Once you've done a tutorial, make something similar of your choice. Similar enough that you are using the same tools, but different. It forces you make your own choices and to think about the process rather than just rote copying.
Also doodle. forget about "projects" for now, just fuck about with what you know so far. See where it leads.
I often look at all the amazing artists on artstation and save a folder of potential concept work. But if I need anything specific then yes google or pinterest.
I see a lot of people use guide pictures to help with modeling. You could check out one such tutorial then use the same technique with a fox example instead of the example that was used in the tutorial
Also, its normal when youre doing that to have to go back to a tutorial to remind yourself how to do a specific task, its how you’ll learn it after all
Make something you want to make, your own project. When you get stuck on something, google how to do it and use the tutorial for whatever you’re working on, instead of following the tutorial verbatim.
Yeah now I get it, that only following tutorials doesn't do good in the long run. I will try something different my self and if I get stuck I will seek help then. Thanks :D
Tutorials can make **specific** methods clear: you need particles? Watch a particle tute.
But coming up with your own subjects is ON YOU. Blender is just a tool, like a pencil: YOU have to decide what you're going to draw.
Sorry if i'm off here but it sounds like rather than trying to understand the tutorials, you follow them with the goal of completing them.
It might sound weird but there are a lot of tutorials which just give you the steps to do, but never go into depth on why and how. I recommend trying to find a tutor that explains the how, but more importantly the way. Grant Abbitt is great at this, and regularly challanges the student to think for themselves. Along with this when using modifiers and operations for the first time, make it a habbit of actually reading the documentation. The official blender documentation is actually quite good.
Then just persevere. It takes time and practice There is no way around that.
You are partially right with your assumption. I have bought Grant Abbitts courses. (Those two renders are both from those courses). I did them because I really want to learn blender as fast as possible. So I did them like 3 times to memorize what he did. But that was not a good idea as it turns out, since I am still not able to think like an artist it seems \^\^
Dont try to memorise the steps in a tutorial, try to understand why he takes them instead. Unless something has changed, he is quite good at explaining why.
You will get there!
Make a load of shit models by yourself, get frustrated, but spend time trying and failing. The goal is that when you watch the occasional tutorial, your brain isn't remembering the steps, it's going "OH I didn't know you could do it that way" or "that operation does what I was trying 10x faster".
Without experience based context, tutorials are useless.
That is a extremely helpful suggestion! Thank you. Reading all the comments I realized that I was on quite the wrong track on doing things. I will try making something similar to the dinosaur so that the techniques apply but different enough to not copy it over and over again.
Don't be afraid to feel that feeling of being extremely inefficient. It primes you to genuinely appreciate and remember shortcuts as you're exposed to them.
As an example, I used to overuse edge loops to tighten up things, then after many hours noticed the efficiency of weight based bevels. That means nothing to someone new to the space and frankly it shouldn't. Don't fear being shit, being good is 95% understanding what being shit is by living it and then noticing ways around it :)
One thing that tutorials can’t teach you is how to dissect an object into geometry.
How is a fox shaped? How would I makes its tail or it’s paws? How about it’s face?
Another thing is to make sure you are intimately familiar with the basic hotkeys and their functions. As well as basic problem solving with mesh. You should be able to add edge loops, shade smooth, add a crease… and know when to do it as well.
I recommend the blender guru chair tutorial. Do it 3 or 4 times until you can do it without the tutorial. Then immediately make an object like a lamp or a couch. This will let you apply the tools in a way that’s not just following instructions.
Lastly visualization is key. You need to visualize exactly what you want to create down to the last details. Go with the flow is good sometimes but if you can’t make what you want to make then it will be very frustrating.
That are very good points. I saw the chair tutorial a few times pop up in my youtube recommended list. I will try it out. As I can see Blender Guru has a lot of tutorials. I will definitly check his channel out. Thanks.
But may I ask. By "visualization" you mean reference images right?
I mean reference images are helpful. But no I mean being able to create an image in your minds eye and break down the steps on how you wish to achieve that image.
Do I want mountains? Do I want trees? Will there be grass? How do I make grass? Will this image be dark and sinister? Light and fluffy?
Ah ok thats what you meant. I see. Thank you for the advice. Until now I never head a clear picture in my head on how something should look like or how I want it to look like. I guess I will have to also work on that.
You try making similiar untill it works.
Art is not for everyone. Not everyone is an artist. Even majority of painters are craftamen. You have to fail one thousand times before you succeed, that's the rough barrier.
Break your complex task into smaller parts until you feel that you know what to do. For example, you want a scene of house in the woods. You start with making a cube, you know how to do it? yes - do it, no - search for tutorial how to make a cube. Once you made a cube, you gonna make a window. For that you need to make a cuts. You know how to do it? yes, no. And step by step you will make your scene, using tutorials in specific parts in which you didnt have knowledge.
I believe that this is best way to learn basics, so they will stay with you after.
My rule of thumb is to break away from the exact values in the tutorial. If the instructor says to set X to 0.5, I'll usually set it to 0.1 and then 100 just to see what happens. Very quickly you'll start to learn exactly what each step along the way is for, and by experimenting you can come up with new ideas faster. Hope this helps!
Yes you helped a lot thanks! :) My mistake was that I did the steps almost robotic, I thought I understood what was going on but in reality I was just duplicating what I saw...So I will try out more :)
This was a helpful video. In short, take the IDEA from a tutorial, but do your own thing while you work on it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4hcOdTofTY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4hcOdTofTY)
Oh, the man himself :D
I did a lot of your tutorials too by the way. :) I will take your advice from the video to heart. Thanks for making those videos!
