18 replies to this topic

[Land of Bits]

hi crew i just started messing around with blender ....any of you users have any tips on good tutorials..

 

i'm already watching Blender guru in youtube and a couple of related channels .

 

 

i would like to get into creating scenes for games .....low poly stuff and basic modeling for game characters...

 

 

 

 

also ....if you know ...please recommend me ...any good graphics card...for using in blender ..

i was digging in the topic ..and ive found that ..as for version 2.79 ...AMD cards are not supported ..maybe when 2.8 come out this year.. ..it may have support 

[Zer0 Fly]

Been some time since I dabbled a bit in it, though my choice was going toward music and renoise then. Got only one life...and I want to get really good at what I do, and so I had to choose after learning basics of blender & renoise.

 

Well you gonna love your electricity bill if you render a lot especially animations.

 

The graphics card/GPU (AMD) thing, do not let that bother you too much. It is about using hi-end graphics card for _rendering_ final results a bit faster than cpu could. You can still do all the realtime stuff, modelling etc on any recent opengl capable card. Rendering can be also done with a strong cpu - also with rendering via cpu you will have full feature set and more options compared to GPU rendering. I think I remember you just built a nice gaming type powerful rig, it should more than suffice. If you want to do game assets, then rendering is of not so high importance anyways. The GPU turbo only really matters if you want to do animations that take weeks to render on many computers at once.

 

Like with music software it is a thing of "concept matters" not being bound to a specific tool. Ofc different 3d software have different features, but, what works for other graphics software in terms of workflow will probably work for blender, too. Blender goes a bit its own ways in terms of gui/workflow, but concepts for modeling are the same in any software. Maybe this will expand the selection of tutorial sources a bit for you, once you lerned the basics of blender and how to use the quirky user interface.

[Land of Bits]

bro thanks for your comment

 

like 6 years ago when i started making music it was ...the same for me ..i faced the problem ..like you  i cant ...learn 2 completely different things that are .. really complex at the same time ..

the same case (3d modelling ...and music software)....and in my case it was truly difficult living in Cuba ..a country...with no internet //limited resources/...////no tutorials.....(kinda the reason why i decided ..making tuts for Renoise),.....

so i can truly say that ..ive advanced and truly gained skill ..in the past 2 years.....(basically when i  started visiting diff countries....places with internet and youtube 

 

 

but now....i know enough sound design ...so i can make my own sounds i can record myself playing diff instruments and have enough mixing skills to mix ..at least my own shitty creations....(and  im not making a living out of my music)......so ...i look back....and it was a wrong idea...not to learn the 2 things....

 

back when i had all the time in the world.......

 

 

well ..as for the 3d modelling...Blender ....its  really a nice choice ...the program its really capable.. i've seen so far a lot of works by other artists...making it in the industry...and ...they use blender as ..their main 3d modelling application...and the results are....truly awesome....

i .. guess i'm interested in making scenes for video games.. mostly mobile stuff ...but i would also  like to get into ..interiors and architectural modelling/rendering ...for catalogs and stuff like that....

[MattD]

Also it's a terrible time to buy a graphics card.

 

>i would like to get into creating scenes for games

 

I advise you practice pushing something all the way through the pipeline early. Don't worry about whether it's any good.

[Land of Bits]

 

 

I advise you practice pushing something all the way through the pipeline early. Don't worry about whether it's any good.

oh yeah ..unlike music im not going to become a perfectionist in modelling  or anything like that jj

[gentleclockdivider]

Yeah blender is pretty capable ...

The sculpting is absolutely amazing ..free dynamic topo ..just waaw ...go see some mind blowing blender sculping on you tube ...

Depending on zoom level etcc...

Haven't done 3d the last year and a half ....rather spend time making music ...

[Land of Bits]

Yeah blender is pretty capable ...

The sculpting is absolutely amazing ..free dynamic topo ..just waaw ...go see some mind blowing blender sculping on you tube ...

Depending on zoom level etcc...

Haven't done 3d the last year and a half ....rather spend time making music ...

fak that is awesome 

[Zer0 Fly]

Don't worry about graphics cards too much, if you have one that can run modest 3d games you will be fine for the start of learning the prog and deciding whether it is for you. You will know when you need a powerful card when you get too impatient waiting for the renders, or when your scenes have become very complex so working gets too choppy. Normally there are always methods to reduce visual complexity or rendering complexity for weaker machines. Rendering animations is a very time consuming task, every frame of video is like a single image. Workflows might include planning when to render previews of higher quality, or which parts of images and animations...and always considering quite some time for the final renders. And for your game art you might still want to do hi quality renders even if they don't get used in any final product. To present your work in a favourable light, and to be able to show some sequenced character animations and turning objects.

 

If you haven't started yet, first really try to learn how to use the user interface to navigate in the screen modes and menus and navigating/selecting in 3d, including shorcuts. The UI is quite different than other software. Like for music where you keep hitting play/pause to listen to what you're creating, you need to be able to visualise what you're working with, until it becomes your second nature to move and evaluate 3d objects in sync with your attention or imagination. Keyboard shortcuts also play a big role, there's so many operations and ways to select stuff, you will want to keep one hand on the keyboard with the other on mouse or pen.

