Is Blender Hard to Learn?

i have a question for you is blender hard to learn well if you've never opened a 3d software before blender can certainly seem complicated there are a few different views multiple menus and panels and moving around your cursor in a 3d space is much more difficult than you think however since the 2.8 version was released in 2018 blender has become a lot more user friendly and the learning curve has become much less steep now being that this powerful piece of software is free the new found access for beginners made blender's popularity practically explode many people picked up 3d art as a hobby without considering that it is a very intricate domain and that it cannot be mastered quickly if you're just starting your 3d journey the interface with all the menus and the myriad of things you hear about blender can seem overwhelming so i'll ask again is blender hard to learn i understand the term hard is subjective difficulty is after all interpreted through the lens of the viewer but if you compare blender to other industry standard software you will quickly begin to see how much more forgiving blender is the interface although seemingly complex is a lot more intuitive than other 3d suites at least in my humble opinion in comparison maya has a much steeper learning curve and it's challenging to use for first-time users even if you have substantial 3d experience with other software and even if cinema 4d is the industry standard for tv it is much more sluggish and almost out of date when compared to more modern 3d packages instead when it comes to blender there seems to be a certain logic behind the software that seems to be aimed at beginners although it is a powerful tool there are certain knickknacks in place that will guide you whenever you're reaching a dead end a lot of tools that will help optimize your workflow and a specific order to all of the menus that makes looking for solutions to problems relatively easy a lot of blender users report that whenever faced with a problem they did not find the need to go online but to try and find a tool that will help with the situation and that works in most cases when it comes to blender apart from the default tools there are many add-ons already included in blender or that you can download to help you save a lot of time with just a couple of clicks blender's sapling tree generator add-on will conjure up procedural variations of realistic looking trees you can then make a forest scene complete with procedural leaves complete rake and default animation patterns another pre-installed add-on called archimec is a library of assets you can use to build an interior scene in minutes it also allows you to create a room with doors and windows furnish it with many different options and even fill it with decoration props such as books curtains and lamps in this aspect the blender community and the developers are providing tremendous help for beginners compared to other pieces of software for which you will need to acquire a license and learn through the much fewer resources available online most industry standard software such as maya come with expensive price tags which makes the supporting community a little bit tighter for this reason beginners don't benefit from the broad range of options in introductory courses tutorials and saturation of inspiration not only are there add-ons that significantly cut out your modeling time but it's really easy to find instructional videos and full-on tutorials on literally anything you'd like to do with blender there are many tutorial channels that are not only informative but also extremely entertaining which provide constant value to beginners blender guru's donut tutorial is somewhat a rite of passage for blender users but is also a great way to get familiar with the basics cg matter covered procedural material notes in a full in-depth course and ducky 3d has a lot of things to teach in regarding motion graphics steven pearson teaches a mean modern interior course on skillshare and gleb alexandrov can teach you how to model spacious and robots with this course there are many discord and reddit communities as well as forums where you can get advice and ask whenever you're having an issue and if you ever need a little motivation you can check out loads of inspiring artwork from other hobbyists and established artists on social media for example check out stuzor for some eerie sci-fi environments or how easy ian hubert made it for lazy people to create cinematic scenes and moths and for those of you who feel like not sleeping tonight or ever again luke starkey sculpts creatures right out of your deepest nightmares so this all begs the question what is the best way to actually learn blender of course your best bet for quickly learning blender just like anything else is through repetition if you approach practicing with a bit of a plan and make realistic expectations for what your journey will look like there really isn't going to be a best place where you can learn blender it's going to be and it's going to come from within yourself now the best part in my opinion about learning 3d art from scratch is that you will find various branches of 3d along the way that will further inspire you and that you will start to learn just from pure passion there are many people who want to learn to model products for advertising but end up falling in love with procedural materials along the way and decide to focus their efforts on that instead it's also not uncommon to want to learn blender for motion effects and end up falling in love with rigging and animating your own characters the best way to go about learning is to get familiar with the basics first and then try to replicate as many tutorials as possible in whatever area that you think is really cool trying to replicate visuals will teach you a lot about modifiers lighting and procedural materials in contrast game asset modeling will teach you how to model and texture using the best practices learning how to model using basic shapes will also make it a lot easier for you if you were to learn sculpting and getting familiar with basic timeline and keyframe tricks will help you if you want to rake and animate in the future so can you actually learn all of this by yourself online can you just blindly follow tutorials and press buttons until someone hires you well it's not that simple obviously it is completely possible to teach yourself blender to the point where you will be able to produce professional work and since 3d is such an emerging market you'll probably be able to find a job if you're willing to make some sacrifices now most people getting into 3d art are attracted to the idea of working in game design which makes for extremely high competition there are many other domains where your future skills will be useful and generously compensated for example you could look into architectural rendering or product rendering for advertising and you will notice that there are a lot of high paying opportunities in these niches you'd be surprised how much some ad agencies are willing to pay for competent 3d artists but for all the information and tutorials that are readily available on the internet it won't make a difference if you can't take the information that you've learned and apply them in your own way as long as