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Comment by aliasEli | Hacker News Reader

Blender is a very good piece of software. The main problem I usually have with it is finding documentation. Although the official documentation is fairly good, Blender is a huge program, and it can be hard to find the info you need. Also the documentation is not always up-to-date.

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If you're talking about the actual documentation as opposed to the API documentation, then I beg to differ. The Blender documentation is fairly up-to date with each release (stable) and in some cases even the alpha ones.

On the other hand, I found the API documentation to be lacking and I had to visit the Blender stack exchange multiple times to see any examples or the usage of most of the APIs.

The API is the worst part of Blender.

* Almost every release introduces some breaking changes

* The documentation that you find online is almost always out of date

* Most error messages give you very little feedback to figure out the problem

* Most of the existing operators/scripts are implemented in C/C++ and are built into blender. So when you encounter a useless error message (extremely common), your only option is to clone the full Blender source tree and start searching for that particular operator

* Many functions/operators are dependent on the editor state. For example: the only way to pass an input to an operator is to change the currently selected object, and you have to make sure the editor is in the correct mode (object/edit/pose/etc). All of these things are visible to the user, so you better revert any changes you made once your script completes to avoid interrupting their workflow/annoying them.

But the built-in Python console with tab completion is excellent. Even though the API has all those problems, having an interactive REPL to figure things out is great. If the API were more stable, documented, and less clunky with the editor state stuff, creating extensions for Blender would be an awesome experience.

While I think the documentation is pretty good, something like Blender is really hard to find your way around initially as a layman.

I’ve found YouTube tutorials to be the best way so far but, My God, they’re slow going. Don’t get me wrong BlenderGuru has done incredible work. I just really struggle with video as a long form learning medium.

Does anyone have a good (non video) resource for getting into Blender? I know my way around a bit, but would love to get deeper into it. I recall an article on HN in the past that walked through the controls from a coders perspective (vim like control). Something along those lines.

Apart from the Blender manual itself, I don't think there are. In general, I also find the repetition of basic things in every Blender video to be exhausting, even if by sticking to it I do learn a lot more stuff. Ian Hubert and his 1 minute tutorial are fun exceptions to this.

Perhaps you could study Blenders' nodes systems? I've found that channels dedicated to shader and geometry nodes are a lot more precise in their terminology and succinct in their explanations. Probably that is because their target audiences are slightly more advanced and, also, the positive influence of math on their method.

Here are a few Youtube channels I recommend: - Erindale. He's probably the most known Blender node wizard. His videos are pleasant, thorough and accurate. - Just 3d things. Another channel about nodes, also very thorough and precise. - Sam Bowman. A channel that methodically goes through the creation of different materials. A very useful resource. - Entagma. They're mainly Houdini people, but in the last months they've also started doing geometry nodes videos. Great and informative stuff.

There are many others, but I can't remember them right now.

Different use case (of more engineering / 3D printing), but I've also found the channel Maker Tales and his Precison Modelling tutorial series really good, with relatively short, focused videos.

That’s awesome. Thanks.

This is true for every 3D editor.

This is a common issue in large free software projects. For instance Godot has hired some contractors specifically to write documentation.

Personally I usually end up using Youtube when I need to do something with Blender.

Blender documentation is more useful once you know Blender well enough to even know what to look for, but in all honesty I've found that it's far more effective to just search your Blender question on YouTube and watch a video from BlenderGuru or CG Cookie or one of the many other fantastic tutorial creators out there. :)

Youtube is best I found. Just find tutorial for your area of interest and do the basic tutorial a couple of times till you get fluent in it.

I stumbled across Ian Hubert's Blender-focused channel (https://youtube.com/c/mrdodobird) even though I have no interest in CGI production. His one-minute lazy tutorials are fun to watch and funny. My favorite: https://youtu.be/imkSdlbXB_U

That was way too fast for me but funny (but a great example how to make something quick)

That’s the funny thing about Blender. Beginner tutorials are painfully slow for anyone who’s anyway familiar with the software. These videos and those by CG matter adopt this really fast style be use that how the work flow goes.

Ian's tutorials sort of illuminate the path quickly. If you need more details on any specific part there's typically a standard tutorial floating out there about it.

That is fantastic, thank you.

My daughter likes to play around in Blender and is getting decent at it. Her issue with YouTube tutorials is that a lot of them are for older versions of Blender and they are different enough that the workflow has changed.

Making a good point there, add “2.9” as a search parameter! Also try to follow recently updated channels.

Also it would be nice to have the version number displayed in a text area somewhere within blender itself so the video captures it.

There are some really good YouTubers that do great tutorials that are fully up to date. A lot of them might not be entirely child friendly (sweary language) depending on your daughter’s age.

Between the official documentation, blender stack exchange, and YouTube I've never had a problem finding what I need.

Ditto. I use Blender at an amateur level from time to time and I feel that every time I want to do something that i know is possible and I look it up, the official documentation mentions menus or UI items that don't exist anymore so I have to figure it out myself.

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