Essential Blender Resources
Here is a list of Blender Resources that I think are essential, both if you have just started to learn Blender or if you have been using it for a while.
Downloads
- The Blender Foundation releases on Blender.org.
- Bleeding edge CVS / Orange / Tuhopuu builds. These have the newest features, but be prepared for crashes.
Documentation
- The Blender Manual. An ongoing community effort to produce an up to date and complete Blender Manual. The integral contents of the Blender 2.3 Guide can be found in here as well. Based on a Wiki.
- Blender 3d: Noob to Pro. An alternative guide to Blender, also a community effort based on a Wiki.
- Blender Basics. Jim Chronister’s 118 page classroom Blender tutorial book.
Tutorials
- Shameless plug: My own tutorials here on BlenderNation.
- The Community tutorials list on Blendernation. Mostly new stuff and tutorials that we like.
- The tutorials list on Blender.org. Not updated very frequently.
- The tutorials list on BlenderArtists.org. Has a nice difficulty index and includes video tutorials.
Community sites
- Elysiun user forums. Go here to get help on using Blender and to share your Blender work with the community.
- Blender.org developers forums.
- Other community sites can be found on Blender.org.
Art
- Blender.org gallery. The ‘Best of Blender’ artwork.
- User galleries. You can create your own album here.
You forgot the Blender Model Repository
:)
Great list, Bart!
I know all the links. But when i remember my first days with Blender…this list would be very, very helpful!
Bart: Something weird happen with the hyperlink I’ve put in my previous response (the first comment).
I can’t edit it, so I ask you to fix it, please. I’m not sure if I mispelled the A tag or it was a problem of WordPress.
Yeah I think something went wrong with your href tag ;-) Anyway, I’ve updated it for you. There will be a folluw-up to this article so we’ll add that link there.
Cheers,
Bart
wiki.blender.org also hosts a list of tutorials, there is also the video tutorials the ones from the various conferences (the 2004, 2005 confernces also there are video tutorials from ones hosted at other countries). Also their are the video tutorials listed at blender.org and possibly additional ones at ibiblio. There are also the blender.org release notes (and some associated videos).
LetterRip
Hey, is the old Knowlege Base still around somewhere? Most of that information is probably now in the manual, but it was very useful to search. Especially if you weren’t sure exactly what tool to use, but rather just how to do something, and maybe even diddn’nt know the “correct” or standard terminology.
@Reed: no, it’s offline. I donated it to Elysiun a few years ago only to see it die.. I have started work on a successor but right now, BlenderNation is taking up pretty much all of my spare time. Once I get in the mood again, I may finish it and try to integrate it into blendernation.com ;-)