I thought this forum was for newbies.

[kernond]

Welcome to the forums!

No question is too simple to ask at BlenderNewbies!

I think what you're referring to is the ability to rotate the 3d view. You can do this by pressing and dragging with the middle mouse button. Your roller (or mousewheel) in the middle should also be a button that you can press. If not, then you'll probably need to get a newer mouse. Is your mouse old or was it purchased within the past few years?

For the "little red 3d symbol", I think you're referring to what's called the "Mini Axis" that's located in the lower left corner of the 3d view? It may have gotten disabled in the Preferences. To check, pull down the horizontal splitter at the top to reveal the Preferences window. Select the "View & Controls" tab button and locate the "Mini Axis" option found right above the Themes tab button. Make sure it's pushed in and you should see the mini axis in the lower left corner of the 3d view.

Hope that helps!

[KenCarlson]

Thanks for helping me Right now I would not know the difference between wise counsel and bad counsel. Any counsel is good. I think I will try to install a new mouse with three buttons. That might work to view the 3D cube. As far as the 3D, the quickstart said: Blender’s interface consists of an arbitrary number of workspaces with multiple window each. Each window displays a part of your scene’s data. The type of data that a window displays is indicated in the header. You can change the type of a window at any time by clicking the header. I see the headers on top of my form page, but I don't see the 3D notation in the header that is hovering over my one dimensional cube. Possibly when I change the mouse to a three button mouse, I will get the 3D cube. When I bring the monkey into my form, the monkey is 3D. But I can't get the one dimensional cube monkey off my back. (small bit of humor)

[KenCarlson]

I purchased a new mouse, Arc mouse from Microsoft, and taking advice on changing the 3D settings worked for me. Now I can rotate the cube in 3D, small start on a long road ahead, but smiling now. It is lots of fun having such a good backup as this forum.

Ken Carlson

[kernond]

Well, I'm glad you're off and running!

[KenCarlson]

Another question from the far corner! I can't find the red record button. I also selected View & Controls under the Preferences Window and I could not located the red record button. Thanks Ken

[KenCarlson]

When I clicked on timeline, the red record button showed up to the right with the associated arrows. It seems this Blender has some amazing features, so many amazing features that it takes a little searching for a newbie like me to find. So scratch my last question.

[kernond]

Yeah, I would recommend going through as many beginner tutorials as possible. Because there are so many things in Blender, you can easily spend hours and hours searching around and not really learn much. Start with really simple things for a while to make sure you have the basics firmly under control. Good Luck!

[KenCarlson]

How do I get the piped rig to appear on my workspace form, and how do I save the piped once I am done creating the angles for the piped that I want to create?

thanks
Ken Carlson

[Nixon]

could u explain this again, i'm not sure on what u mean with piped rig, do you mean how to save an armature (collection of bones refered to as rig often) or pose it?
theres different windows in blender for all the sections of cg so u might need to switch to a different window type in orer to work on rigs, or animate things,
good luck blendering

[KenCarlson]

Nixon: Thanks for responding. I will explain again for sure. Blender provides a few animated rigs, such a piped, mancandy, rabbit and squirrel. I have biped on a dvd. How do I bring the piped into a frame? How do I get into the pose mode with a piped rig?
Ken Carlson

[Nixon]

hey ken,

okay i downloaded a biped-rig blend file too,
just to get an idea:)
here'S how i understand it

if u want to add for example your biped rig and add it to a scene you gotta do as follows,
use the append or link button in the file menu, chosse the .blend wich includes your rig and go for the group section (hope your rig and geometry are grouped too), choose the rig there and click on append, (mine was called biped_rig),
now you should see the biped in your 3view,
however in my case the armature itself was on a different layer than the model, mine was on layer 11,
u can access layers in object mode by clicking on one of the 20 boxes at the bottom of your 3d view, (when u hover your mouse over it will tell u that these small boxes are the layer selector),
to see both the rig and the figures geometry at the same time u gotta turn on the layer visibility of both layers, use shift-click onto layer boxes you wanna activate in addition to your active one,

to get into pose-mode u select a part of the armature/ rig, and look for the mode selector on the bottom of the 3d screen, if it isnt already in pose-mode u gotta click that selector and switch from lets say object-mode to pose-mode, there u can grab the handles of the rig and play around,

i didnt got yet how to animate the rig since adding keyframes with loc/rot doesnt work for me ...but i guess someone else might be able to clear that up,

[KenCarlson]

Nixon: Thanks I will try this out! I will get back to you. I am going on a trip for a few days.

[blenderaven]

Good title for the thread. Somebody needs to ask this every couple of months, to keep it showing on the index.

Sounds as if you've spent enough time with Blender to find this funny -

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Blender

I found Blender on a computer magazine's free disc, about a year before I went online. Hey, anybody need a tutorial about staring at the screen or trying to understand tooltips?

More usefully, I hope, it's very easy to be put off by others seeming to know more, but after a little while with the tutorials you'll see everyone has a different way of doing things, and realise you know a better method.

Hey! the link is really funny!*