• Install Blender from the Steam store
  
• Open up Blender
  
• Go into the controller configurations and go to "Lay-outs of the community" tab.
  
• Then press X to show all community layouts (it only shows downloaded layouts by default).
  
• Find the "Making a donut - v1.1" controller layout in the list and select it.
  
• Download and apply the layout

One of the important things to know is that we can combine modifiers such as Shift and control (L4,L5) and radial menu's. It's all just emulating a keyboard. Keep that in mind when thinking about how to do a shortcut. How would you do it on a keyboard? Then look at the back buttons and the modifiers they represent. Press the ones you need and then just add in the last key you need with a radial menu.

For example let's say that we want to apply the transforms of an object with the shortcut Ctrl + A. We first hold the Ctrl (L5) and open up the radial menu on the right joystick and select A. This will then input the shortcut Ctrl + A.

The 3 back pedals/buttons are mapped to modifier keys and can be used with other keys in the radial menu's or buttons.

(L4) : Shift _________ (R4): Alt
(L5) : Control _______ (R5): F12 (the exception)

Important!: The back buttons are easier to hold if you press them on the side of the button that is closest to the deck and not on the side of the grip. This requires less pressure which I found to be a neccesity when using them as modifiers.

To use the modifiers we can use the common keys radial menu attached to the right joystick. These can be used seperately with or without the modifier keys. First press the modifier you want (with the back buttons) and then select the key in the radial menu.

Examples are:

• Ctrl + A - Applying transforms
  
• N - Showing properties
  
• Ctrl + P - parent
  
• 0 - Making the camera the view
  
• B - Bevel

The most common operations are attached to the left joystick. These include:

• Move (G)
  
• Rotate (R)
  
• Scale (S)
  
  
• Duplicate (Shift + D)
  
• Delete (Delete)
  
• Paste (Ctrl + V)
  
• Copy (Ctrl + C)
  
• Rename (F2 + open keyboard)

The middle mouse button is attached to the left trigger (L2). The left mouse click is the right trigger (R2) and the right click is the right bumper (R1). I found this most comfortable as i personally don't like clicking the touch pad. This way I also have one hand completely free to move around the touchpad comfortably.

Other useful tips:

• The left and right mouse click can be used in Blender to apply or abort operations. This can be useful in confirmation popups.
  
  
• You can scroll the UI by holding the middle mouse button (L2) and dragging. I found this easier then using the up and down arrows for scrolling.
  
  
• If you can't find something keep in mind that anything in Blender can be done using the mouse. If there's a shortcut you can't really do or don't use often you can just use the UI menu's.

The A button is mapped to Shift + A to add new objects/ elements depending on the viewport.

The X, Y and B buttons are mapped to the X, Y, Z keys to control the axes.

Other helpful tips:

• Shift + A can be achieved in multiple ways. The A button that it is mapped to but also L4(Shift) + the right stick radial menu selecting A. Some controls can be achieved using multiple ways.
  
  
• As the axis buttons are mapped to the keys on a keyboard these can also be used for other shortcuts that use X, Y or Z. You can use undo with L5 (Ctrl) + B (Z). Which also means you can do redo by using L4 + L5 + B. Which is just Shift + Ctrl + Z.
  
  
• You can move on 2 axis by using Shift (L4) + axis (X,Y,B) you don't want to move over.

To make inputting numbers usable I made a radial menu. This can be accessed with the left touchpad. You'll have to click the touchpad to execute it. Mainly so that you can keep on typing. I also added cm and mm options because it was frustrating to keep typing 0.01. These definitely save me some time while inputting numbers.

The left and right buttons of the D-pad or button-pad are mapped to the undo and redo. This is mostly because I often used the wrong shortcuts or made a mistake with positioning. Having them on the left and right buttons enables me to work faster.

The up and down buttons are used to scroll up and down. I don't find this a great solution but it's not terrible. I mostly scroll the UI with middle mouse button (L2) and dragging.

You can tab between edit and view mode with the left bumper (L1). You can also use the number radial to switch between vertex, edge and face by pressing 1, 2 or 3.

By default Blender will render in a new window. However the steam UI isn't really setup for this. You'll have to close it by opening the steam UI, going to windows and then close it with X. As you can imagine this isn't a great workflow. So what I did is changed the setting to render in the current viewport with F12 (R5) and then after i'm done to reset the viewport using Shift + F5 (back button). This changes the viewport to the render viewport while rendering and then when done you reset it to the 3D viewport.

To accomplish this you have to go to Edit > Preferences > Interface > Temporary Editors and set the 'Render In' setting to 'Image editor'. This will make sure that it will show the render in the current window and not open up a new window.

To change the settings make sure to save them with the 'Save Preferences' under the (three lines) burger menu at the bottom left of the Preferences menu. Then you can open the steam UI, go to windows and close the Preferences window with X. The setting should now be applied. You can try it out by rendering. It should now be rendered with R5 and when finished you can go back with the back button.

You might als want to know that i had some problems with Cycles crashing but Eevee seemed to be working fine.

While making the layout I found I had to many operations to map to all buttons. At this point i've found to be able to do basically everything on the first layer. But in older versions I needed more buttons so it's more of a backup. It also comes with a full alphabet and has a different mouse sensitivity.

The layer can be switched with the start button (right above the right stick). In the older version it was mainly used in rendering. A and B are mapped to rendering and resetting the viewport.

The second layer might be removed in later versions.

• Slow down movement with control and shift - I sometimes had problems with the movements going to fast or slow. You can change the behaviour by using Shift (L4) and Ctrl (R5).
  
  
• Don't forget the touchscreen - The touchscreen works but I kept on forgetting that I have it. I found it mostly usefull for painting masks. There are some usecases in which it is pretty usefull but it seems to be just very specific tasks for me.
  
  
• Viewport shading - One of the things I kept running into is the viewport shading buttons in top bar kept getting pushed off screen. You can drag the UI with middle mouse button (L2) to show the viewport options. But Blender also has it's own viewport radial menu for changing viewport shading, which you can open in the viewport with Z (B).
  
  
• UI scale - You can change the scale of the UI in the Preferences by going to Interface and then changing the Resolution scale and Line width.
  
  
• Steam Deck STL model - The model of the Steam Deck is available and can be downloaded from the Steam Gitlab [gitlab.steamos.cloud].

I had fun making this button configuration and it works well for me. If it doesn't for you or you don't like certain parts feel free to copy, remix and share. Always happy to see other ways of doing things. Have fun!