As i have been trying to reflect on my mistakes in my 3d art journey to do better, another hard pill to swallow has been I’m not sure how to ask for help, and facing the fact that in most situations i won’t be able to just abandon a project just because I’m not sure how to fix it and whether u should move forward.
However one thing that has kept me from asking at times is the idea of professional expectations and that when i am a freelancer or a professional i can’t just post screenshots of NDA work or client work, so that i have to learn how to be able to either cut my problem up into chunks i can post online. how do professionals do it? I know it’s a bit of an ironic question but it’s embarrassing how many times i didn’t ask for help because i wanted to somehow build up professionalism.
There is nothing wrong with asking for help, regardless of your experience in Blender, Only the other week I had to ask a question here, very silly thing once I got an answer, just forgot about a setting, and I use Blender every day professionally.
Everyone has brain farts from time to time.
Nobody knows everything.
If you are under an NDA and you cant get your answer without sharing a scene, I would recreate the issue in another non NDA scene if possible, or worst case ask someone that is willing to help, to sign your own NDA.
One thing I’ve learned that has got me very far in life is to articulate your questions in a way people can understand. This skill is sometimes called “knowing how to Google”. If you can phrase a question in such a way you can get an answer on google, you can learn any programming language and get any job. Any programmer will tell you that no, they don’t know the languages perfectly, they just know how to articulate what they don’t know in a way that gets an answer.
How do you do this? Good questions aren’t abstract- they are specific and actionable. “How do I get better UV unwrapping in Blender?” isn’t a good question. “How do I optimize packing my UV islands in Blender?” is a good question.
Here’s another example- a very common one- “why isn’t my armature working?” This is a bad question I see every day.
When trying to formulate a question like that, ask yourself- what specifically isn’t working? What are you expecting to happen? Why are you expecting that? What have you done to accomplish that?
A better question is “why is part of my mesh not being deformed by my armature after automatic weights?”
Questions will help you if they are clear and specific. They won’t if they’re vague.
There’s nothing unprofessional about asking questions- it’s a huge sign of character to admit what you don’t know. Most employers are suspicious of people that aren’t willing to ask questions, in fact. If you think you know enough to not ask questions, you’re wrong, and everyone around you knows you’re wrong. Being able to articulate what you don’t know in a clear understandable way is one of the most professional things you can do, so don’t worry about asking questions
A huge part of being able to ask good questions is knowing the correct terminology. Googling “weird black things in Blender” won’t help you. Googling “triangular shading artifacts in Blender” will. When you’re learning something, you should make a dedicated effort to learn the terminology- even if you don’t fully understand it. Official documentation is great for this.
One good exercise is to, whenever you find yourself ending a question with “isn’t working”, see if you can find a more specific way to describe your problem.
Some resources for asking good questions:
One last example:
I’m using a question I asked today as an example. Notice that the title is clear and precise, and the first paragraph after the disclaimer explains briefly exactly what I’m looking for. Then I describe exactly what I’ve already tried, exactly the results I’m getting, and the results I expect.
I’m not trying to toot my own horn here- my point is, look at how this question immediately got answers from several people. People were able to see it, understand it, and easily formulate an answer
Yeap… there is also this thing that somebody wants to do something, get some weird tips and finnaly asks a question you couldn’t (even) understand because (s)he didn’t explain the real problem… Or with main title: XYZ has a bug… (but i don’t understand the bascis at all)… Or (readapting UVs):
Q:Why are may UVs overlapping and all over the place?
A: You aren’t showing us the UVs. Which unwrapping did you used? Did you set some seams?
Q: What’s unwrap? And i want no seams on the model.
A: <long explanation about modeling UV-unwrapping and UV-seams>
Q: No i just payed for it and downloaded it at … By the way the texture on some parts are weird… can you fix it for me?
(Another thing: I’m not a native english speaker and lookup at least 5% which i don’t now (Thanks BA for making my english better ) and another 10% to be absolutly ( ← NO it’s absolutely … okay at least more than 90% ? ) sure someone else can understand me.)
Everything they said! please do not refrain from asking for help just because you’re working on a project professionally. It doesn’t make you less of a professional!
Here’s another one (something like that swirls for some time in my head):
A professional is supposed to know what he don’t knows and how to ask professional questions. An Amateur knows the weirdest things how to waste time and money and is always right.
In an organization of any size, one essential goal of project management is to make sure that everyone on the team communicates and truly collaborates with one another. If you don’t know something and just sit there trying to “puzzle it out” on your own, beyond a certain point you are wasting your time-equals-money. The team needs to break down the project into tasks and assignments, then to make sure that everyone clearly understands how to do it. Also, so that the completed pieces of the work will actually fit together in the end.
That’s why formal PM strategies include things like “daily stand-ups.” To get people to talk about what they’re doing, and how they plan to do it, and to feel free both to ask questions and to volunteer information and guidance to each other. Sometimes, someone will describe their approach, and someone else will pop up with a suggestion that is totally different and totally better – and you can watch “the little light turn on.” A whole bunch of otherwise-wasted time just got saved by one comment.
There are no “lone wolves” in a well-structured team. But many people begin their careers as exactly that. It takes a little “un-learning” to glom onto something that works much, much better and to become a useful part of it. I see this all the time in “pure computer programming.” People have to learn how to be part of a team. It doesn’t come naturally for most of them. Human communication is not their strong suit. (But, once they do experience being part of a functional team, they never want to go back to their old ways. Yes, the pressure is still there, but now it’s a different kind of pressure. It sits on the back of the team, not the individuals.)
) and another 10% to be absolutly ( ← NO it’s absolutely … 
okay at least more than 90% ? ) sure someone else can understand me.)