Interface

Using math expressions in Blender input

Blender has a very convenient feature – when performing any action, the values for it can be specified in the form of expressions. For example, when rotating a mesh around the Y axis by 36 degrees, we can specify the final, already known value of the degrees of rotation and press the following key combination: R -> Y -> 36. Or, if we need to rotate the mesh by 1/5 of 180 degrees, we can use the expression by entering: R -> Y -> 180 / 5, which will be equivalent to rotating by the same 36 degrees.

Showing custom UI panel in Blender by pressing keycodes

When creating add-ons for Blender, developers almost always create the user UI panel with tools that provide the main functionality of the add-on. Typically, such custom panels are placed in the N-panel block, called by pressing the N key. However, if it is assumed that the user will often call the panel with add-on tools, its call can be bound to a keyboard shortcut and the panel can be called from the keyboard.

Setting an icon from the tools panel to a button in the custom UI panel in Blender

To set an icon to a button when creating the custom user UI panel in Blender, we look for the text identifier of the desired icon (usually using the built-in Icon Viewer add-on) and set its value to the “icon” parameter when binding the desired operator to the button. However, the icons used in the tools panel are not existed in the common Blender icons list.

Turning off the Load UI option by default

Blender is developing intensively and new versions of the program are released quite quickly. In this case, compatibility often suffers – when we open a project created in earlier versions of Blender, it can be opened not correctly. Sometimes this happens because Blender stores all user interface (UI) settings and options in every .blend file. Opening a project with the Load UI option unchecked can help.

In this case, Blender only loads the project itself, without any UI settings that may have changed in the current version.