What are my default settings? Your standard default settings after you download and open Blender usually consist of a point light, camera the trademark default cube. But you can change what you see when you open Blender.
Settings worth changing
- 1. Viewport settings
- 2. Measurement units
- 3. Render settings
- 4. Camera settings
- 5. Collections
- 6. The Filter Button
1. 3D Viewport
The viewport settings are especially important given that this is where you with spend most of your time creating and searching for your options. The first thing that you might want to do is delete the default cube for good. The default cube is there when you open blender but you may not use this cube so sometimes it’s best to start fresh. You can delete the cube then save the start up file but there’s more to change.
Viewport Clipping: If you press “N” on the keyboard it opens the menus along the right-hand edge of the viewport with the top “View” tab selected you will see the Clip start option and another option below that’s named “End”. What this does this a lot like load distance within a game. The clip start option you will notice when you zoom close to your object you can’t see the mesh up close but rather you see through the mesh right inside it. Lower the Clip start number and the closer you will be able to get to the mesh without being able to see inside the mesh. The Clip End option you notice at the other end of the spectrum. If you spawn in a cube and scale, it up and keep going you will start to see the corners vanish but reappear if you get closer to them. For big scenes like a city, it is better to have a high number in the Clip end box. If you play around with it, you will see what parameters suit your needs and system better.
2. Measurement units
The units of measurements will depend on where you live and what system you use. Whether it’s metric or imperial it’s good to know how to change this setting and not to have to adjust it every time you start a new project. Under the collections area on the right side of the blender interface you have the home of your materials and modifiers and so on. On the 5th tab down, you have an icon that looks like a droplet. When clicked on you’ll see the unit’s tab where you can choose your preferred measurement system.
3. Render Settings
The render settings can be set to one of three native renderers. You have Eevee, Workbench and Cycles. The Eevee renderer is great for fast renders and when configured properly it’s great for realism but the Cycles renderer takes the pedestal for best realistic renders. Whereas the workbench renderer takes a render of your standard viewport.
How you render will depend on your systems GPU and/or CPU. If you go to the edit tab at the top left of the interface, you’ll see at the bottom of the drop down there is a preference section. When you click on that and navigate to “System” you will see an option list that refers to CUDA and OPTIX. If you can select your GPU and CPU in either tab and go to the bottom left to the three-line button and ensure that autosave preferences is checked.
Then if you go to the tab at the top of the interface that says Rendering you can select your preferred render engine from the drop-down menu then go to devices and select GPU compute if your system allows it.
4. Camera Settings
The camera settings are available on the right-hand side of the interface after you click on the camera in the viewport. You can change the focal length to suit your needs although 50mm and 84mm seem to be the most common lengths.
The clip start and end is also a good thing to change especially if you need to have close-up shots of your models’ textures or certain details not usually visible and the clip end is useful for when trying to frame a shot of a larger scene like a city or some other landscape.
The next option you may consider is the viewport display settings. With the camera selected press “0” on the keypad to look through the camera view. The viewport dropdown shows options of compositions guides that gives a broken dotted line as guides for the composition within the camera view.
5. Using Collections
The collections are very useful for scenes with a lot of parts. Although not always needed it can be good practice to make use of them as a beginner. When I have lights or cameras in a scene, I try keep them in another collection separated from my mesh objects. If there are a lot of lights of various colours it can help to separate them and name the collection accordingly. You can select and object and press the “M” key which gives the options to create a new collection or add to a current collection. You will also the button at the top right of the collections window which adds a new collection.
You can rename the collection by double clicking on the collection name within the window. You can then right click the box icon and choose a different colour icon to help make it easier to distinguish one collection from another.
6. The Filter Button
The filter button is right next to the new collection button in the top right of the collection window. There are some filters there that are not set by default such as the selectable option. This is useful when modelling clothing for example. When you click the clothing at time you can click through it highlighting the wrong object. Making the character model un-selectable avoids this issue and is useful to have it on hand in line with your objects, lights, or cameras.
Conclusion
If you are new to blender all the above guidelines are worth considering using. Use the save start up file option when you add new functions to your workflow and plan to use them in the future. Just keep in mind that anything in the 3D viewport will also save to the start up file.