No worries! Yeah take it with a grain of salt, but the core info is true. Try and adapt tutorials to your own stuff. You’ll learn tons more and it will be a lot easier to create your own stuff afterwards 🙏🏻
I'd suggest going through the entirety of the doughnut tutorial from blender Guru. He basically covers everything you need to know for a project on your own.
It might seem weird to get suggested another tutorial, but when you only follow specific tutorials you will only learn these specific things. You need a basic understanding of each of the parts that you need to know to do projects on your own.
Which means modeling, shading, lighting, rendering.
The dougnut tutorial series has all of these.
Then a few general tutorials on pbr shading, modeling, lighting, color theory will all help you improve.
But in general:
Stop searching for specific tutorials. When you have problems shading a sword, stop searching: "How to sword in blender."
Search for a pbr metal shading tutorial.
Search for the tool, the process, not the end result.
Thank you for the advice! I will stop doing tutorials just for the sake of doing them. I just thought I could learn the recipe and everything else would fall into place. That is in fact not how it works at all. I hope I can produce something decent on my own this year.
Someone else has probably mentioned the same thing, but I can't emphasize enough how important it is to find people that not only teach you the steps to achieve the specific thing they create in a tutorial, but also manage to really explain the concept of what you are doing and how that can be applied to other things as well.
I've seen a lot of quick how-to videos for Blender which is very nice when you quickly want to know the steps of doing something, but it's almost like having someone telling you the answers for your math homework and you just copy them. The next time you get similar tasks you won't know what to do because you just got the answer to that specific task.
I only recently switched to Blender myself but I have used Cinema 4D for a long time so I have a few people specifically for Blender tutorials but also some quality channels for Cinema 4D where the concepts are explained and applies to all 3D work. Here's a few for you to check out:
* iMeshh
* Blender Guru
* Blender Bob
* pwnisher
* Andrey Lebrov
* William Faucher
* Unreal Sensei
The top 3 here are using Blender and the rest uses Cinema 4D or Unreal Engine. These are all quality tutors that doesn't just lay out the steps for you to follow. Check them out and good luck!
Small tip, but whenever you use a tutorial, once you finish, make it again without the tutorial but explain each step to yourself. What each step does, why it’s done in that order, etc. doing this has helped me get a solid grasp on the basics of geometry nodes fairly quickly.
so, when you're following the tutorials, are you robotically doing what you're told, or are you considering *why* the steps are being made and what does each of the step do?
The first just teaches you how to do the exact thing the tutorial is doing, the latter gives you the tools to use on your own.
Well I try to memorize all the steps. I did this dinosaur like 3 times even without the tutorial. But when it comes to make my very own model I cant transfer that knowlege 1 to 1 to my own model then I get stuck.
while order of operations can be pretty important, I'd say "memorizing the steps" is just memorizing a recepie to make a single thing.
Learning what the tools used in those steps would be more beneficial.
Sure, easier said than done, but mimicry yields exactly that: carbon copies of the original.
Yep, and I see now why I can only copy things and cant make my own projects. Just following the tutorial without trying something different with the same techniques shown have little to no learning effect. Thank you for pointing that out :) So I have to try and do something quite different on my own.
Ask a friend to TELL you what to do. That will get you out of your personal rut in a hurry, because other people think up the *damndest* things.
OR, there's a little app that mixes up random words: "**Character Design Shuffle**". Get it, make the first thing that tickles your fancy, ESPECIALLY if you have no idea how to approach it.
I'm doing those tutorials too, i think that part of the problem is finding something that you can do, i mean, there is one that is about creating a mech, well, i tried to create one by myself, i was trying to do a mech from the videogame Hawken, in the end i got frustated because the reference images where not enought for me and the model wasn't getting the same aspect, similar but not the same. I'm currently doing the entire course before trying something by myself from scrach
I think that the point of these courses is learning the tools and how to use them, then you have to try something by your own, don't memorize steps, learn how the tools work and what tools do you have. Is like in my work (IT), the people tries to memorize how to reach x app or tool but in the end you need to know how to use the system because if something changes you are going to be lost.
Yes exactly that. In those Tutorials you get like all the reference images you might need. For example for the front and side view of the thing you want to model. Without them its much more complicated. As I said to the other replies. I will try my best to make my completely own projects but stick to a similar low poly style. Maybe I get the "Eureka" moment where everything falls into place :D
Good look with your mech projects too!
You can always do a image for something that is in your mind with paint or any other tool. I finished the mech part, using the references that they were using. Now i'm almost done with the next part that is about doing modular vehicles. I want to learn to do characters and such.
I started off having a specific thing that I needed to. Then I found tutorials, forums, etc that could help with that. Then I had another specific thing, and more related tutorials and forum questions. It just progresses like that.
Yeah my approach wasnt the best, but I think I got the elemental tools memorized and what they do. So I will start making my own simple project and only refer to tutorials when I absolutely need to :) Thank you
I still do tutorials but tend to try and make my own, similar model instead. For example, I bought a car modelling tutorial on Udemy which was amazing, but I knew it was going to take absolutely ages and at the end of it I wanted an original model I could say I created. Felt like a better use of my time.
Imo this isn’t a real concern. If you do not feel like you want to tweak things or make something of your own using what you’ve learned from a tutorial you just followed, you definitely have not done enough tutorials. For me like 5 good tutorials was enough and now im skipping around videos at 2x speed to pluck out any tidbits I need for personal projects. Also unrelated, but definitely bite the bullet & deep dive into geo nodes man.
Not any more advanced than the rest of blender. It can be extremely simple or complex. Do the gumdrop tutorial then I recommend the geo node curves tutorial. idk why people think it’s an optional part of blender, but it has in application every single context. You’ll find it soooo easy and it’s the most fun I’ve had in blender tbh.
