10 Tips to Speed Up your Blender Workflow! ⚡

in this video i will share with you 10 tips on how you can speed up your blender workflow and the purpose of speeding up your workflow isn't so that you can just rush through things because i do use blender because i enjoy creating artwork so i do enjoy the process but if you can speed up your blender workflow then you'll be able to be much more efficient and you can focus less on all of the technical things and just focus more on the process of creating the artwork and if you have any blender workflow tips that you'd like to share with us definitely leave that in the comments and if i see a really cool one maybe i'll pin that comment tip number one is you can copy and paste any values in blender just by hovering your mouse over the value and then pressing ctrl c to copy and then you can hover your mouse over another value and press ctrl v to paste so this is something that i often forget about usually i just click on the value and make sure it's selected and then i press ctrl c to copy but you can simply hover your mouse over the value and press ctrl c that will copy the value and then you can press ctrl v and that is going to paste the value into any other value and you can do that with pretty much any value in blender so i have the shader nodes right here but for instance if i wanted the y location of the cube to be the same as the z location just press ctrl c hover your mouse over this value and press ctrl v and you can very quickly copy and paste values tip number two is to create your own custom workspaces so if there's a workspace that you commonly use you can set it up and then use it in all of your blender projects i edit all of my videos in blender and so what i've done is i've clicked on the plus icon right here and then i've gone right down here to video editing and made a new video editing tab and then right over here on the video editing tab i've just set some things up to how i like on the defaults or for instance maybe you use geometry nodes a lot what you could do instead of going to the layout here and like splitting the window and then clicking here and then changing this to the geometry nodes what you could do is just click on the plus here you can go right down here to general and you could add a geometry nodes and then you could just set this up however you like so what i would do is i would like do a vertical split and i don't really ever use the spreadsheet so i could like close that kind of bring this over here and then i could also like press the t key to close this and also i don't really use the gizmo so i could just turn that off so you can just set up your new tab to whatever preferences you like and you can actually double click on the tab and then you can rename it and then to save the preferences so that this is the default in blender you could just go back to the layout here and then you can click on file and then you can go right down here to defaults and you can click on save startup file so click on that and then when you open up a new blender file it's going to save all of your preferences and this can really save you a lot of time tip number three is to use the node wrangler add-on to enable the add-on you're just going to click on edit and then you're going to go to the preferences and then in blender's user preferences you can click over on the add-ons tab and then you can go right here to the search and you can search for the node wrangler and then this check mark the node wrangler add-on and then make sure you click on that save preferences button so that the node wrangler is turned on in all your blender projects so the node wrangler has a lot of features which can really speed up your workflow for instance if you want to add the texture coordinate and mapping on a texture you can select the texture and then you can press ctrl t and that will add the texture coordinate and mapping you can also hold down the ctrl and shift key and then select different nodes and make sure you are in the rendered preview and that is going to preview the different nodes and if you have two different textures and you want to combine them together you can just hold down the shift key and select both of the textures and then you can press ctrl zero and that is going to add a mix rgb that's something that i should really implement into my tutorials and one of my favorite features about the node wrangler add-on which can really speed up your workflow is by using the principal texture setup so what you're going to do is just select the principle shader and then you can press control shift t and when you press ctrl shift t that is going to bring up blender's file browser and then you can just locate to where you've saved some textures so just hold down the control key and then select the different textures and then you can click on principled texture setup and as you can see the node wrangler add-on is automatically going to set up all the textures for us so it's added all the textures it's added the texture coordinate and mapping it's also added the normal map to the normal and then it's also set the roughness and normal to the non-color data and so this is a very very quick way to set up materials in blender i do plan on making a separate video specifically on the node wrangler because it has so many features but those are just a few ways to speed up your workflow using the node wrangler tip number four is to use the asset browser so i actually have two tutorials specifically on how to use the asset browser links in the description if you'd like to learn how to set up the asset browser but once you have the asset browser set up you can just split the window right here and then you can change the editor type and i'm gonna go right over here and change it to the asset browser so what you can do is you can set up different assets that you commonly use like for instance i very commonly use different hdris from polyhaven.com so what i've done is i've set up a bunch of different hdris so now what i can do is i can just drag and drop the hdris into the world and it's going to add that hdri in and so this is a very quick way to change between different hdris and find an hdri that i like to use and you can also do this with textures and procedural materials and also 3d models so for instance here's my low poly nature what i can do is i can just drag and drop the low poly nature into the scene and it's going to add it in so if you have some different assets that you commonly use you can set them up in blender's asset browser and then you can very quickly just go between the assets and add them in tip number five is to memorize and use shortcut keys memorizing and using shortcut keys is really going to help you to speed up your workflow because for instance let's say i want to bring the camera to my view instead of clicking on view and then going down here to align view clicking on align active camera to view it's much easier to learn the shortcut key of control alt numpad 0 that's going to bring the camera to your view so if there's a tool or option that you commonly use you can memorize the shortcut keys and it's really going to speed up your workflow so you can look up the different shortcut keys online or what you can also do if you know where the feature is like somewhere here in these settings is you can just click on one of these tabs and it's going to show you the shortcut key right over here so for instance view and align to view and you can see right here the align active camera to view is ctrl alt numpad 0. and many of the tools will show you what the shortcut key is if you