Template:Useful Blender Shortcuts

• r: rotates the mesh from whatever direction you are viewing it. Use carefully or the results are very odd.
• s: scale the entire mesh up or down by dragging the mouse up or down. Also drags the mesh out of alignment with the axes, especially z, so you’ll want to move it around afterwards.
• ALT-s: shrink or fatten along normals; this may not mean anything to you, but it's actually what you wanted when you chose “s” nine times out of ten.
• r followed by x, y, or z: rotates the selected mesh or vertices on the x, y or z axis.
• s followed by x, y, or z: scales the mesh along an axis.

 If you scale a mesh along an axis in Blender, then you need to apply scale and rotation
 (CTRL-A) afterwards because the NIF format does not support non-uniform scaling.

• g followed by x, y, or z: grab and move selected a mesh or vertices on x, y, or z axis. Again, you can do this without x, y, or z, but you often won't end up with the position you want.
• z: when used in edit mode, makes every vertex visible and the faces transparent. Very useful for selecting hidden vertices from any given angle.
• b: a crosshair appears that you can click and drag to create a rectangular selection box.
• b followed by b: a circle appears that you can scale up or down by rolling the mouse wheel to create a selection area.
• Mouse wheel: hold down and drag to "roll around" the screen and look at the mesh from different angles. Hold down shift/wheel and drag right or left to move right or left only. Scroll mouse wheel up or down to zoom in and out.
• Tab: switch between modes. If you're back and forth between Object and Edit a lot, which you will be, this can be useful.
• w followed by 2 or 3: Used in UV screen. These very useful commands let you snap a row of vertices into a straight line on x or y.

• numpad 7: Moves the camera to a top position, aligned to the x and y axis.
• numpad 1: Moves the camera to a front position, aligned to the x and z axis.
• numpad 3: Moves the camera to a side position, aligned to the y and z axis.