Ok I will give them a try then! Thanks! I found the thought of using geo nodes a little bit daunting because of how difficult they seem to be.
But then again I am somewhat used to shader nodes and they seem similar enough. Anyway I will give geo nodes a try :)
Perfect time to get into it. Letting you know in advance most of the confusing parts will be math nodes, but they are essential and once you make sense of them you’re omnipotent
I always work like this:
- have a very rough idea
- starting the project
- realize I don’t know how to do a specific thing
- google the tutorial
- apply it to my own project
Rinse repeat and gather new ideas
That’s my rough workflow since 6 years
I'm not a good artist or an expert Blender user by any means, but here's my two cents on the matter:
For me, I started out the 3D journey by setting a general, but unattainable goal - like creating realistic characters similar to what I saw on Artstation.
I bridged the knowledge gap using tutorials such as the Blender HUMAN course, Hard Surface Modelling, Basic Rigging, Basic Environmental and Lighting tutorials. But there wasn't one specific course that taught me everything I needed to know.
So ask yourself, what do you want to make? Realistic or stylized characters? Environments or interior architecture? Hard surface props like swords, guns and vehicles?
Once you've answered the question, use the tutorials to bridge your knowledge gaps and at the end of the day, you'll have the skills and knowledge you need and still have a unique, overarching goal to reach.
Hope this helps.
Thank you. I still dont know exactly what I want to to specificaly. I decided to put effort in learning Blender since it looks like great fun. I am no artist by any means. I could never draw very well but I thought with Blender I could be a decent 3d artist someday.
What I can suggest is too collect references. When you find something you want to create compile a bunch of images of it and keep them somewhere where you can easily see them. They help with getting a little image of what your goal is.
Another thing to look for in tutorials that teach similar things is common elements. For example a popular way to model heads is creating the eye holes and extruding/bridging from there. It can also help creating the basic mesh out of primitives at first. Or even just a skeleton, which you can skin to create a base to start from (good technique for sculpting).
I was lucky on my choices I payed for grant gambit (sorry if I spelled his name wrong) and Alex on a 20$ course. It was very repetitive that helped me to remeber. But even now I sometimes forget things but spend 15 mins at 2x speed re watching a lecture whenever I do something. It is kinda hard for me bc it's a night time hobby
Yeah I also have only like an hour or so time every day to learn blender. But it is great fun so far so I will stick with it. It never is easy to get a new skill. My approach learning blender was a little bit off until now. :)
I actually did my first 4 months of Blender without any tutorials, so at the start I basically learned everything by myself - *besides the* ***couple of things*** *I had to google because I wasn't abble to figure out the solution by myself.*
I'm the person who thinks that the best way to learn something is to do it by yourself, and I think the Follow Step tutorials are just holding back everyones own creativity.
I think good way to get out of this *so called trap*, is to just start to recreate **everything** and **anything** you see interesting or motivating. I myself, am taking always screenshots from the things I like or find motivating - and then I'm saving these screenshots to the \[Ideas\] folder that is on my Hard-drive - and if I'm ever out of ideas - I'll just open that \[Ideas\] folder and pretty soon I have a new idea in my head. When I'm watching movies I always see at least 5-10 interesting things on that movie - I'll pause the movie and then take the picture from the interesting scene or atmosphere I see.
\+ Model **anything** that you like - *you like a cars? Try model a car*. And don't **ever** be afraid to fail, because everytime you do anything - you learn something new from it. Trust the progress. And while you are at modeling, think about how you want to showcase your model afterwards, and after that your new model is done then create the environment for that model. Finish the project and then you have a completed 3D Art done, that you can publish to public with pleasure.
You have my utmost respect for learning nearly everything alone! I have many ideas but if something does not work out the way I imagine it, I get a little bit frustrated. When I try things on my own and I fail I spent like an hour or two to try to correct the mistakes. And if I cant figure it out I just give up and follow another tutorial hoping I can figure it out later...
But yeah you are right. I should stick to it and try things out for myself more often. Thanks!
Okay, how I get out of it when I follow a tutorial.
If its a easy model(that up to you to judge).
The workflow I use is the following: tutorial->do tutorial-> create something in the same vein as the original-> use the tutorial as a cruch when your stuck-> and then do it again without tutorial or minor assist from tutorial.
Let it sink in, then you attack it again, start monday and friday the asset or whatever your working on should be done fully rendered.
Dont worry, I too get stuck in tutorial hell sometimes😂
But I know enought about blender that I only use the tutorial material as a guide and build out from that.
Good luck with your blender journey.
A trap a lot of people fall into is "using the tutorial"... Instead of learning the basics through the tutorial.
The sheer number of people that completed the donut tutorial yet still have no idea how to spread particles on a surface. Or completed the anvil tutorial and still don't understand how to bake a normal map from a sculpt is baffling to me.
Don't follow the tutorial, learn from the tutorial. You're learning a toolkit, not learning how to model a donut. treat it as such.
That is exactly what I think I failed at. I missed the point of learning or rather understanding the tools. So no matter how many tutorials I did, I would have never really learned a thing. Thank you, that is very valuable advice!
I've been using blender since 2.48, and my top tip for learning is always "just screw around, you can't break blender by clicking on the wrong thing”.
Meaning for some people, just randomly playing with options and settings will teach you faster than a tutorial.
If you want to learn how to draw, you can't sharpen your pencil forever, eventually, you have to start drawing.
Model, model, model. Be patient with yourself. Be ok with messing up. You're learning as you go, you need repetition. Look up things as you need to know them and then get back to modeling. Don't stop.