you're creating every tutorial by solo work and approaching learning this software with focus you'll quickly find yourself creating things you didn't think you could make so how long will it take before you're able to complete your first project well your first project can take a week or two months or five you can finish the donut tutorial in about a day or two if you apply yourself a couple of months at a relaxed pace or about a month of intensive study should bring you up to a point where you have a decent grasp of the most important aspects of blender like how to navigate the user interface and how to properly use the most important modifiers like booleans and skin modifiers after this point there will be many different areas where you can try to specialize when and how to use specific modifiers sculpting uv maps texture painting and baking procedural materials rigging armatures composition and lighting you can spend forever playing with all of these and your expectations will grow along with your skills but the number of hours you'll have to invest before you're able to make something you're satisfied with will depend all on your own standards you are the only one who can decide if your first project will be a skateboard or a full short movie feature so which parts of blender are easier to learn after you feel like you've got the basics down and you're somewhat familiar with the interface one of the most helpful things you can focus on is basic modeling you'll need good modeling skills in practically any area you want to specialize in anyway and it's probably the easiest thing to learn there are a lot of resources and tutorials that will guide you and you can start as simple or as complex as you want of course there are various ways in which you can approach modeling and practicing modeling small objects will take you through the most common ways by learning modeling first you will learn about blender's many tools that can help speed up your workflow such as bridging loops which allows you to quickly insert kinks and holes into a model and not spend an eternity on patching the mesh up or the poly build tool which will let you extrude edges freehand thus allowing you to model complicated meshes in just seconds the spin tool will also create complex circular objects at a fraction of the time moreover while learning how to model you will probably get to use the most frequent modifiers such as the mirror modifier which lets you create symmetrical objects the skin modifier which will be an invaluable tool when creating organic shapes such as characters or trees or even the screw modifier which will allow you to twist and shape some fascinating models just a heads up messing around with the screw modifier will keep you entertained for hours so don't forget to eat while you're messing around with it so what parts of blender are actually hard to learn well for starters uv unwrapping and texturing are definitely not easy to master once you get past your project from view stage getting the perfect uvs for your model can take some time to do well even though i'm technically a texture artist by trade i still hate doing uvs and i'll probably always hate doing them uv mapping can be a bit of a pain in all 3d software and users across industries regularly use certain tricks to hide shortcomings as one often does in digital art but as a beginner trying to employ good topology and cleaning up your meshes can turn out pretty bad and can be very difficult as a beginner you can expect that even if your models look like what you've imagined there's a pretty significant chance that your topology would make an experienced user cry so learning how to take your soggy and gone riddled dubiously shaded mesh and transform it into a nice all quad uniform mesh will probably take a lot of time still it's a critical step if you'd like to work in game design or collaborate with other artists without the fear of them hating you so how would you go about learning blender without getting stuck in tutorial hell or being disheartened by your own slow progress are there things you can do to speed up the learning process and get those meaty satisfying parts sooner well a great thing to do that most people don't do is take notes whenever watching a tutorial with blender make sure to write down anything that seems important to you any trick that you feel could be used in other situations i used to say that if i need a trick again i'll find the tutorial but you shouldn't rely on your memory so much i seldom found them a second time when i went back to look for them along with your notes you can also keep a spreadsheet with hotkeys and shortcuts you will learn a lot faster if they are readily available to you whenever you need to take a look plus you'll probably find a bunch of really cool shortcuts that you didn't even know existed now regarding your notes i would recommend revising them regularly say every week this reminds you of the tricks that you've forgotten and will further sediment those into your working memory you shouldn't also solely rely on just tutorials there are many great resources that can help you level up your blender skills such as comprehensive books in-depth courses or even boot camps and to make sure you won't forget everything you're doing when you do a tutorial every project you complete with the help of some sort of resource should realistically always be followed up by a solo project in which you try not to use any help while doing the same thing over and over again might seem like a good idea you might fool yourself by thinking that you're just working on your speed the only way forward is to challenge yourself do something that scares you jump into a problem you have no idea how to solve i promise you will get there your result might not be the prettiest but you'll learn a lot more than if you were to model your 24th donut as soon as you think you've got a concept half down jump into the next one and keep pushing your limits also just taking some time to fool around with blender and experiment will do wonders for your progress jumping into the software with no particular goal in mind without feeling the pressure of an upcoming colossal project will teach you a lot more than you think so just go ahead and download blender if you haven't already i mean it's entirely free forever nice if you practice a lot you'll get the hang of it a lot sooner than you think in a couple of months you'll be able to reap the benefits of bravely venturing into the painful few days of not knowing where you're going and just remember every single artist that you admire has started at this point right now thanks for watching guys i will see you in the next one

Channel: Stylized Station

Views: 468,284

Rating: 4.9688907 out of 5

Keywords: blender, tutorial, blender tutorial, blender (software), blender 3d, blender tutorials, blender grass tutorial, blender fluid tutorial, blender animation tutorial, blender 3d animation tutorial, blender fluid physics tutorial, tutorials, tutorial (media genre), blender3d, blender render, beginner tutorial, blender water material, blender guru, modeling tutorial, blender online, blender curves, 3d modeling tutorial, is blender hard to learn, blender 2.8, 3d software

Id: jA0IDJy5AcU

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 05 2021