3 Button mouse

Bought a brand new pc. Then I saw the blender program says you need a 3 button mouse. Do you really need one or is it recommended that you have one.

 

I wouldn't use Blender without one. I find it hard to believe that your PC wouldn't have come with one though. You can always pick up a cheap mouse for $10 (though if you're doing any extended amount of work, it's worth investing in something that's good).

--Eric

 

You really need to have a 3 mouse button. The middle mouse is used for rotating the scene to view around. So 3 mouse button is needed!!!!

 

Blender is another country. They do things differently there.

 

in most 3d apps, you should be using a 3 button mouse. In my case, I've mapped the third button to my thumb button (I have a 10 button mouse <.< >.>) I find it more natural of a motion to use that in navigation. If you don't have that third button, some of the shortcuts can get complicated, but there is no reason you can't map it to a keypress.

 

I do not recommend a mouse. A Wacom stylus works better. I map middle-click to the knuckle of my thumb and right click to the tip of my thumb (the latter is the default).

That said, navigating with a mouse is not something I recommend for 3D, either. I do use middle-mouse for ortho views, but I use the SpaceNavigator for anything in Perspective. Blender is set up so NDOF-ing takes you out of the gridded ortho view. At least 2.49 is. I won't use anything past that, because the best they've been able to come up with is "you must hold Shift to pan with an NDOF device". Give me a break – how can anyone use this software?! ;-)

 

You can set up your configs.

 

That's not what I read on the blender support forum. I'd love for you to tell me if something's been updated though.

 

Look at the image.Congrats. on your six thousand post !

 

I prefer using one of these personally for any kind of 3D modelling... Although the one I have doesn't seem to work too well in Blender for some reason. And no Unity Support :x

 

behold, the strange beast of burden from ages past... Death to the trackball >..> oh but neat anyway.

 

These things are not like trackballs in feel or function.

 

That's not a trackball at all.

It's used like this:


And pretty much any engineer who does 3D CAD work uses one, and I'm pretty sure most professional 3D Modelers use them as well.
http://www.3dconnexion.com/

And this is their latest and greatest:


I have one of the older models shown in the first picture I linked as a hand-me-down from my job

 

Hey, I love my trackball

Wow, just watched some of the videos on their site. I'm not a modeler, but they make me want to be one. Very cool device.

 

I messed around there. That doesn't seem to do anything but affirm that you can't pan and orbit simultaneously, which makes the device considerably closer to as worthless as a mouse and keyboard for navigation. No?

 

Thanks for the examples and pics. the pc is an imac. i see the difference with the 3button mouse and the regular mouse. It looks like an arcade joystick lol. Will start my search. Cant quit now.

 

None of those screenshots are of a three-button mouse. If you have a new iMac, your mouse has a lot more than three buttons, even though it looks like you don't have a single button.

 

I use Blender using the 3-button mouse emulation and it works great, I found it very easy to get used to holding Alt and Shift when needed. You pretty much need your left hand on the keyboard anyway. My mouse does have a middle button, but it's a scroll wheel and you have to press it just right for it to work as the middle button (at least in Blender).

 

I'm sorry but that's like saying the car is a bycicle.

PC = Windows Computer

IMac = overly expensive paperweight

 

Technically a Mac is a PC (i.e. Personal Computer) and some people use the term that way. Many people do refer to a personal computer running Windows (or maybe Linux) as a PC and a personal computer running Mac OS a Mac, but today the hardware is essentially the same. Either way, it is not relevant to the discussion at hand.