Naeh, I’ve been doing 3D on & off for 15 years, so it’s not 3D, but it’s the difference between the apps… And my oh my what difference there are. I mean, shortcuts & such, well, that’s thought to relearn, but the terminology? Nothing is named the same in the apps… But come on, hehe, that’s just not fair… But it takes a while and you get into it and then you start getting irritated when having to go back to the old app… And then you get old. And fat. Not that being fat is a problem doing 3D, but with age comes alzheimers light. It’s just not that easy to learn as it used to be. Did I say it wasn’t fair? ;D
Your frustrations are very typical. The Blender Community has a bit of a bad reputation for being overly defensive and antagonistic in the face of criticism. Unfortunately, we sometimes do live up to our reputation. 
To be fair I did expect a bit of that so it’s all good and thanks for the 3d buzz link, I’m liking the way the info is presented, I just wish I’d seen them two weeks ago 
And lol Farmfield, I’ll get there, just feels like I’ve got a few more problems to encounter before I get up to speed.
Well, I’ve given myself 2012 to get up to speed and swithing to Blender. I use Maya/Vray for production now and it’s such overkill for what I do - but I couldn’t have choosen a better time to switch considering Cycles and the tiles compositor a.s.o… So this fall, when my Maya lic runs out, it’s perfect timing to switch… 
Most of what you are complaining about, I’m sorry but this is something you’d have to face in any other program. You need to learn how to use the tools and, frankly, I’ve not heard of anyone “flipping” anything but normals in 3D before.
With that said, the “right click select” is a pain for everyone. It’s been complained about more than anything else in the application and I honestly think the only reason it is still there is someone in the upper-echelons of the dev team is being stubborn. It’s not just the newbies that complain about that one, but a few respected Blender veterans as well (in these forums no less).
Considering Right click select:
On the surface it sure looks like really bad design, and I also think it should be fixed into a proper default.
But fixing it means you’d have to touch a lot areas in blender to make everything work together.
For a simple example, How can you select something with left click, if the manipulator is in the way?
Is it really better to click left button twice then altering when trying to move vertices around with mouse tweak?
Yes in reality scaling to -1 (locking it to the X or Y or Z axis for the directions you want to mirror it) is hardly something that I would call “intuitive”. And yes I know from a mathematical pov it does make sense, but not everyone is a developer/mathematician. From a usability standpoint it absolutely doesn’t fit in any “mental” models but hey f*ck al those proven studies and concepts… .
If I would give a tip to the topic starter.
- make a list what you want to do, google it.
- write it down (I have my own personal wiki where I collect little tidbits regarding different programs)
- don’t think or start a discussion about it. Such kind of discussion aren’t wanted here as some a rusted in their “Blender is perfect” mantra or “you are doing it wrong”. If you are lucky you will even get a show of hour in house clown who will make insults that you are only asking about features and making smug remarks that you aren’t worthy because the level of your work doesn’t hold up his “professional” (don’t miss with attitude) standards.
I wouldn’t fret about it after a while the mental friction wears of and it becomes second nature. I’m now scaling with -1 to mirror like a “pro”. Blender for me is sometimes a lot like playing piano in the begin years. Having the hands doing to different things does seems to be awkward or unnatural in the beginning, but it wears off.
Personally I’m sure that newcomers (noobs or pro’s, users from other programs,…) can have valid input - hey the money companies throw at usability interviews with users, etc - but unfortunately some aren’t mature enough to handle such kind of discussions.
The manual has a few missing pages too you know and sometimes the pages that are there don’t make alot of sense.
Blender may benefit from some official basic tutorials that lays out certain concepts. When 10 years ago at work I got my feet wet with 3D studio max, the tutorials that came with the program certainly set me on the right track. It isn’t a mater of having a lot of tutorials it is about the correct tutorials for beginners following a clear and logical path explaining the most important concepts… .
For the rest documentation is not up to standards, but they are working on it. But I know your pain, sometimes I also get lost in the documentation as Blender is moving faster then the documentation is written. RTFM is only valid if the manual is complete… . And even if you google it and found something, you still need to hope that the explanation still works in the newer versions or the workflow hasn’t been changed.
For things you don’t know, I would simple ask it on the forum with keeping in mind to make sure you don’t have any critical tone in the way you describe your problem. That is my main tip I give to people with regarding BA if you want to survive this forum and keep your blood pressure down.
Period. End Rant.
It took some serious patience and time to be able to do something very basic for me too. It has so many features it’s incredible, but it gives you an appreciation of just how much skill goes in to creating a full movie.
