About using Background images in Blender

First of all, what are background images?

Background images are reference images that appear in the background of the 3d viewport in Blender. They are very helpful if you are trying to make something specific (Such as R2D2) and help make your model as close to the picture as possible. Background images are DEFINITELY handy when creating people, my attempts at making a person without using background images looked horrible!

Make sure that you don’t use background images TOOO much, as this can often take away a lot of your creativity, But also don’t just NEVER use them, as they do help to create more realistic results.

Now, How to set up background images, (I didn’t know how to do this for a long time and found it really annoying!)

First, press N to bring up the properties menu, then, check the box next to “Background Images” now add a new image and open the file you want to use. Now hit 1, 3 or 7 to go to front, side or top view, But you will see that nothing has happened! That’s because you need to into perspective view, to do this, just hit 5 and POW!!! There you go! IT”S WORKING!!!

Now, when your in edit mode and you’r finding it hard because you can’t see through your model and see the background image, all you need to do is to hit Z to go into wireframe mode and there you go!

Usually you will want to have at leased 2 views opened at a time, usually front and side view. So go into the corner of your 3d view and drag the 3 diagonal lined to bring out a new window! You can set the image in this new window to a different image now by simply opening a new picture!

Hopefully this has helped you a bit, and you should find that this makes copying images much easier!