It's become a ritual for me: Get excited by the Blender release notes on HN, try to find good beginner resources, play around with it for an hour, give up.
This is not a negative comment about Blender. I'm not their target audience I guess. I just _want_ to learn it but I can't really find good resources that start at 0.
There are some Youtube channels out there but videos have never been a good way of learning for me.
It's tough keeping material up to date with a fast moving project.
I recommend starting right out of the gate with a modest project goal in mind, such as something neat to 3d print, or a simulation of interesting gears turning.
The period where you feel like you’re progressing the least and struggling the most is actually when you’re learning fastest.
Agree. You really need a personal goal in order to learn. Plodding through tutorials with no particular goal in mind is... not a fool's errand, but certainly a fast path to boredom and no retention.
Yep, same here. I remember years ago playing around with the student version of 3DS Max, was able to create and animate quite complex scenes for my school presentations in minutes, everything was very intuitive and stable. Trying to use Blender feels like I'm wrestling with the interface most of the time, while not being entirely sure what's going on the rest of the time.
Got to admit overall it looks better and better. Wish they took some time to redesign the interface properly, not just 'improve' it. The current one is still mostly looks and feels like 2.x
The UI "dead-ends" a lot, where you get into a state where, "why is the wireframe not showing?", or, "why aren't the transform gizmos displaying and why is my screen now one single screen with no UI?" Especially Macbook Pro, where you don't have a numpad.
One way to get through this is to save a startup file, and just keep going back to it. I wish there was a "reset UI to default startup file state while preserving current file"
Oh dang -- nice! I wish this was available when I was a few steps back. I tried multiple times but 2.5 when they fixed the UI was when it finally became actually usable. It's sooo good. I mean, compared to buying 3DS Max, or Maya, et al
I kind of did the same. The hours may have added up though — I finally started grokking it a bit.
Actually, what finally worked was to have a very specific (small) project in mind. For me it was to figure out how to model a plastic storage bin. I struggled for days on that one — making all the rookie mistakes.
Having now done several follow-on projects in Blender I think I could go back and create that plastic storage bin in less than an hour.
It's going to just take time. But having a small, achievable goal/project in mind will give you the excuse to get there.
Grant Abbitt's the best. His Udemy course "Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners" is really great for a complete novice. It's a really well thought out style of "repeat after me, now let's do it again and I'll give you a bit less guidance, now here's the thing again and you try it on your own, okay now I'll walk through it." Very intentional, very well done, broad introduction to many tools.
He also has some short free videos of the same style: "here's a simple shape, produce it on your own, now I'll show you how I would've done it."
Of course, it's on Udemy, so the price rapidly vacillates between $10 and $190 according to no system knowable to man, but when it's on the cheap end it's a great deal.
To reiterate what others have said, one doesn’t just “learn blender”, it’s way too complicated a software with too many parts for different roles/jobs. Instead focus on a goal. Have a project in mind and pursue the learnings to complete the project. Start small like “I want to model and render a small room” to get the feel for sculpting and modeling, materials and lighting.
You are correct. I did elaborate on that in another thread.
I did come in with a concrete project when I first started looking at this years ago. I'm interested in creating models for 3D Printing.
Unfortunately, even with this limited scope I found it hard to get started.
But again: I'm not blaming anyone. I know that I'm using a professional tool as an amateur who does not even have enough time to skill himself up for something that is possible in this tool but not its primary use-case.
Mostly, my comment was meant as a fun/light story about how much I like thos release notes and how they get me to spend a whole evening on Blender every time they pop up.
I like books and lots of little nougats of information you can piece together: like how you can learn code or an SDK. So for me, this book has been great: https://www.blendersecrets.org/book
I'd be willing to vouch for his courses on ArtStation; he was explaining his line of thought well.
My issue with most of paid tutorials is that it's hard to know if it will be worth it - 40 USD is not a lot to most of you I pressume, but I'm a Pole and a student, so that is suddenly a way bigger sum of money.
