Hey guys, after a couple of years of reading the forums in CGTALK and trying my hand in traditional drawing, I have been finally getting myself into Blender. I have mainly been learning from CGCOOKIE and watching other tutorials on YouTube. While experimenting with Blender, I thought of a few questions.
How did you learn Blender? I’m assuming (and I may be assuming incorrectly) that many of your did not learn by watching YouTube tutorials. Did some of you just go on the BlenderWiki and look up how to use the different tools, then try experimenting?
Is having traditional art skills essential to being a good modeler/blender artist? I know that it definitely helps but I was wondering if there are modelers who don’t have good traditional art skills and are still able to create awesome looking work?
Is writing software that generates 3D imagery heavily math/physics based? I know this probably isn’t an artistic question, but I was watching an interview with a technical director at Pixar and she said that she uses calculus everyday of her job. I am curious because I am majoring in Computer Science and I am looking into what software engineering for 3D software entails.
I am excited about learning more Blender and hopefully contributing to the community in a meaningful way. Thanks.
1 - I think most learn via videos. There are books and things too, but Blender tends to develop so rapidly that video tutorials seem to be the only media that keeps pace.
2 - Traditional art skills definitely carry over, but you can learn art without actually drawing. If you’re doing 3D a lot, chances are good that you’ll get pretty good at it. TED video on learning new skills.
3 - My guess would be it depends on what you’re doing how much math is involved. Blender is Open Source so you can peek through the code and see for yourself. Udacity has a free course on 3D Graphics that might be worth looking at as well.
This is the page I went. I did one by one the tutorials, from the simplest on, not skipping anything, not going on before being confortable that I understood the current lesson. Blender is huge, don’t tackle it as if it was another “freebie” program; tackle it as if it was 3DStudio (just without the 4-digit price tag ;)).
Math? all kind of mathematical branches plus physics, perception theory, numerical analysis, etc. etc. (heaven, for somebody like me :yes:).
When settling in with a 3D package there are two things you should look at…
Get a good introductory book for the package you intend to learn and use. Getting familiar with the interface and knowing where basic tools are located is vital. When learning Maya 4.5 many moons ago I bought a “Visual Quick Start” book by Danny Riddell. Heh, best £15 I spent towards learning Maya! For Blender I went with “Blender for Dummies”.
Consider investing in reprogrammable game pads and mice. As you switch between packages with different layouts these devices more than earn their keep. They can also group together your most used functions and break down long-winded shortcuts to a single button press. I recommend the Razor range, with the Nostromo game pad at the top of your shopping list.
I didn’t ask a lot of questions that required long term answers when I got curious about 3D. Most of us, I’m sure, started with 2D graphics. In other words, ask yourself what you want to do with 3d right at this moment. In my case I wanted to do a chess set which I can then rotate in any angle in three dimensions. Where do I start? The knight chess piece, as you’ll discover, is the hardest to model among the rest. If you could model a knight, you could model the rest including the board, of course. So then I got myself familiar with the tools available in a 3d app I was tinkering with at the time, I don’t even remember which app I started getting serious with, Anim8or, Wings, cracked versions of famous 3d software, etc.
Point is, start modeling something simple that you want to see in 3D. Some want to see trees, a cell phone, car wheel, anything you feel passionate about or interested in.
Learning something doesn’t have to be in chronological fashion, such as Blender’s origin or history, how 3d evolved and all that. Do something in 3D. It will all come to place and in proper perspective once you learn how the tools work and able to produce something in it.
I started learning with the instruction manual for my first few weeks. Now, I’m working through a few Cycles tutorials as well as poking and prodding with the nodes to achieve the desired effects.
I learned form Blender for Dummies, which is availble from many libraries. I think it is wrong to assume that learning from Youtube tutorials is impossible, though. CG Cookie has a great Blender basics course on Youtube. If you like learning from videos, then that is the way to go. If you are a books person, Blender Foundations or Blender for Dummies is your best bet.
You don’t have to be able to sculpt the Thinker to be a great modeler in Blender. But knowing about the princples of art will be invaluble. It all depends on what you want to do. I would say that photography and cinimatography skills are very helpful, and knowing about drawing will help hen storyboarding.
I’m no programmer (I know the basics of python, but nothing really advanced) but my guess is that the more advanced of a program your trying to make, the more advanced math you need to know. Writing a ray-tracing algorithm? Break out your Greek alphabet. Fixing some bugs? Middle school level math sould do.
Back in the 1990s I played around with 3D apps that were very user-friendly, such as Truespace and Bryce. You didn’t even need the manual to figure those programs out. Just play around with them and things would become apparent.
Then when Blender first came out I downloaded it and tried to figure it out, but there was no manual and virtually nothing in the way of tutorials so I gave up on it. Then in 2004 I was in a bookshop and saw the Blender 2.4 User Guide and decided to buy it. That helped tremendously. Having a quick reference for all the keyboard shortcuts was also a big help, because I would often go for extended periods where I didn’t use Blender at all and I would forget all the shortcuts.
I think having an understanding of the basics of art (and/or photography) is a big help when it comes to composition and lighting. Certain principles hold true regardless of what medium you’re using.
I’m not exactly an art aficionado myself, but I tend to pay attention to things around me, like lighting, shadows, buildings, and various odds and ends. I have a bit of an active imagination, so I can visualize stuff quite well, and is what led me to start learning Blender about a month ago. :spin: