Blender Day 3: Install Add On

Alright, let's continue our learning process with Blender. When you install Blender, you may notice a small UI popup. Don't worry about it, you can simply click outside of that window and it will disappear. If you can't find it later, don't worry, it will appear almost every time you open Blender. It's not a bother, and you can just click elsewhere and it will disappear. You can save your projects as usual, and the popup won't bother you anymore.

To clearly show my process, we need to install a useful addon. As you know, Blender is an open-source software, which means anyone can write addons to extend its functionality. In order to display my keystrokes clearly, we need a screencast addon. Fortunately, there is a great open-source project on GitHub called "Screencast Key". It currently has over 400 stars and has been widely used by many Blender users. I have personally used this addon for recording several series of Blender tutorials in English, Chinese, and Japanese, and it has been extremely helpful. However, please note that this addon only supports the English version of Blender. But I don't think that will be a problem for you. If you want to share how you use Blender with others after learning from this tutorial, I highly recommend using this plugin. It's a fantastic addon, and if you're willing, you can show your support by giving it more stars on GitHub.

Let's go ahead and download the addon. You can visit the GitHub page and find the project called "Screencast Key". On the release page, you can find the different versions available. I recommend downloading the latest version as it will have more features. Simply download the ZIP file and you're good to go. I've already downloaded it for you.

Now, let's go back to Blender and I'll show you how to install the plugin. Go to the "File" menu and select "Preferences". Let me just make the preferences window a bit bigger. Here, you'll find the "Add-ons" tab. You can search for official addons or community addons here. You can also install an addon by clicking the "Install" button. Since we've just downloaded the Screencast Keys addon, we'll manually locate it on your computer.

Let me see, I believe I put it on the desktop. Ah, here it is. I placed it in the "Blender Intro" folder on the desktop. If your window is too small, you might only see today's downloads. Just resize the window to make it larger, then click on the ZIP file and choose "Install Add-on". Everything should go smoothly.

I assume you have already installed it, so you can click on the checkbox to enable the addon. You can see whether you have enabled official, community, or testing addons. It seems you haven't enabled this addon yet, so let's go ahead and enable it.