Blender isnt that hard...

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Hello,

I just got started with blender about 3 days ago, and following the video tutorials and others on the site im making good progress…more than any other 3d program, at least in this little time…

I say this because i always heard everyone telling me blender was the hardest application to learn and that i should go with other programs, on lots of forums i read that but i said what the hell lets try it…

i hope it doesnt get a lot harder lol, however i know the basics now and i learned pretty quickly…

Great program :wink:

2

Blender: Dispelling Myths… One User at a Time

:slight_smile:

Welcome to the fold, sir.

3

Well it has gotten easier to learn with all the great tutorials and videos that have come out recently.

Welcome aboard, and if you run into problems, you know where to ask :wink:

4

HAHA :slight_smile:

well… i also think the same… people judge you before they even know you unless you have a price tag of 2000$! :wink:

5

Most people I know who’ve said it’s hard are those that have actually tried it and used it for a while so for a lot of people it can be a hard application to learn. The interface is over complicated in places and far from intuative quite often. If you think the right way you might well find it easy but as is often the case with free software, the results are very good but the route to get those results is far from obvious. Same goes for the tutorials, some are outstanding, others less so and some just plain wrong (or at least miss out really important steps). I got on to blender myself from being a member of a film making forum and several guys on there said the same thing. It’s hard to learn but gives good results plus its free and each of them has use belnder in anger. So you’ve been lucky buddy, you click with how it’s been designed. Quite a few out there don’t Blender being hard to learn is not a myth, it’s just not true for absolutley everyone.

6

I say this because i always heard everyone telling me blender was the hardest application to learn and that i should go with other programs, on lots of forums i read that but i said what the hell lets try it…

Well years ago when blender first came out, it realy was hard to use. No tutorials, no manual, no anything. And also a very small community that wasnt very deditcated to begin with. But now its huge and everything is GREAT! :stuck_out_tongue:

I have been a blender user since its first week (I’m not kidding). I have to admit, that in the begining I had my moments where I just didnt want to use it anymore and just wanted to try something else. But I just stayed with it, and Im glad I did.

You should do the same. :slight_smile:

7

i always heard everyone telling me blender was the hardest application to learn

Blender is a bit baffling at first, i will admit. As hard (or as easy) as it is, it must have been a pain programing it. I read somewhere that programing graphics programs are the most complicated things to program, and they have WHOLE BOOKS on just that topic (they also have big books on firewalls, which i find a bit curious). Now imagine programing a program that manipulates 3 dimensions!! It just baffles me…

8

Blender was not my first 3d app. I have used many 3d apps since the 90’s. The myth is that pro 3d cg is easy if you buy the right app. I could say that it was always easy to render a reflective sphere on water in more mainstream 3d apps out of the box. But beyond that phase of 3d usage, 3d software requires skill to really produce amazing images.

It’s not the software, it’s always the artist that produces the jaw dropping 3d images.

Anyone who is surprised about the quality of a Blender production is new to the 3d software arena. An experienced 3d artist could apply their skill to any 3d software and get the same results. They may have some workflow issues with various apps but that’s not a major problem.

Blenders interface gets you into the action of producing 3d designs without a hitch. The more you learn about Blender the more you realize this.

Blender is not a drag and drop 3d software so some effort is required to learn how to use it. Once you get the hang of it it’s easy to use.

9

Years ago 3d software artist had very few books. Most of us learned by trial and error. CG schools were not available to most people. Your software vendor often was your best cg teacher.

The Blender development has gained a lot over the years. Blender really begin to improve once it was an open source app. Open source software is all about community support. At the rate that Blender is changing it’s hard to maintain docs. So once a Blender artist learns to use a feature they can help other Blender users. I have learned most of what I know about Blender in this manner.

10

I learnt Blender with practically no touch of the manual.Helps a lot if used to general 3d, even with the big difference in Ui that Blender offers. After all, everything can be “ported”.

Years ago 3d software artist had very few books. Most of us learned by trial and error. CG schools were not available to most people. Your software vendor often was your best cg teacher.

I yet remember 3d Studio for msDos, 3.0 times. When one had his 8 MB of ram for everything in his 386dx or 486, and you could only model a car at a time because no more power, lol.

Lol, and remember thinking of getting into a course (the early 90’s I think) of 3D…lol…The guy saying me then that they were working with their expensive machines (to produce TV quality filming) with Crystal Topas (if that was the name) , but had planned switching to 3d Studio (msdos) …hehe.

I since preferred to learn with no manuals, even went to a master of 3ds (again, DOS) and never ever touch the nice printed manual. What for? I’d reach to the point faster :wink:

There was lenty no other option right around here. Some Amiga freak used to tell me by then “heck, that is crap, Lightwave is superior”.I didn’t care, simply was an Amiga only software…No free tools for 3d, not even shareware or cheap tools either. No option. No internet either, so the tools only arrived by 3d magazines, which were rare and very few, and we could get a taste with trial demos. But not yet then, a bit later, they started to appear.

I remember those very first things, Truespace 1, InfiniD, Organica, etc. (maybe some of this were quite more recent, have bad memory)

Blender 1.x…That was when I had a first feel of it…so different to the little I knew that was unable, and only could grab a chapter or two that did come as a sample of the manual which I think was sold apart…I think was the only tool I tried to learn which I simply desisted to.

Today, any 3d artist used to several other UIs (those that have concentrated in only one, will allways have it harder, don’t forget it…) for 3d, wont have a problem to switching very quickly. I did.

11

Run away. RUN AWAY!!

