Blender Shipbuilding Tutorial

This is a guide explaining how to use the free Blender 3d software as a tool to design Starbase spaceships.

Blender can be downloaded here.

The Blender version of the parts pack can be found here.

The original parts pack, made by Okim, can be found here. (Blender has trouble importing it and some extra setup, not explained here, is necessary, so I recommend you use the blender version)

---

Blender can seem intimidating at first, but what's needed for ship building is only a tiny fraction of what Blender has to offer.

• Note: this guide will include some things that are not essential, marked like this:

Optional

Also, there may be many alternative ways to achieve the same thing, so don't be scared if you see too many shortcuts... 99% of the times, which one to use is simply a matter of preference. (Blender has a lot of those, due to the fact that it was born as a keyboard shotcut-only program, a workflow that many experienced users praise, but it's unfriendliness to beginners has lead to more standard interactions to be added, many of those having arrived in the newer versions of Blender 2.8x)

Navigation: moving around the Blender scene.

Orbit: Hold middle mouse button.

Pan: Shift + Hold middle mouse button.

Zoom: Scrollwheel.

Sometimes these actions can start behaving weirdly: becoming too slow or quick, or Orbit rotating around an inconvenient point. If that happens, you can re-center your view using...

Center view to selected objects: Numpad .

Center view to mouse cursor: Alt + Middle Mouse Button.

Walk mode: Shift + AccentGrave (the key above Tab). When activated, lets you move around with WASD controls. Click to exit Walk Mode.

Optional: Top/side and orthographic view. 
There are 2 ways to do this: clicking on the view controls on the top right of the 3d viewport, or using the Numpad shortcuts: 
Toggle Orthographic view: Numpad 5. 
Front view: Numpad 1. 
Right view: Numpad 3. 
Top view: Numpad 7. 
You can get the opposite view by pressing Shift + the numpad key, like this: Bottom view: Shift + Numpad 7.

Editing, putting the pieces together to create your ship.

Selecting objects (parts)

Select: Left click.

Select (add to selection): Shift + Left click.

Deselect all: Click on an empty area, or double press A, or press Alt + A.

Box select: Click and drag.

Box deselect: Ctrl + Click and drag.

Optional: the Active object. In Blender, there is always 1 object considered as "active". Every time you select by clicking or shift+clicking, that object you select becomes the active one. The Active object can be distinguished by the yellow outline and origin point, instead of orange. The Blender pack uses the Active object as the pivot point for moving, rotating, mirroring, etc by default. If you want to deselect something using Shift+click, you'll find that it sometimes doesn't do it: that's because you selected a normally selected object, and Blender interpreted your command as "Make this one the Active object". If you want to deselect like that, you'll need to click twice, once to make it active, and a second time to deselect. If there are other objects behind it, this usually results in those being added to the selection... So if you clicked on the wrong part to select, Undo or Box Deselect are usually the best options. Box select never alters the Active object.

Duplicating objects: There are 3 ways, pick one

Duplicate (Linked): Alt + D. Like Duplicate, but reuses the object's 3d model data. Greatly helps avoiding huge project file sizes.

Duplicate: Shift + D. Same as copy/paste + pressing G.

Copy/Paste: Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V.

Moving/Rotating objects: There are 2 ways, the choice is entirely preferential.

You can activate the two tools on the left bar, then click and drag (Beginners usually prefer this, so if the shortcuts scare you, feel free to skip the next part) or use the keyboard shortcuts:

Grab: G

Rotate: R

Once the shortcuts are activated, press X/Y/Z to select the axis of the movement/rotation.

You can also press Shift+an axis to move along a plane instead of a single axis.

• You can type in the exact angle/distance!

Optional: If you need to go off the grid, hold down Ctrl when moving/rotating to ignore snapping. If a part goes off the grid and you need to align it again, open the snapping options (on top of the 3d view, in the center, next to a magnet icon), and enable Absolute Grid Snap. You can then move the object and it will snap back to the grid. I recommend to turn it off once you're done, because it can sometimes cause things to misalign when selecting and moving many objects (select the whole ship, the Active object is misaligned, Absolute snap wants to align that, and the rest goes off grid)

Mirroring objects

• Note: mirroring does not create a mirrored copy, if you want to do that, you need to duplicate first, then mirror the copy.

Mirror: Ctrl + M, then select the axis (X, Y or Z).

• Mirroring objects that are not rotated in multiples of 90° causes weird results. If you need to do that, try to see if you can rotate instead to achieve the same outcome.

Parenting (optional), how to connect multiple objects to move together

• You need to know about how Blender handles the Active object. Scroll up if you haven't read it yet.

