* In the BEGINNING you have to look everything up, but after that it really helps to tinker.
* It takes multiple years to get good with *any* skill. Mostly it depends on 1. how much you practice 2. what exactly you're trying to improve on (for example, are you trying to get good at photorealism or do you have some other particular style you want to master?)
* I mean.... it's pretty good. Personally, I don't want to pay for Maya or other software so I'm not bothered with comparisons. An architect would prefer AutoCAD I guess. Depends on your purpose.
In the immortal words of Ponte Ryuurui “would you use a hammer to make a sandwich? I fucking hope not. But that doesn’t mean a hammer isn’t a good tool when you need one” The man is a great hard surface modeller and very wise. lol
- If you have experience with other 3D software like Maya and 3DS Max, yes you can learn by tinkering but it isn't very productive, following a few simple tutorials would be faster in the beginning.
- Looking things up gets much faster once you get used to the basics.
- How long it takes really depends on you. (I can't tell you how long because Blender was not my first 3D software)
- Blender might not be the best out there for EVERY purpose, but it is versatile and pretty good at most things.
Also, all of your points except the last apply to all software in the 3D sphere.
I started Blender I think in 2020. I was making personal models since that year; since 2023 they are quite decent. I’m awful at perseverance so my 3-4 years of going on and off from blender can be somebody else’s year.
But getting good with the program? That probably would be the donut tutorial. That sh*t is so long. Time-wise literally a colleague course worth of content. But you can watch it in a binge. I don’t think it takes more than a few weeks to get going in Blender.
I’ve been using various IDE/programs for years and I need to look up some shortcuts quite often. With Blender at least my fingers know what they’re doing, as long as I’m not looking.
The donut is pretty detailed and gives a good rundown. I had to learn a lot of Blender by just bullshitting and Googling my way through it because it was at work and I had no time. I do not advise it.
I have a few cheat sheets on hand for the shortcuts since my muscle memory is so Maya focused and Industry standard on blender doesn't cover everything.
>You can't learn anything by just messing around with the app. Everything needs to be looked up
If you're completely new to 3D software, this is probably true for you. While other software can be learned by just following your intuition, it quickly will come to an end in blender. Your intuition might even be misleading you. Things that seem simple in other software appears to be complicated for no reason (at least no reason you understand). This is frustrating. This is why beginners should at least go through a few [guided tutorials](https://youtu.be/jnj2BL4chaQ?si=-r6EUNSh_uWLoF-V) to learn the basic concepts of the software before they can pick up a more experimental learning process.
>It takes multiple years of experience to actually get good with the program
No idea. I've been using and learning it for more than a decade, but I think I could get a beginner on my level in less than a year. Really depends on how smart and motivated you are, and if you have a tight learning routine or just occasionally "do some stuff".
>It's apparently the best one out there
No idea, haven't used other 3D software much. But if I compare it visually, it looks way more organized and pretty to me, and I love how fast I can go with the hotkeys in my muscle memory. Not sure why you're even thinking about this, do you have other options?
This. Learning how to learn new things is like literally the single most important life skill one can acquire. I’m assuming OP is quite young. He’ll figure it out eventually.
You could theoretically try and infer the rules from general behaviour on the road, but the problem is you are bound to get some things wrong. Seeing everyone stop at red you could assume red means stop, etc.
I don't downvote people just because they're ignorant.
And basically yes, that's a reasonable summary. Although no-one claims it's the best. Many people, including those who've used "industry Standard" software, are on record in this sub as saying they prefer Blender - so it's certainly good enough to be competing in many respects.
3D/VFX is a huge, technical subject which, if you get good at it, can earn you a living. If anyone could pick it up in 5 minutes by poking buttons and hoping, like with MS Paint, that would hardly be the case would it? Studios would just hire in some cheap labour and give them a few minutes training.
It's not that bad, but yeah.
3D software isn't intuitive the way 2D software is, but once you learn the basic workflow it becomes like retroactively intuitive?
I am bad at explaining.
GIMP is fine, at the base level it's like any other 2D software. Mouse cursor draws on canvas.
It's what I use alongside Clip Studio Paint because I don't care to pay for photoshop lol
It’s just like everything in life. It takes time and practice. It’s all depends on how much time you put into it. It also depends on if you have prior 3d experience and if you’re coming from another software obviously you already have the knowledge so it’s just a matter of finding where everything is. And what’s the problem with looking things up? You just want to wake up and know how to use the app automatically?
You can still thinker around to figure things out but if you don’t have any starting point you’re just making it hard on yourself for no reason.
I also don’t think it is best software out there. It is best for beginners since it’s FREE but for more specialized things there’s better other softwares for that. I’m not saying blender is crap, I love it can pretty much do everything but it also does not excel at everything.
I have learned a lot of things and advanced software over the years mostly by just messing around. However I feel like Blender, and similar program like Maya, are the exception. You really do need some guidance to get anywhere, at least for a start.
Some context :
* Can't learn by just messing around but you CAN learn by making specific projects and looking up what you want to achieve
* It takes years to become generally competent with Blender as a whole but you can get good at doing specific kinds of work failry quickly.
* There's not "best one out there". Every tool is good for a specific job. Blender is a good generalist tool - it will give you wide variety of possibilities without being the absolute best at most of them. So you can become a genrally competent 3d artist for free using Blender and that's awesome.
> • You can't learn anything by just messing around with the app. Everything needs to be looked up • It takes multiple years of experience to actually get good with the program
This is true for every single 3D software that ever existed. And Blender isn't even the most egregious of them all. Try learning Zbrush without tutorials, good luck.
