Where did you start?

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1

Hi my name is Ethan and I’m 15 years of age and I want to get into 3D art. I’ve been drawing for the last 3-4 years and I wanted to do 3D art recently cause I think it would be fun and challenging, like drawing for example. What made me want to get into 3D modeling/art was seeing the movie Zootopia made by Disney. Don’t know why, but it made get into it. Now I just have a passion for it now and some day wish to work for them. So my question is where did you guys start? I looked for tutorials on YouTube and Google but I couldn’t find what I wanted. If there are any good YouTube tutorials or Google tutorials please link them in your reply. I know Disney uses a lot of in-house stuff based on Maya but I just don’t have the money to afford Maya. I wanted to use Blender for a couple of reasons:

1: Pretty obvious (Its free).

2: Just to get a grasped on what things in 3D look like.

3: It would help me out in the long run.

These are the only reasons I can think of right now but I’m certain there’s more I can think of. I know I’m not going to learn this over night but it gives me a new thing to learn. I like challenges and ones that I can really benefit from. I’m also new to this but I got the basics down and know how to navigate through Blender so that won’t be an issue, but if you have any good basic Blender in depth tutorials that would be great!

Thanks for reading,

~Ethan

2

Hi,

You can start by reading and exploring with Pixar’s RenderMan using Non-Comercial (Free) version, which is working with Blender.
You will need to register. Then can head on to Pixar forums, check Community resources, documentation…

To enjoy a well organized curriculum i propose to go through with Pixar In A Box on Khan Academy.

Basically practice, practice a lot… be patient, take it slowly… don’t take on too much at once (does more harm than good)
and foremost… love life, enjoy & feel good.

Welcome
:eyebrowlift:

Nice starters, tips & tutorials on Blender:
- Blender Cloud
- Blender Cookie
- Blender Guru
- Creative Shrimp
- Blender Diplom
- BlenderArt magazine

There’s so much more, hope it will get you going and if anything comes to mind… we are!

3

hi
yeah just as burnin say,d ,he left nothing for me to add her, i,v started working on blender for 6 year,s now and it,s all about youtube and other site,s but you need to know first, to become a good modeler on 3d ,you need to become a good artiest ,not as good as other,s but at least the why you feel it,s good and the why where people can understand your point, a great artist isn’t about styles it,s about how much can you let people understand what you want by art , so after you learn how to draw ,start drawing your character map ,then go to youtube ,know the basic,s of modeling,s and start on ,that,s what get me her :slight_smile: nothing is impossible ,and you can be what you want if you want , work hard and don’t lose fate and if you ever need anything ,then blender artist is her for you and other,s

other thing ,blender is actually growing up so fast it,s actually can do move,s just like Disney and other studio,s if you can chick on youtube blender movie,s the most popular one will pup out for you is sintel and there are other,s you can chick that i think thy,l change your mind for ever

4

I have a different theory about where to start. My advice: Just start.
Get the default cube and try make it look something like a car. It won’t come out exactly how you like, so try again. If you get stuck, google for specific problems, but I’ve found that learning blender by playing with it is:
a) Really fun
b) You learn to make your own things rather than copy tutorials.

5

I second the playing to learn - as sdfgeoff suggests ,

get the basics though

extrude, move cursor to selection, move selection to cursor offset, and scale etc.

6

Hello Ethan!

I run a weekly game development club where I live in which we get together and work. The thing about working in Blender, or Unity or any other powerful digital tool is that it can be overwhelming at first. Spending time with other people that want to do it to can help keep you motivated to keep going. So the first thing that I’d suggest is find other people that want to work on 3D modeling and build things. On top of that later you may want to find people to help you add sound, or write a small short story for your characters or whatever you’re building.

The first thing I built in Blender was a Sword. It was rather simple and taught me what I needed to know about navigating around in the tool. Later I built people, learned how to texture (putting colors/skin on models), worked on rigging (putting bones in a model), and started animating. The engine is really powerful, but it’ll take some time to really get good at it.

Think about anything you want to do like sports, or play music etc… You probably didn’t start off that great but over time you get better and better. Make sure you don’t discourage yourself by expecting to go from building swords to Zootopia modeling overnight.