Parenting allows you to set an object as a "parent" and other objects as "children" of it. When the parent moves, the children follow the same motion. When a child moves, the parent and other children are not affected. You can also have parents of parents. This is handy to create moving parts, like a door: -the hinge's base is the whole door's parent -the hinge's rotating piece is the rest of the door's parent Now you can rotate the rotating hinge part and the whole door will open with it. If you want to move the door elsewhere in the ship, you can move the hinge's base.

Parent Objects: Ctrl + P > Object(Keep Transform). This will make the Active object the *parent*, so the order you select your object matters!

Clear Parent: Alt + P > Clear and Keep Transformation. (The normal Clear Parent option works too, but the child objects may move in unexpected places if you do so)

Optional: Using Empty objects as "handles" for doors and moving/rotating parts. Continuing the example from before - I usually don't use the rotating hinge part as the parent as it's very small and inconvenient to select. The solution I have to that is to create an Empty object to act as the parent. (Empty objects are invisible in renders) 
1) Select the rotating hinge part. In this case, this matters because we want the door to rotate around that same point.
2) Right click > Snap > Cursor to Selected. The 3d cursor is that red and white "crosshair" that is usually at the center of the scene. New objects are created at its location. (You can also use the 3d cursor as a pivot point, but this guide is already becoming too long)
3) Press Shift + A > Empty > Single Arrow. Any other shape will work, it's just the single arrow usually makes sense.
4) Rotate the arrow in the direction that you want it to stay in. In this case, it'll point in the same direction as the door.
5) To resize the Empty object: go to the Properties panel, in the tab with an icon of 3 axis (should be on the bottom), and alter the Size slider.
6) Now that you have set up everything, parent every part of the door to the Empty object. Then parent the Empty to the hinge's base. Done! You can now rotate the door as if it was a single object by selecting the Empty object.

Optional extra stuff. If you're overwhelmed, skip these.

Hiding objects

Hide: H.

Unhide all: Alt + H .

Hide everything that's not selected: Shift + H. (An alternative to Local View)

Local View

Local View "hides" all unselected objects.

• Note: Technically it's not hiding them in the sense that it's separate from the hiding system, for instance you can press Unhide all and the objects that were "hidden" by Local View still won't show up.

Toggle Local View: Numpad Divide.

Remove from Local View: M. (This only works while Local View is active. "Hides" the selected objects from the current Local View.)

Making cross sections

Clipping Region Toggle: Alt + B. Lets you draw a rectangle that will cut the whole 3d view. Very useful to show/modify the inside of your ship. Press again to deactivate.

Collections

The Blender pack has different categories of parts split into different collections. You can hide them individually in the Outliner panel, on the right of the screen.

Cameras

Seats in the Blender pack have a camera object parented to them. Cameras can be used to preview a specific angle, or to define what the point of view is when doing a render.

Toggle view from camera: Numpad 0.

Set selected camera as active: Ctrl + Numpad 0. If the triangle above the camera is filled, it's active, if it's empty, it's not. The active camera is the one that you view from when pressing Numpad 0 or when doing a render.

Position active camera to the current view: Ctrl + Alt + Numpad 0. (Useful if you create a new camera [Shift+A > Camera]. Avoid doing it on the cameras from seats, because those are parented to the seats (moving/deleting the seat will move the camera too)

Quick Favorites

If you want easier access to any button or action that you can find, you can probably right click it and press the Add to Quick Favorites option.

Open Quick Favorites menu: Q.

• For example, I have the "Absolute Grid Snap" checkbox in my Quick Favorites.
• Quick Favorites are not specific to one Blender file, you can use them anywhere.

End notes

Blender is a very powerful tool that has many more things to offer, for example:

• Customizing materials and lighting for better renders (basic ones are included in the pack)
• Using the Cycles renderer for more advanced and natural lighting in renders
• Modeling scenery/environment
• Animating parts to show off a mechanism, do a video tour of your ship, or make a simple turntable video
• d̘̙͇̠͉͜o͜n̸̥̲̟̠̲̪ͅ't̮͇̣̼̟͖ ͓̺c̜l̩̯͚ḭ͈̯́c̛̘̩k̡̦ ͏̩̳͖̩͉̹̳D͇͕ON̹̪͕̕'̵͇̞͙̭͖̦͕T̢̪̖̖͕ ̞͚̟͉̤͚̺C͍̩͖͙̀ͅL̼̖I̠̮͔͕̫͖̩C̤K͇̰̳̱̟͇: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/565466907642167316/702267870037540944/Abomination.png

But chances are you're just here to start learning and improving at ship design and put together your ideas while you're waiting to get access to the game. If you're feeling confused, remember all you need to create something is selecting, duplicating, moving and rotating. If you have any additional questions, fixes or changes for this guide, don't hesitate to write them to me: mrchip#4403 on Discord.