How to move around in Blender: orbit, pan, zoom, move the camera and scale from the center

Blender's 3D Viewport is built around the middle mouse button and the numeric keypad. Once you know four or five gestures, moving through a scene becomes automatic. This guide covers navigating the view, working on a laptop or a Mac, moving the camera, moving objects, and scaling from the center. Every shortcut and menu was checked against the Blender 5.2 manual, with the default keymap.

Orbit, pan and zoom with a mouse

Right-clicking during an orbit, pan or zoom cancels it. The Alt key adds two useful tricks: an Alt + middle click on a point makes it the center the view orbits around, and holding Alt while you drag with the middle button snaps the orbit to the world axes and the diagonals between them. Numpad 9 flips to the opposite side of the current view. Orbit, pan and zoom are also in the View > Navigation menu.

Numpad views: front, side, top and camera

• Numpad 1 front, Numpad 3 right, Numpad 7 top.
• Add Ctrl for the opposite view: back, left and bottom.
• Add Shift to align with the local axes of the selection, for example to look straight at a tilted face.
• Numpad 5 toggles between perspective and orthographic (View > Perspective/Orthographic).
• Numpad 0 looks through the active camera.

Orthographic keeps objects the same size whatever their distance, which makes proportions easier to judge while modeling. It only changes the viewport: the render uses the camera's own lens settings.

Navigating without a numpad or a middle mouse button

Emulate Numpad

Open Edit > Preferences > Input and tick Emulate Numpad. The number row at the top of the keyboard then acts as the numpad. The trade-off, according to the manual: you lose those keys' usual jobs, such as switching between vertex, edge and face selection with 1, 2 and 3 in Edit Mode.

Emulate 3 Button Mouse

In the same section, Emulate 3 Button Mouse replaces the middle button with Alt + left click. Orbit becomes Alt + left drag, pan becomes Shift+Alt + left drag, and zoom becomes Ctrl+Alt + left drag. Some tools that already use Alt + left click stop working, such as deselecting edge rings or detaching node links.

The navigation gizmo

The axis widget in the top right corner of the viewport works with the left button alone. Drag it to orbit, click an axis label to look along that axis, and click the same label again for the opposite side. The four buttons underneath zoom (drag the magnifier), pan (drag the hand), toggle the camera view and toggle perspective. In camera view, the last one becomes the Lock Camera to View toggle.

The pie menu

Press the grave accent key `, the one left of 1 that also carries the tilde on a US keyboard. A pie menu opens around the cursor with the six axis views, the camera view and View Selected.

Trackpads and Macs

Blender reads multi-touch gestures on Windows, macOS and Linux with Wayland. Check that Multi-touch Gestures is on in Preferences > Input > Touchpad, then:

• drag two fingers to orbit;
• hold Shift and drag two fingers to pan;
• hold Ctrl, or Cmd on a Mac, and drag two fingers to zoom;
• tap with two fingers to right-click.

On a Mac, Cmd stands in for Ctrl in most shortcuts, Option is Blender's Alt, and Cmd+, opens the Preferences. A MacBook has no numpad, so Emulate Numpad is worth turning on.

Centering the view on what you are working on

• Numpad . (View > Frame Selected) centers and zooms the view on the selection, so you orbit around it from then on.
• Home (View > Frame All) shows every object. In camera view, it fits the camera frame to the window instead.
• Numpad / (View > Local View) hides everything except the selection. Press it again to get the whole scene back.

Fly and walk navigation

For a large set or an interior, first-person controls beat orbiting. Shift+` starts whichever mode is chosen under Preferences > Navigation > Fly & Walk; both are also in View > Navigation.

• Walk works like a first-person game: W A S D to move, the mouse to look, Tab to toggle gravity, E and Q to go up and down when gravity is off, the wheel to change speed.
• Fly steers with the mouse once the cursor leaves a central safe zone; W and S accelerate forward and back.

Left-click keeps the new view; Esc or right-click returns to where you started.

How to move the camera in Blender

The camera is an object, but three methods are faster than moving it by hand.

1. Snap it to your view. Navigate until the framing looks right, then press Ctrl+Alt+Numpad 0 (View > Align View > Align Active Camera to View).
2. Drive it with the view. Press Numpad 0, open the sidebar with N, go to the View tab and, in the View Lock panel, tick Camera to View. Orbiting, panning and zooming now move the camera, and its frame turns into a red dashed outline. Untick it when you are done.
3. Fly or walk it. Start fly or walk navigation from camera view and the camera travels with you.

If no camera is active yet, select one and press Ctrl+Numpad 0. Moving several cameras and keyframing them is covered in the camera guide.

Moving objects precisely

Select an object and press G: it follows the mouse until you left-click to confirm or right-click to cancel. While it moves:

• type X, Y or Z to lock it to one axis, and the same key again to switch to the local axis;
• Shift+Z moves it freely on the floor plane (everything except Z);
• type a value and press Enter: G Z 2 moves it 2 units up.

The Item tab of the sidebar (N) shows Location, Rotation and Scale as editable fields. The Blender shortcuts guide lists the rest of the transform keys.

How to scale from the center in Blender

S scales around the Transform Pivot Point, chosen in the viewport header or with . (period). S 2 Enter doubles the size, and S Z scales along Z only. The pivot decides where the "center" is:

• Median Point (default): the average position of the selected origins in Object Mode, or of the selected vertices in Edit Mode.
• Bounding Box Center: the middle of a box drawn around the selection.
• Individual Origins: each object, or in Edit Mode each separate group of selected elements, scales around its own center.
• 3D Cursor: everything scales around the cursor.
• Active Element: around the last item selected.

When the object does not scale from its middle

In Object Mode, Median Point, Bounding Box Center and Individual Origins all work from object origins, the small dot on a selected object, not from its geometry. If the origin sits in a corner, the object grows from that corner. Fix it with Object > Set Origin > Origin to Geometry, which moves the origin to the center of the mesh, then scale again.

In Edit Mode, Median Point leans toward dense areas: a subdivided half pulls the pivot toward it. For the true middle of the selection, switch the pivot to Bounding Box Center. To scale from an exact point, place the cursor there with Shift+S > Cursor to Selected and choose the 3D Cursor pivot.

Common navigation problems

• The view orbits around the wrong point. Press Numpad . on what you are working on, or enable Orbit Around Selection in Preferences > Navigation. Also check that Lock to Object is empty in the sidebar's View Lock panel.
• Zoom stops moving forward. The view has reached its point of interest. Use Frame Selected, or dolly with Shift+Ctrl + middle mouse drag.
• Objects get cut off when you get close. That is the viewport clipping distance. Lower Clip Start in the sidebar, View tab. Keep the range reasonable: the manual warns that a very large range causes display artifacts.
• Part of the scene is hidden. A clipping region may be active (Alt+B toggles it), or you are in Local View (Numpad /).
• The camera moves every time you navigate. Camera to View is still ticked.
• The horizon is tilted. Shift+Numpad 4 and 6 roll the view. Press Numpad 3, then orbit, to get a level view back.

New to the interface? The learn Blender guide puts these basics in order.