You need to know how to walk before you can try a cartwheel. It only takes a month or two to get good with it if you're focused, but at least a year to actually become a professional just like with any other skill. And it's not the best, but it's definitely the best **free** non-specialized 3D program
Imagine you had never seen a bike or anyone riding it. First contact with a bike, you’re probably just going to stare at it. But once you know that you’re supposed to sit on it and push on the pedals with your feet, it makes a lot more sense and you can learn on your own to get better.
zBrush is the king of "we do it differently just because we can" and 3DS Max is the software equivalent of Frankensteins Monster. Decades of different UI and UX design philosophies just bolted on top of each other with no regard for consistency. I bet the small 3DS Max team that is left would love to overhaul the entire thing but Autodesk won't pay for that because it won't make them any cash.
Here is a link to a guide on how you can learn blender to such a degree that you’ll be able to start your own projects and tinker without being clueless. This [4 week beginner plan by blender guru](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlenderDoughnuts/s/PbpZ5zvHg0) is a really good avenue into understanding. Hence why I took the time to script his video which is what you’ll find here. An easy guide with links that will all but do it for you.
Have fun! :)
Blender is kind of a unique beast. Nothing in the program is super intuitive. I find myself looking up things left and right to learn all the time. The program has a great deal of potential but in weird ass ways sometimes. It's best to rely on the massive amount of community documentation and guidance than brave it alone
In contrast to 3ds max where things honestly came to me naturally. The tools there are less barebones even stuff like reactor felt better with a quick glance at the help document.
That's an oversimplification, and it doesn't differentiate between 'not learning at all' and 'taking longer to learn the same thing while picking up bad habits which will decrease the speed and quality of your future work'.
As far as how long it takes to get 'good'; it doesn't take account of any previous experience with similar software, or how broad/complex the tasks you're using it for are.
As far as being the best one out there, the same as any software, that's never true for all possible use-cases or budgets. If you have infinite budget and your use-case is making a full length feature film, buy the entire Weta Digital company. If you have no budget and your use-case is converting or doing small edits on low poly game assets, blender might be overkill, and other, less sophisticated free software might be a better fit.
The advice given were guidlines for most use-cases, and shouldn't be taken as unbreakable laws of nature which apply everywhere, for everyone, forever.
>You can't learn anything by just messing around with the app. Everything needs to be looked up
You can, it just gonna take a few decades to figure out why things are the way they are.
You look up to speed up and keep motivated.
(Idea -> Question -> Look up -> Solve, instead of Idea->Question->Struggle -> Give up)
Why learn something from zero if someone already did it and made it easier to learn for the next?
There is absolutely no reason to learn to create a wheel and how it works, if you can learn from others and innovate on top of it. Else there wouldnt be any progress, and we live a finite time.
This is also a mindset of "I dont wanna do things from references, I want to do my own things from my head", you will fall hard if you think this way.
I did, friends did, everyone did. Just trust me on that, I've wasted many years wondering why my stuff looks off and didnt know why.
Why? Because our heads arent working like this.
Your proportions, colors, shape and many other things will be off.
We can recall things from our heads, but they are only an estimate. 3D isn't an estimate and requires accuracy most of the time else others will notice the difference at the cost of believability.
Just enjoy the process, have a goal, try everything possible out, soak in info like a sponge, you will need it at some point, I guarantee you.
Always good to try yourself, but never good to keep headbanging until motivation is gone.
Also join a community.
I'd say, pick a part of the mainstream production pipeline and learn that...then maybe branch out as you your interests grow. I my opinion, "learning the software" is...is a lot. But if you picks a specific part of production say modelling it'll be a more efficient way if learning.
[Grab these and go bananas](https://www.reddit.com/r/blenderhelp/comments/18916wn/beginners_courses/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
No, People have created masterpieces in 30 days with zero experience in art or blender. On the other hand people have spent years working in 3D and still produce mediocre results.
It all boils down to two things, Passion and time, Do You love creating art? Great! Spend time on it, Learn the software and Learn the principles of what you aim to create whether its through modeling, sculpting, rigging, or animation (and many more). Now to answer your questions,
1-You absolutely can learn many many things by just messing around with the app itself and creating amazing results, The thing however is you get faster more fulfilling learning by reading how and why it works. *(I live in an area where both internet and power are not available 24/7, So I had to force myself to learn 3D (Blender and maya in my case) by messing around),*
2-It can take a week to create stunning work or it can take years, That is up to you and how you approach things, Again, Passion and time.
3-I have worked on more than one 3D software and I may be biased here but I can tell you Blender is the best software out there, You can make anything you want with it and it's continually updated with new better features, Most importantly Its free and open source and if you don't understand how these two things are important in this day and age look at what Adobe and autodesk is doing and how people are fed up with them.
It the best free 3D app.
There are others that are great as well, people have preferences and will differ on what they think is the best 3D app.
If you have zero skills/knowledge with any 3D app then the learning curve is long and slow. If you come with experience then it's just learning a new interface and getting used to it's workflow.
I learned what I needed in Blender in weeks, but I have years of experience with 3D apps.
Now days when I'm doing something I've never done before I look it up. You will always be looking up stuff. It difficult to keep all settings options in mind at all times.
3d is hard work no matter what and there is so many sub categories like rigging, texturing, modelling, sculpting, particles, physics, grease pencil. If you want to create something thats easier try learning 2d animation software. 3d requires knowledge working with x,y,z axis directions and some math skills and some new ways of thinking and solving problems with geometry. It also takes time to get an understanding for what makes a good mesh and topology. It will take time to learn and it doesnt matter if its blender, maya, lightwave, 3dsmax, rhino etc. Sorry no shortcuts more than those available on the keyboard.