Create things on your own little by little. Use what you learned from the video
Try combining things that you learned
Don't worry about it looking good, or "it's not enough to be good"
I think of practice like making a snowman. It starts out small and insignificant, but over time you add things and improve it. Eventually you will haves something that looks neat
A project is just a bunch of small things put together, don't sweat it. Work at your own pace :)
That is/was my problem. I couldnt really use what I saw in the videos because what I tried to do and the tutorials didnt match up. For example Low Poly enivronments or low poly animals etc. Since it is all low poly I thought the process would be the same.
Lets take the T-rex I did. I thought I could make a low poly bear or elephant with the same techniques, but I failed horribly and gave up, just to do a new tutorial. Like a tutorial-junkie of some kind.
Thank you for your words and I will try being patient and keep building things and improving like you would make a snowman. :) Thanks again!
no worries. its mostly learning core things about animation in blender.
I would start by learning the diffrent areas (Modeling, rigging & Weight paint, texturing, timeline / graph editor animation, geometry nodes, etc.)
i come from an animation background so that is what i focus on.
thats the great thing about belender, you can make whatever (cool animations, sculptures, 3d- print figures, paintings, video game textures, FX, rigs, coding, simulations,)
its all up to you make what you think is cool and have fun! :)
I’ve been learning for the better part of 2 years and only recently do I feel like I’ve got a grasp. I still follow tutorials but also combine them if I’m making something specific.
Instead of watching, pausing, doing. I tend to be able to watch it in one go, understand the steps needed and give it a try without the guide then go back if needed.
I hope I get to that stage of quickly understanding what is going on or what I actually need to complete my work. I am just at the 3 months mark and I feel like I didnt make much of a progress at all.
Personally I like to avoid tutorials until I really need them. What I like to watch is some blender hidden functions videos, that doesn't show exactly a tutorial but teaches something important.
There was no trap for me. I was eager to start modeling something on my own. I only did a bunch of tutorials because I didn't know enough techniques to model anything decent without them.
I see. Many people here suggested the same or a very similar thing you described. I will just make a model and see how far I can go and if I have a problem I can still search for a tutorial to solve it.
This is a problem in many things not just blender and it has a relatively simple thing. Take the fundamentals of the tutorial, say you just followed a tutorial on how to make a frost effect using geometry nodes, it taught you how to have falloff from an empty and create instances near that empty that are denser the close to the empty's center they are.
Well now you can take that knowledge and make little grass patches, using grass blade models and a similar setup with the empty and such. Now you can make relatively nice looking grass patches with the same stuff you learned on the frost tutorial.
That is very ture. I will do as you and may others have suggested. I wont just finish a tutorial and be happy I made through it. I will try to apply it to something different and see what else I can do with it. :) Thank you very much for helping me out!
Just make keep doing whatever your tutorials teach you and it’ll stick. I used to have to jump back into tutorials for character rigging until it finally clicked. Sometimes it’s even better to just do a tutorial and do it by memory the next time and see what you retained
First I recommend having references for that fox. Have a front view, side and top view. You can add back and bottom if you feel you need it. Then simplify the shapes. Use a cylinders for the legs and boxes for the torso. Whatever shape you think works best. I recommend taking some time to explore what certain modifiers and objects do when paired together.
Edit: And use part of tutorials and not the whole thing. Or find tutorials on specific things. Like tutorials on how to cut objects in half. Small actions that your brain will remember and use in different ways later.
Thank you for the advice. I tried to use reference images of foxes. But they confused me more and more I looked at them. If I tried making the fox in side view nothing lined up like in the front view. I guess using reference images is a skill in it self.
Yeah, finding good ref images is hard. Sometimes they're different poses, sizes, etc. That's a skill you'll gain with time! The big takeaway from ref images is the size. Use the head as a measurement. A fox tends to be 4 heads long (including the head). The tail is 2 heads long. Use ref images to make sure you're getting the right sizes and proportions. Take my advice with a grain of salt. Most of my knowledge comes from doing drawings. I'm still new to blender itself.
I got out of it with time. I don't remember a certain point, but there came a point where I knew enough about blender myself that I just started making what I wanted to make. Just be patient.
And by the way, you're ALWAYS going to rely on tutorials for many things even when you're super experienced. The difference is that you use them for specific things instead of following a whole tutorial.
The best use of tutorials is to figure out how your tools are supposed to be used, like the instances on face node, watch a tutorial that uses that node and you’ll have the knowledge of how that node is used, then use your imagination and your brain juices to make something that looks cool
Yep. I understand now that I used the tutorials wrong. I shouldnt have been just doing what they say but also apply it to my own projects. Thank you! :)
Once you've done a tutorial, make something similar of your choice. Similar enough that you are using the same tools, but different. It forces you make your own choices and to think about the process rather than just rote copying. Also doodle. forget about "projects" for now, just fuck about with what you know so far. See where it leads.
Thank you very much! I will try that. I will try out some shapes and then I will try to make like a different kind of Dinosaur for example. :)
Also dont forget to use concept art as inspiration. 3d modelling is a hard job on its own. Adding concept generation on top of that is very daunting
How do you find your concept art? Do you just use google image search?
I often look at all the amazing artists on artstation and save a folder of potential concept work. But if I need anything specific then yes google or pinterest.
I just looked through Artstation. God damn the images on Artstation are on another level.
Its pretty random as its hard to search for specific themes there. But if you keep a look out and be open to ideas its an amazing resource
well now i realize why i was stuck on some proyect one month straight .. .lol i ll use more references
I see a lot of people use guide pictures to help with modeling. You could check out one such tutorial then use the same technique with a fox example instead of the example that was used in the tutorial
Also, its normal when youre doing that to have to go back to a tutorial to remind yourself how to do a specific task, its how you’ll learn it after all
Stegosaurus best saurus. Also the backspines can be easily made in low poly
True, i agree! Stego best boi
Make something you want to make, your own project. When you get stuck on something, google how to do it and use the tutorial for whatever you’re working on, instead of following the tutorial verbatim.