 

I remember the blender community from passive reading as quite friendly, if you like this forum, look at the blender forums for learning about the software and discussion. Seemed to me like a healthy mix of opensource enthusiasts and professionals that actually get work done with the software. Bugfixing and release cycles are also special, due to the opensource nature - if you get enthusiastic about it you could fix your bugs yourself if you are impatient (or even pay someone to do it), and choose to follow or use different levels of bleeding edge in development versions and user forks. Blender is very advanced and a long standing project, there seem to be quite some studios using it commercially, but also many hobbyists as the software is available for free. Also it is scriptable even more than renoise, to customise very fine aspects of how it is working and enhance it with new functionality.

[TheBellows]

After trying Zbrush ages ago i was a bit surprised when i tried Blender recently, it just seems so unintuitive and horrible to work with. I spent more time figuring out wtf happened to all the ridicoulous windows that magically appears and disappears and what not. Think i'll stick to 2D and the very basic 3D features in Photoshop, i just don't have the patience. Maybe one day when i shit money i'll fork out for Zbrush or an alternative to that..

[Neurogami]

I've been attempting Blender on and off for several years.  Yes, the UI is wonky.  People who have gotten used to it swear by it, but that's not saying much.

 

My biggest gripe with Blender is that the default setup assumes a 3-button mouse and a full-scale keyboard with a numpad.  

 

Using a laptop? Jokes on you!

 

You can change assorted settings, but if you're still learning you're going to find all the help material using the default keybindings, etc., so it makes the task double hard.

[gentleclockdivider]

Blender is every bit as capable as any other 3D software ...

Here's an interesting interview with the creator and developer ton  , ( his dutch accent is funny  

The fact that Pixar is officialy supporting blender for use of it's renderer  (renderman ) is just awesome

Pixar only  supports  4 programs  .the foundry's  katana ,maya blender  and houdini 

Edited by gentleclockdivider, 10 April 2018 - 22:31.

[Skyscape]

I've been trying to learn Blender for like 20 years. It's almost impenetrable to learn at the start but they made a bunch of quite good changes to the GUI a few years back which has made it better. My advice is to buy some cheap courses on Udemy (don't pay full price, they go on sale like all the time) there are ones specifically aimed at game assets and things like that and they go through things in good detail. One of the things that makes Blender so difficult to learn is that the tutorials and documentation are very fragmented, and sometimes out of date. I learnt quite a bit dropping $15 on a course and going through it as it filled in a bunch of gaps in my knowledge. It is an enormous time sink though, and like others here have pointed out it's hard to keep up if you have a major hobby like music.

[TheBellows]

Blender is every bit as capable as any other 3D software ...

That sounds like a bit of a stretch to me, it's almost like saying a 486 DX is capable of rendering 3D movies or that you can paint impressive realistic graphics in MS Paint, yes it can be done in theory at least, but will take considerably longer time and be a lot more difficult.

I have only tried a Zbrush demo or whatever it was ages ago, i had no trouble understanding how it works for the most and i was sculpting 'impressive' models within a few minutes. Blender on the other hand almost made me throw my computer out of my window. 

[redhoot]

Occasional blender user here, full time Houdini user too.

[gentleclockdivider]

That sounds like a bit of a stretch to me, it's almost like saying a 486 DX is capable of rendering 3D movies or that you can paint impressive realistic graphics in MS Paint, yes it can be done in theory at least, but will take considerably longer time and be a lot more difficult.

I have only tried a Zbrush demo or whatever it was ages ago, i had no trouble understanding how it works for the most and i was sculpting 'impressive' models within a few minutes. Blender on the other hand almost made me throw my computer out of my window. 

 Me thinks , you're not familiar with blender , and didn't take the time to properly learn it ..

Golden  rule : SHORTCUTS  ...without them you're not unlocking the potential of blender 

It's sculpting features are the best of all the dedicated 3D programs ,scupltris and z-brush are better  yes. but these are dedicated sculpting programs .

Blender has dynamic scupting tools , dyntopo ..do you have any idea what that means ...it's on par with sculptris ...infinite zooming and hig res sculpting .

It's renderer is coded by a guy that now works for arnold renderer ( the biggest renderer used in the industry ).

This is the latest open source blender movie ..all blender 

 

Pont is that blender is used in the industry , more and more indpendent sstudio completely rely on it ....

The bigger studios however ...need max in their pipeline .for reasons explained in the video above .

LIke I said , being officialy supported by PIXAR is proof that blender is a force to be reckoned with ..in the industry that is .

Edited by gentleclockdivider, 12 April 2018 - 13:17.

[Raegae]

*<<< Interesting news on blender3D google summer of code: >>>*
http://wiki.blender....Code/2013/Ideas



"...for example to easily pause/stop all sounds and adjust volume levels of different categories."


"Binaural audio: ... different sound modifications (filters, reverb, etc.) which are spacially dependend on sound source and listener position."


