Ok… I know everyone learns at different paces…
but, for the sake of information. I’m just curious how long you spent “learning” blender… from the VERY beginning, from the first day you opened the program until the moment you were able to create things like human models, faces, or other otherwise “intermediate - advanced” projects.
I’m new, and was just curious as to when it “clicks” for people. It hasn’t clicked for me yet… but hey its only been 5 days. lol.
well, I joined the forums when I started in 07…
I would say I still haven’t learned blender, I am just good as a tech support guy or an environment modeler.
You can never learn blender entirely, stuff’s always being added. And now I’ll have to learn it all over again come 2.5.
I’ve been on the blender boat just shy of 3 years.
I still have no idea how to use the sequencer 
(Anyone got tuts for that?)
i started almost a year ago, i picked it up right before school started and got into it like a month later, but i would not say i know it. sure, i may know how to use many of the tools, but i don’t feel like i have a good knowledge of working with them. i haven’t developed a technique, i guess you could say.
I’d give it another 20-30 years myself.
JF
Starting around (or before) 2006, I spent a few months trying to guess the buttons thinking Blender was an elaborate games engine. It wasn’t until some time later I got into reading a tutorial… possibly the old gingerbread man one and finally started making “something”. Now I teach Blender to students, usually on holiday programmes. The hardest initial barrier is the interface… once properly directed, students can move shapes around and even begin to make simple extrusion models within an hour.
I went to Media Design School in NZ where I learned Animation on Maya, which was a year long professional level diploma. I have been able to apply most of what I learned there into the Blender equivalents.
Well I’ve now been using it for 2-3 years now. When I first started I gave up in under a month, then came back to it half a year to a year later, and tried it again.
I originally downloaded Blender in the days before it was first closed-sourced (late 90s? early '00? I forget – I know a friend of mine had MAX 2.5 and everyone was jealous), got frustrated with the interface, and ended up buying TrueSpace4 instead. I picked it up again after 2.3, and have been tinkering ever since. I’m reasonably competent but I still wouldn’t say I “know” it. However, note that I have not been focused on learning Blender, it’s just something I enjoy exploring in my free time, so I might’ve taken a smidge longer than your average user.
You can check my forum join date. This is about a month after I first picked up Blender. Fortunately, I quickly realised that searching for good tutorials will massively increase your learning speed. No matter how simple a tutorial may seem, I’ve learned something from every one I’ve done.
I made a fairly decent achiviz garden a few months ago, but this is the only thing I’ve actually got round to ‘finishing’. I learned a lot about library linking in that project from how not to do it. 
If you search the forums for “Plurdo”, you might find a little green man that I made fairly early on in my Blender usage. This kinda chronicles my organic modeling beginnings if you look at the post dates.
I’m just an amateur that messes about in my free time, and I’ve spent a while getting into the scripting side of things though, so my artistic progress has kinda slowed.
Blender is a big program. I don’t think any one person has fully mastered everything that you can do… Organic modeling, scenery modeling, texturing, animation, realistic rendering, game making, sequencing, compositing, physical simulations, scripting and everything else that I don’t have the time to list.
The important thing is to have fun and do those things that interest you. That way you stay interested and keep learning.
Happy Blending. 
I’ve been at it for a little over a year. Based on my progress to date, I’m expecting one more year to get me to a reasonable level of competence.
Best wishes,
Matthew
With the exception of Lancer, (Kudos, sir!), everyone here feels nooby-ish, don’t let it intimidate you! I’ve been working with it for 5 months now, and like everyone here, I’m still not learn’t on Blender…at all. But I love it, it’s my 3D environment of choice now, and after I read a lot of tutorials, I’m comfy with the interface. Now I get mad when my games and paint programs don’t use the same hot-keys!
I’ve modelled faces, nude bodies, monsters, guitars, spaceships, galaxies, nuclear explosions, it does (almost) everything I need it to. (waiting for 2.5) .
If you’re stuck on something, come here, these people are GREAT. Otherwise, just keep at it, it’ll click. I give you a week, before it grows on you!
Maybe it is a got idea to start shortly with blender 2.5, it is stable enought to play with and so many things would change in aspect of 2.49.
If you have experience in other 3D software you are faster. I saw some guys work out astonished models after a few weeks with blender coming fro cinema 4d or 3dmax.
Reading, then reading and then to proofread wikis, tutorials and books.
Good speed! for you, mib
I have been using blender nearly 7 years (ever since 2.31a) and when i first opened it i got scared and didn’t open it for a week then i did the old quickstart and model/texture a castle tuts and i was going great and in those days there was no wiki or anything and tuts were few and far between so it took about a month for me to get around in it, but in this day and age of blender i would say 1-2 weeks you will start getting decent and will know your way around
ive been using blender for years and im still learning new things.
I tried learning it for ages, but only when i bought the essential blender and got about half way through ws I really able to do anything useful… I had learned lightwave in the meantime though so that was an advantage I suppose
coming from using other 3d apps… learning how to do the basics in blender didn’t take more than a day or two… but for more specific stuff… it takes a while to learn… but generally I wouldn’t bother learning specific techniques unless you are going to use them in a project. So the learning never ends.
I joined in 2006 , i was learning by miself nearly everyday for 6 months , then i could do some allready cool stuff.
But i am still learnig more advanced stuff , u never stop learning. u never should ;D
I have started using Blender about half a year ago but stopped using for quite a long time because of school. I would say with the help of “Essential Blender” (excellent book, a bit outdated though) you can easily learn most of the basics in 1 to 2 months. It took me about 1 day for each chapter (things like mesh Modelling, Sculpting, Compositing for example) and then I played around with Blender. My first real project took about 6-7 days (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=165025 if you’re interested) and I think looking back I could have gotten to that level in about 2 month if I would have devoted several hours per day to Blender. One thing you have too keep in mind is that the learning is the real fun, not the actual doing. After having learned the basic interface you can do wonderful things and still discover more and more in each project.
I started with blender about 3 years ago. At first I was scared of UVmapping, then I was scared of animations with particles, then I was again scared of armature rigging, then I was scared of Nodes, and one day I opened the wiki and started experimenting myself and learned all those things and since them I am not scared anymore. The best way to learn blender is to make things, even If they scare you.
pd: I started with the more difficult things first, easier things later xd
Still learning. Did I say blender interface scared the hell out of me too?