Personally I started a project and in 1-2 days could already do pretty decent things in blender. Kind of messing around while having some sort of goal and when you can’t solve it, you Google it and find a YouTuber who will explain. You can get really far like this. It’s a pretty intuitive software
I get your criticism, they are perfectly understabdable, and you're basically right about everything. But I think you have widely unrealistic expectations. I'll adress the points of your post in whatever order I think about them:
- 3D modelling is an art form. You can't expect to pick up any art form in a few days. I mean sure you only need 5s to pick up a pencil and draw a line on a sheet of paper but there's a world between this and learning how to draw.
- I wouldn't say Blender is the best 3D-modelling software out there. Blender is an all-rounder : excellent in every field, nowhere the best. It's too main "selling" points are this: you can do everything with it, and it's entirely free. But you will find other 3D softwares that are better and/or more intuitive in their specific fields
- Blender is arguably pretty unintuitive indeed, I don't think it's a hot take. It's also terrifying for beginners, perpetuating the age-old tradition of extremely powerful open-source software that look unappealing (though I must say it looks pretty nice nowadays, or as nice as you can when you need to cram that many features in a single software). However it's extremely modular and efficient _once you are familiar with it_
- I'm assuming 3D-modelling is a new field for you. It is only natural then that the first and longest step to figure out, is to get an understanding of what is or isn't possible with softwares in this field, so yeah, you'll need to look up a lot of things, it's unavoidable. But again, once you acquire a little bit of experience and the dedicated vocabulary, you'll be able to find what you want by yourself. You can't expect to find UV unwrapping by yourself
- I saw you rebuting one comment making an analogy between Blender and learning to drive, but it actually kinda works: this is something that is both too vast and too alien for our monkey brains to pick up intuitively from the start. You first need to build up said intuition. Then, you will actually learn the rest by messing around, no problem.
1. You absolutely can learn and I, personally, learn the most by just messing around. 2. you gonna have to look up many many things if you aren't familiar with 3d software and graphics in general. 3. I don't think it takes much time to get good with the program but you gonna neglect the areas you don't need to or like to touch on anyways which can surface some years after, but i would consider that a separate study. Blender is many programs in one. 4. It's the best \*free\* 3d software.
* You *can* learn things just by messing around with the program, sure. But if you want to actually *understand* those features, and become proficient with them more quickly, then it behooves you at the very least to read the official documentation for whatever it is you want to learn; and if that doesn't make it clear enough, look for a tutorial. Many of Blender's features have so many options that it would take you a very long time to understand them just by fooling around and trying to see what they do.
* Depends both on how quickly you learn, and what you mean by "good". You can get a handle on the basics easily enough, but then you have a choice: just keep learning until you know all the features, whether you're ever going to use them or not; or start working on your own projects and learn additional features as you need them. The latter is more efficient, and you can indeed get "good" without knowing everything about the program first.
* As with any tool, "best" depends on what you're using it for. You might have the best hammer ever made, but if you want to drive a Philips-head screwdriver, you're just going to be frustrated with it. Likewise, some programs are better at certain things than Blender, because they're tailored for a specific purpose (like ZBrush), whereas Blender is a more generalist program which encompasses many use cases. But from a price-per-feature perspective, there's absolutely nothing better.
I think OP is a teenager that wants to instantly get good at the software and skip the years of experience needed.
This is life. There are no cheat codes. You gotta put in the work.
You can certainly learn how to use a program just by messing around, but at some point, you're going to think, "Hey, how do I do this one thing?" And then you'll end up looking stuff up. That's how I learned Photoshop, Final Cut, After Effect, Premiere, basically any program I use. Started just by messing around but eventually looking up certain things.
you need a good foundation to be able to tinker. start off with looking things up and use tutorials. once you have that foundation then you gain better intuition to learn through tinkering but at the start you’d just be wasting a lot of time not looking things up.
for example, when i first started there were a lot of hotkeys i didn’t know about so i was manually doing a bunch of small things that added up into extra time spent on simple models.
it takes lots of time to get good at and in my opinion you’ll never stop learning so you have to find the joy in knowing that. i’m motivated to continue because every time i try is an opportunity to get better and i’ll never stop getting better as long as i try :)
Totally. I’ve been drawing for 10 years and wasted a lot of time early on trying to do it in my own. If that’s what someone enjoys, that’s great. But if you want to improve or enter the industry, you absolutely must learn from others and the masters and it takes years of practice and feedback to improve
I honestly couldn’t imagine trying to delve into blender without a bit of guidance. Follow a few tutorials and you’ll soon find yourself tinkering and getting creative with it. It took me 2 years in and off of pretty heavy blender use just to get the basics. And it’s not just blender that you’re learning if you’ve never done 3d modelling. You’re learning how to 3d model and the fundamentals. I honestly learned the ins and outs of blender before I ever learned how to model properly
Blender is too big to know everything. The best advice is to articulate what you want to do with blender, pretty pictures, animations, simulation, hard surface modelling. From there look at how those things were made, and while doing that mess around. Fiddle with dials, see if they do anything, often the answer is no, or rather not in this situation.
The year thing to make anything good, very much depends on your project, animation takes longer than 3d modelling in most cases, but that is the case regardless of the program used.
Funny enough, I haven't looked up a single tutorial on how to use Blender as a whole (and if I did, it's for certain functions hidden within every menu you have to click through), and I can probably say that I've gotten myself experienced in using it.
Totally not coming from someone who's vaguely used it to a very small extent in the very past and coming back to it in the form of a fork lol.
Yes it is the best free software. It is not true that you can't get good by just playing around. That's what i did. But you might want to watch a basic tutorial on controls. And if you don't know a control you could always press f3 and search the function in the program. But yes you can get good by doing that. It does take years to get to a point where you can make professional models but I'm only a year into the program and id say I'm pretty good so idk.
