Doc:2.6/Manual/Interface/Buttons and Controls

Buttons and Controls

Buttons and other controls can be found in almost every Window of the Blender interface. The different types of controls are described below.

Operation Buttons

Operation button

These are buttons that perform an operation when clicked with LMB . They can be identified by their gray color in the default Blender scheme.

Pressing CtrlC over these buttons copies their python command into the clipboard which can be used in the python console or in the text editor when writing scripts.

Toggle Buttons

Toggle buttons

Toggle buttons consist of tick boxes. Clicking this type of button will toggle a state but will not perform any operation. In some cases the button is attached to a number button to control the influence of the property.

Radio Buttons

Radio buttons

Radio buttons are used to choose from a small selection of "mutually exclusive" options.

Number Buttons

Number buttons

Number buttons can be identified by their labels, which in most cases contains the name and a colon followed by a number. Number buttons are handled in several ways:

1. To change the value in steps, click LMB on the small triangles on the sides of the button.
2. To change the value in a wider range, hold down LMB and drag the mouse to the left or right. If you hold Ctrl after holding down LMB , the value is changed in discrete steps; if you hold ⇧ Shift instead, you'll have finer control over the values.
3. ↵ Enter or LMB lets you enter the value by hand.

When entering values by hand, pressing ↖ Home or ⇥ End will move the cursor to the beginning or the end of the range. Pressing Esc will cancel editing. You can copy the value of a button by hovering over it and pressing CtrlC. Similarly you can paste a copied value with CtrlV.

Expressions

You can also enter expressions such as 3*2 instead of 6. or 5/10+3. Even constants like pi (3.142) or functions like sqrt(2) (square root of 2) may be used.

These expressions are evaluated by python; for all available math expressions see: math module reference

Units

As well as expressions, you can mix units with numbers; for this to work, units need to be set in the scene settings (Metric or Imperial).

Examples of valid units include:

• 1cm
• 1m 3mm
• 1m, 3mm
• 2ft
• 3ft/0.5km
• 2.2mm + 5' / 3" - 2yards

Note that the commas are optional. Also notice how you can mix between metric and imperial even though the display can only show one at a time.

Menu Buttons

Datablock link buttons

Use the Menu buttons to work with items on dynamically created lists. Menu buttons are principally used to link DataBlocks to each other. DataBlocks are items like Meshes, Objects, Materials, Textures, and so on. Linking a Material to an Object will assign that material to the selected Objects.

Datablock link menu with search

1. The first button (with an icon of the DataBlock type) opens a menu that lets you select the DataBlock to link by clicking LMB on the requested item. This list has a search box at the bottom.
2. The second button displays the name of the linked DataBlock and lets you edit it after clicking LMB .
3. The "+" button duplicates the current DataBlock and applies it.
4. The "X" button clears the link.

Sometimes there is a list of applied DataBlocks (such as a list of materials used on the object). See DataBlock link buttons above.

1. To select a datablock, click LMB on it.
2. To add a new section (e.g. material, or particle system), click LMB on the "+" button to the right of the list.
3. To remove a section, click LMB on the "-" to the right of the list.

Another type of a Menu button block will show a static list with a range of options. For example, the Add Modifier button will produce a menu with all of the available modifiers.

Modifier options

Unlinked objects Unlinked data is not lost until you quit Blender. This is a powerful Undo feature. If you delete an object the material assigned to it becomes unlinked, but is still there! You just have to re-link it to another object or supply it with a "Fake User" (i.e. by clicking that option in the corresponding DataBlock in the datablock-view of the Outliner). Read more about Fake User »

Color Selector Controls

In Blender, you can choose from 4 types of color pickers; the options are

Circle (Default), Square (HS + V) , Square (SV + H) and Square (HV + S)

For more information about how to select the type of color picker, please go to the System preferences page.

All of the Color picker types have the common RGB, HSV and Hex options to show values.

