CG Cookie($-ish)
CG Cookie began as a general training website for all 3D software
It still sort of is, but it’s clear that they shifted their focus to Blender and 2D concept art
What makes CG cookie as iconic to the blender community as it is today is the shear quality and quantity of tutorials.
It has a paid subscription it calls “Citizenship”
But if you can’t afford it(or if you can but don’t feel like paying for anything)
You can take advantage of what some might call one of the most cannibalistic business moves ever.
Right next to making a really useful plugin that people would pay 70$ for and then making the plugin’s repository free,
Which is…
The CG Cookie archive
All of what used to be considered premium 5-7 years ago, is now 100% free.
Things like
Are now 100% free in the archive
Not entirely sure whether it actually hurts the company as much I think it does,
Who knows maybe this is some sort of new psychological marketing tactic that’s designed to guilt trip people to buying citizenship
(If it is, it seems to be working ;))
CynicatPro has made a name for himself by being the guy who, for better or for worse, started the “PBR” craze in the Blender community.
He’s a fun guy to listen to, one of the few people who can make a video about how light physics work and not be boring.
And it’s not just PBR and shading he does,
He made a neato video about converting real world terrain into Blender meshes
On top of being a great tutor he’s also a great environment artist
Definitely go subscribe to him
Blender Guru
Blender Guru is a pretty prominent website in the Blender community
Andrew Price, the owner/founder of the website definitely deserves the attention.
It’s a really great site
The best way I found to describe Blender Guru is to basically say that it’s the “GreyscaleGorrilla” of the Blender community
Charismatic owner
Excellently made products (Even if the marketing is sometimes…a bit too… patronizing?)
Excellent Tutorials
Since this thread is about the tutorials I’ll talk about those
His tutorials are for Intermediate - Advanced level users that want to learn something new
You wont see him make a tutorial for making a cup(except for that one time he did), but you’ll see him and his crew tackle complicated things like snow and interior lighting
He also runs a paid course called the “Architecture Academy”
I hear it’s really good, and judging from the results of the people who took the course, I’m inclined to believe the people who say it’s good.
And even better he runs(…or… used to run ) a podcast, a great one at that.
The unscripted nature of the podcast just makes it so funny
Also he apparently started a stormin the Blender community about the UI, so if you see anyone having what seems to be… “hatred” towards him, that might be a reason as to why the person feels that way. Personally I don’t care that much.
Creative Shrimp is run by Gleb Alexandrov
And as something made by Gleb Alexandrov, you know it’s going to be good, and you’re not wrong,
the site keeps getting better every time I look at it.
On a broad sense the site is more or less Blender Guru but Aimed at Advanced users and with Gleb’s quirky personality layered on top of it.
He sells two things,
A Space VFX Course
A Realistic Lighting E-Book
Honestly, what more could you ask for
This guy’s relatively new but he’s just great. He’s pretty descriptive and shows you how to get to the end result, quickly
The best way I can describe CG geek is,
A hard core blender tutor
He does everything in blender, no photoshop or gimp or after effects none of that crap.
Pure blender
He gets you from a to b, even if it takes 6,30 min videos
And that’s great.
If you followed the tutorial correctly, your end result, will be what you saw in the video.
He sells some asset packs but hell,
he couldn’t resist showing you how to make it in a video
If you think that Blender Guru is misleading with it’s great thumbnails but not so great result.
Then maybe CG geek is your guy
Bandyte (Formerly 3D Bandit)
I don’t know why this guy isn’t more noticed in the blender community but bandyte is awesome
The procedural materials that he shows you how to make look amazing.
Definitely give this channel a look.
XRG13
One of the two(idk how many people make hand painted tutorials ) people who make only hand painted tutorials.
He has this one really really good sword tutorial
Not many people like Hand painted stuff but there’s still a large demand for them because some people make games in not so impressive game engines(or not so impressive platforms ) or they just like how hand painted stuff looks like. Like overwatch
Onelvxe decided to do the writing for me, how nice of them!
Even more lists(may or may not be blender related)ONELVXE Studios is an open production studio that creates custom visuals, campaigns, music, and designs for brands, corporate clients, musicians, and designers around the world. It’s goals include funding and actively developing Blender 3D, as well as elevating Blender as an open-source production ready alternative to industry standard toolsets. Lastly, ONELVXE provides training on how to use Blender in a production pipeline, advanced topics like Animation Nodes and MoGraph, as well as proper, physically accurate material/shader creation.
Joseph Raccoon’s list
Polycount Wiki
Artstation