How to Resize an Object in Blender?

Resizing an object in Blender, also known as scaling, can be done using interactive handles or keyboard shortcuts, allowing you to stretch or shrink objects uniformly or along specific axes.

Main Methods for Resizing Objects

There are two primary ways to resize objects in Blender, giving you flexibility depending on whether you prefer visual manipulation or precise control via keyboard input.

1. Using the Scale Gizmo (Interactive Handles)

One intuitive method involves using the Scale Gizmo, which provides visual handles directly on your selected object. This method is particularly useful for interactive adjustments.

• How it works:
  • Select the object you want to resize.
  • Ensure the Move tool (or another tool that displays gizmos like the Scale tool itself, typically accessed via the toolbar or by pressing T in the 3D Viewport) is active. The Scale gizmo often appears alongside the Move and Rotate gizmos. Alternatively, you can explicitly enable only the Scale gizmo from the overlay options.
  • The gizmo will display colored handles (typically red for the X-axis, green for the Y-axis, and blue for the Z-axis).
  • According to the provided information, you can use the handles to stretch or squeeze the object. For example, by clicking on the tiny little green cube handle, you can stretch it or squeeze it in the green direction (the Y-axis). The same applies to the red direction (the X-axis) or the blue direction (Z-axis).
  • Clicking and dragging a handle along its axis will scale the object non-uniformly along that axis.
  • Dragging the white circle around the gizmo will scale the object uniformly along all axes simultaneously.

2. Using the Keyboard Shortcut

For faster resizing and more control, the keyboard shortcut is widely used by experienced Blender users.

• How it works:
  • Select the object you want to resize.
  • Press the S key on your keyboard.
  • Move your mouse away from or towards the object to scale it uniformly. The further you move, the larger or smaller the object becomes.
  • For non-uniform scaling, after pressing S, you can press the key for a specific axis (X, Y, or Z) to constrain the scaling to only that axis. For example, S then Y will only scale along the Y-axis.
  • For scaling along two axes, press S followed by Shift and the key for the axis you want to exclude (e.g., S then Shift + Z scales along the X and Y axes but not Z).
  • Click the left mouse button or press Enter to confirm the scale, or click the right mouse button or press Esc to cancel.
  • You can also type in a specific scale factor after pressing S (e.g., S then 2 makes the object twice as large; S then 0.5 makes it half as large).

Summary Table

Here's a quick comparison of the two main methods:

Understanding both methods allows you to efficiently resize objects in Blender for various modeling and animation tasks.