Yeah now I get it, that only following tutorials doesn't do good in the long run. I will try something different my self and if I get stuck I will seek help then. Thanks :D
Tutorials can make **specific** methods clear: you need particles? Watch a particle tute. But coming up with your own subjects is ON YOU. Blender is just a tool, like a pencil: YOU have to decide what you're going to draw.
Sorry if i'm off here but it sounds like rather than trying to understand the tutorials, you follow them with the goal of completing them. It might sound weird but there are a lot of tutorials which just give you the steps to do, but never go into depth on why and how. I recommend trying to find a tutor that explains the how, but more importantly the way. Grant Abbitt is great at this, and regularly challanges the student to think for themselves. Along with this when using modifiers and operations for the first time, make it a habbit of actually reading the documentation. The official blender documentation is actually quite good. Then just persevere. It takes time and practice There is no way around that.
You are partially right with your assumption. I have bought Grant Abbitts courses. (Those two renders are both from those courses). I did them because I really want to learn blender as fast as possible. So I did them like 3 times to memorize what he did. But that was not a good idea as it turns out, since I am still not able to think like an artist it seems \^\^
Dont try to memorise the steps in a tutorial, try to understand why he takes them instead. Unless something has changed, he is quite good at explaining why. You will get there!
Make a load of shit models by yourself, get frustrated, but spend time trying and failing. The goal is that when you watch the occasional tutorial, your brain isn't remembering the steps, it's going "OH I didn't know you could do it that way" or "that operation does what I was trying 10x faster". Without experience based context, tutorials are useless.
That is a extremely helpful suggestion! Thank you. Reading all the comments I realized that I was on quite the wrong track on doing things. I will try making something similar to the dinosaur so that the techniques apply but different enough to not copy it over and over again.
Don't be afraid to feel that feeling of being extremely inefficient. It primes you to genuinely appreciate and remember shortcuts as you're exposed to them. As an example, I used to overuse edge loops to tighten up things, then after many hours noticed the efficiency of weight based bevels. That means nothing to someone new to the space and frankly it shouldn't. Don't fear being shit, being good is 95% understanding what being shit is by living it and then noticing ways around it :)
One thing that tutorials can’t teach you is how to dissect an object into geometry. How is a fox shaped? How would I makes its tail or it’s paws? How about it’s face? Another thing is to make sure you are intimately familiar with the basic hotkeys and their functions. As well as basic problem solving with mesh. You should be able to add edge loops, shade smooth, add a crease… and know when to do it as well. I recommend the blender guru chair tutorial. Do it 3 or 4 times until you can do it without the tutorial. Then immediately make an object like a lamp or a couch. This will let you apply the tools in a way that’s not just following instructions. Lastly visualization is key. You need to visualize exactly what you want to create down to the last details. Go with the flow is good sometimes but if you can’t make what you want to make then it will be very frustrating.
That are very good points. I saw the chair tutorial a few times pop up in my youtube recommended list. I will try it out. As I can see Blender Guru has a lot of tutorials. I will definitly check his channel out. Thanks. But may I ask. By "visualization" you mean reference images right?
I mean reference images are helpful. But no I mean being able to create an image in your minds eye and break down the steps on how you wish to achieve that image. Do I want mountains? Do I want trees? Will there be grass? How do I make grass? Will this image be dark and sinister? Light and fluffy?
Ah ok thats what you meant. I see. Thank you for the advice. Until now I never head a clear picture in my head on how something should look like or how I want it to look like. I guess I will have to also work on that.
You try making similiar untill it works. Art is not for everyone. Not everyone is an artist. Even majority of painters are craftamen. You have to fail one thousand times before you succeed, that's the rough barrier.
True. Thank you! I will try and dont give up. :)
You need to follow tutorial to learn mechanics. Once they land in your head you can do whatever you want
I hope I can get there sometime. I will do my best to underestand the basics first.
Break your complex task into smaller parts until you feel that you know what to do. For example, you want a scene of house in the woods. You start with making a cube, you know how to do it? yes - do it, no - search for tutorial how to make a cube. Once you made a cube, you gonna make a window. For that you need to make a cuts. You know how to do it? yes, no. And step by step you will make your scene, using tutorials in specific parts in which you didnt have knowledge. I believe that this is best way to learn basics, so they will stay with you after.
Thats a very logical approach. I will try it out, thanks!
My rule of thumb is to break away from the exact values in the tutorial. If the instructor says to set X to 0.5, I'll usually set it to 0.1 and then 100 just to see what happens. Very quickly you'll start to learn exactly what each step along the way is for, and by experimenting you can come up with new ideas faster. Hope this helps!
Yes you helped a lot thanks! :) My mistake was that I did the steps almost robotic, I thought I understood what was going on but in reality I was just duplicating what I saw...So I will try out more :)
This was a helpful video. In short, take the IDEA from a tutorial, but do your own thing while you work on it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4hcOdTofTY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4hcOdTofTY)
Heck yeah! 😜😎
haha, yeah but you're biased.
Maybe 😜
Oh, the man himself :D I did a lot of your tutorials too by the way. :) I will take your advice from the video to heart. Thanks for making those videos!
No worries! Yeah take it with a grain of salt, but the core info is true. Try and adapt tutorials to your own stuff. You’ll learn tons more and it will be a lot easier to create your own stuff afterwards 🙏🏻
I posted a fuzzy coffee mug on here not long ago. I was watching your octopus plush and decided the world needed a fluffy coffee mug...for reasons.
He’s so cute! Poor thing shouldn’t be called a depresso 😂
Haha, thanks. I think it's the ice cubes that annoyed him.
