I Spent 100 Days Learning Blender

so I've been stuck in this cycle for years now and it goes like this decide it's finally time to learn blender follow a few tutorials get too busy with work take a few months off forget everything I learned and we're back to the beginning I want to share with you how I finally broke this cycle learned blender and stuck with it and how you can do this as well but first a tiny bit of background information is needed I've relied on solid works and fusion 364 modeling and keyshot for rendering for the better part of a decade now but the more I focus on product rendering and animation the more I begin to feel limited by these tools this is where blender comes in it's not considered a traditional CAD tool CAD programs are meant for Designing products that will be manufactured in the physical world blender on the other hand is used to create video games films commercials things like that and if you haven't yet heard it's completely free and open-source program the only problem blender has a reputation of being hard to learn as a cad user very little knowledge will carry over into blender it's like learning a whole new language that said after spending a 100 days learning blender I don't think it's actually that hard to learn most people make a few mistakes that lead to them quitting before they make that much progress so I designed a 100 days of blender project so that if I stuck with it I would have a zero chance of failure before I explain how I structured this 100 days of blender project I want to be clear as to why I wanted to learn blender in the first place see as a render artist the goal is to be able to create beautiful realistic and informative videos and images of products that might not even exist in our physical world quite yet see designers and Engineers use CAD software to make digital models that machines can then fabricate keyshot makes it easy to take a cad model and make highly realistic images from it despite the strengths of something like keyshot or solid works there's a lot that these two software can't do learning blender would allow me to do things like Advanced UV unwrapping organic modeling deformation animations physics simulations inverse kinematic animations rigging for advanced animations particle systems sculpting these are some of the features that film studios use to create the same visual effects that you see in movies and TV shows blender is a tool for technical artists who want to create any type of visual content so if I want to broaden my skill set to include realistic product animations then I would need to leave the realm of traditional industrial design tools and step into the world of entertainment design [Music] tools on the first 10 days I worked through the polygonal modeling boot camp course at CG fasttrack.com and I modeled a medieval cage a set of skeleton keys and a barrel which I then combined into this basic dungeon scene for my first mini project I modeled a zipper which took 3 hours and 53 minutes I exported the model as an fbx file and rendered it in keyshot since at this time I was only focused on modeling in blender then on days 11 through 20 I created a battle axe which pushed my modeling skills a little further with more complex forms and operations I also o began working on a rigging course which allows me to control an object with an Armature this is how animators create complex and lifelike animations in the films you see now for my second mini project or self-guided project I modeled a mountain bike pedal and this one took 4 hours and 16 minutes to complete I wasn't confident that I could capture all the subtle textures or details or even figure out the texture mapping and Blender at that time so I rendered this one in keyshot over the next 10 days I finished up the rigging course and created a Pixar inspired animation which shows off some of the strengths of using an Armature so not only could I create an inverse kinematic relationship between all the linkages but also quite expressive movement now at this time I also began working through a really ambitious car modeling course and my third mini project featured a plastic Buckle which took 3 hours and 46 minutes to model it proved to be a good challenge though from modeling perspective as I was trying to create a perfectly optimized quad topology if you're from CAD that might not make sense but it's important for polygonal modeling now I chose to render the final model in keyshot still at this point um wasn't quite ready to render and blender on days 31- 40 I kept working on the car course and at this point I blocked in the body of the car and finished up the modeling of the tire and part of the rim on day 40 I chose to model a military grade metal buckle it came with a handful of challenges and took me about 5 hours and 51 minutes to model once again I exported this as an fbx and rendered and animated it in keyshot the animation that I made here took off on Instagram and is currently my second most like post at this time which was kind of cool on days 41 through 50 I kept working through the car modeling course I finished up the wheels and moved onto the body panels This workflow made use of shrink wrapping a high resolution mesh over a low resolution version this also made it easy to get sharp edges on the panels without ruining the surface curvature then for the day 50 mini project I modeled out a super clamp this was way more difficult than I anticipated due to the many rounded holes and threads on this product now it's easy to extrude a circle through a solid in CAD and a nightmare to do so in blender especially on a curved surface this model took about 6 hours and 51 minutes to complete being in a rush to finish this project I sent it on over to keyshot where I applied my materials and rendered this one out on days 51 through 60 I finally finished my modeling the Roadster modeling this car took a total of 54 hours and 30 minutes over the course of 36 days now that includes the time spent watching the video lessons usually at 2x speed it was quite the challenge but it helped me build lots of good muscle memory now on day 60 I modeled a folding pocket knife this took a total of 8 hours and 28 minutes and it was spread over 2 days I really wanted to capture all the micro details and realistic materials contained in this model so I ended up rendering it in keyshot on day 61 through 70 I finished up the Roadster project I learned how to apply more realistic materials to all the surfaces and set up an hdri and some basic camera angles now this was the first time I learned how to use blender's material system and cameras for creating Studio renderings similar to what I would do in keyshot it's super rewarding seeing the final images after spending so much time modeling this thing now for my day 70 mini project