just move your mouse over the tool so for instance if i move my tool over the toggle x-ray you can see it says shortcut alt z and so if i memorize that shortcut key i can very quickly just hit alt z and i can toggle in between the x-ray mode and tip number six is to copy and paste objects from one blender file to another blender file so i actually didn't know about this feature until just quite recently because recently i created a tutorial on how to append data from one blender file to another so what you do is you click on file and then you click on append and then you locate to the blender file and select the data that you want to append and then you can append it into the blender file but after posting that tutorial i got a comment from someone and they told me that you can simply select everything in one blender file and you can press ctrl c to copy it and then you can just go to the other blender file and then you can press ctrl v and that is going to paste all the data so my mind was blown when i realized that this was possible i didn't know it was that easy i just totally overlooked it so it's a really quick way to paste data from one blender file to another blender file and tip number seven is to use the copy from active feature when you are doing a simulation so i remember making this mistake all the time back when i was first learning blender in 2016. so what i would do is i would create a cube tower and then i would play the animation and realize that i forgot to add physics to the cube and so sometimes i would just have to add the rigid body physics to one of the cubes and then i remember just like deleting the tower and recreating the entire thing but there's a much quicker way to do this so what you can do is you can hold down the z button go into the wireframe and then you can press b for the box select and just box select all the cubes or all the objects that you want to add the physics to and then what you can do is you can hold down the shift key and just make sure to select this cube last make sure that the cube that's been selected last has the rigid body you can see this cube has a yellow outline so this cube is the active object so then what you can do is you can just press f3 to go to the search and you can just search for copy from active and you can add the rigidbody copy from active that is going to copy all the rigidbody settings from the active object and it's going to apply it to all the other objects so now all of these other objects have the rigidbody settings and so now the simulation works properly and tip number eight is to use the linking feature so again sometimes i remember like creating a simulation where i had a bunch of different cubes and then i would go into the rendered view only to realize that i had forgotten to add a material to this cube and i remember making this mistakes many times when i was first learning blender so sometimes what i would do is i would just like add a new material and then i could make it like a blue color and then i would have to go along here and i would have to add the material to all of these cubes individually but you don't have to do it individually what you can do is just hold down the z button go to wireframe you can press b for the box select and just box select all of the objects that you want to add the material to and make sure to select one of these objects last which has the material so then what you can do is you can press control l and control l is going to bring up the linking options and then i can click on link materials so it's going to take the material from the active object and add it to all the other objects and you can even do this with other data like for instance modifiers so if i click on this cube here i can go to the modifiers and let's say i want to add a bevel modifier and then to add it to all these other cubes i just need to make sure i have all the cubes selected so i'm just going to box select the cubes and then remember to hold down the shift key and lastly select the cube which has the modifier then i can press ctrl l and then you can just go right down here and click on copy modifiers and it's going to copy all the modifiers from this object to the other object and as you can see this feature will save you a lot of time tip number nine is to use the quick favorites so if there's a very common feature you use in blender you can add it to the quick favorites and then it's very easy to use so what you can do is press the q button and that is going to bring up the quick favorites and you can add different options into the quick favorites so because i use the origin 2 geometry feature a lot i've added the origin 2 geometry to the quick favorites so i just press q and then hit origin 2 geometry so how you add an option to the quick favorites is you first define the option so for the origin 2 geometry it's right here on object and then set origin and then origin 2 geometry so i can just right click right here and then you can click on add to quick favorites i've already added it so it says removed from quick favorites and then once you've added it you can press the q key and then you can just click on the option and then one really important thing you need to go to blender's preferences and save the preferences or else blender won't remember your quick favorites so you're just going to click on edit and then you're going to open up the preferences in blender's user preferences you just need to click on the save preferences after you've added the quick favorites so just click on the save preferences and then that way when you open up a new blender file you can press q and it's going to remember all of your quick favorites the last tip is to use the shortcut key for the subsurf modifier so the subsurf modifier is very common you click on add modifier you go right down here and add the subdivision surface so it's a very common modifier it's probably the most used modifier but instead of adding the subdivision surface by clicking on the modifiers panel you can use the shortcut key which is control 2 and ctrl 2 is going to add the subdivision surface modifier to that object and it's going to add two levels of the viewport and render but if you want to change the viewport levels so what it's going to preview in the viewport you can press control 1 or control 2 or control 3 and those are the numbers on the top of my keyboard not on my numpad so control 1 control 2 and you can go all the way up to five so that is going to add the subdivision surface modifier and that's going to add the viewport levels for whatever number you pressed one through five all right and those are my 10 tips on how to speed up your blender workflow and if you have any tips on speeding up your workflow that you'd like to share with me or share with all the viewers definitely leave your tip in the comments and if i see a really good tip in the comments maybe i'll pin the comment so that's it for this video i hope you found some of this information helpful and thank you for watching and if you'd like to help support me and this channel so i can keep making blender tutorials then you can check out my gumroad store and patreon page and the youtube memberships those are all great ways to help support the channel so i will have the links in the description but i hope this video was helpful and thank you for watching

Channel: Ryan King Art

Views: 9,427

Keywords: Ryan King Art, Blender Tutorial, Blender, Ryan King, Tutorial, workflow, speed, speed up workflow, faster workflow, fast, quick tips, 10 tips

Id: u6pYtyovUH8

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022