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Comment by lars_francke | Hacker News Reader

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 enjoy these threads every time!

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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

I hate most open-source UIs (see GIMP and Audacity), but Blender's is a breath of fresh air so far. I was pleasantly surprised.

I took a class in Maya and found its UI to be a shitshow of redundancy and unintuitiveness. Didn't explore 3DS Max though.

If you have specific objections to the Blender UI, by all means share.

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"

What you're asking for was added as an option when loading files, though I can't remember when.

Steps are:

Step 1: Save your blender project

Step 2: File --> New --> General

Step 3: File --> Open (find your messed up blender project)

Step 4: Go to the cog (settings) in the top right

Step 5: Uncheck 'Load UI'

Step 6: Load your blender project

It will then have default UI

I only remembered this was possible, not how to do it. The steps above are copied from this persons lovely succinct video tutorial on how to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKJLOIy7OFE

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.

For anyone just getting started, no video tutorials really clicked for me until I found Grant Abbitt's: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn3ukorJv4vuU3ILv3g3x...

Obviously no guarantees of instant savantism, but never say never!!

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.

Thank you both for that recommendation. I'll be sure to look at his courses when the next Blender release comes out ;-)

It's a fun week or two of evening activities. Gives you that "oooo, my thing looks like the picture on the box" tutorial rush.

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.

Exact same way I “learned” audacity.

But ... if audacity is like notepad, blender is like vim.

Or neovim with an emacs plugin called cycles…

So.... How do I exit blender?

Open a new terminal, find the pid and kill it? :-D

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

Grant Abbitt — cited as another good resource in this discussion — also likes this book. The ToC gives a detailed look into what the book covers.

Check this, his vids were the best for me (and then his stuff on ArtStation, but paid :| )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2U0MiZSV9A

Thank you! I'm happy to pay for good content. I'll take a look.

In fact, If I could make a targeted donation towards Blender that only goes towards funding documentation I'd be up for that as well.

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 should write to them and ask! I'm sure lots of people will appreciate that, it seems like a worthy cause.

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.

Hope it works out! :)

They replied:

"We are not considering labeling donations to specific futures."

Aw oh no :(

What kinda thing would you want to make?

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.

roundedcube is all you need.

-- Build the model only from roundedcubes as it is also a sphere and cube.

I'm a noob but have learned Blender->3D-print. I can report that it works well enough for me.

WIP: https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/scratch-built-space-tu...

Try solvespace. There is also the CAD sketcher addon for blender, but that's big software compared to solvespace.

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.

Do you want to render photorealistic images or make models for a video game engine or....

It's really helpful to have a goal or project in mind, something extremely small. The classic for photoreal is the donut, just a donut on a plate.

For game models, I made some low poly missiles and a small cityscape that looks like trash but now I know how to use blender.

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.

This is the course you are looking for.

https://cgmasters.com/blender-for-complete-and-total-beginne...

the blender doughnut project video series is a pretty good intro to them and your complexity can go up quite a bit

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.

https://www.skillshare.com/en/classes/Filmmaking-with-Blende...

Did you try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw ?

I did, yeah. Didn't work for me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35360962

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'd recommend a highly-rated book if you are starting from 0.

Do you happen to have a recommendation? Books have the unfair disadvantage that they are out-of-date the moment they hit the printer.

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.

not every piece of software sticks, blender post 2.8 is an amazing achievement, but he'll never get me the way Maya does

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