Blender For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Looking at Editor Types

A Blender area can contain any editor type. You can see what editor types are available by left-clicking the button on the far left of that editor's header. Figure 2-1 shows the menu that appears when you press this button.

The editor types available through this menu are as follows. Next to each type is the hotkey sequence to bring up the editor type quickly:

• 3D View (Shift+F5): Arguably the most-used editor in Blender, the 3D View shows you the three-dimensional view of your model or scene and allows you to modify it.
• Timeline: The Timeline editor offers you a convenient way to quickly jump from one part of your animation to another, as well as play back the animation.
• Graph Editor (Shift+F6): Blender's Graph Editor shows a graphical representation of animatable attributes in your scene as they change over time.
• DopeSheet (Shift+F12): The DopeSheet is where you create and adjust your overall animation by using actions or keying sets. You can use actions to animate all of a character's movement in a scene, or you can mix them together in the NLA Editor. Keying sets give you the ability to group together several different animatable attributes.
• NLA Editor: NLA stands for nonlinear animation. This editor allows you to mix pre-animated actions on a single character (such as mixing a waving hand animation with a walking animation to have your character walk and wave her hand at the same time).
• UV/Image Editor (Shift+F10): With the UV/Image Editor, you can ...