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What You Need to Know When Learning Blender

6

Well-known training provider Digital-Tutors is adding Blender to their portfolio of supported apps. They're kicking off with a primer on Blender usage.

Learning any new 3D application is going to be a challenge, no matter how experienced of a 3D artist you are, there are different layouts, workflows and tools to get accustomed to. However, there is a workflow you can take when learning a new 3D application that will get you back up to speed faster, you can learn more about this workflow in 8 Tips for Mastering a New 3D Application in the Shortest Amount of Time.While that article has some invaluable nuggets of information from our Lead Modeling instructor Justin Marshall, it is rather general and can be applied to really any new 3D application you’re learning, whether it’s for a job or simply to mix things up.

So to help you in this learning process even further we also were able to get some vital information from Justin on what you need to know when learning Blender specifically, and find out some of the differences he ran into when mastering this 3D application.

Seeing as our Blender training is just around the corner, what better way is there to get you guys up to speed than to give you a heads up on some of the differences between Blender and other 3D applications you may be familiar with like Maya or 3ds Max. As well as some of the things that make it unique so you can hit the ground running with our first Blender release.

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

6 Comments

  1. This is exciting news indeed. I'm looking forward to checking out this Blender training series.

    A note for Mark Masters (article author) on his comment "by default you can’t extrude along a curve in Blender", you can find steps for doing that in the "Using Curves for Extrusions" section on page 15-5 of the 4th Edition of the Blender Basics Book here: http://www.cdschools.org/Page/455

  2. It's good that Digital Tutors finally added Blender to their roster, and I do welcome them, though I would hope they do a better job about teaching it. This article didn't really tell you "what you need to know when learning Blender."

    For instance, in addition to learning the Transform tools in the Toolbar, why not use that as opportunity to share the shortcut keys (G, S and R) which 99% of Blender users rely on? At least inform the reader that if you simply hover over those Transform buttons, you can see the tooltips for them.

    Also, why not inform users that while Blender uses the LMB to select and that it's good to keep that in mind, that you can change it to RMB in the User Preferences? That alone would relieve some initial opposition that some might have in reading about Blender's RMB peculiarity.

    And I have no idea why the Skin Modifier made it on this introduction to Blender. It's a cool features and all, but it's not quite on topic of "what you need to know when learning Blender." It's more of a "What's cool in Blender," which is another article in itself.

    There were several other things that should've been mentioned, such as explaining between the different Modes, a look at its method of using Modifiers, or simply a look at its Cycles renderer. Those would've been more appropriate, I think.

    Though, I'm aware this is just a start for them. I can't be too hard on their first try. I do hope they give it a good effort, with frequent content. I also hope they don't dwell on just basic topics you can pull up on a YouTube video or wiki somewhere. Make some quality courses with professional-grade results.

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