You know what, that's a good idea.
I did send an email just now.
We have the concept of "targeted donations" over at the Apache Software Foundation.
I did actually check their about page (https://fund.blender.org/about/) where they mention that 5-8% of the funds go into "making development projects visible and accessible in general" and one part of that is docs.
Blender can do so many things. I personally use it to draw pretty things to be 3d printed, and then cast out of metal. But there are people who use it to composite things into live action footage, people who make game assets, and a lot more.
I'm mostly interested in a 3D printing suite as well.
I've been using SolidEdge for a few years and Fusion and also tried FreeCad but the latter also never really clicked for me.
I'm trying to find an open source solution - I understand that SolidEdge etc. are parametric and Blender is not. But I at least wanted to get good enough in Blender to make simple things (mostly functional, not pretty as in your case).
My 3D printing needs are not seriously complicated, so I've found that OpenSCAD to be the best solution for me. Because I'm a programmer, a workflow focused on programmatically generating geometry is very intuitive. Everything else I've tried is too cluttered and complicated for what I want to do. It's weak when it comes to organic geometry, but most of what I make isn't organic-looking. If I needed to make something more organic, I'd probably make the base model in OpenSCAD first and then bring it into Zbrush.
I've done some basics with OpenSCAD and it does well, but as soon as I want to do anything that isn't just a bunch of extruded polygons I run into trouble. Also the lack of chamfer and fillet functions is frustrating, even though I know I can use a custom function someone else wrote I don't like not understanding the math behind the code.
I'm with you. For me it's also about motivation, and getting past that point where you can do basic things, and then learn by doing. I'm on a Mac, but I do have a big monitor with a wide keyboard, so I could give that a try.
Udemy has some good courses for which you never should pay more than $20 and they always have offers. It's not about time, but it's about getting yourself motivated to do that course day after day.
I started playing with the game editor in the pre 2.79 versions. It's Amazing how easy you Can Do cool little games. I find it much pleasant to use than unity, because blender is a all in one solution. The game player embed a python interpreter. It would be fun to use it to create a data visualiser. Unfortunally, theses pre-2.79 are not compatible with new Intel drivers for 520 and 630 chipset : selecting an object in a second layer make the software crashing. I found an old 520 driver, and it is working fine, but at this day I didn't find any driver version compatible with blender < 2.79 for Intel 630 graphics.
Polygon Runway has a good intro tutorial. But like you, I'm in a similar boat. Play around with it for a couple hours and can't get back into it even when I really want to. I think it's a matter of building a good habit.
I did the first five or so videos and that didn't work for me. I know, that others have different opinions here but it was too much "do this, then do that, then this" for me and too little explanation why.
He's acknowledged some of the short-comings of the most recent iteration of the doughnut tutorial on twitter before. Blender 4.0 should be coming out later this year and he's stated he'll be releasing a new version then: https://twitter.com/andrewpprice/status/1631529825717604353
You're not alone. I think it's a problem with all 3D modelling and CAD software as well - it's all amazing - but it's all really quite horrible to use.
Just think how easy it is to do simple things like cutting and pasting selections in 2D (even with any number of layers) with tools like Photoshop, Pixelmator Pro and GIMP - now you try doing that in Blender or Fusion 360 and you'll quickly find that not only is not at all intuitive - it's a bloody nightmare.
I can recommend this paid course on skillshare. I know the author and he is super professional. A really dedicated person doing a short film and sharing everything in a course.
You must endlessly google for the first week(s) to learn how to use it. Luckily I have only encountered a few issues where stack did not have an existing answer.
The youtube tutorials out there are sometimes OK but typically mediocre and annoying, so I learned most by having a problem to solve and figuring it out step by step.
