Blender - What to read up on...
polycounter lvl 12
Hey to all,
I decided to finally learn Blender in my free time, but being oblivious on how it works, I was wondering what and where should I start.
I was told to check out the Blender Store here: http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/default_n.php
However, I'm more of a visual guy, and the Blender Store looks pretty static to me (I'm not a big fan of 'tutorials' based upon premade movies, always regretted buying anything under such banner since they always seem half and half.)
So I was wondering on who I should go about, which tutorials to start from and which ones to climb up on.
Much appreciated for the input, cheers and ciao.
I decided to finally learn Blender in my free time, but being oblivious on how it works, I was wondering what and where should I start.
I was told to check out the Blender Store here: http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/default_n.php
However, I'm more of a visual guy, and the Blender Store looks pretty static to me (I'm not a big fan of 'tutorials' based upon premade movies, always regretted buying anything under such banner since they always seem half and half.)
So I was wondering on who I should go about, which tutorials to start from and which ones to climb up on.
Much appreciated for the input, cheers and ciao.
Replies
Blendercookie
3dBuzz Blender Fundamentals, 1st Drop
ralusek's Blender 2.5 Crash Course (Not For Retards) thread.
EDIT:
All the 3D Buzz Blender Fundamentals can be found here: http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/content.php?223-Blender-Fundamentals
And thanks for the two other links, much appreciated.
http://www.blendernation.com/2011/06/14/new-blender-quickstart-in-catalanenglish/#utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Blendernation+%28BlenderNation%29
PDF:
http://www.imatgedart.com/wiki/_media/serveis:formacio:blender:doc:quickstart_blender25x_english.pdf
Frequent looks in the BlenderArtists forums is also a great way to stay updated with Blender's development.
Thanks for the site, much appreciated!
I went though the 1st Drop from 3D Buzz over the last couple of nights. It was a pretty good intro to the UI.
http://foreverblender.blogspot.com/p/blender-quizzes_30.html
Great way to gauge my knowledge...
The issues are free to download. I haven't really gone through them much yet but they look promising.
What else have you been able to do in those apps without tutorials? O_o
Not sure if I should take this as sarcasm or what. It took me forever to figure out how to select faces/edges/points
Handy.
http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info_n.php?products_id=134
http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info_n.php?products_id=133
Believe it or not but they are actually licensed in a way so that it is not illegal to distribute them so you can just look for them on some torrent sites and download them (please consider buying them if you find them useful though)
I am pretty sure it's the same for their whole training collection here.
http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/default_dvds.php
EDIT: Also http://www.cgmasters.net/ sells some FUCKING AWESOME training for Blender, the ninja character creation tutorial is one of the best ones I've ever seen. CGmasters are definitely on par with Eat3D on quality tutorials.
(Psst, check the teaser here: http://vimeo.com/15520141)
(though those DVD's are not legal to share so you have to be ready to spend a few bucks :poly124:)
http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/
=\ If you are getting started, why not stick with free stuff until you are ok with the getting started stuff.
Not saying it is not capable of getting things done - Just saying that ease of use, compliance to standards and accessibility are just as important as an exhaustive feature list...
Considering that no studio use it I don't really see the point of learning it really. I would think that XSI would be a more interesting "alternative" program to try out...
If you want great tutorials, as previously mentioned Blender Cookie is great. One of their contributors, Jonathan Williamson does an amazing job with tutorials. Here is the one I worked on: vehicle-series. Jonathon does a great job explaining everything and this tutorial is up to date with the new 2.5 Blender. I hopped into the tutorial knowing nothing about Blender and it went very well. I'd say it's on par with top notch Eat3d and 3DMotive tuts. The vehicle has a full, intricately detailed and original concept to work off of as well.
Nawww, that's unfair. Blender complies with standards and even adopts competitor features like Matcaps from zBrush for example. There are Indies that swear by it and make really cool stuff. Look up overgrowth. Accessibility is it's biggest problem, but like I said, once you get over the UI it's great. It has a lot of features that make sub-d Modeling faster than in Max. It practically invented swift loops, but they are much better in blender.
I use Max primarily, and will always do. It's just Blender so far doesn't do...iffy stuff I don't want it to.
I think just the top of my head example is texturing, Max's viewport canvas is great, but has a weird issue where it won't paint on a mesh if it's too big or you set it to SI units, which sucks for me. This extends for me all the way to Normal Map...I don't think I ever baked a single normal map in Max which ever worked correctly, Blender and xNormal on the other hand did.
Plus, I guess I was a little brainwashed when a guy from WETA told me, that Blender is used sometimes as the 'corrector' for small things, during downtime, and the only reason no one in the industry switched to it, is because it doesn't have a proven history with the developers, which is a pity if it's the only reason.
Funnily, enough I always wanted to learn XSI, and I did try it a few times, but I think the only 'current' tutorials I found where from Digital Tutors when ICE was implemented, tuto was robust, but it was a mushy middle tuto which really only thought half and half, and most of the stuff could be done in Max too, so I gave up on it. Will try again someday, just gotta find time to knuckle down.
Computron: Thanks for the tuto's, much appreciated, and I guess I moved to it for the reasons stated above. The marriage of standardization is the main reason I would say, since it always tries to bring different workflows and tools together, as opposed to (sorry for the stab at Max) tell us on how to manually switch on 'quality' mode in Max, and that Offline and Online renderers and bakes need to be different, and that they might also break, even when synched in a game engine, soo vexing.