YouTube channel that I learned a lot from is Little Guy CGI run by Alimayo Arango https://www.youtube.com/user/aadigitalproduction

Hope that helped!

7

I actually “started” a few years back. I was modding an older game called Morrowind, and was kinda aggravated about not being able to do some model related edits in the game’s editor, and that led me to Blender. I needed the most basic functions to do the edits I wanted, and I didn’t move from there since then. But recently my desire to get more into Blender got stronger, so I started messing with functions more complex than scale and rotate, and here I am. :stuck_out_tongue:

8

I started by, well, starting. And then stopping. Then I started again. And stopped again. Rinse and repeat.

When I was sixteen, I got myself Counter-Strike: Source and consequently Garry’s Mod - which was, at the time, a free mod, the paid Steam version came some time later - and found that certain models I wanted to play with weren’t in it, nor could I find them in the add-on database, so I looked up a bunch of stuff. UV unwrapping, texturing, exporting to Source. My very first finished 3D model was, quite humbly, a pencil. A six-sided cylinder with one centre vertex pulled out for the tip.

But, I like creating. Making from scratch. I’d be a decent deity if I could be bothered to look into omnipotence. And of all the creative outlets I’ve tried (couldn’t keep me away from a map editor when I was young) 3D modelling seemed to me the purest. An empty void that you can fill to your heart’s content.

Well.

That’s the romanticised version, it’s true but only in hindsight. Back then I probably thought more along the lines of “I’m bored, what do I do?” and my laptop at the time wasn’t very good for video games (aforementioned CSS only barely ran and had plenty of graphics glitches).

So, yeah. I just jumped straight in, failed a few times, rage quit some more (and I still routinely abandon models and scenes that don’t go my way), but eventually I got stuff to stick. Get used to the UI, look at tutorials (for the record, I prefer text-based tutorials over videos on general principle, but there’s not a lot of those anymore) and just… keep going. Invent a hundred ways to not make a light bulb. Every failure is a learning experience of some description, and learning experiences you will need.

9

I agree: “just start.”

No, I didn’t “start” in CG. I “started” in computer programming (and now, consulting …) in a day when none of us, in our wildest(!) dreams, could have imagined “what is commonplace today.”

Nevertheless, “I have made a business of it,” and continue to do so.

My first job consisted of: tearing pages off of a line-printer and shoving it through the proper slot. Sometimes, at 2 o’clock in the morning. I faithfully did it, even though I assure you that it was not “fun,” and in so doing I gained first the attention and then the respect of people that could get me where I wanted to go.

Now, consider this …

There was a time, several years ago, when Zootopia was a project that “was going to have ‘Walt’s Name On It.™’” After approval had been secured to spend $X Million dollars on it, someone had to assemble many teams who were going to … accomplish(!) what had to be done. “On budget, on time.”

“Was it always ‘fun?’” I guarantee not. But, they did it, and “Walt would be proud.”

Some of the team members were “seniors.” Many others were “apprentices.” But all[/u] of them, one way or the other, had earned the trust of decision-makers. And, all of them, working [I]together, accomplished a movie that most-certainly is worthy to bear Walt’s signature.

Pursue your dream. And, be willing to work your a*s off to get there. So that one day you might be part of a project “upon which Walt’s ghost would be pleased to sign his name.”

Why? Because “working your a*s off is what you do for a living,” even though you have long ago resigned yourself to the fact that you will never, ever be able to explain it at dinner parties. :smiley:

10

I started by tackling a basic item such as a table. In it’s simplest form, you are talking 5 cubes, sized to make the top and the legs. You can then go on to add details to each part using bevel and loop cuts. Add in bracing struts, (more boxes), throw in some torus for leg details etc, etc, etc. It’s a great way to get familiar with tools whilst not pushing yourself to a point you feel you can never finish anything. I did a small video for my local community group members to show the above process.

11

Where did I start? Back in the eighties/early nineties I had an Amiga, and the magazines frequently gave away high end packages. At the time, Real3D, Lightwave, Imagine and Cinema 4D were all given away. I got on best with Real 3D and C4D (though thinking back, Imagine prtobably had more in common with Blender than the others at the time, except Blender was just a twinkle in someone’s eye).