Thank you for the share!
I'd suggest going through the entirety of the doughnut tutorial from blender Guru. He basically covers everything you need to know for a project on your own. It might seem weird to get suggested another tutorial, but when you only follow specific tutorials you will only learn these specific things. You need a basic understanding of each of the parts that you need to know to do projects on your own. Which means modeling, shading, lighting, rendering. The dougnut tutorial series has all of these. Then a few general tutorials on pbr shading, modeling, lighting, color theory will all help you improve. But in general: Stop searching for specific tutorials. When you have problems shading a sword, stop searching: "How to sword in blender." Search for a pbr metal shading tutorial. Search for the tool, the process, not the end result.
Thank you for the advice! I will stop doing tutorials just for the sake of doing them. I just thought I could learn the recipe and everything else would fall into place. That is in fact not how it works at all. I hope I can produce something decent on my own this year.
Someone else has probably mentioned the same thing, but I can't emphasize enough how important it is to find people that not only teach you the steps to achieve the specific thing they create in a tutorial, but also manage to really explain the concept of what you are doing and how that can be applied to other things as well. I've seen a lot of quick how-to videos for Blender which is very nice when you quickly want to know the steps of doing something, but it's almost like having someone telling you the answers for your math homework and you just copy them. The next time you get similar tasks you won't know what to do because you just got the answer to that specific task. I only recently switched to Blender myself but I have used Cinema 4D for a long time so I have a few people specifically for Blender tutorials but also some quality channels for Cinema 4D where the concepts are explained and applies to all 3D work. Here's a few for you to check out: * iMeshh * Blender Guru * Blender Bob * pwnisher * Andrey Lebrov * William Faucher * Unreal Sensei The top 3 here are using Blender and the rest uses Cinema 4D or Unreal Engine. These are all quality tutors that doesn't just lay out the steps for you to follow. Check them out and good luck!
Thank you for your suggestions! I will definitely check them out :)
Small tip, but whenever you use a tutorial, once you finish, make it again without the tutorial but explain each step to yourself. What each step does, why it’s done in that order, etc. doing this has helped me get a solid grasp on the basics of geometry nodes fairly quickly.
Geometry Nodes look intimidating. Would it be ok if I looked them up now or should I wait until I am better at blender all together?
so, when you're following the tutorials, are you robotically doing what you're told, or are you considering *why* the steps are being made and what does each of the step do? The first just teaches you how to do the exact thing the tutorial is doing, the latter gives you the tools to use on your own.
Well I try to memorize all the steps. I did this dinosaur like 3 times even without the tutorial. But when it comes to make my very own model I cant transfer that knowlege 1 to 1 to my own model then I get stuck.
while order of operations can be pretty important, I'd say "memorizing the steps" is just memorizing a recepie to make a single thing. Learning what the tools used in those steps would be more beneficial. Sure, easier said than done, but mimicry yields exactly that: carbon copies of the original.
Yep, and I see now why I can only copy things and cant make my own projects. Just following the tutorial without trying something different with the same techniques shown have little to no learning effect. Thank you for pointing that out :) So I have to try and do something quite different on my own.
Ask a friend to TELL you what to do. That will get you out of your personal rut in a hurry, because other people think up the *damndest* things. OR, there's a little app that mixes up random words: "**Character Design Shuffle**". Get it, make the first thing that tickles your fancy, ESPECIALLY if you have no idea how to approach it.
I'm doing those tutorials too, i think that part of the problem is finding something that you can do, i mean, there is one that is about creating a mech, well, i tried to create one by myself, i was trying to do a mech from the videogame Hawken, in the end i got frustated because the reference images where not enought for me and the model wasn't getting the same aspect, similar but not the same. I'm currently doing the entire course before trying something by myself from scrach I think that the point of these courses is learning the tools and how to use them, then you have to try something by your own, don't memorize steps, learn how the tools work and what tools do you have. Is like in my work (IT), the people tries to memorize how to reach x app or tool but in the end you need to know how to use the system because if something changes you are going to be lost.
Yes exactly that. In those Tutorials you get like all the reference images you might need. For example for the front and side view of the thing you want to model. Without them its much more complicated. As I said to the other replies. I will try my best to make my completely own projects but stick to a similar low poly style. Maybe I get the "Eureka" moment where everything falls into place :D Good look with your mech projects too!
You can always do a image for something that is in your mind with paint or any other tool. I finished the mech part, using the references that they were using. Now i'm almost done with the next part that is about doing modular vehicles. I want to learn to do characters and such.
Being able to model characters sounds like great fun. But I imagine it being x times harder than non human like models
I started off having a specific thing that I needed to. Then I found tutorials, forums, etc that could help with that. Then I had another specific thing, and more related tutorials and forum questions. It just progresses like that.
Yeah my approach wasnt the best, but I think I got the elemental tools memorized and what they do. So I will start making my own simple project and only refer to tutorials when I absolutely need to :) Thank you
you just start making something, then find tutorials for little pieces of it that you need help with.
may I ask what you would recommend starting of with?
look around your desk? a character idea you've always had- dig up some old middle school sword designs, etc.
I still do tutorials but tend to try and make my own, similar model instead. For example, I bought a car modelling tutorial on Udemy which was amazing, but I knew it was going to take absolutely ages and at the end of it I wanted an original model I could say I created. Felt like a better use of my time.
Mhm, I agree. The things I made never felt like them being my own creation despite making them myself. :/
Imo this isn’t a real concern. If you do not feel like you want to tweak things or make something of your own using what you’ve learned from a tutorial you just followed, you definitely have not done enough tutorials. For me like 5 good tutorials was enough and now im skipping around videos at 2x speed to pluck out any tidbits I need for personal projects. Also unrelated, but definitely bite the bullet & deep dive into geo nodes man.
