In this short tutorial on Blender 4.5 for beginners, we’ll see how to separate parts of an object, how to parent them to each other, and how to set their Origins so they can be used properly.
Video Transcript
Hello everyone! In this short tutorial on Blender 4.5 for beginners, we’ll see how to separate parts of an object, how to parent them to each other, and how to set their Origins so they can be used properly. These are useful operations if, for example, you’ve downloaded a 3D model that comes as a single Object and you want to edit the different parts individually while still keeping them parented to the main object. That’s the case in the example I’ll be using, where I want to separate the gauge needle so I can easily rotate or animate it.
Separating parts of an object to create distinct Objects is actually very simple. All you need to do is select the part you want in Edit Mode and press the P key. The Separate option from the menu that appears will let you detach the selected part, creating a new Object.
The menu also has the option By Loose Parts. To use this, you would select all geometries in Edit Mode by pressing A, and Blender will create a new Object for each “geometry island,” meaning each piece of geometry not physically connected to the others. With the model I’m using, this would result in 7 Objects, some of which I don’t need, so I’m undoing that.
To select the parts you’re interested in, you can use Blender’s typical selection tools, which you’ll find in the Select menu in Edit Mode. Very useful for this purpose are the More and Linked tools. The More operator allows you to expand the initial selection.
Linked works by pressing the L key while your mouse cursor is over a vertex of the part you want to select, quickly selecting the entire geometry island that vertex belongs to. I’m using it here in two steps. First, I use it to select the protective glass and hide it with the H key, so I can more easily select the gauge needle. I can bring the glass back with ALT H. Then, I use Linked again to select the needle and separate it from the rest using Separate.
Back in Object Mode, with the needle separated, I press the Divide key on the numpad to switch to Local View, which will show me only the needle for convenience. The needle, once separated, will have its Origin set to the same place as the original object’s Origin, which makes it difficult to rotate. To set the Origin to the correct spot, I first go to Edit Mode and select the inner ring of vertices of the pin. I do this by pressing ALT and clicking on an edge of the ring I want. Once that selection is made, I move the 3D Cursor there with SHIFT S and the Cursor to Selected option.
In Object Mode, I perform the Set Origin to 3D Cursor operation. Now the needle can correctly rotate around its pin. I then return to Global View by pressing the Divide key on the numpad again. However, I notice that when I move the main body of the object, the needle stays in place, since it is now a separate object.
To parent the needle to the main body, I first select the needle in Object Mode, and then the main body, using a multiple selection in this order, that is, selecting the object that will act as the parent last. Multiple selection is done with SHIFT and click on the parent object, making it the active object of the selection.
Once this multiple selection is correctly made, I press CTRL P and choose the Set Parent To Object option from the menu that appears on screen.
As you may have noticed, both separating and parenting involve the P key. Specifically, pressing P in Edit Mode lets us separate the selection from the original object, creating a new one. The CTRL P combination, on the other hand, allows us to parent the selected objects to the active object in the selection.
I’ll close the tutorial by also mentioning the ALT P combination, which allows us to clear the parent relationship of an object. Using this shortcut, for example, on the protective glass I separated a moment ago, we can make this object independent again, with no link to the main body of the gauge.
Alright, that’s it for this video! If you found it useful, you can thank me with a Like and by subscribing to the channel! Don’t forget to turn on notifications so you won’t miss the next tutorials. See you soon!