Starting out in a serious manner

General Forums Off-topic Chat
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Hello everyone, I intend this thread to be a meaningful one to not only me but like me as well. So I’ve been toying around with Blender for about 2 years now and I want to become more serious about using it professionally. I was wondering what is the best way to go about this? I extremely enjoy using Blender to create things, modeling, animating, all of it pretty much. However I fall into this little chasm where I get stuck saying to myself that I have all these great ideas of what to make what and what to do, but I don’t believe I have the experience needed to make them truly fantastic. Which to some greater or lesser extent I probably don’t seeing as how I can always learn more. Now my question is how do I stray away from this and which direction should I take in terms of things, scenes, videos, w/e that I should make that would help me learn along the way as well. I know I should always do something that I want to do, something that I enjoy and trust me I can find something I will enjoy in most any form of modeling and using Blender. I guess I just want to know some tips of starting out to be professional and what direction I should take that helps me get more Blender experience under my belt and push towards quality work. I believe I need to “fail” more, which I’ve been reluctant to finish a project that isn’t matching my mind’s eye.

TL:DR: I’m want to become more professional in Blender and want to know tips and a good learning direction to do so. Please help. Thank you. :slight_smile:

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For characters, learning to sculpt is great and then learning to re-topologise is key to building realisitic organic things. I, myself, need to learn how to re-topologise in Blender.

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It is difficult to be really expert in all aspects of Blender. In professional studios, there are artists who are great modelers, great texturers, riggers, animators, people who arrange lighting, sometimes people who just do things like hair and grass. Blender makes it fairly easy to learn how to do all of these things, but does not give you the experience to do them at an expert professional level.

For that expertise, you need to decide what you want to do, what you like best, and focus on that aspect of computer graphics. I am not saying you can’t do it all, but I am warning you against trying to do it all at once. Pick a specialty, and practice that specialty. Read the release notes, find the experts and pick their brains, explore the research on the subject, and practice, practice, practice.