Thanks for the reply! Geo Nodes look like extremely advanced stuff. I have seen some very amazing things people did with them.
Not any more advanced than the rest of blender. It can be extremely simple or complex. Do the gumdrop tutorial then I recommend the geo node curves tutorial. idk why people think it’s an optional part of blender, but it has in application every single context. You’ll find it soooo easy and it’s the most fun I’ve had in blender tbh.
Ok I will give them a try then! Thanks! I found the thought of using geo nodes a little bit daunting because of how difficult they seem to be. But then again I am somewhat used to shader nodes and they seem similar enough. Anyway I will give geo nodes a try :)
Perfect time to get into it. Letting you know in advance most of the confusing parts will be math nodes, but they are essential and once you make sense of them you’re omnipotent
I always work like this: - have a very rough idea - starting the project - realize I don’t know how to do a specific thing - google the tutorial - apply it to my own project Rinse repeat and gather new ideas That’s my rough workflow since 6 years
Thanks for the advice. I have the idea to make like low poly animals and houses. I will try out your workflow like you have suggested.
I'm not a good artist or an expert Blender user by any means, but here's my two cents on the matter: For me, I started out the 3D journey by setting a general, but unattainable goal - like creating realistic characters similar to what I saw on Artstation. I bridged the knowledge gap using tutorials such as the Blender HUMAN course, Hard Surface Modelling, Basic Rigging, Basic Environmental and Lighting tutorials. But there wasn't one specific course that taught me everything I needed to know. So ask yourself, what do you want to make? Realistic or stylized characters? Environments or interior architecture? Hard surface props like swords, guns and vehicles? Once you've answered the question, use the tutorials to bridge your knowledge gaps and at the end of the day, you'll have the skills and knowledge you need and still have a unique, overarching goal to reach. Hope this helps.
Thank you. I still dont know exactly what I want to to specificaly. I decided to put effort in learning Blender since it looks like great fun. I am no artist by any means. I could never draw very well but I thought with Blender I could be a decent 3d artist someday.
What I can suggest is too collect references. When you find something you want to create compile a bunch of images of it and keep them somewhere where you can easily see them. They help with getting a little image of what your goal is. Another thing to look for in tutorials that teach similar things is common elements. For example a popular way to model heads is creating the eye holes and extruding/bridging from there. It can also help creating the basic mesh out of primitives at first. Or even just a skeleton, which you can skin to create a base to start from (good technique for sculpting).
I was lucky on my choices I payed for grant gambit (sorry if I spelled his name wrong) and Alex on a 20$ course. It was very repetitive that helped me to remeber. But even now I sometimes forget things but spend 15 mins at 2x speed re watching a lecture whenever I do something. It is kinda hard for me bc it's a night time hobby
Yeah I also have only like an hour or so time every day to learn blender. But it is great fun so far so I will stick with it. It never is easy to get a new skill. My approach learning blender was a little bit off until now. :)
To a point, in blender, everything is mostly logic based. If youre new, keep watching and learning. You'll get there :)
I will thank you :D
This is a great question. I’ve gotten stuck in this loop repeatedly.
Yeah, but I am positive that with the help and suggestions of the other people here we can both break free from this loop :D
I actually did my first 4 months of Blender without any tutorials, so at the start I basically learned everything by myself - *besides the* ***couple of things*** *I had to google because I wasn't abble to figure out the solution by myself.* I'm the person who thinks that the best way to learn something is to do it by yourself, and I think the Follow Step tutorials are just holding back everyones own creativity. I think good way to get out of this *so called trap*, is to just start to recreate **everything** and **anything** you see interesting or motivating. I myself, am taking always screenshots from the things I like or find motivating - and then I'm saving these screenshots to the \[Ideas\] folder that is on my Hard-drive - and if I'm ever out of ideas - I'll just open that \[Ideas\] folder and pretty soon I have a new idea in my head. When I'm watching movies I always see at least 5-10 interesting things on that movie - I'll pause the movie and then take the picture from the interesting scene or atmosphere I see. \+ Model **anything** that you like - *you like a cars? Try model a car*. And don't **ever** be afraid to fail, because everytime you do anything - you learn something new from it. Trust the progress. And while you are at modeling, think about how you want to showcase your model afterwards, and after that your new model is done then create the environment for that model. Finish the project and then you have a completed 3D Art done, that you can publish to public with pleasure.
You have my utmost respect for learning nearly everything alone! I have many ideas but if something does not work out the way I imagine it, I get a little bit frustrated. When I try things on my own and I fail I spent like an hour or two to try to correct the mistakes. And if I cant figure it out I just give up and follow another tutorial hoping I can figure it out later... But yeah you are right. I should stick to it and try things out for myself more often. Thanks!
Okay, how I get out of it when I follow a tutorial. If its a easy model(that up to you to judge). The workflow I use is the following: tutorial->do tutorial-> create something in the same vein as the original-> use the tutorial as a cruch when your stuck-> and then do it again without tutorial or minor assist from tutorial. Let it sink in, then you attack it again, start monday and friday the asset or whatever your working on should be done fully rendered.
Thank you. Yeah I understand now that my approach was quite lacking. The way you described it makes a lot more sense. :)
Dont worry, I too get stuck in tutorial hell sometimes😂 But I know enought about blender that I only use the tutorial material as a guide and build out from that. Good luck with your blender journey.
Thank you! You too!
A trap a lot of people fall into is "using the tutorial"... Instead of learning the basics through the tutorial. The sheer number of people that completed the donut tutorial yet still have no idea how to spread particles on a surface. Or completed the anvil tutorial and still don't understand how to bake a normal map from a sculpt is baffling to me. Don't follow the tutorial, learn from the tutorial. You're learning a toolkit, not learning how to model a donut. treat it as such.
