First I join Blender because I am ready to habit for blender. I would like to share you all for my experience new journal of Blender .
How do you develop Blender habits? (honestly)
First I join Blender because I am ready to habit for blender. I would like to share you all for my experience new journal of Blender .
How do you develop Blender habits? (honestly)
Practice. Learn. Then Practice. Then, learn and practice some more.
Evaluate your work. Let others evaluate it. Listen to the feedback.
Practice around the feedback. Practice to learn new stuff. Practice to do the mundane.
Evaluate, learn, practice.
Robert
I would recommend to only do work, and avoid learning.
The most basic mistake everybody does, is that they learn something, then try to relearn it, then try again once more to learn it again. etc⌠They get âlearn-itisâ where they think they donât know something though they do.
For example, when I started learning about human proportions and anatomy, I would spend months in it practicing. And still would not be able to remember 100% from my head. After a moment I just got bored, started trusting again the good old reference tracing.
I partially agree.
i agree with your example of anatomy, but thatâs doesnât transfer so well to the case of blender in my opinion.
Blender is so vast in what you can do with it. For learning, Interface, hotkeys, all the possibilities of different workflows, 3d, math⌠wowsers! I wouldnât have standed a chance, to learn a bit of this all by my own.
I like good tutorials, and it helped me alot. For example proceduralism, geo- and shadernodes.
If youâre a super math-genius, well, you might get something together, but for the most normal people itâs impossibile wizardry. And indeed, i think, i learned more about math doing it in blender, than learning it for school.
Itâs importend to not fall into the tutorial-loop and only do tutorials, I agree.
But for maths in blender actually exactly doing this, helped a lot. You just have to know when itâs time to jump out of the warmth of the tutorial-nest, and do your own stuff.
when you want to do something particular, and a good tutorial exists about it. why not give a try, and iterate from it later.
unless you allready know it, i think learning from someone who knows it, is a great shortcut.
There is allways more to learn, which makes , doing something on your own importend.
I think finding a balance of learning and own work, depending on your own skill-level, would be my take to this.
Thank you for your response to this question.
I agree with you, really interesting point about âover learningâ. Why should we avoid learning so much? Because it is a trap in self improvement and you become an information junkie? This is why we spend more time learning new information rather than putting it into action.
Thank you again!
I am not sure itâs the best idea to think of the learning of an app to be an end in itself. Developing a good daily habit or routine is good for Yoga practice. But for building the sort of focus needed to learn a new creative and technical skill set I would say that there normally needs to be a broader creative goal and ambition in mind.
The first thing to think about surely is what you want to do with it. Why do you need to use Blender. Think of the sort of work and project you want to be doing and focus on what you need within Blender to know to do that. The project should be the goal and becoming a better artist. Blender is an enormous app and there is so much there to grasp. Coming to it without a broader sense of direction and purpose can be overwhelming.
Learning a particular software simply as an end in itself without a clear project in mind feels a bit like putting the cart before the horse. And where does it end ? When is a software actually ever truly mastered if approached in this way. Iâve been doing this sort of work for years and also used to teach it at collage level so have seen and observed the process of learning with novice beginners as well as with myself. The learning actually never stops and also the tools are always changing and evolving. Nothing is ever standing still in this field itâs always in a constant process of change. So I would suggest to start first with a destination in mind before planning the journey.
This does not have to be a huge project. It can start by making a model of something. Use this to take yourself through the basic process of modelling. From block out to finer details to UV unwrapping and then texturing. Next perhaps try lighting it. Then point a camera at it and render a short sequence. Try animating something. Donât think about this as a process of trying to cram knowledge into your head at a set time each day. Let things build naturally in a creative playful way and try to get into a creative flow state.
All the best of luck.
This basically sums it up. However the catch is to be creative and adapt. This means that you do the learning only once, then you look it up for reference or adapt it as much as possible. As for example, if you followed the donut tutorial, now you would basically know how to create 10 other types of pastry food (chocolate cakes, croissants, or whatever).
If as an example you have a completely blank mind once you learn something you are 100% more knowledgeable than before. Then as you look something additional or analogous to what you know, suddenly you have two options to choose. The more you look at it, the more unsure you get about which option is better. The more unsure you get the more books and more tutorials you end up adding on your reading list to make your mind. The solution is to simplify everything as much as possible, by limiting the options.
Most typical case is that beginners, do not know what they want to do. Mostly they are driven by a strong reference. As for example they might see a movie or a game they liked the result they saw, they decide that they want to do the same thing.
They donât know how to approach such as a vast and complex field, but as of stepping from tutorial to tutorial they might find their way around. Perhaps initially every beginner needs to learn exactly what is needed, to they have confidence in their abilities.
But after, learning is completed, more or less is like from the pool, diving to the ocean. Then a totally new set of skillset is required that is irrelevant to Blender.
kind of, and on the way, there might be new challenges to tackle.
I did 2 or 3 different pastries and then moved on to different projects, that didnât made me that hungry and i was more passionate about.
Finding something that gets you off, and you are passionate about,
is a major point towards building a habit, i guess .
even more due to the fact that most of the very first artworks, at least mine, didnât really look that satisfying to me. even now, i still encounter this a lot.
But doing projects i am more passionate about (for me i figured: plants and creepy characters), feels more rewarding. eventhough it still looks mostly whacky, The path to getting better, is better visable, than at the pesky way to good pastry. And i cant even eat it! damn thats the worst about those pastries.
But when allways doing the things youâre passionate about, itâs also easy to get lazy.
And avoiding other knowledge that might be handy in the future. For example UV unwrapping.
I am learning blender now for 7 months, and the only asset i unwrapped is the donut. I am allways cheating my way trough with vertexcolor for masking and generated- or position coordinates with procedural textures. And it works. kind of.
But thatâs certainly not allways a recommandable workflow.
Another good idea for getting a habit is monthly challenges like nodevember or sculptjanuary.
Becourse it gets you to A: do projects frequently. and B: gets you out of the comfort-zone of doing the same projects over and over. And doing only topics and workflowâs, you allready are familiar with.
So that also helped me a lot.
still didânt made me unwrapp one thing. I should do that sometime soon.
I agree, and secretly hope, i will never need UVâs. Because of the evolving.
Is this recommable? i donât really think so. Sometimes there might be the point, where biting in the sour apple, and also learning the lame parts which are the least favorite, might get you further on long term.
over all: So many good points to be made, and all are somehow true.
Obviously itâs appears to be a very individual process, but the main statement is: doing it⌠and enjoying what you do.
also avoid UVâs wherever possible ;D ( thatâs supposed to be a joke. at least i can laugh about it)