I'm looking for tutorials/courses

Hi there

I’m sorry if this is a bad thread. I am looking for a good courses of modeling characters in blender. I found some online but they didn’t look very good. My question is then, do you guys would recommend me any course/tutorial? Price is not a big problem, but it would be nice if it didn’t cost over 200$ as I am living in Poland and it’s kinda hard for me to get this money as I’m a student.

Cheers
Biers

learn the basics of blender and then experiment and learn it yourself. thats the best way i think. watching speed modelling videos will help with methods.

The basics I have. I don’t think your advice is good because it’s like saying to a person who wants to learn engineering to learn basics of physics and experiment and learn it. Again, I would love if someone recommended me a good character modeling course :slight_smile:

i strongly disagree with daedalus. paying for a course is definetly a good idea, IF you want to take this seriously

If you try to learn everything yourself you will spend x10 the time, and i speak from experience. i was self tought for 2 years, and then went to school for 3D and animation, and everyone else learned the SAME stuff i lerned in 2 years, but in the timespand of 2-4 weeks. literally.

here is what i suggest, and please take my word for it as i speak from experience in every aspect of this.

Self Tought + Youtube tutorials:
this will learn you how to use the program, but not necessarily the fastest, or correct workflows. you will often learn incorrect ways to do stuff as the techniques they teach you are outdated, or tought by unprofessional.

Online cources:
This is the alternative that gives most for your money, make sure the person who made the tutorial has RECENTLY been in a AAA production in games or movies. DONT look for blender spesific cources, as blender is not used in the industry. they teach you stuff that you can yourself apply to blender.

School or Campus:
VERY expensive, but you get one very valuable resource, and that is being among people who are in the same position as you, and you can all help eachother. i wont recomend this unless you really want the experience.

Twitch:
Live stream is also a good alternative, go to twitch.tv and look for creative streamers. there are many industry professional livestreaming, and watching them is a really good, and free alternative. its definetly slower, but worth it.

also id like to add, join Discord Comunities. if you get into the twitch comunities, you will end up getting a lot of discord servers aswell. one big benefit of twitch is that we are a small comunity of about 500-1000 people, so we know eachother soft of.

I have the approach my friend. I want to take it seriously and I am willing to pay money for the knowledge and I made this thread to get some help with the good tutorials that Blender Artists users would recommend me. I will be very grateful for your recommendations guys!

this one was recomended by a lot of artists. ive also seen other videos from the same guy, so i trust that this is good stuff.

-88% off atm so go ahed and grab it.

It shows me that it’s price is 125 euro. Is it on this -88% or it’s not working anymore?

I have never paid for a course in my life and yet I make my living from 3d only. It MIGHT be a good idea. Can we say definitely? I don’t think so. I have seen people hoping that if they spend the right amount of money on it they will learn. Well… it doesn’t happen because of the material investment, that’s for sure. One needs to be prepared to learn no matter the circumstances. There is so much material online on the subject - you really do not HAVE to buy anything. You can… but do not have to.

If you want to learn 3d modeling, read the documentation of the software, go through all the modeling functions one by one and learn what they do, then model things. Then model some more. And then do some more modeling and watch some tutorials online, see how people do it. And guess what? Yes, do more modeling after that. That’s all. If you want to learn to draw, you should draw, if you want to learn 3d modeling, you should do modeling It’s simple. Now this method does not work if you are trying to become an engineer, or learn to pilot a plane :D, but it does with modeling.

It’s a good idea to have goals. They should be realistic. Do not start with modeling Iron Man your first day. Model a lighter, a spoon, a chair - gradually increase the size and complexity. Also motivation is the most important thing here, so share the work when you succeed in getting good results, show it to your friends, don’t be afraid to show off. People who like your work and all those ‘Wow! how did you do that?’ will encourage you to move forward and if you don’t get those, you will instead get feedback that you can use to get better. I think it’s a really good idea to try to impress people with your work - it gives you motivation and pleasure and it makes you think of how to use skills that you have at the moment to the fullest. From my experience lack of motivation is the main reason people fail at this so don’t underestimate the importance of it.

