Where do you stand?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

This came out too good to not have its own post.

There is a progression in a blender artist that I see. Here it goes.

Excited - Just got or found blender. The world has opend up and flowers rain down on you as you dance in the possibilities of things you can create!

Confused - You learn that all those cool renders actually take time to produce. You start doing tutorials to learn faster.

Frustrated- You are getting tired of things not working. You feel like all you do is ask questions and dont get any work done.

newNo hope: You look at Blender occasionally, as you have done for the last four or five years, but you’re still no closer to “getting it” so you spend your time in “off topic” talking crap with strangers who are just happy to be a part of a group.

Anger - You are done with trying to make anything. You hang out at the forums looking at other peoples work, not once opening blender to try anything new.

Defeat - You know now that blender is not what you thought it was when you started. You dont want to quit using it, but the thought has crossed your mind.

Renewal - You had a fresh idea. You know that blender is the right tool and you get to work. You are nolonger a n00b and you have been around the forums long enough to be considerd a vet.

newWorking: You know enough about Blender to actually be able to do something useful (or at least artistic) so you spend a lot of time doing just that and maybe spend little or no time in the forum at all.

newAnnoyance: You do know enough about Blender to be able to do something useful and to even give back occasionally but you spend most of your time trolling or arguing with people on the forums about stuff that isn’t even remotely related to Blender.

Hate - You now see others as n00bs. You hate the fact that they dont “get it” yet. You just went through all that, and here comes someone who THINKS they know it all…Your gonna tell them something…

Acceptance - You accept the faults of new users. You no longer use the term n00b. You know this is a bad term to call someone by. You even help out a few in the forums.

Content - Your comfy with your skill level. You dont need too much help anymore. Your projects are looking better and better. You gain some respect and admiration in the forums.

Masterd - You know so much now, even the largest scene holds no challenge for you. You can do mostly anything with blender now. People cant stop talking about how good you are.

Giving - You now know that your presence here is better served helping and giving back to the community that you took so much from. You now know why they “do it”! You know why the development team does what they do. You see the world diffrently now, you know where your place is and you do your best to help.

This is pretty much it. Take a look and see where you are at. I bet you will be surprised.

Thanks AndyD for the new ones, they fit well.

2

hm, I guess I have the excited attitude, but i wouldn’t consider myself a noob. I guess I’d be in the confused section, but I don’t find myself confused. So, I guess I’m in between Excited and Confused

3

between Acceptance and Giving

4

Again,(saw the original thread) I think Im between Acceptance and Giving. Im no Blender Master, but Ive been down the road for a couple of years, know what Im doing, and dont mind helping out new users.
Ive already been past losing interest and coming back…

Anyway, again, very good list. Pretty Accurate timeline.

5

I’m all over the map between excitement and renewal. I don’t have much to give back yet, but I hope to be able to at some point.

6

I think I’m somewhere between confused and frustrated, though less frustrated with blender not working and more frustrated with my inability to be good at stuff. :stuck_out_tongue:

7

It’s not quite totally accurate- I’ve never called anyone on Blender Artists a noob.

I’m not really sure what stage I am in- I have multiple symptoms of Excited (less than when I found Blender for the first time though), renewal, and giving.

8

I’ve never called anyone on Blender Artists a noob.

That means you are one.

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: jk. I usually do(though its new users to their face). I dont find Noob offensive. I was called one many times, its just a right-of-passage thing. It means your new. If that offends you, get over it.

Wait, maybe Im at Hate? :)…

9

I think I’ve hit Giving, as I recently wrote a very long tutorial, and am currently working on a little surprise…

I don’t think I was ever in the Hate phase, though. I was a n00b for long enough that I have a lot of sympathy toward them. (I’m still not exactly a Blender Master, at least not where animation is concerned.) Although I did sorta hate Cubefan and Kansas_15 at times, but they don’t count, do they?

BTW, Cyborg Dragon, I hated Kansas, but I don’t hate you.

10

defienetly renewal…:smiley:
oh PlantPerson thats called hate crime…:stuck_out_tongue:

11

Renewal and giving. I don’t give that much but I know I had a lot of questions when I started, and if I see someone with ones I can answer, i try.