I lol’ed at this comment. so true.
Some solid advice in there SilenceBe, indeed I have a wordpad doc with all the bits of info I think might be relevant when I’m doing a ‘tutorial tour’ and I still wish I’d seen these 3d buzz tuts 2 weeks ago, they’re very good.
It is also a very interesting time to get into 3d, what with cycles, bmesh etc and the Blender of yesteryear looked even less forgiving.
You can check my post history to see my tone, I’m normally a lot nicer when not in ‘rant mode’ (which has now been disengaged) 
It’s good to vent every now and then!
I also want a rectangle with radius corners, where’s the fillet tool?
to round off you want the addon bevelround, was taken out of latest 2.63 stable I think.
Thanks MJ, I do have bevel round, it’s a shame they changed it for release but look forward to seeing it when they’ve sorted it out.
It doesn’t work on a 2d rectangle though
The way I got around that was to start with a circle, duplicate to the four corners, delete unnecessary areas of each cricle so only the corners are left, I then joined the vertices and used F to fill in the face. Much easier than starting with a plane.
That’s the kind of thing I was talking about, it’s a bit like an IQ test trying to think your way around a problem with the tools you’re aware of
Being something of a “Newbie” myself, I feel your pain but you can be thankfull that you’re not coming from another program’s learning curve because it would be even more difficult. It took me almost a year to join this forum because of the fear of looking stupid or something for asking simple questions. But these are a bunch of great guys and if you need help just ask. And by the way, after a year and a half of learning Blender, I’m still building my “muscle memory”.
Thanks for the warm welcome 
Exciting times ahead! I’ll definitely be along for the ride, I’ve loved 3d ever since I saw Knick Knack
Right time for bed.
Sorry for sounding harsh before, it’s just that this thread pops up a lot. I remember being new to 3D and to Blender. But honestly, the workflow of Blender is SO much faster than any other 3D package I’ve used (Maya, 3DS, Softimage). Softimage is the only one that even comes close. Give it a month at least. It can be overwhelming to see all of the tools, but chances are you won’t need to use even half of what there is. Once you learn the shortcuts for the operations you do on a regular basis, Blender flies. I couldn’t go back from the “everything hotkeyed” workflow now if I tried.
Hey LGG,
Maybe this will help?
Getting Started in Blender from Blender Cookie
I can relate! It wasn’t that long ago i picked Blender up myself. 3D is a whole different ballgame to flatter design paradigms like Illustrator and Photoshop, so i can definitely understand the frustration. The quirks are definitely there but they’ve come to make their own weird sort of sense - many of the commonest keypresses for modelling are under the left hand near the home row; you can mouse with one hand without having to look down at the keyboard. I guess that’s why people find it so quick to work with.
Blender kind of reminds me of the old MOD tracking software i used to use in the 1990s - keyboard heavy but blindingly fast to work with once you get your muscle memory. Piano roll is slow as by comparison (though much better for polyphony).
Never knew what a fillet tool was - looks useful! And yeah, after a bit of fiddling around i haven’t figured out a nice tweak-friendly way of doing it in Blender yet. I suspect BMesh will be making your life way easier right about now if your design workflow moves from curves/lines to polys too.
Oh and +1 for BlenderCookie, naturally.
Good thing is to join irc.freenode.net #blenderchat and when you have hard time getting somewhere with blender, just see if there’s someone willing to help you at the time. Worked for me a few weeks ago when I started learning Blender again. =D
Same time I was creating a python script, afther 1 week getting nuts, a 1 hour few questions in #blendercoders helped me enormously. Afther that I created my first script afther years inside blender.
Mr Williamson
Thanks for that, I have indeed seen many tutorials on your site, mostly in the modeling section. It’s a great resource so thanks for making it available and taking the time to make all those videos.
I probably found the quick tips most helpful. Again it must be tough with an ever changing Blender feature set. A “common do’s and don’t’s” would be very helpful.
Quollism, it does feel like blender is a bit friendlier towards sculpting and things that are geometric seem a bit more labour intensive and you’re right, Bmesh is helping A LOT, especially as what I do isn’t for a game engine etc and doesn’t need to conform to any particular methodology.
I’ll get my head around the shortcut system soon enough, it’s just a case of practice and repitition. In photoshop I can select everything, make a merged copy, create a new file, insert the copied layers and resize the document in about a second so shortcuts are definitely the way to go.
I’ll also have to look into IRC too, thanks JD