As a new member of the forum and to the blender program, i’m completely amazed at what you poeple have accomplished. I downloaded Blender about 24 hours ago, both me and my friends decided to give it a try out of sheer boredom. What did we see when we opened the program? An armada of buttons and lines to attack us directly upon opening the program.
I’m at the point in my blender career where I’m happy if I get circle and lines halfway completed. Then, while basking in a few rays of accomplishment with my sphere, I check the forums to see what other blenderians can to, to get some ideas, etc… the first post I check, elemental:fire. I’m completely stunned that somone has the time or skill to make this. My question; how?
I’ve read all the tutorials the site has to offer, countless lines of text and my best accomplishment was an untextured castle with walls that wouldn’t extrude.
Is the storebought manual required to do anything decent? I do not saee how any of you could possibly accomplish what I’ve seen, it’s unhuman; you’re all obviously some genetic cyborg defects that sony through out, and somehow managed to find a pc to download this program. It’s the only way your skill can be explained.
If not, start explaining how your “artwork” is possible.
No you don’t need the storebought manual. My advice is to just keep trying until it clicks. Once you have mastered the basics, you can get on to the fun stuff. Also you will eventually develope a nose for where the best tutorials are at. Try this: Concentrate on one thing at a time. If you can’t make a texture, concentrate on that. If you get frustrated with it there are a jillion other things to learn, but just keep working at it until it makes sense. If you want to know how to do something specific, and the tutorials are not cutting it, just ask in the ‘general’ subforum. The main thing is to be specific as to where it is not working. These are the things I think you are asking:
Why can’t I extrude my object?
Answer: #1 you have to be in edit mode. This is the mode where if you select a vertic by right clicking, it turns yellow. or,…you are not dragging the newly created vertices before clicking them into place.
Cannot texture castle
Answer: #1 you have to have your object selected #2 you have to have added a material to your object.
Once you add your texture you have to define it by clicking the buttons that say ‘clouds’ ‘wood’ or what have you. It should then show up in pinkish color, so go back to materials, and where the sliders are next to the little screen with the piunkish color, adjust it to what you want.
I’d say try as many tutorials as possible. I started with this one : http://10secondclub.org/users/juicy/
It quickly got me hooked on Blender about a year ago.
Once you’ve been playing with Blender for about a week or so and read lots of tutorials you realize you’ll never need half the buttons !
The questions and answers section has a massively-comprehensive list of tutorials, go there for more. A forum search will probably answer most of your questions at this stage but if not, post a question !
Have fun Blending and don’t give up, everyone gets shocked by the number of buttons !
HI wellcome to BLENDER!!! I my self got in to belender out of sheer boredom, and I am here since then (three years ago, since 2.21, not very old compared to many others!), and also I wasn’t realy sure how goo is blender (till I saw the gallery back at the old community site), and my face got :o when I first opend the program (too many buttons), well it’s not too many and whend you’ll get use for blender you’ll see that every button earned is place. my suggestion is that you to the blender3d.org site and look for the learning curve and then go for the many tutorials the comunity have to offer if any question arise ask it in this forum but in the questions section because stefano will lock your question
If you find the buttons daunting, here is a good solutions: Place your cursor in the 3D Viewport and press CTRL + <upArrow>. That will make all those confusing buttons go away, and free up a bit more working space.
Second, I would say (as a noob myself) that the biggest thing for starters is to memorize these keys and what they do in edit mode:
G
S
R
B
A
E
F
X
Get those down and I think things start making more sense.
Here are some resources to help you with those, if you need it:
24 hours and you have gone through ALL of the tutorials??? :o
[gets on soapbox]
As an artistically challenged individual (not a single artistic neuron in my entire body) I will tell you that alot of the incredible results that you see on this site are mostly the result of fantastic talent - plus, in many cases, years of exploring the vast posibilities that this program has to offer.
As you can see, I have been a member of this site for over a year - and I have been using blender for almost 2 but as of yet I have not been able to do anything that was worthy of showing to the general public. (you can also see that I don’t even post much- always felt that it was better to keep my mouth shut and let people think that I was stupid than to open my mouth and prove it…) In spite of that, I am a founding member of blender and love the fact that this program can even give someone like me the the ability to produce renders (and a couple of animations) that I am personally quite proud of given my limitations.
[gets off of soapbox]
but I digress, Give yourself (and blender) a chance - spend a bit more TIME and EFFORT getting to know blender and probably in a few weeks you will be posting renders beyond what I will be able to do in my lifetime…
As others said, the purchased manuals aren’t necessary, however, if you buy manuals or other products available at http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/ you are helping to support blender’s development.
No one on this site is a super-human, maybe a bit smarter than average. Yet I don’t really think that 24 hours of working with a program (any program, but especially blender) could earn someone enough experience with it to make anything remotely professional looking. It can be done, as you have seen, but it is not so far away as you might imagine.
Start with what has already been layed out for you, the suggestions offered here to get started are worth persuing. I just wanted to chime in to give you some support. Remember Blender is for everyone; Blend on and Blend well.
you think it’s daunting seeing all those buttons when you first load up blender?
Once you get a bit of a hold on the program, you will find out where TEN TIMES AS MANY useless buttons are hidden.
Also, there is always gonna be someone who can do stuff way better than you. But, you improve all the time. Remember to always save your work, so that you can go back and look at it.
You won’t believe how many times you’ll think: I thought that was good??
if any question arise ask it in this forum but in the questions section because stefano will lock your question 