12

Before I discovered Blender, about two or three years ago, I had roughly three years of experience with 3D modeling. The first program I used was originally a proprietary modeling suit used by a game company to create their game but a “Light” version was released to the community for development of third party modules. Needless to say, the program was extremely primitive, only cube projection UV and xyz projection UV, no extrude or cut options. Despite it’s short comings I quickly took to the program and created an extensive collection of highly detailed, dense mesh models. My modeling skills eventually progressed beyond the program’s capabilities. (The program did not support more than 30,000 vertices / faces, hence I had to create the objects piece by piece in separate files.)

The lack of flexibility was only one of the reasons why I began searching for a new 3D program. My primary concern was the lack of commercial licensing available. The proprietary modeling suit’s EULA stated that the company was willing to license the program for commercial use, however the company did not respond to my emails. For about two or three months I scoured the internet for a free 3D program with a commercial license. Although I found a number of free 3D programs, they did not allow user created content to be commercially distributed. Then I found Blender!

Immediately I knew that Blender was “It.” I had never touched a “Professional Quality” program prior to my experience with Blender and I found all of the new features very confusing. After reviewing the Blender online manual I was off and running. My first Blender project was a SUV model to be used in a game module. During the process of constructing the model I became some what dissatisfied with Blender, simply because I was able to complete most simple tasks much faster in the older program. I returned to the old program once the basic body of the SUV had been finished and I stopped using Blender for about two weeks.

My second Blender project was a human body, of which I only completed the torso before I quit using Blender again. By this time it was painfully clear that the company was not going to grant me a license for their program, nor would they allow me to purchase the commercial use rights to the odd 150+ models I had created. At this point I absolutely knew that I was done with low poly 3D work, I wanted to start working on CGI. To my surprise, the next version of Blender had been released and I quickly downloaded and installed it. After about a month or so of learning the GUI, hotkeys and general workings of Blender, I began to seriously develop an new model portfolio. Within 4-6 months I had ceased using the old program entirely and I eventually released all of my old models into the game community’s domain, for public use.

To be quite honest, I have not looked back more then once or twice. Both times I realized that I was much better off working in Blender, building my own portfolio, which I and I alone, owned the rights to. Although I still help my friends, who still mod the game and it’s sequels, I refuse to go back and I refuse to use anything but Blender for modeling and UV mapping. Allot of people are surprised at how little time it takes for me to model most projects. Maybe it’s just my motivation but I really think that Blender deserves a fair part of the credit. Once you know how to use Blender properly, it is a very powerful tool…

Additionally, I believe that Blender is a prime example of a cooperative community working together, not only to build a great program but to build better artists as well.

13

Well, I must be at least 2/3rds of that list, just bits and pieces from each section put together and you’ve got my profile generally worked out :wink: . Great list though!

14

Oh yeah, I am always learning, so I guess I like watching what all you talented people can do with blender. Sorry for the double post!

15

with every new release I go back to square one.

16

I am at “Defeat”

17

Heh heh… I guess I made a leap. I went from excited to acceptance. At least if I recall correctly (I may not… you’ll have to ask the older users on here: I started using blender in 1998).

Dunno, there have always been features I wished Blender had, and I’m sure there always will be. And, of course, there’s always the initial learning curve. But beyond that I don’t think I was ever really “confused”.
And I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone a n00b. I generally try to help where I can… when I have time.

I guess I’m in the “giving” stage. Except that I have fairly limited time these days, so my giving is limited. I did contribute three new nodes to the material node system for the upcoming release, though. And I’m hoping to make a pretty substantial feature contribution for the release after that. But, again, it depends on how much time I have.

18

I guess I’m Frustrated, though I’m not. Frustrated for ideas, perhaps.
I find the answers to most of my questions, and if I don’t I know the community will help me out. Though I’m not tired of working/learning Blender, I find it hard to come up with models which I am capable of completing. I suppose that’s the most frustrating: I have the idea for something to model, but not the capability.

19

Very intersting replies…I never thought it would get this type of response…

20

perhaps betweeen ‘renewel’ and ‘hate’. I dont consider myself a vet tho.