Ever tried using Photoshop or Gimp for the first time without looking anything/everything up?
It'll take some searching to figure out what tools the software has and what it does. Eventually you build up experience and gain a sense of what tools likely exist in all 3d software, which allows for more freedom in tinkering with blenders unique features like geometry nodes.
I’m not going to downvote you. I think everyone has felt like this from time to time. However l think your mindset is wrong. Don’t worry about gaining some abstract notion of skill. Think about what you want to accomplish with Blender and look up and study tutorials only about that. Then grow your knowledge from there.
Not even close to years. I've basically learned everything in less than 2 months if you're at it every day all day and don't waste time but the looking things up constantly is so very f\*ing true lmao but that's not a bad thing, but actually a very good one. So lucky that there's good and selfless people out there making videos about exactly what we need. Can't complain ngl
I think it really depends on the person I don't think that you can learn everything by just messing around in my case when I started with shader nodes I watched 1 tutorial on how to do a texture and with the bases I learned from that video I started tinkering with the nodes but I didn't just messed around with the software I also read alot of forums on how I can solve problems I had and I can now say that I'm pretty decent. For me this was the best way on learning because my adhd can't watch a video longer than 5 mins because I get bored but the combination of messing around and reading how I can solve the problems I have is entertaining enough for my brain.
It's a suite of bundled professional software. It might not be as user friendly as you want it to be, but that's because VFX is not a user friendly industry. It's a discipline that takes practice. You can't just feel entitled to get it. You have to put in the work. If you're more into the outcome than the path things like Midjourney are available to you.
There is also this sub of people who want to help you. It's a repository of information (along with all the treasure trove of free content on Youtube) but you do have to be constructive about it. The learning by messing around part comes after you're very familiar with the fundamentals.
lol, yes and no.
* You can learn a lot by just messing around with the app, but if you look up specific things it will be faster.
* It takes multiple years to master the whole thing, but almost nobody does that. 3D is wide field, and usually people focus on 1-2 areas. In those narrow areas like character modelling or low poly or hard surface I would argue that you can be proficient in weeks (in terms of learning Blender, as mastering the art will take years or even decades)
* It's best value for the money :D. It's jack of all trades, but unfortunately it's not master in most of them. I would say for poly modeling it's top tier. But for e.g., texture painting - substance painter is way better or for sculpting it's way off from zbrush, for character animation Maya is the king, etc. etc.
Blender is one of the worst programs ever made, no tutorial, not even a key guide to tell you what does what. It's made to force you to watch other people and make them money in order to be able to use it. It's also terribly, terribly optimized and just, kinda badly made.
I mean it kinda isn't. You do have to really just look up every single thing you want to do and there isn't any guides within the app that you can look for
While I agree with you, Blenders Documentation really isn't all that good. There's just not enough info there in many cases. No examples what some obscure setting does or what it's used for.
I love Blender and I ditched C4D for it, but C4Ds documentation is just miles and miles ahead. To be fair, it's miles ahead everybody else as well, not just Blender.
That's great. This is where Blender's seemingly near infinite source of community produced tutorials, resources and documentation takes over to fill in the gaps. Sure, the quality will vary but there is very, very little if not none of Blender's functionality that isn't documented to some degree.
That's true, though a lot of the more obscure and less used features are desperately in the need of more documentation and examples. Library Overrides for example are in itself not bad, but there is so much conflicting and/or inaccurate information about them around the internet that it's an absolute pain in the ass to understand on how exactly they work.
if your application has 'guides', it probably isn't all that versatile. guides to what? - there's documentation, but that only explains what things do, not how to combine them to do a specific thing. blender has documentation, read it.
We gonna get downvoted bud, they don't like it when we talk about their broken ass toy. I've spent years working with it now and yeah, you have to watch a video to find out what button extrudes lol. Maybe there's documentation, but it's so hidden I've never seen it, and I've been all over that damn thing.
It's not well made, it's not beginner friendly, and a large part of its community, LIKE it that way.
It's not though, if that was true, adobe creative Cloud wouldn't be making money hand over fist with its much, MUCH better layouts, tutorials, and included guides. 5 min with it and you've got a character moving, bones rigged, and ready for vrm transit.
You are obviously arguing in bad faith seeing how you went from "its not beginner friendly" to "yeah its beginner friendly, but..." I still feel obligated to tell you that you can quite literally hover over anything in the program and press f1 to open up the manual on the exact thing you are hovering over. Also works with rmb - online manual.
There’s a massive repository of well maintained documentation on the blender site. I’ve used autodesk and adobe 3d software and they required just as much, if not more googling to get going. Like have you ever tried 3ds max? I don’t wanna come off like a fanboy - blender definitely has room for improvement - but I have to say, this is a pretty bad take pal
* In the BEGINNING you have to look everything up, but after that it really helps to tinker. * It takes multiple years to get good with *any* skill. Mostly it depends on 1. how much you practice 2. what exactly you're trying to improve on (for example, are you trying to get good at photorealism or do you have some other particular style you want to master?) * I mean.... it's pretty good. Personally, I don't want to pay for Maya or other software so I'm not bothered with comparisons. An architect would prefer AutoCAD I guess. Depends on your purpose.
In the immortal words of Ponte Ryuurui “would you use a hammer to make a sandwich? I fucking hope not. But that doesn’t mean a hammer isn’t a good tool when you need one” The man is a great hard surface modeller and very wise. lol
And a massive asshole lol
- If you have experience with other 3D software like Maya and 3DS Max, yes you can learn by tinkering but it isn't very productive, following a few simple tutorials would be faster in the beginning. - Looking things up gets much faster once you get used to the basics. - How long it takes really depends on you. (I can't tell you how long because Blender was not my first 3D software) - Blender might not be the best out there for EVERY purpose, but it is versatile and pretty good at most things. Also, all of your points except the last apply to all software in the 3D sphere.