Optionally, depending on the operation, another slider for Alpha control is added at the bottom of the color picker.

Blender uses Floating point values to express colors for RGB and HSV values.

The Hex values are expressed in the same way HTML colors are expressed.

Note that Blender corrects Gamma by default; for more information about how to disable Gamma correction in Blender, please go to the Color Management and Exposure page.

Fig. 2 - Color Picker - Circle Circle (Default) A full gamut of colors ranging from center to the borders is always shown; center is a mix of the colors. Brightness is adjusted with the right bar, from top to bottom. For operations that are capable of using Alpha, another slider is added at the bottom of the color picker. See Fig. 2 - Color Picker - Circle

Fig. 3 - Color Picker Square (HS + V) Square (HS + V) Hue, Saturation plus Value → A full gamut of colors is always shown. Brightness is subtracted from the base color chosen on the square of the color picker moving the slider to the left. For operations that are capable of using Alpha, another slider is added at the bottom of the color picker. See Fig. 3 - Color Picker - Square (HS + V)

Fig. 4 - Color Picker Square (SV + H) Square (SV + H) Saturation, Value plus Hue → A full Gamut of colors is always shown at the bar in the middle of the color picker. Colors are adjusted using the a range of brightness of the base color chosen at the color bar in the middle of the picker. For operations that are capable of using Alpha, another slider is added at the bottom of the color picker. See Fig. 4 - Color Picker - Square (SV + H)

Fig. 5 - Color Picker Square (HV + S) Square (HV + S) Hue, Value and Saturation → A full gamut of colors is always shown at the square of the color picker. Brightness is added to the base color chosen on the square of the color picker moving the slider to the left. For operations that are capable of using Alpha, another slider is added at the bottom of the color picker. See Fig. 5 - Color Picker - Square (HV + S)

• Use Mouse wheel to change overall brightness.
• Color sliders don't have a default value; the last value before any changes is used instead.

Eye Dropper

The eye dropper allows you to sample a color from anywhere in the Blender window. The Eye Dropper can be accessed from any color picker or by pressing E with the mouse hovering over the color property.

LMB and dragging the eyedropper will mix the colors you drag over which can help when sampling noisy imagery. Spacebar resets and starts mixing the colors again.

Cascade Buttons

Occasionally, some buttons actually reveal additional buttons. For example, the Ramps panel has a Cascade button called Ramp that reveals additional buttons dealing with colorbanding. See Colorband before and Colorband after.

Colorband before

Colorband after

Color Ramps Color Ramps enables the user to specify a range of colors based on color stops. Color stops are similar to a mark indicating where the exact chosen color should be. The interval from each of the color stops added to the ramp is a result of the color interpolation and chosen interpolation method. The available options for Color Ramps are: Add (Button) Clicking on this button will add a stop to your custom weight paint map. The stops are added from the last selected stop to the next one, from left to right and they will be placed in the middle of both stops. Delete (Button) Deletes the selected color stop from the list. 'F' (Button) Flips the color band, inverting the values of the custom weight paint range. Numeric Field Whenever the user adds a color stop to the custom weight paint range, the color stop will receive an index. This field shows the indexes added (clicking in the arrows until the counter stops), and allows the user to select the color stop from the list. The selected color stop will be shown with a dashed line. Interpolation Options Enables the user to choose from 4 types of calculations for the color interpolation for each color stop. Available options are: B-Spline Uses a B-Spline Interpolation for the color stops. Cardinal Uses a Cardinal Interpolation for the color stops. Linear Uses a Linear Interpolation for the color stops. Ease Uses a Ease Interpolation for the color stops. Constant Uses a Constant Interpolation for the color stops. Position This slider controls the positioning of the selected color stop in the range. Color Bar Opens a color Picker for the user to specify color and Alpha for the selected color stop. When a color is using Alpha, the Color Bar is then divided in two, with the left side showing the base color and the right side showing the color with the alpha value.