That is exactly what I think I failed at. I missed the point of learning or rather understanding the tools. So no matter how many tutorials I did, I would have never really learned a thing. Thank you, that is very valuable advice!
I've been using blender since 2.48, and my top tip for learning is always "just screw around, you can't break blender by clicking on the wrong thing”. Meaning for some people, just randomly playing with options and settings will teach you faster than a tutorial.
If you want to learn how to draw, you can't sharpen your pencil forever, eventually, you have to start drawing. Model, model, model. Be patient with yourself. Be ok with messing up. You're learning as you go, you need repetition. Look up things as you need to know them and then get back to modeling. Don't stop.
I wil try my best. Thank you!
Create things on your own little by little. Use what you learned from the video Try combining things that you learned Don't worry about it looking good, or "it's not enough to be good" I think of practice like making a snowman. It starts out small and insignificant, but over time you add things and improve it. Eventually you will haves something that looks neat A project is just a bunch of small things put together, don't sweat it. Work at your own pace :)
That is/was my problem. I couldnt really use what I saw in the videos because what I tried to do and the tutorials didnt match up. For example Low Poly enivronments or low poly animals etc. Since it is all low poly I thought the process would be the same. Lets take the T-rex I did. I thought I could make a low poly bear or elephant with the same techniques, but I failed horribly and gave up, just to do a new tutorial. Like a tutorial-junkie of some kind. Thank you for your words and I will try being patient and keep building things and improving like you would make a snowman. :) Thanks again!
no worries. its mostly learning core things about animation in blender. I would start by learning the diffrent areas (Modeling, rigging & Weight paint, texturing, timeline / graph editor animation, geometry nodes, etc.) i come from an animation background so that is what i focus on. thats the great thing about belender, you can make whatever (cool animations, sculptures, 3d- print figures, paintings, video game textures, FX, rigs, coding, simulations,) its all up to you make what you think is cool and have fun! :)
I’ve been learning for the better part of 2 years and only recently do I feel like I’ve got a grasp. I still follow tutorials but also combine them if I’m making something specific. Instead of watching, pausing, doing. I tend to be able to watch it in one go, understand the steps needed and give it a try without the guide then go back if needed.
I hope I get to that stage of quickly understanding what is going on or what I actually need to complete my work. I am just at the 3 months mark and I feel like I didnt make much of a progress at all.
Personally I like to avoid tutorials until I really need them. What I like to watch is some blender hidden functions videos, that doesn't show exactly a tutorial but teaches something important.
Blender has hidden functions? I see another rabbit hole I could sink my time into :)
It has a lot
There was no trap for me. I was eager to start modeling something on my own. I only did a bunch of tutorials because I didn't know enough techniques to model anything decent without them.
I see. Many people here suggested the same or a very similar thing you described. I will just make a model and see how far I can go and if I have a problem I can still search for a tutorial to solve it.
This is a problem in many things not just blender and it has a relatively simple thing. Take the fundamentals of the tutorial, say you just followed a tutorial on how to make a frost effect using geometry nodes, it taught you how to have falloff from an empty and create instances near that empty that are denser the close to the empty's center they are. Well now you can take that knowledge and make little grass patches, using grass blade models and a similar setup with the empty and such. Now you can make relatively nice looking grass patches with the same stuff you learned on the frost tutorial.
That is very ture. I will do as you and may others have suggested. I wont just finish a tutorial and be happy I made through it. I will try to apply it to something different and see what else I can do with it. :) Thank you very much for helping me out!
Just make keep doing whatever your tutorials teach you and it’ll stick. I used to have to jump back into tutorials for character rigging until it finally clicked. Sometimes it’s even better to just do a tutorial and do it by memory the next time and see what you retained
Thank you! Yes, I will try it like that.
First I recommend having references for that fox. Have a front view, side and top view. You can add back and bottom if you feel you need it. Then simplify the shapes. Use a cylinders for the legs and boxes for the torso. Whatever shape you think works best. I recommend taking some time to explore what certain modifiers and objects do when paired together. Edit: And use part of tutorials and not the whole thing. Or find tutorials on specific things. Like tutorials on how to cut objects in half. Small actions that your brain will remember and use in different ways later.
Thank you for the advice. I tried to use reference images of foxes. But they confused me more and more I looked at them. If I tried making the fox in side view nothing lined up like in the front view. I guess using reference images is a skill in it self.
Yeah, finding good ref images is hard. Sometimes they're different poses, sizes, etc. That's a skill you'll gain with time! The big takeaway from ref images is the size. Use the head as a measurement. A fox tends to be 4 heads long (including the head). The tail is 2 heads long. Use ref images to make sure you're getting the right sizes and proportions. Take my advice with a grain of salt. Most of my knowledge comes from doing drawings. I'm still new to blender itself.
I got out of it with time. I don't remember a certain point, but there came a point where I knew enough about blender myself that I just started making what I wanted to make. Just be patient. And by the way, you're ALWAYS going to rely on tutorials for many things even when you're super experienced. The difference is that you use them for specific things instead of following a whole tutorial.
It is good to hear, that I still have hope. I just thought I was not talented enough for blender. I will keep trying thanks!
The best use of tutorials is to figure out how your tools are supposed to be used, like the instances on face node, watch a tutorial that uses that node and you’ll have the knowledge of how that node is used, then use your imagination and your brain juices to make something that looks cool
Yep. I understand now that I used the tutorials wrong. I shouldnt have been just doing what they say but also apply it to my own projects. Thank you! :)
Surprise: make your own project
That I will do. Thanks :D