Pivot Points, Proportional Editing, etc…

  • Display and Shading – Allows us to manage Object Visibility, Gizmo display, Overlays, and Viewport Shading.

As a bonus, we will come back to 3D Viewport to cover some basic navigation and 3D object manipulation, but for now let’s push on to the next Interface item!

Blender’s Outliner Panel

The Outliner helps us organize all the elements that compose a scene into Collections. This panel reminds me of animation and video editing apps like After Effects or Premiere Pro, displaying all the resources arranged in collapsable and expanding tree branches. This is a first take at what the Outliner panel allows us to do:

• Overview of all the data in the scene

• Select or deselect objects

• Hide or reveal objects in the 3D Viewport

• Exclude objects from rendering

• Duplicate or delete objects

There are many more basic and advanced features to explore in the Outliner panel, but the ones I’ve covered will get you started. 

Blender’s Properties Panel

This is a vast part of the Blender interface, and is also context dependent, so some of its tabs and features change depending, for example, on the object or element we have selected in the 3D Viewport. There are tons of tools, actions, and settings that we can choose from while editing 3D scenes and objects. I couldn’t possibly go through them all without turning this blog post into something close to the size of Wikipedia, so I’ll keep this tour limited to its default structure.

The Properties panel is divided into categories, which can be found in the vertical tabs to its left:

• Active tool – settings for the active tool in the 3D Viewport and Workspace

• Scene – Scene tabs hold settings for the active scene

• Collection – Set of options for the active Collection.

• Object – Settings and tools to add features and change properties of an active 3D object. The available Object tabs are also context dependent, so depending on the type of active object, some will be hidden or revealed.

Have a look at the image below. With the 3D cube active, the Material tab is visible, allowing us to control the object's appearance, like color and texture.

If we select the Light Object in the 3D Viewport, the Material tab goes away and we find new Light settings active in the Data tab, now identified with a green light bulb.

One last example: if we select the Camera, the Data tab icon changes to a green camera and inside the panel we can now access camera settings for our 3D scene.

Bonus tip: Splitting 3D Viewport into 2 screens

Blender’s Interface is incredibly flexible and adaptable to each project, workspace, and user. In just a few clicks we can resize and switch panels, change workspaces, customize keyboard shortcuts, and so much more. Another cool thing we can do in three simple clicks is splitting screens. It couldn’t be quicker or easier:

We move our mouse to the edge of any panel and right-click it. From the pop-up window, we pick Vertical or Horizontal Split.

Next, we drag a vertical line across the 3D viewport to the point where we want the break to happen and click one last time. Boom!

This split is mostly used in the 3D viewport, but you can apply it, for example, to the Properties panel and have two different tabs open at the same time! Am I blowing your mind? Next let’s check out some basic navigation.

Navigating in Blender’s 3D Viewport

To talk about navigation and gizmos, we must first address the X, Y, and Z. H To make X, Y, and Z easy to understand, picture yourself in front of a camera, recording a video for social media. All set? Cool! You are now the 3D object in the scene.

• If you walk sideways to the left and the right, you are following the X axis (red).

• If you walk closer to the camera or away from it, you are following the Y axis (green).

• If you jump high and sit down on the floor, you are following the Z axis (blue).

Cool, huh?

Blender gives us a three-axis structure, also known as Gizmo, to help us navigate the 3D Viewpoint. If we click, hold, and drag one of the axes, we are changing the position from which we are looking at the scene. We are not changing the scene itself or any element inside, only our own view. It’s like rotating the paper on which we are drawing something.

If we click on the letter on each axis the view is rotated to a 90-degree angle, straight-on view.

Going back to recording a social media video as an example:

• If the camera is placed exactly on your left or right side, you are in the X axis.

• If the camera is placed exactly in front or behind you, you are in the Y axis.

• If the camera is placed exactly above or below you, you are in the Z axis.  

Zooming In or Out and Moving across Blender’s 3D Viewport

There are several ways to zoom in or out inside the 3D Viewport:

Mouse and Keyboard:

• Click and hold the magnifying lens icon below the Gizmo and drag up (zoom in) or down (zoom out)

• Roll the scroll wheel up (zoom in) or down (zoom out)

• Smash our keypad ‘+’ (zoom in) or ‘-‘ (zoom out) keys.

Trackpad (Laptops)

• Pinch with two fingers (zoom in and out)

To move across the 3D Viewpoint, we can use these tips:

Mouse and Keyboard:

• Click and hold the hand icon below the Gizmo and drag in any direction.

• Shift + Middle Mouse Button and drag in any direction.

Trackpad (Laptops)

• Swipe with two fingers in any direction.

Moving, Rotating, and Scaling an Object in Blender

Let’s finish this blog post with one last interface tip, this time considering an object inside the scene. For this, we will use the left toolbar inside the 3D Viewport. I’ll share three quick examples, so you can go and have a power nap.

Moving an object - We click the Move button in the left toolbar and then click, hold, and drag one of the axes visible within the object. It will move it across the selected axis.

Rotating an object – We select Rotate from the left toolbar and then click, hold, and drag one of the axes within the gizmo that pops up inside the object. It will rotate along the chosen axis.

Scaling an object – We pick Scale from the left toolbar and then click, hold, and drag one of the axes within the object. It will change its size according to the chosen axis. To keep the object’s initial proportions, drag the white circle in the Gizmo instead of one of the axes.

And There We Have It!

Hope you’re not exhausted after this guided tour of Blender’s Interface. Again, it may look like it’s a lot to take in (and in a way, it is) but remember that you don’t have to pick up all the skills at once and become a 3D graphics master overnight. Take your time, enjoy the ride and sooner than you think, you will be cruising through Blender’s interface faster than a shopping list. 

What 's Next?

Pre-register for Blender Essentials here and be among the first to hear when it launches. When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to this new Blender course as well as my 30+ additional courses on Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, Figma, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

See you in class! – Dan