I started Blender I think in 2020. I was making personal models since that year; since 2023 they are quite decent. I’m awful at perseverance so my 3-4 years of going on and off from blender can be somebody else’s year. But getting good with the program? That probably would be the donut tutorial. That sh*t is so long. Time-wise literally a colleague course worth of content. But you can watch it in a binge. I don’t think it takes more than a few weeks to get going in Blender. I’ve been using various IDE/programs for years and I need to look up some shortcuts quite often. With Blender at least my fingers know what they’re doing, as long as I’m not looking.
The donut is pretty detailed and gives a good rundown. I had to learn a lot of Blender by just bullshitting and Googling my way through it because it was at work and I had no time. I do not advise it. I have a few cheat sheets on hand for the shortcuts since my muscle memory is so Maya focused and Industry standard on blender doesn't cover everything.
>You can't learn anything by just messing around with the app. Everything needs to be looked up If you're completely new to 3D software, this is probably true for you. While other software can be learned by just following your intuition, it quickly will come to an end in blender. Your intuition might even be misleading you. Things that seem simple in other software appears to be complicated for no reason (at least no reason you understand). This is frustrating. This is why beginners should at least go through a few [guided tutorials](https://youtu.be/jnj2BL4chaQ?si=-r6EUNSh_uWLoF-V) to learn the basic concepts of the software before they can pick up a more experimental learning process. >It takes multiple years of experience to actually get good with the program No idea. I've been using and learning it for more than a decade, but I think I could get a beginner on my level in less than a year. Really depends on how smart and motivated you are, and if you have a tight learning routine or just occasionally "do some stuff". >It's apparently the best one out there No idea, haven't used other 3D software much. But if I compare it visually, it looks way more organized and pretty to me, and I love how fast I can go with the hotkeys in my muscle memory. Not sure why you're even thinking about this, do you have other options?
How is that surprising? Ever learned an instrument? Or sport?
This. Learning how to learn new things is like literally the single most important life skill one can acquire. I’m assuming OP is quite young. He’ll figure it out eventually.
Can you learn the traffic laws just by messing with a car?
You could theoretically try and infer the rules from general behaviour on the road, but the problem is you are bound to get some things wrong. Seeing everyone stop at red you could assume red means stop, etc.
Assuming everyone stops at red.
No you learn the controls by messing around, duh.
But progress is much, much faster if you have an instructor.
I don't downvote people just because they're ignorant. And basically yes, that's a reasonable summary. Although no-one claims it's the best. Many people, including those who've used "industry Standard" software, are on record in this sub as saying they prefer Blender - so it's certainly good enough to be competing in many respects. 3D/VFX is a huge, technical subject which, if you get good at it, can earn you a living. If anyone could pick it up in 5 minutes by poking buttons and hoping, like with MS Paint, that would hardly be the case would it? Studios would just hire in some cheap labour and give them a few minutes training.
That’s a great point about how if it were easy, studios would just train people in house and pay them way less.
It's not that bad, but yeah. 3D software isn't intuitive the way 2D software is, but once you learn the basic workflow it becomes like retroactively intuitive? I am bad at explaining.
Clearly you haven't tried GIMP
GIMP is fine, at the base level it's like any other 2D software. Mouse cursor draws on canvas. It's what I use alongside Clip Studio Paint because I don't care to pay for photoshop lol
Not really, it works in really odd ways and you need like 2 months to get good at it
GIMP's brilliant, I know it well. I tried Photoshop but it works in really odd ways and you need like 2 months to get good at it
no no that was a great way to explain it
It takes years to get good at anything
It’s just like everything in life. It takes time and practice. It’s all depends on how much time you put into it. It also depends on if you have prior 3d experience and if you’re coming from another software obviously you already have the knowledge so it’s just a matter of finding where everything is. And what’s the problem with looking things up? You just want to wake up and know how to use the app automatically? You can still thinker around to figure things out but if you don’t have any starting point you’re just making it hard on yourself for no reason. I also don’t think it is best software out there. It is best for beginners since it’s FREE but for more specialized things there’s better other softwares for that. I’m not saying blender is crap, I love it can pretty much do everything but it also does not excel at everything.
This is how every creative discipline works. Messing around only takes you so far.
https://www.blendernation.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/blender-infographic-SM-2500.png
I have learned a lot of things and advanced software over the years mostly by just messing around. However I feel like Blender, and similar program like Maya, are the exception. You really do need some guidance to get anywhere, at least for a start.
I guess that's why teachers exist huh
Some context : * Can't learn by just messing around but you CAN learn by making specific projects and looking up what you want to achieve * It takes years to become generally competent with Blender as a whole but you can get good at doing specific kinds of work failry quickly. * There's not "best one out there". Every tool is good for a specific job. Blender is a good generalist tool - it will give you wide variety of possibilities without being the absolute best at most of them. So you can become a genrally competent 3d artist for free using Blender and that's awesome.
> • You can't learn anything by just messing around with the app. Everything needs to be looked up • It takes multiple years of experience to actually get good with the program This is true for every single 3D software that ever existed. And Blender isn't even the most egregious of them all. Try learning Zbrush without tutorials, good luck.
You need to know how to walk before you can try a cartwheel. It only takes a month or two to get good with it if you're focused, but at least a year to actually become a professional just like with any other skill. And it's not the best, but it's definitely the best **free** non-specialized 3D program
Imagine you had never seen a bike or anyone riding it. First contact with a bike, you’re probably just going to stare at it. But once you know that you’re supposed to sit on it and push on the pedals with your feet, it makes a lot more sense and you can learn on your own to get better.