"Dynamic music: a music playback interface which can change the music based on some user-defined flags. For example: a game has some random background music while the player runs around and then he starts fighting against a bunch of enemies and the music gets more exciting. This interface should then use predefined loopable music samples and transition nicely between them changing the mood of the background music according to the action that is currently going on."
-----> time for new nibbles

"Reverbation"


"Back- and front-ends (libogg, -vorbis, alsa, pulse, Windows and OSX backends)"


"Plugins (including plugin architecture)"


"Filters"


"Synthethic music: tools to create and edit music inside blender"
-Tracker interface inside blender, lol

"Speech recognition: can it be helpful to control blender, or used in the game engine?"
-awesome at gigs to control videoprojector/3D

...

 

[TheBellows]

 Me thinks , you're not familiar with blender , and didn't take the time to properly learn it ..

Golden  rule : SHORTCUTS  ...without them you're not unlocking the potential of blender 

It's sculpting features are the best of all the dedicated 3D programs ,scupltris and z-brush are better  yes. but these are dedicated sculpting programs .

Blender has dynamic scupting tools , dyntopo ..do you have any idea what that means ...it's on par with sculptris ...infinite zooming and hig res sculpting .

It's renderer is coded by a guy that now works for arnold renderer ( the biggest renderer used in the industry ).

This is the latest open source blender movie ..all blender 

 

Pont is that blender is used in the industry , more and more indpendent sstudio completely rely on it ....

The bigger studios however ...need max in their pipeline .for reasons explained in the video above .

LIke I said , being officialy supported by PIXAR is proof that blender is a force to be reckoned with ..in the industry that is .

I'm just a guy that doesn't want to spend too much time getting what i want done, i'm not a dedicated 3D artist and i simply just want to be able to create a 3D model if i need it for a project. Blender might be as good as you say, but when i look at tutorials for blender vs tutorials for Zbrush, the latter certainly appeals to me much more. I want to create models like i would with clay, it makes much more sense to me.

I haven't gone into depth with any of these 3D apps at all, but i have watched a few video tutorials and demonstration of a few. I haven't tried Maya myself, but to me that also made a lot more sense to me than Blender.

I'm not saying that Blender isn't capable, but i believe you have to invest a lot of time to be able to use it efficiently and i just don't think people like me who aren't dedicated to 3D modeling would have much use for Blender. I've definately seen awesome stuff made with Blender, but like i said in the last comment, amazing stuff can be made in MS Paint too, but not everybody has this talent:

[gentleclockdivider]

WIth all due respect , but why do you bring up this ridiculous MS paint comparison ?

What's your point ....

Truth is  , because it's freeware , a lot of kids and aspiring 3D artist are using it , so a lot more crap is posted ..that goes for every  program that is freely downloadable .

If you haven't used blender or any other 3d programs in depth ( like you said ) , then your opinion is based on you tube tutorials instead of real life experience .

The material editor is a complete node based compositing environment and deep as hell .

Blender is pita to learn , it took me almost 6 months to get were I felt comfortable like  IN 3d max , but once you knew the hotkeys and zooming/panning /edit cursor placement ..KABOOM 

I stopped doing 3d now , occasionnal sculpting in blender ..forgot most of the shortcuts .

I love sculptris ( freeware now bought up by pixologic ..still freeware I think ) , but I prefer blender to sculpt .

It's al about smoothing and creasing the edges and use the dyntopo in a smart way , don't use a gazillion verteces whe it's not necessary .

 

Anyway,;blender foundation is aware of the steep learning curve and they will introduce basic versions of blender , for just sculpting /modelling /compositing etc..iow a simpler User interface .

Edited by gentleclockdivider, 12 April 2018 - 19:26.

[TheBellows]

 

Blender is pita to learn , it took me almost 6 months to get were I felt comfortable like  IN 3d max , but once you knew the hotkeys and zooming/panning /edit cursor placement ..KABOOM 

 

That's exactly my point, i don't have those 6 months, not the time, desire and not the patience, but i still want to make an occational 3D model for fun and i choose simpler apps for that. I made this in about 15 minutes in Paint 3D for instance:

I don't even know where i would start in Blender and would probably spend hours. Of course Paint 3D is a toy, but it has some very nice features that makes simple things like this super easy.

You misunderstand, i do not compare Blender with MS Paint, those are two very different things and not comparable. My comparison was about the time consumption i'm willing to spend to get a simple job done, like you said, you spent 6 months getting comfortable with blender. I have maybe spent an hour in Paint 3D and it's so dirt simple that makes it fun to play around with. I don't need half of the features in Blender and i'm not gonna make 3D movies or 3D games.

I'm just not being inspired to do work in Blender, i wish i was, but i can't just change this fact. If i can sculpt what i want in another app far easier and more fun, then i do not see the point in learning an over complicated fully proffessional tool just to do the same.

 

 

 

Anyway,;blender foundation is aware of the steep learning curve and they will introduce basic versions of blender , for just sculpting /modelling /compositing etc..iow a simpler User interface .

That sounds more like something i would be interested in. For now i'll just stay with Photoshop 3D, Misfit Model 3D, Paint 3D...wait a sec...seems like MS has added a new app called 3D Builder, i definately need to check that out...

Edited by TheBellows, 12 April 2018 - 20:16.