Hey all, in 3 weeks I'm going to be without internet (outside

blender is a fairly capable tool but you need guidance. the internet can be misleading.

for beginners:
>borncg
for rendering:
>blender guru,blenderhd,tutor4u
for vfx:
>Kenan Proffitt

good luck
for characters
>darine lile
for blender mods and crap to improve workflow
>blender sensei

>>550623
Honestly since you need to download a lot now, I'd look on cgpersia and pick a bunch of long tutorials

"The Cliff Tower" (if it's still on there) is very good, goes through every aspect of Blender, the only downside is that the speaker is some kind of russian or something so he might be hard to understand, but seriously this project is very complete

I don't like borncg at all, maybe if he went back and redid his old tutorials now that he's a lot better at modeling (this is kind of the problem with Andrew Price as well)

I do however recommend Andrew Price's general videos on composition, lighting, all the sort of general photography type concepts

tutor4u's teddy bear and cup are good but are VERY "paint by numbers", you'll end up with something that looks good but you won't understand how in the fuck you got there, but at the very least you'll realize that Blender in the right hands is quite powerful.

Also Blender's default Materials, default lights, default UI, basically everything by default fucking sucks in Blender and it'll take a while to learn how to configure shit properly so it's actually not garbage.

Also watch this video RIGHT NOW and save it because you WILL accidentally all the windows and not know how to fix it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q6mLdO1E4Q

There's a much better one by Andrew Price but I can't find it

Also, very important, Save File as Startup will make it so you don't have to delete the fucking cube every time, setup your rendering shit, your UI modifications, common materials, etc

If you fuck everything up click File -> Load Factory Settings

>>550631

Addendum, Andrew Price's donut tutorials look really good, I would 100% recommend doing / downloading those, as he is a B- modeler but an A+ teacher / orator

>>550631
>recommending someone the cliff tower with never touching blender

>>550629
>>550631
OP here thanks for these, looking through em real quick they seem great.

>>550637
IDK if you mean that cliff tower is bad or if its something I should leave near the end of the list of stuff they provided due to its complexity maybe?

Am about to head to bed (think /3/ is a slow board so I hoping thread is still around tomorow with more discussion) but just a couple quick questions about blender and 3d in general:

1. should I do anything special as far as filemanagement and stuff? I realize I might be getting ahead of myself but any advice on version control or a rule of thumb set up that is generally accepted for 3d artists would be great.

2. I assume with blender being free it'll have changes often, am I generally ok with material I might find that is one or two versions old? Should I be prepared to run two different installs of it in the future due to anything breaking between major versions?

3. Most importantly is there a general term handbook that I can find? I have some basic grasp of vertices/faces and I *think* I kind of understand what baking means but when it comes to different types of maps or what I've seen relating to light/texture it all gets real confusing real quick.

>>550623
Mastering Modeling in Blender – Workshop
This is one of the most important, it teaches the basics of modelling and it will familiriaze you with the controls of blender a lot.

>>550651
>IDK if you mean that cliff tower is bad or if its something I should leave near the end of the list of stuff they provided due to its complexity maybe?

you shouldn't even go near gumroad tutorials without at least a month of work. i done one of his tutorials but i don't think a beginner will follow properly

>1. should I do anything special as far as filemanagement and stuff? I realize I might be getting ahead of myself but any advice on version control or a rule of thumb set up that is generally accepted for 3d artists would be great.

just keep folders arranged. if you work with references make a separate folder for those

>I assume with blender being free it'll have changes often, am I generally ok with material I might find that is one or two versions old? Should I be prepared to run two different installs of it in the future due to anything breaking between major versions?

its totally fine, you have searchbar (space) if you need to find a function

>Most importantly is there a general term handbook that I can find?

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/basic-3d-modeling-terminology/

>>550623
Do yourself a favor and get a decent mobile data plan, contract or pre-paid. Download the software beforehand, and use a dongle while you're away so you can access plugins and tutorials.

>>550651
2.78 is the last stable version (there are nightly builds or whatever of course on buildbot) for a while, they're slowing down on the releases while they focus on some big features.

There is actually an official blender wiki which is pretty good but unfortunately useful information is often spread across several versions of the wiki, which is a bit shit (but manageable).

Blender Stack Exchange is the number one "how do I do this particular thing right at this moment?" website but that's not going to helpful to you while you're offline

Regarding baking, it's the process of having the software create textures based on the lighting and materials / shaders in the scene, and then using that texture as an Emission Shader so that your renderer (or game engine) has had that information already solved for it.

But honestly, you're getting ahead of yourself, and it's why I recommend doing a long tutorial series (after doing enough fundamental "how do I move the camera around the scene?" type tutorials).

This thread is also relevant to my interests... but I'm trying to make some animated "fluff" holographic HUD UI. Can a beginner knock something out like that in a month or so?

Looking to do things similar to this...
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4iG9tQfb1g

Yes, I'm aware it says, "After Effects," but I'm asking if it's possible to create similar effects in Blender without a huge learning curve. I have a little experience with 3D but nothing above hobby stuff or over a year. Haven't used Blender before.

Would I be wasting my time attempting this kind of stuff?


>Audiojungle
>Audiojungle
>Audiojungle
>Audiojungle
>Audiojungle

>>552526
The short answer is no, with little experience you couldn't make what was in the link.

A lot of that stuff could easily be done in 2D so I'll ignore them, things like the 2.5D solar system would't be too hard but the rest would take a very experienced use a few weeks to make, unfortunately even with more time a novice would have a very hard time trying to make these.
You should definitely have a go, but just don't expect it to be easy.

>>552529
Let's focus on the 2D stuff. How much of a learning curve is it?