In my experience you'll want to start with the sculpting mode. The vertex twiddling can come later. Rough "tutorial" for anyone interested:
1) start blender
2) switch to sculpt mode from the dropdown in the top left, by default it's set to "object mode"
3) Open the "remesh" dropdown in the top right and click "Remesh" in the panel that shows.
4) mess around with the brushes along the left side. Click and drag to use the brush. Click and drag middle mouse button to rotate around the sculpt. Scroll to zoom. Shift and drag middle mouse button to "offset" your view.
5) notice your sculpt starts getting kind of glitchy or low resolution, Go back to step 3 and repeat. You can lower the "voxel size" to increase sculpt resolution.
I feel like blender isn't especially hard to use these days, it just does a lot of things and has a lot of buttons which makes it hard for beginners. Ignore all the buttons you're not using and it's a lot more doable.
hey me too!! The video that finally helped me get going was this one from Imphenzia on YT: https://youtu.be/1jHUY3qoBu8
all his other stuff is great, like building and rigging a low-poly character. Instead of having to follow tutorials and make stuff I didn’t want to, he shows you how to use the tools to make what’s in your imagination!
I don't but would pick the highest-rated books from versions 3.x or 3.2x.+ because interfaces changed.
Blender and similar programs have been around for decades however. Learn one and you learn them all to some degree. Personally learned Maya and 3DSMax back in the day and so Blender basics were pretty understandable once they improved standardization of the UI.
I hope this doesn't sound negative, but I'm curious about the converging feature set of modeling software like blender and game engines like Unreal. From my total amateur point of view it seems game engines slowly get all those nice modeling features and visual fidelity, while also being able render all it in real time. How can modeling software compete with that? Vastly better tools for modelling?
The workflow difference starts to matter more than actual features, where for me the workflow for modelling in Blender is miles ahead than what you get in something like Unreal Engine.
Secondary and more technical, not everything has to or can be real-time rendered, and for that Blender is probably still king of the two, where Unreal Engine is optimized for real-time.
There are things you can only do in Blender, and vice-versa, so what the right tool is will as always depend on the job.
Yes, blender is mainly a modeling tool. You can plug it into many different renderers (technically, including an Unreal engine game where you exported your models). Epic subsidising it should hint at it not being a competitor :)
There are other niche tools in a creative pipeline, like Substance Painter for texturing and applying surface shaders. Blender has image and material edition capabilities, but they are more entry-level than competitors to Substance and GIMP/Photoshop.I think there's a niche for a lot more tools, including "AI" stable diffusion-like tools.
Also, blender used to have its own "Blender Game" engine.
Game engines like Unreal are incredible, but Blender still has capabilities they lack: unbiased rendering. Real-time engines work via a series of clever tricks and hacks. We've spent decades of effort on hiding the seams, but they are there if you know where to look.
As an example, take refraction. I can look up Newton's telescope dimensions, model the lenses in Blender, slap a glass material on there, and look down it to see an accurate view. (Minus diffraction and dispersion, and dispersion can be added manually.)
Real-time raytracing is an answer to this, but it's not quite there in it's current state. It still takes an order of magnitude or two longer to raytrace a frame than to rasterize it, so it's currently only used sparingly to touch up details.
Personally this is one of the areas I'd love to see Blender continue to develop. A spectral rendering option in Cycles would be invaluable when you want to render the Dark Side of the Moon logo.
Unreal's modeling tools are fine for blocking out stuff but you still want to do proper modeling in an actual modeling software because of the modifiers & tools that make the process so much simpler and less cumbersome
Actually immediately thought of Dolphin with this comment. The Dolphin team's dedication to having fantastic write-up that match every release is commendable as hell. Phenomenal software, as well. :)
Blender is what I point to when people tell me open source is doomed for failure. There isn't anything that comes remotely close in terms of features and ubiquitous support, and its free. Honestly the best example of open source done right.
And on the brink of not existing at a couple of times in its history, reinforcing how tenacious you have to be :) Huge Kudos to Ton who've been through hell and back for Blender to end up what it is today.