I went on to buy C4D, and stuck with it religiously until last year. Unfortunately, the cost exceeded the desire for a hobby, and whilst I’d played with Blender, I never had seriously. Then came the day I decided I wasn’t paying stupid money anymore, and here I am.

Blender has a peculiar workflow compared to the others, and an odd interface. It took me a while, and now I find using middle mouse to navigate too natural (I keep trying to middle mouse navigate in OSGrid, which doesn’t work, obviously). I’m loving node based materials more and more as I learn more and more, and what was highly unintuitive originally is starting to become “Why has it not always been this way”.

Am I a professional, no. Am I ever likely to make a career out of this, no. Was a grade A art student, yes. Have I simply worked with the medium available to me, yes.

So, how did I start. I started with a desire to create art. That was 35 years ago, and I still have that desire.

EDIT: colkai, your accent puts you not a million miles from me in NW England :slight_smile:

12

Where did I start? Back in the eighties/early nineties I had an Amiga, and the magazines frequently gave away high end packages. At the time, Real3D, Lightwave, Imagine and Cinema 4D were all given away. I got on best with Real 3D and C4D (though thinking back, Imagine prtobably had more in common with Blender than the others at the time, except Blender was just a twinkle in someone’s eye).

I went on to buy C4D, and stuck with it religiously until last year. Unfortunately, the cost exceeded the desire for a hobby, and whilst I’d played with Blender, I never had seriously. Then came the day I decided I wasn’t paying stupid money anymore, and here I am.

Blender has a peculiar workflow compared to the others, and an odd interface. It took me a while, and now I find using middle mouse to navigate too natural (I keep trying to middle mouse navigate in OSGrid, which doesn’t work, obviously). I’m loving node based materials more and more as I learn more and more, and what was highly unintuitive originally is starting to become “Why has it not always been this way”.

Am I a professional, no. Am I ever likely to make a career out of this, no. Was a grade A art student, yes. Have I simply worked with the medium available to me, yes.

So, how did I start. I started with a desire to create art. That was 35 years ago, and I still have that desire.

13

Where’d I start… well…

Much like you I’m still in my teens
but I never really drew, instead I got into 3d modelling in 2010
See I was into this game called roblox when I was 10(I sort of still am into it)
I saw it turn from a really cool creative toy, to a very user friendly(for the most part) genuine game engine

in mid 2010 I wanted to stop using the engine’s prefab assets and create my own meshes,
So I read a tutorial on how to create a mesh or import a mesh into roblox,

this tutorial said that I needed either Anim8r or 3dsmax 2011

I tried using anim8r, I didn’t know what was going on there so I just downloaded the 3DS Max 2011 student version,
Remember this was back when you didnt need to be in specific schools in specific countries to download student versions
So when I was accompanied by the beautiful artworks during the setup menu only to find that I was just as confused as before.

So I abandoned 3D for a while until late 2011 where I had nothing better to do but to play around with photoshop and 3DS max(and later on a pirated version of C4D r12)

So where does blender fit in to all this?
At the time I didn’t think highly of blender because freeis bad because badwas free

Wasn’t until I started watching some of Andrew Price’s and XRG’s tutorials that I was convinced otherwise.

tl’dr: I was recruited by Andrew Price, indirectly ofc :wink:

14

Thanks so much for these replies, they mean a lot to me :). I’m still trying to get used to blender (since I’m still new at it I’m finding different things I haven’t see before). But thanks again for these replies. I’m figuring out blender little by little and finding so many cool things that I have never seen before.

15

I’ll share my story.

I was playing Command and Conquer Generals and then I found mods for it. I then decided to make my own mods because I want to change the units to my own designs. I learned how people make the 3d models of the units and it’s by using a 3d modeler app. So I searched 3d modelling app and I found 3DS Max. I then installed it on my PC and after awhile, I managed to create a tank and exported it on the CnC readable format. It worked. The units on the game are of my own design. I then found Blender and installed it. I found it easier to use so I switched to using Blender until now

16

… My TV died the Monday after Christmas of 2008. The rest is history.