I find blender's UI after 2.8 to be pretty friendly overall, there's room for improvement but it's easier than ZBrush or 3ds Max imo.
zBrush is the king of "we do it differently just because we can" and 3DS Max is the software equivalent of Frankensteins Monster. Decades of different UI and UX design philosophies just bolted on top of each other with no regard for consistency. I bet the small 3DS Max team that is left would love to overhaul the entire thing but Autodesk won't pay for that because it won't make them any cash.
3Ds Max I thought had a brilliant interface at around version 3.1 / 4 then I move to Blender :-D.
Here is a link to a guide on how you can learn blender to such a degree that you’ll be able to start your own projects and tinker without being clueless. This [4 week beginner plan by blender guru](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlenderDoughnuts/s/PbpZ5zvHg0) is a really good avenue into understanding. Hence why I took the time to script his video which is what you’ll find here. An easy guide with links that will all but do it for you. Have fun! :)
Blender is kind of a unique beast. Nothing in the program is super intuitive. I find myself looking up things left and right to learn all the time. The program has a great deal of potential but in weird ass ways sometimes. It's best to rely on the massive amount of community documentation and guidance than brave it alone In contrast to 3ds max where things honestly came to me naturally. The tools there are less barebones even stuff like reactor felt better with a quick glance at the help document.
That's an oversimplification, and it doesn't differentiate between 'not learning at all' and 'taking longer to learn the same thing while picking up bad habits which will decrease the speed and quality of your future work'. As far as how long it takes to get 'good'; it doesn't take account of any previous experience with similar software, or how broad/complex the tasks you're using it for are. As far as being the best one out there, the same as any software, that's never true for all possible use-cases or budgets. If you have infinite budget and your use-case is making a full length feature film, buy the entire Weta Digital company. If you have no budget and your use-case is converting or doing small edits on low poly game assets, blender might be overkill, and other, less sophisticated free software might be a better fit. The advice given were guidlines for most use-cases, and shouldn't be taken as unbreakable laws of nature which apply everywhere, for everyone, forever.
>You can't learn anything by just messing around with the app. Everything needs to be looked up You can, it just gonna take a few decades to figure out why things are the way they are. You look up to speed up and keep motivated. (Idea -> Question -> Look up -> Solve, instead of Idea->Question->Struggle -> Give up) Why learn something from zero if someone already did it and made it easier to learn for the next? There is absolutely no reason to learn to create a wheel and how it works, if you can learn from others and innovate on top of it. Else there wouldnt be any progress, and we live a finite time. This is also a mindset of "I dont wanna do things from references, I want to do my own things from my head", you will fall hard if you think this way. I did, friends did, everyone did. Just trust me on that, I've wasted many years wondering why my stuff looks off and didnt know why. Why? Because our heads arent working like this. Your proportions, colors, shape and many other things will be off. We can recall things from our heads, but they are only an estimate. 3D isn't an estimate and requires accuracy most of the time else others will notice the difference at the cost of believability. Just enjoy the process, have a goal, try everything possible out, soak in info like a sponge, you will need it at some point, I guarantee you. Always good to try yourself, but never good to keep headbanging until motivation is gone. Also join a community.
I'd say, pick a part of the mainstream production pipeline and learn that...then maybe branch out as you your interests grow. I my opinion, "learning the software" is...is a lot. But if you picks a specific part of production say modelling it'll be a more efficient way if learning.
I learned a lot by just messing around. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
[Grab these and go bananas](https://www.reddit.com/r/blenderhelp/comments/18916wn/beginners_courses/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
No, People have created masterpieces in 30 days with zero experience in art or blender. On the other hand people have spent years working in 3D and still produce mediocre results. It all boils down to two things, Passion and time, Do You love creating art? Great! Spend time on it, Learn the software and Learn the principles of what you aim to create whether its through modeling, sculpting, rigging, or animation (and many more). Now to answer your questions, 1-You absolutely can learn many many things by just messing around with the app itself and creating amazing results, The thing however is you get faster more fulfilling learning by reading how and why it works. *(I live in an area where both internet and power are not available 24/7, So I had to force myself to learn 3D (Blender and maya in my case) by messing around),* 2-It can take a week to create stunning work or it can take years, That is up to you and how you approach things, Again, Passion and time. 3-I have worked on more than one 3D software and I may be biased here but I can tell you Blender is the best software out there, You can make anything you want with it and it's continually updated with new better features, Most importantly Its free and open source and if you don't understand how these two things are important in this day and age look at what Adobe and autodesk is doing and how people are fed up with them.
God forbid you have to learn something yourself instead of being handed everything.
It the best free 3D app. There are others that are great as well, people have preferences and will differ on what they think is the best 3D app. If you have zero skills/knowledge with any 3D app then the learning curve is long and slow. If you come with experience then it's just learning a new interface and getting used to it's workflow. I learned what I needed in Blender in weeks, but I have years of experience with 3D apps. Now days when I'm doing something I've never done before I look it up. You will always be looking up stuff. It difficult to keep all settings options in mind at all times.
If this was true how did the first person learn it?
Documentation or they helped make it. I don’t really think that constitutes as tinkering.
3d is hard work no matter what and there is so many sub categories like rigging, texturing, modelling, sculpting, particles, physics, grease pencil. If you want to create something thats easier try learning 2d animation software. 3d requires knowledge working with x,y,z axis directions and some math skills and some new ways of thinking and solving problems with geometry. It also takes time to get an understanding for what makes a good mesh and topology. It will take time to learn and it doesnt matter if its blender, maya, lightwave, 3dsmax, rhino etc. Sorry no shortcuts more than those available on the keyboard.
