Blender Startup File and Presets

This short post will handle Blender startup file and presets of Blender 2.80. We will modify the startup file of ‘General’ and ‘Video Editing’ because these functions I use the most.

Normally Blender starts in the ‘General’ project preset. We will change the behavior that no the original Blender project is opened but our modified project.

Modifying the Default Project to your Needs

First we open this ‘General’ project and alter all the settings in this project to our needs. In my case I changed the ‘Light’ object from ‘Point’ to ‘Sun’ and removed the cube. In addition I modified the render settings to my most common setting.

Save the new Default Project

After we finished the modification of the project we are going to save the project as a new startup file. This is done in File/Defaults/Save Startup File, please check the picture below.

Blender will ask again if you really want to change the startup Blender file. By confirming this message the new Blender startup file overwrites the old one.

Default Video Editing Project

As for the ‘General’ project you can change the default project for the Video Editing view. Herefore you open under File/New/Video Editing the recent Video Editing startup file like shown below.

Again you modify the project to your needs. Because I often use the WebM as codec for animations this is my default setting.

If you finished you again save the file under File/Defaults/Save Startup File. As you can see in the picture below this section the label of the ‘Defaults’ box (bottom right) is ‘Video Editing’ which indicates that you will now save the startup blender file of the Video Editing.

Blender Startup File Location

The Blender Startup File Location hardly depends on the operating system which is used. This information is copied from blender.stackexchange.com:

Windows

The following files are stored in:

%APPDATA%Blender FoundationBlender2.73config

(%APPDATA% points to C:Users<UserName>AppDataRoaming)

In more recent versions of Windows it will be in:

C:Users<UserName>AppDataRoamingBlender FoundationBlender<VersionNumber>config

Note that AppData is a hidden folder, you can change directory to AppData from the command line.

Linux

The Linux versions stores the same files at this path

/home/<UserName>/.config/blender/2.73/config

OS X

For OS X, the config files can be located at

/Users/<UserName>/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.73/config

The Library folder is also likely to be hidden by default so you may have to look up how to unhide it.

Location Content

This picture shows the content of this Blender location. It is shown that we have a startup.blend file which belongs to the ‘General’ Default Blender project and a folder which is named ‘Video_Editing’. This folder has a startup.blend file as well and if, you guess it, the ‘Video Editing’ Default Blender project.