This is an impressive project, but I was hoping the UX standardization would continue. Seems to have slowed?
I've started using it this month due to hearing things had been improved, but what did I find?
- Window always opens maximized, which I never want. Couldn't find a way to change it. (A common arrogance of media apps.)
- F11 key doesn't toggle fullscreen. To its credit I was able to change this. Defaults are important however.
- When in full screen the top left menu doesn't extend to the edge of the screen. So you can't easily hit it without slowing down. I first learned about Fitt's Law in the 90s, not exactly new:
Is this a lack of interest? Or special-snowflake syndrome?
Another quibble with media apps is that they want to use their own special hotkeys for zooming, panning etc, but I never want them to be different from my browser and/or web maps, which are used every single day. Option doesn't seem to exist to change them in a group to standards. Probably could do individually, but don't yet have time, and risk conflicts.
To be a good desktop citizen these things still need to be addressed. Looks like they have profiles now so non-standardisms could be moved to the classic profile.
I only follow this stuff casually, but IIRC hair is notoriously difficult to render realistically without massive computing power. It doesn't surprise me that this would be called out as a leading feature.
I commented elsewhere so I sound like I am trying to push it. This book does it. I speak passionately about this because video tutorials just don’t do it for me. And you asked for a book but the other comment is a video. When you google Blender books it’s mostly people asking and people answering with videos references : https://www.blendersecrets.org/book
Greatly appreciate it! I don't know why but book format is the one I like best, maybe it's a mix of learning at my own speed and at the same time something tangible that I can mark in various ways.
> With great power comes great complex-ability, so Blender now includes hair assets to make your life easier.
That's a good lesson is software/product design. As things get featureful/complicated, it's nice to provide carefully chosen defaults and samples to help people get started.
Anyone know the performance on M1 Mac, 16GB ram for use creating only simple model s? I do not plan on creating thousands of objects for a scene and wondering if it is suitable machine for learning and where it might start to lag.
That machine will run blender absolutely fine for simple tasks! Heck, I learned blender on a 2013 Core i7 MacBook Pro years ago, and even then it ran pretty darn smooth all things considered.
One of my favorite projects ever. I’m having a ton of fun learning blender and I can’t wait to get to the point where I can start learning hair modeling.
Looks like GPT is the new 'blockchain', except it's the unwashed masses calling for it rather than VCs (I suppose the latter have learned some hard lessons recently).
Hi, it looks like you are commenting on my username: ftxbro. Thanks for noticing!
After lurking I made this account only to post a joking-not-joking explanation of why Alameda had the weirdly specific credit limit $65,355,999,994 with FTX and why I thought it could be a funny off-by-almost-1000x bug/typo/mishap https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34473811 but I think almost no one read my comment because I posted it so late after the thread had scrolled off the front page :(
EDIT: wait did you call me an unwashed mass? usually the unwashed masses call me an elitist!
I don't know about that. I think it is fully plausible that products like Blender will get LLM integration over the next few years. Already this looks quite useful and it's made by one guy in a week.
Blender has support to programmatically generate and manipulate 3d objects.
Of course it could be handy for some users if those programs can be written by a tool that has natural language as input.
And as you pointed out there a plugins doing that.
But I would agree it's obviously ridiculous to think Blender would integrate some third party commercial non-free API into it's core.
You thought in two days they would integrate a commercial plugin that uses a closed commercial API that just generates commands and then put in a major release?
no, but if you watched presentation you mostly fiddling with numerical values for how the hair would be constructed. not a hard stretch to imagine GPT learning how to fiddle with that and create its own characters by - yes - generating text values / numerical values that Blender understand.
This is not a negative comment about Blender. I'm not their target audience I guess. I just _want_ to learn it but I can't really find good resources that start at 0.
There are some Youtube channels out there but videos have never been a good way of learning for me. It's tough keeping material up to date with a fast moving project.
I enjoy these threads every time!