New to Blender

Hello all,

I am new to Blender. I have worked on some Tutorials online…the wine glasses, etc.

Couple of questions:

  1. Do I need to be an artist in order to do Blender? As of right now, I am not. I don’t even know if I have the talent to become one. I like modeling but if I have to dig down inside for talent in drawing or something…well, I don’t think i have it or at least it isn’t developed yet.

  2. Are there any good books on Blender that would fill in the gaps of terminology and stuff like that? When I watch blender videos (doesn’t matter how basic), I find the instructor usually says something like “and we’re gonna go turn “blah” off”. So, I sit there for days trying to figure out what “blah” does. It is frustrating when instructors are clicking around and you (I) really find it hard to follow along because I don’t know WHY they did what they did.

Any opinions would be appreciated!
Thanks blender community
-Stoss

  1. You are not born an artist, you become one. The definition of “artist”, well, I’ll let philosophers write it. Everyone can become one, you just need to work hard on whatever you want to achieve. The same goes for talent. Just do it, you know ?

  2. There are some books and tutorials for complete beginners out there. Packtpublishing has some, blender cookie has also a decent amount of tutorials for newcommers. But for terminology, blender’s wiki will be your best friend.

Also take a look at : https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

  • Kévin

I’m no artist, unlike my wife, (no fair), but so long as you have an eye for an image and can learn the tools, there is no reason you cannot become good at 3D. Like everything in life, it is practice, practice, practice. I enjoy doing 3D and am always learning, but even at my level, I know I am far better than I was at the start.
Yes, if you can learn to do tradtional art there are distinct advantages, but not being able to do it does not preclude you from learning I am happy to say. :slight_smile:
Not sure about books, but go to BlenderGuru for some great tutorials and on youtube, subscribe to the AmadeoCompositions channel, he has some great series of tutorials.

It all depends on how you want to use Blender. If you want to model beautiful women characters, some art training will help. On the other hand, if you like to build furniture, you can build it in Blender, too. Lots of people do mechanical things, no artistic ‘talent’ required. We also have a lot of people doing architectural rendering, I suppose it’s art, but the training is not the same as the traditional drawing and painting sort of art. You may find you like animating… use someone else’s model and rig, you do the acting. There really is something for all tastes here.

Welcome to BlenderArtists. :smiley:

Thanks all for the replies!

I am glad to hear what you all had to say. And thanks for the info on books, websites, etc.

If you come across anything else, please let me know.

Thanks,
Stoss