I actually returned to the pocket knife so after creating the car renderings I was determined to create materials lighting and animation in blender instead of in keyshot like I normally would have so adding labels was a bit confusing but I was really happy that I was able to make use of some of the deformation animation tools that I couldn't have done in keyshot I also really liked the key frame system that blender uses in its graph editor for creating nice fluid motion this mini project actually only took 3 hours and 38 minutes to complete on days 71 through 80 I worked through a procedural Shader Network course and comp compositing course now these were great little side quests that helped me get comfortable with creating materials from node networks in Cycles which is blenders built-in render engine the equivalent would be like the material graph and keyshot so the compositor also unlocks a pretty powerful workflow though it can be really foreign for someone who's not done much compositing now on day 80 for my mini project I chose to make an animation of a photographer's Loop coming out of a folded box to learn how to animate the folding box I followed along with drick Elliot's folding box tutorial on YouTube unfortunately I ran into a dead end after a couple of days and I eventually scrapped the whole project and started over from scratch in the end I overcame the challenges and this project took about 4 days to complete and I spent another day creating a hero still image along with a few more props to help tell a narrative story in that image on days 86 through 100 I broke away from my typical format and tried to complete my final self-guided project an animated dog collar now in un fortunately I didn't complete the project before day 100 I spent about 5 days on R&D I was testing different modeling and animation techniques to try to create a believable woven nylon strap that could then be animated or bent into a circular shape I was about 90% finished with the modeling portion of this project when day 100 rolled around and then it took me another week or two to work out the materials and animation so here are the six steps I used to design this 100 days of blank project so that I could avoid the mistakes most people make when trying to learn this tool first I defined what I wanted to learn in the next 100 days most people are not specific enough and they waste time learning something that's not relevant to their goals in 100 days I wanted to learn the blender user interface subdivision surface modeling basic material Creation in Cycles physical and environment based lighting camera properties and render and animation settings so while making a list like this it's important to keep it handy so you can stay focused on your goal and not waste time getting distracted by things that are not actually on your list second I chose a sustainable goal most people try to learn too much too quickly I chose to spend a minimum of 1 hour per day every day for 100 days this worked for me since I'm self-employed and have flexibility in my schedule I did this project also from December through March when I had no travel planned which was not a coincidence and perhaps the most important thing I made learning blender the first thing I did every morning to avoid running out of time third I chose the right Mentor most people just follow whatever tutorial grabs their attention because it has a cool thumbnail but when you do this there's no continuity between each tutorial and it's too easy to miss important skills and each person will have a different teaching ability so in my case I chose to follow CG FasTrack after following their three-part beginner course on YouTube I paid to access their full training Library which is taught by a seasoned professional with extensive teaching experience personally I'm happy to pay money to avoid a bumpy and inefficient learning path this also ensured that I would not run out of content or lessons over the 100 days if each day you're searching for a new tutorial you'll quickly get overwhelmed and quit finally when learning from a one library or curriculum the courses are laid out chronologically each building upon the previous this ensures that you keep leveling up fourth I did sell self-guided mini projects most people get stuck in tutorial jail watching tutorials feels like learning but without actually applying the skills you don't make real progress So to avoid this I followed along with each tutorial instead of just watching them and then every 10 days I chose to do a self-guided mini project I recommend limiting these to one day and I try to keep them under 2 hours as I went on of course they became more ambitious and they took longer to finish now each project should demonstrate skills that you learned while following along with the previous week's tutorials these will then expose your weaknesses and demonstrate the progress you've made fifth I was able to stay motivated most people lose motivation and give up all the previous points I mentioned will actually help with this having a clear reason why you're learning blender choosing a sustainable goal that you can keep up with picking the right mentor to learn from and self-guided mini projects to prove to yourself that you're actually getting better in my case limiting my project to 100 days also help think of it like this if you've ever run a race like 5K you know that having a Finish Line helps you push hard until you hit the end if you don't know where that finish line is you quickly lose motivation to keep going so in my case having 100 days just felt right for you it might be fewer it's highly individual and number six I built an accountability system most people are not held accountable which makes it really easy to quit to keep myself accountable here's what I did I announced to my peers that I would be spending 100 days learning blender I asked my wife if she was okay with me spending 1 hour per day every day for the next 100 days learning blender I shared my plans with my email newsletter subscribers and I created and posted daily videos to my Instagram showing myself learning each day with so many people knowing what I was doing and offering encouragement and support I was able to stay committed even on days when my motivation was lacking so you definitely want to build an accountability system so if you decide you want to learn blender I recommend you take the one 100 days challenge that I outlined in this video and then go ahead and adapt it to meet your own needs and until next time happy rendering

Channel: Will Gibbons | 3D Rendering

Views: 143,918

Keywords: will gibbons, wil gibbons, will gibbins, will gibons, will gibins, keyshot, rendering, tutorial, animation, studio, freelance

Id: poiJT6Rfjmc

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2024