Modeling has two parts to it:
* Technical - the software
* Artistic - sculpture

You should address both. Sculpture is essential, as it includes understanding shapes and seeing the world in a different way - you need to learn to think of objects in terms of basic shapes and how you are going to form them using your 3d tools. Be aware of that. Sometimes you think you are unable to achieve results because of the complexity of the software, but in fact you struggle with understanding the shapes. In this case you need to observe the shapes you are trying to model more closely while watching another tutorial on how to use one software function or another might not be that useful. Realize that and address the right problems.

Another thing - learning character modeling and character design are two completely separate things. That also is important. Its essential to have a good design in order to model amassing things. On the other hand, you don’t need to model your designs while learning to model. Don’t be ashamed to use some other art or whatever you see for inspiration.

You said you have the basics. Could you show us where are you at at the moment? Could you post a few images of your best current work?

Hey there

Thanks for the long comment. I understand that you don’t have to pay, but if there is some course that I think is amazing, I will pay for that. I don’t agree with just doing things tho. Of course working is the most important thing, but lets say I will try to learn character modeling and I won’t use tutorials - I will make habits of wrong workflow and stuff. That is why I think good teacher is important - to show us our mistakes.

By saying I learned basics I meant that I went through Andrew Price’s basic blender tutorial on youtube and I got the generall concept. I made this recently in mudbox tho:

I know it’s a long way from perfect but it’s something. I would like to learn how to do this in blender. How about you? Can I see some of your works?

Cheers

If you watch tutorials you should avoid worst mistakes and worst bad habits. You will develop your own workflow sooner or later anyway. finalbarrage said in 2-4 weeks in school they learn the same as one would learn over two years. Yes, you can learn the software in that time. Sculpture however is not something that you learn in 2-4 weeks. Don’t expect to master something in a month.

I do not specialize in character design. I make interior visualizations mainly. You can have a look at a few works of mine:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

You have a great tool for human body creation - Make Human. Google it. Check it out. No shame in using it for generating a good starting point. It will let you focus on other stuff. I would like to push you towards looking a bit more at what character designs you like. Maybe find online something you personally honestly like a lot, then try creating something similar. Why don’t you try starting a thread. But don’t rush it. Divide it into small steps. Make it 3 months project or something like that while you watch tutorials if needed. I bet you get more professional help and advice here than you can imagine. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the tips! :smiley: I like your works. very nice indeed! Right now I’m learning to draw human body - skeleton, then I will move to muscles and when I will get good enough with generall human body I will jump to more details like hands and stuff I guess. Can I make thread on drawing here?

I don’t see why not. There is Traditional section in the forum.

However I would suggest you try it from the other end - try reaching for the visual look of a character you like and learning anatomy as you need to. I made this mistake of moving in steps too slow and abstract myself. I think you should not overdo it with the preparation stage and get to modelling the things you aim to be able to model as soon as possible. Of course then you should fail and realise you need to learn other stuff first, but this way you will be looking at it from a more accurate perspective in terms of what you need to learn. I think. I was learning anatomy a long time ago but I made it too long of a process and it got irrelevant for actual goals in my case and I never went in the character desgin direction any further then. I am not complaining, I really love what I do now :slight_smile: but… It didn’t work, I think I should have looked into the design part more and should have had a clearer idea of what styles and what shapes I like and what characters I want to create instead of what was the shape of some bones I will never need to know about. It might be that I needed some guidance from a teacher or something, I don’t think so, but who knows…

Oh, and by the way, if you sculpted that from scratch, I think your skills are not bad at all for start. I think it doesn’t have to be perfect. It really looks good enough to start thinking about what designs and styles you are after, what art you like.

Again thank you for all the tips. I will experiment with all this stuff and most importantly I will keep working regularly. Also thanks for the compliment. However though, I am still looking for some good courses/tutorials blender users will recommend me :slight_smile:

Cheers!