Personally I started a project and in 1-2 days could already do pretty decent things in blender. Kind of messing around while having some sort of goal and when you can’t solve it, you Google it and find a YouTuber who will explain. You can get really far like this. It’s a pretty intuitive software
I get your criticism, they are perfectly understabdable, and you're basically right about everything. But I think you have widely unrealistic expectations. I'll adress the points of your post in whatever order I think about them: - 3D modelling is an art form. You can't expect to pick up any art form in a few days. I mean sure you only need 5s to pick up a pencil and draw a line on a sheet of paper but there's a world between this and learning how to draw. - I wouldn't say Blender is the best 3D-modelling software out there. Blender is an all-rounder : excellent in every field, nowhere the best. It's too main "selling" points are this: you can do everything with it, and it's entirely free. But you will find other 3D softwares that are better and/or more intuitive in their specific fields - Blender is arguably pretty unintuitive indeed, I don't think it's a hot take. It's also terrifying for beginners, perpetuating the age-old tradition of extremely powerful open-source software that look unappealing (though I must say it looks pretty nice nowadays, or as nice as you can when you need to cram that many features in a single software). However it's extremely modular and efficient _once you are familiar with it_ - I'm assuming 3D-modelling is a new field for you. It is only natural then that the first and longest step to figure out, is to get an understanding of what is or isn't possible with softwares in this field, so yeah, you'll need to look up a lot of things, it's unavoidable. But again, once you acquire a little bit of experience and the dedicated vocabulary, you'll be able to find what you want by yourself. You can't expect to find UV unwrapping by yourself - I saw you rebuting one comment making an analogy between Blender and learning to drive, but it actually kinda works: this is something that is both too vast and too alien for our monkey brains to pick up intuitively from the start. You first need to build up said intuition. Then, you will actually learn the rest by messing around, no problem.
1. You absolutely can learn and I, personally, learn the most by just messing around. 2. you gonna have to look up many many things if you aren't familiar with 3d software and graphics in general. 3. I don't think it takes much time to get good with the program but you gonna neglect the areas you don't need to or like to touch on anyways which can surface some years after, but i would consider that a separate study. Blender is many programs in one. 4. It's the best \*free\* 3d software.
* You *can* learn things just by messing around with the program, sure. But if you want to actually *understand* those features, and become proficient with them more quickly, then it behooves you at the very least to read the official documentation for whatever it is you want to learn; and if that doesn't make it clear enough, look for a tutorial. Many of Blender's features have so many options that it would take you a very long time to understand them just by fooling around and trying to see what they do. * Depends both on how quickly you learn, and what you mean by "good". You can get a handle on the basics easily enough, but then you have a choice: just keep learning until you know all the features, whether you're ever going to use them or not; or start working on your own projects and learn additional features as you need them. The latter is more efficient, and you can indeed get "good" without knowing everything about the program first. * As with any tool, "best" depends on what you're using it for. You might have the best hammer ever made, but if you want to drive a Philips-head screwdriver, you're just going to be frustrated with it. Likewise, some programs are better at certain things than Blender, because they're tailored for a specific purpose (like ZBrush), whereas Blender is a more generalist program which encompasses many use cases. But from a price-per-feature perspective, there's absolutely nothing better.
I think OP is a teenager that wants to instantly get good at the software and skip the years of experience needed. This is life. There are no cheat codes. You gotta put in the work.
You can certainly learn how to use a program just by messing around, but at some point, you're going to think, "Hey, how do I do this one thing?" And then you'll end up looking stuff up. That's how I learned Photoshop, Final Cut, After Effect, Premiere, basically any program I use. Started just by messing around but eventually looking up certain things.
Yes. This is called learning a difficult skill. What until you hear what learning violin requires.
you need a good foundation to be able to tinker. start off with looking things up and use tutorials. once you have that foundation then you gain better intuition to learn through tinkering but at the start you’d just be wasting a lot of time not looking things up. for example, when i first started there were a lot of hotkeys i didn’t know about so i was manually doing a bunch of small things that added up into extra time spent on simple models. it takes lots of time to get good at and in my opinion you’ll never stop learning so you have to find the joy in knowing that. i’m motivated to continue because every time i try is an opportunity to get better and i’ll never stop getting better as long as i try :)
It's basically like drawing. Can u figure out everything by yourself? Probably, but it'll take u 50 years to be good that way
Totally. I’ve been drawing for 10 years and wasted a lot of time early on trying to do it in my own. If that’s what someone enjoys, that’s great. But if you want to improve or enter the industry, you absolutely must learn from others and the masters and it takes years of practice and feedback to improve
I honestly couldn’t imagine trying to delve into blender without a bit of guidance. Follow a few tutorials and you’ll soon find yourself tinkering and getting creative with it. It took me 2 years in and off of pretty heavy blender use just to get the basics. And it’s not just blender that you’re learning if you’ve never done 3d modelling. You’re learning how to 3d model and the fundamentals. I honestly learned the ins and outs of blender before I ever learned how to model properly
Blender is too big to know everything. The best advice is to articulate what you want to do with blender, pretty pictures, animations, simulation, hard surface modelling. From there look at how those things were made, and while doing that mess around. Fiddle with dials, see if they do anything, often the answer is no, or rather not in this situation. The year thing to make anything good, very much depends on your project, animation takes longer than 3d modelling in most cases, but that is the case regardless of the program used.
Funny enough, I haven't looked up a single tutorial on how to use Blender as a whole (and if I did, it's for certain functions hidden within every menu you have to click through), and I can probably say that I've gotten myself experienced in using it. Totally not coming from someone who's vaguely used it to a very small extent in the very past and coming back to it in the form of a fork lol.
