What's your Blender story?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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i don’t know if there’s a thread about this or not, but i think there should be, a place for everyone to share their story, how did you ended up using Blender? what leaded you here? what are you using it for? are you a hobbyist or are you aiming higher? some of you are probably gonna go like, who gives a damn about anybody else’s life or some thing like that. but the way i see it, a community needs interaction, and understanding of each other to work together on our path in the CG world.

so, i’ll start with mine story. how did i decided to learn blender properly? it actually because of my discovery of the clone stamp tool in Photoshop :wink:

i am 19 years old, i discovered Blender 4 years ago when i’ve just enter high school. back when i was just a toddler my sister and i got obsessed with a small PC kids game call Zoo Tycoon 2 (actually Zoo Tycoon 1 but than the second part came out and it was so much better). than when i was 15 my sister bought me that game as a present, i was re-living my youth playing that game. it didn’t took long for me to realized, there are a thing called mods of a game, and you know how user made contains are, they are so much better. the ZT2 community was a small place, but people was quite nice there, perhaps the nicest place on the internet that i have ever been a part of (here’s a link to 1 of it’s forum if you’re interested:The ZT2 Round Table). and the mods of this game was made by using a 3d program. wanna know what it is? i’ll give you a hint, it’s starts with B and ends with R :yes:. it’s Blender baby! :RocknRoll:

at first i was not even thinking about making such mods myself, they just look so complex and detailed, i tried download blender once, but quit soon afterwards when i can’t figure out what to do :no:. but the most daunting part to me in zt2 designing is texturing a model, i thought you would have to use Paint for that, (how naive i was). but than one day i discovered, the so call clone stamp tool, which i never knew about, hell i didn’t even know what Photoshop do back than. the clone stamp tool, though not the only tool you would need, but it helps make texturing easier. so i tried again, and after 3 years i came to become one of the most avid zt2 designers around. here’s a very ugly google site i made for my zt2 downloads: One_piece designs (i used to took the username one_piece).

now although i said that i used blender for 4 years, i actually don’t have the experience a 4-year-blender-user would have. cause zt2 modding with blender was rather simple, i just need to make a low poly model and export to the game’s model format. however it did teaches me some fundamentals. like organic modeling, uv mapping, basic rigging, etc… i only started actually going deeper into blender like 4 months ago i think, when 2.74 came out, and i was amazed how much awesomeness i missed from blender. and now, i’m pretty obsessed with it, it’s 2:34 in the morning and i’m still awake, working on my projects and write this real lengthy story of my life. anyway, i love blender, i love CG in general and i don’t plan to stop here, being just a hobbyist. i am currently major in Multimedia Design in uni, and my goal is to make a living out of this. cause even back in 2011, 4 years ago, i knew that this is what i wanted to do for the rest of my life.

so that’s my story, what’s yours?

(again, i don’t know if this thread exsisted elsewhere, so i apologize if it does)

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My story is not very remarkable, but here goes.

My grandpa makes a living fixing and building computers and usually he asks us if we want leftover parts or software. So, when I was about eight years old, my grandpa gave me a whole bunch of software, and one of those programs was Blender. This was a really old version of Blender (before cycles!). My brother and I weren’t really sure how it worked, but that didn’t stop us from playing around with it. Our actions were mostly limited to dragging around the default cube and messing around with the vertices. We didn’t have access to the Internet, so there was no way we could learn about the keyboard shortcuts or anything. We sort of abandoned the program after a while, since whenever we tried to render anything our ancient computer decided to crash!

Fast forward several years, and I stumble across Blender again. I was blown away that it was a free program, since I never knew that as a kid. I immediately downloaded it and decided to properly learn how it worked this time. I’ve been learning Blender for about a year and a half now, and I plan to keep learning. I’m not sure what I plan to do with it, so for now it’s staying a hobby. :slight_smile:

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I started out animating with flipbooks about 4 years ago. I probably created like 100 of them, but they were awful. I was always really frusturated. I couldn’t draw well at all, but I could create very smooth movement, and I was able to create really good fight scenes (With stick figures). Then, I moved onto using the DSI flipnote studio, which helped me develop more skills as an animator. Then, I got into the world of after effects. I started creating special effects for other people’s videos, and I really loved it. What I really wanted to do but couldn’t though, is create motion tracked characters within the world. I tried element 3D, and many other softwares, but nothing worked. Then, I got into Blender. I started making little minecraft animations, and I loved it. I was terrible at it, but I still worked on it. I never ended up actually doing any more live action stuff. I moved on to creating intros for other people, combining my knowledge of Blender and after effects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhySJ0BMAvw. As of now, I’m currently working on my own fully animated series. ^.^

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Tried Blender on-and-off for years, hitting a brick wall on each attempt. Eventually put aside some time to learn its interface and then took the plunge to use it alongside Silo for rendering on a creature project. It was that experience that finally made me switch from 3ds Max.

For now I am currently working on a small game, which I am sure I will have to whip-out Blender for some rendering…