If you’re brand new to Blender, moving the 3D view around is probably your first big obstacle. Thankfully, learning how to navigate around isn’t too hard! By the end of this post you will know exactly how to move in Blender!
How To Move in Blender – Table of Contents
- Moving in Blender on a Laptop
- How to Move Around in Blender
- How to Move the Camera
- Move Camera to View
- Frame Selected/View Selected
- Use Tilde Instead of Hotkeys
- Happy Creating!
Moving around in Blender isn’t very hard, but it does take some practice. Don’t give yourself a hard time if it feels awkward for a while. It will get easier the more you do it, I promise!
The biggest challenge, perhaps, is the fact that there isn’t just ONE way to navigate through your scene. There are actually MANY different ways! But, don’t worry, you don’t need to know them all to get moving around, you just need one.
Today, we will go over the most common, most efficient way to move around in Blender. Plus a few very helpful keyboard shortcuts that will help with camera angles!
Moving In Blender on a Laptop
In order to move around in Blender, you’re going to need a mouse with a scroll wheel, or more commonly known as a 3 button mouse.
If you only have a laptop trackpad, then you should read this post, which covers how to move around in Blender on a laptop.
This post is also great if you only have a 2 button mouse like the Apple Magic Mouse that comes with iMacs. Or if you just want some additional options for moving around, it’s good for that, too! I give you 3 different methods of navigating in Blender, as well as the pros and cons of each method.
But, for everyone else, let’s get started!
How To Move Around In Blender
The first thing we will learn is how to rotate your 3D view. Simply click (like a button) and hold your scroll wheel, or middle mouse button (MMB), while you move your mouse around. This will let you rotate your view around, like looking around in first person.
Next, if you hold SHIFT while pressing in your MMB, you will pan around. This will let you move side to side, and up and down.
Then finally, if you scroll your scroll wheel, you will zoom in and out.
Now in combination with these 3 moves, Rotate, Pan, and Zoom, you can literally move anywhere in your entire scene!
And you could stop here if you really wanted. This is actually all you need in order to navigate around your scene. However, there are a few keyboard shortcuts that are extremely helpful to know. We’ll cover those next.
How To Move The Camera in Blender
When you finish creating a scene (and usually many times before as well), you’re going to want to save a “high quality” or final version of your picture, or animation.
You can do this by going to the top menu (by File and Edit) and selecting Render > Render Image, or Render Animation. You can also use the keyboard shortcut F12 for Render Image and Ctrl F12 for Render Animation.
The camera angle you get for your render is based on where your actual camera is in your scene. To see what your camera sees, all you have to do is hit 0 (zero) on your numpad, and you will change to Camera View.
At this point, in order to move your camera, just hit N on your keyboard to bring up the “Sidebar”. Then click on the “View” tab.
Next, select the “Camera to View” option, and your camera will now be able to freely move with your mouse, just like you did above with your 3D view.
When you’re done moving your camera around, don’t forget to turn off “Camera to View”. If you don’t, you’ll mess up your camera angle, and that’s really frustrating, believe me!
Move Camera To View in Blender
Alternatively, if you want to “move camera to view”, just press Ctrl + Alt + Numpad 0. You can also find this in the Viewport menu by going to View (right next to the “Object Mode” dropdown) > Align View > Align Active Camera to View
This will do pretty much the same thing for you as “Camera to View”, just in the opposite order. If you already have a great view set up in your 3D Viewport and wished was your camera’s view for rendering, you can do this little keyboard shortcut instead. That way, you don’t have to try moving and matching your camera around to get the same thing!
Frame Selected And View Selected in Blender
One handy way to navigate quickly is to use a feature called, “View Selected”, or “Frame Selected”.
Actually, to be honest, I’m not even sure which name is correct because both names appear in Blender!
If you press Tilde(~), you will see it labeled as View Selected. However, if you go to the View menu (next to the Object/Edit mode dropdown), it’s labeled as Frame Selected. But, just so we’re on the same page, I’m going to refer to it as View Selected.
View Selected is really useful when you start creating bigger scenes with lots of items in it.
Just click an item you want to focus on, either in the 3D Viewport or in the Outliner menu, and then press the decimal key in your numpad. This will zoom you directly into whatever you have selected.
Another really practical use for View Selected is to reset your 3D View.
Sometimes you’ve been scrolling and zooming so much that the camera/view starts to slow down. When you keep scrolling, it eventually won’t even let you zoom anymore. If this has never happened to you before, keep this trick in mind because it will eventually.
So when you need to get closer to something but it won’t let you, just use View Selection on the object you’re trying to get close to. This will “reset” your camera/view, and you’ll be able to zoom in again.
Use Tilde(~) Instead of Blender Hotkeys
Here is one last little bonus tip for you!
Sometimes you just don’t want to remember all those Blender Hotkeys. We’ve all been there 😂 In this situation, there’s actually a kind of “master” hotkey for all the views.
Just press Tilde(~), and a little pie menu will pop up with every numpad view we just talked about. It’s not quite as fast as using the actual hotkeys, but it’s super handy if you don’t want to remember everything on the numpad!
Happy Creating!
And that should do it! After reading this post, you should now know how to move in Blender! There are a lot of different ways to move, but as I mentioned before, this is the most common and most efficient way to do it.
Also, don’t forget that while it is a simple concept, don’t feel discouraged if it takes some time to get the hang of it.
Yes, there is only be 3 moves to remember. MMB to rotate, MMB+Shift to pan, and scroll wheel to zoom. However, it does take a bit of practice, and some patience with yourself.
Thanks for following along and I hope you enjoyed this post! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment down below! I will try my very best to get an answer to you!
Enjoy your time in Blender! It’s an amazing program! Happy creating!