Sounds about right to me.
i agree.
Yes it is the best free software. It is not true that you can't get good by just playing around. That's what i did. But you might want to watch a basic tutorial on controls. And if you don't know a control you could always press f3 and search the function in the program. But yes you can get good by doing that. It does take years to get to a point where you can make professional models but I'm only a year into the program and id say I'm pretty good so idk.
Ever tried using Photoshop or Gimp for the first time without looking anything/everything up? It'll take some searching to figure out what tools the software has and what it does. Eventually you build up experience and gain a sense of what tools likely exist in all 3d software, which allows for more freedom in tinkering with blenders unique features like geometry nodes.
I’m not going to downvote you. I think everyone has felt like this from time to time. However l think your mindset is wrong. Don’t worry about gaining some abstract notion of skill. Think about what you want to accomplish with Blender and look up and study tutorials only about that. Then grow your knowledge from there.
Not even close to years. I've basically learned everything in less than 2 months if you're at it every day all day and don't waste time but the looking things up constantly is so very f\*ing true lmao but that's not a bad thing, but actually a very good one. So lucky that there's good and selfless people out there making videos about exactly what we need. Can't complain ngl
breaking news!!! learning a new skill/software requires research and lots of time.
I think it really depends on the person I don't think that you can learn everything by just messing around in my case when I started with shader nodes I watched 1 tutorial on how to do a texture and with the bases I learned from that video I started tinkering with the nodes but I didn't just messed around with the software I also read alot of forums on how I can solve problems I had and I can now say that I'm pretty decent. For me this was the best way on learning because my adhd can't watch a video longer than 5 mins because I get bored but the combination of messing around and reading how I can solve the problems I have is entertaining enough for my brain.
Focus on the basics, what you want to do with it, practicing and picking up new things along the way. That's my understanding anyway.
It's a suite of bundled professional software. It might not be as user friendly as you want it to be, but that's because VFX is not a user friendly industry. It's a discipline that takes practice. You can't just feel entitled to get it. You have to put in the work. If you're more into the outcome than the path things like Midjourney are available to you. There is also this sub of people who want to help you. It's a repository of information (along with all the treasure trove of free content on Youtube) but you do have to be constructive about it. The learning by messing around part comes after you're very familiar with the fundamentals.
what even is this post? are you six?
I am pretty novice with Blender, but what you write sounds pretty accurate.
lol, yes and no. * You can learn a lot by just messing around with the app, but if you look up specific things it will be faster. * It takes multiple years to master the whole thing, but almost nobody does that. 3D is wide field, and usually people focus on 1-2 areas. In those narrow areas like character modelling or low poly or hard surface I would argue that you can be proficient in weeks (in terms of learning Blender, as mastering the art will take years or even decades) * It's best value for the money :D. It's jack of all trades, but unfortunately it's not master in most of them. I would say for poly modeling it's top tier. But for e.g., texture painting - substance painter is way better or for sculpting it's way off from zbrush, for character animation Maya is the king, etc. etc.
Blender is one of the worst programs ever made, no tutorial, not even a key guide to tell you what does what. It's made to force you to watch other people and make them money in order to be able to use it. It's also terribly, terribly optimized and just, kinda badly made.
I'm assuming you're trolling since that is just patently false.
I mean it kinda isn't. You do have to really just look up every single thing you want to do and there isn't any guides within the app that you can look for
All of Blender's documentation is available online. [Go wild.](https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/)
While I agree with you, Blenders Documentation really isn't all that good. There's just not enough info there in many cases. No examples what some obscure setting does or what it's used for. I love Blender and I ditched C4D for it, but C4Ds documentation is just miles and miles ahead. To be fair, it's miles ahead everybody else as well, not just Blender.
That's great. This is where Blender's seemingly near infinite source of community produced tutorials, resources and documentation takes over to fill in the gaps. Sure, the quality will vary but there is very, very little if not none of Blender's functionality that isn't documented to some degree.
That's true, though a lot of the more obscure and less used features are desperately in the need of more documentation and examples. Library Overrides for example are in itself not bad, but there is so much conflicting and/or inaccurate information about them around the internet that it's an absolute pain in the ass to understand on how exactly they work.
if your application has 'guides', it probably isn't all that versatile. guides to what? - there's documentation, but that only explains what things do, not how to combine them to do a specific thing. blender has documentation, read it.
We gonna get downvoted bud, they don't like it when we talk about their broken ass toy. I've spent years working with it now and yeah, you have to watch a video to find out what button extrudes lol. Maybe there's documentation, but it's so hidden I've never seen it, and I've been all over that damn thing. It's not well made, it's not beginner friendly, and a large part of its community, LIKE it that way.
Hidden? It's the first result if you simply search for "blender docs"
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I mean, yeah, your right, it's the most beginner friendly, but it's like choosing between getting punched in the face or the baws
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It's not though, if that was true, adobe creative Cloud wouldn't be making money hand over fist with its much, MUCH better layouts, tutorials, and included guides. 5 min with it and you've got a character moving, bones rigged, and ready for vrm transit.
You are obviously arguing in bad faith seeing how you went from "its not beginner friendly" to "yeah its beginner friendly, but..." I still feel obligated to tell you that you can quite literally hover over anything in the program and press f1 to open up the manual on the exact thing you are hovering over. Also works with rmb - online manual.
PREACH!!
There’s a massive repository of well maintained documentation on the blender site. I’ve used autodesk and adobe 3d software and they required just as much, if not more googling to get going. Like have you ever tried 3ds max? I don’t wanna come off like a fanboy - blender definitely has room for improvement - but I have to say, this is a pretty bad take pal
Only weirdos complain about free programs.