Completed my first BlenderGuru doughnut!

[MartynJBull]

I’ve never used Blender before, but recently I saw more and more people talking about it.

I’ve really enjoyed working through the Doughnut tutorial from BlenderGuru. It’s so well thought through, and introduces the Blender interface in context, which I really appreciated.

Using Blender, I found it amazing, and overwhelming, and confusing. It feels like learning a thousand new ways of thinking all at once. But I persevered, and got to the end. It’s taken me hours and hours, but I’m really happy I have a doughnut to join the thousands people have made before me.

Technical stuff

I had to use what I have which is a MacBook Pro 16-inch from 2019:

• Processor 2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9
• Memory 64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4
• Graphics AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB
• Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

I used Blender 3.2.

I had no idea if it would even work, but actually it is a buttery-smooth user experience.

It took me a while to work things out on Mac with trackpad as all the documentation and online videos are using Windows and 3-button mouse. But once I figured out the tricks, I was into action.

I rendered out in cycles, which works well. It’s obvious slower than newer more powerful computers, but not terrible.

The final render tie with cycles took 05:45:00 for 300 frames so around 1:09 per frame - I let it run overnight.

Out of interest, I also ran it with Eevee, which is much faster, although the output is noticeably less good than cycles. Eevee took 00:34 for 300 frames so around 0:06 per frame

I know that “doing a doughnut” makes some people’s eyes roll, but for me it was completely engrossing and I learned so much. It’s been a brilliant place to start learning Blender.

Now what to make next?!

[piranha4D (Pir)]

No eye-rolling here; the donut is almost a right of passage for new Blender users.

And yours is very nice – I especially noticed the dough part, which often gets less attention, but yours is great.

You can make Eevee renders look amazing, and it can certainly handle the donut, but it takes knowing Eevee better. I’m still putting that off myself until I’ve got a solid handle on modeling.

Whatever you decide on next, do it soon, and if you can, do some of it daily, to better anchor the processes in your mind. This is super important at the start so that things become less confusing. I went from the donut to low poly tutorials next because I was overwhelmed by the donut and realized when starting on a non-tutorial cupcake I hadn’t actually retained much. That really paid off; after a few weeks of practice I am totally comfortable with the interface, remember all the most-used hotkeys, and can create not only blocky sheep but other baked goods entirely on my own ;). I recommend Grant Abbitt’s tutorials; they’re all concise, calm, well-designed, bite-sized (which means success is rapid, frequent, and that’s encouraging and motivating).

[Midnightcpu]

I feel like homer Simpson right now.
Mmmmmm doooogghhnnnuutt.

[MartynJBull]

Thank you! Much appreciated.

It did take me a while to get the dough part right, especially as at one point I managed to do something that turned it into pink polystyrene! I really had to spend a while figuring out what had gone wrong!

Whatever you decide on next, do it soon, and if you can, do some of it daily, to better anchor the processes in your mind. This is super important at the start so that things become less confusing.

Thank you for the good advice and tip to look at Grant Abbitt videos. They look very nice.