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My original learning experience with 3D was through a searchable indexed help file. Of course today we have the Internet and that is almost the same. And, as with all things, the way you learn to use a thing in the first place is the way you’ll always find easiest.

13

I remember those days. What’s subdivision surfaces? Hehehe. Back then Lightwave didn’t have proper uv mapping. Max had no raytracing engine in the olden days. It was raw back then but we got by. Compared to those times today’s 3d is easy.

RustBoy…

Check out 3d artist work through the years at Raph.com-

http://www.raph.com/3dartists/

Folks thrived back in the 90’s without Yafray and MentalRay. It’s not the software… And they did it on P90’s…

14

Of course is isn’t hard : it is software !

(Sorry, couldn’t resist messing up a little with yet another one of those threads :smiley: )

Jean[/b]

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I remember those days. What subdivision? Hehehe. Back then Lightwave didn’t have proper uv mapping. Max had no raytracing engine in the olden days. It was raw back then but we got by. Compared to those times today’s 3d is easy.

3d studio for msdos(even hated that they started to call “Max” to the new monster) had its modules…keyframe, material,mesh, 3d lofter, 2d shaper…the ui changed dramatically with Max appeareance. A tool made by the autodesk multimedia department, I think, called later Kinnetix…
And a way to keep me out of Autodesk products for years, later on I have had to get back, as got imposed in games market.

The IK kinematic module did not have weights, was actually kinda IK parts… not full body with weights. If some of you remember that IK parts kindda weird long-legged bird…hehe.

Folks thrived back in the 90’s without Yafray and MentalRay. It’s not the software… And they did it on P90’s…

p90? I did a 3ds dos master with p75…16mb ram… 15" monitors…
and as I said, 386 and 486 with oldie 3ds… much later, a p120 with Organica… and Amorphium, kindda precedent to zbrush…

hehe, raytracing…well, I dunno what the heck 3ds dos had for rendering…surely was scanline, a basic one,dunno. I did thought that was the sumum of realism, by then… :smiley:

Even more, remember wishing to be able one magic day to waste the huge amount of money for that expensive package, Truespace 3.0 (much later on, if I remember well) , which had raytracing! XD

And now 3.2 is free, and I’ve been able to buy xsi for a ridiculous amount of money…crazy…

Also remember trying a bit that uber old thing, povray… I allways liked the results. just was too much for me :slight_smile: (though 3.x much later on povray was incredibly much easier and with loads of helping tools…)

Well, the fact is all changes with time. This is a very different moment. Much sweeter to make 3d, imho. In other view, it’s also much more difficult to get impressed on how a reality was simulated, or “improved”.

Mobile games (the media for I work right now, previous in pc games) are like a going back to then: 2d pixel artwork, and very low pol 3d (duke nukem 3d, quake 1, even some do tries with mode 7(wolfenstein…), etc) …is like a going back to those times…though the 3d times I spoke above of yet hadn’t seen any 3d game, that I knew, apart from some asteroids untextured experiment, or Alone in the dark 1 (if that was actually 3d) and stuff like that…

Heck, getting old.

16

Even Photoshop is hard … damn hard … if you really get into it and have a demanding requirement to fill. There is no substitute for experience, no matter how good the educational materials may be.

Something else to consider is the fact that all of these tools provide you with a dizzying array of fairly special-purpose options, all couched in the language of the highly-experienced designer who envisioned them. If you try to study such a system “from the bottom up,” you get hopelessly lost in the details. You need to approach it from the top-down: start with the forest, then the trees, then a tree, then the bark, then the texture of this particular point on the bark. The execution of any computer-project is necessarily from the bottom-up, but the envisioning of it must be from the top-down.

On top of this, you periodically skim through the docs, maybe through the source-code of the program if you are so inclined, and certainly through all the buttons and knobs. But you are skimming: not trying to learn every whizbang, but simply to become aware that it’s even there. Look for tutorials about that feature and skim those, too. Eventually, one of your projects may call for that feature … and when you’re bopping around through the trees, or maybe you’ve settled on one tree and you’re beginning to think about the bark … bing! Something jogs your memory. You poke around. You find it. A little light-bulb pops on, and you see how this feature, that you noticed some time ago, can be applied to what you are doing now. You learn more about it.

I also advocate keeping a diary, which I prefer to do with notebooks and a pencil. Write down what you are doing, what questions you have (now you cannot lose it and don’t have to keep remembering it), and leave space for when you find the answer. I find the time spent away from the computer to be very useful.

17

Blender being hard to learn is not a myth, it’s just not true for absolutley everyone.

Quite right.

I find golf hard to learn. No matter how hard I try or how still I hold my head, I can’t hit that ball with this stick. Even the scoring has me bamboozled (eagles, bogies, albatrosses - what the…? Who made this stuff up?). It’s bloody frustrating and in fact, it makes me angrier the more I try. Other people do it for FUN!!! - On WEEKENDS!!!

Everything’s hard unless or until you understand it, then it’s easy - just like quantum physics and brain surgery really.

18

Agreed. I do all of the above things on weekends.

19

I got truespace S/E and got used to the “point 'n click” interface. Also being a windows user, I’m used to dumbed down interfaces. Still once you start using blender you will see that it’s awsome. The workflow overall is great compared to trueSpace for example. People just rely on their mouse to do EVERYTHING for them and never want to touch the keyboard, which is what makes blender easy to use, keyboard shortcuts.

20

Blender, usually, does indeed look tough to tackle the first time someone opens it. Hell, I still have no idea what I’m doing.

But, I do take a whack at learning something about it every now and again :slight_smile: