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Do tiny projects in Blender and just trudge through the horrible experience of having to look up a bunch of stuff. I also moved from 3ds Max to Blender, but back in the Blender 2.7 days, I'm sure it's easier today.

Basically take whatever you'd do in 3ds Max normally, commit to doing in in Blender and prepare to Google/Ask an LLM "I can do X in 3ds Max 2025, how can I do the same or equivalent in Blender 5.2?" A LOT. Nothing beats practice :)

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IMO it’s probably better to start following at least one tutorial video which will walk you through most of the common actions and UI.

Different minds learn best different ways I suppose, I could never go through a "tutorial video" for any visual programs, always done it "the hard way" by basically looking up action by action. But again, YMMV of course.

Yes, but I think for Blender specifically this is the hard way.

After a video tutorial I always concluded that I had a few really clumsily ways to work around my lack of knowledge. Some workflows really need an expert demonstration, or you won't even know what is possible. (I do pause the videos to look up the docu.)

The problem is you will develop an incomplete understanding, using a ton of weird workflows, and missing tools that are super useful that you didn't know existed.

Just pushing through one end to end tutorial will introduce all the main concepts than asking gemini for bits and pieces won't get. It's not as satisfying as doing your own project but pushing through at least one of them is well worth it.

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