You are sitting there looking at the Blender default screen wondering what to model. You look through some photos for inspiration and the discover you have no clue where to start. You begin to search for tutorials and you discover hours have past and you have rendered nothing and worst of all tomorrow it will be some of the same as you have gained no experience. How am I ever going to do anything with Blender. Should I just quit. The short answer is no. Believe me Blender takes a long time to learn and added to that the fast development of the ever evolving software makes it ever important to stay in tuned to the changes coming through the development pipeline.
So don’t fret when your render results don’t look like the one’s in the tutorials. It may not be entirely on you as some tutorials are not well done, skip some steps, and face it not very well explained. so be mind of the tutorial source as their experience level as advertised.
Remember the old saying you have to “crawl before you walk“. Well it is true. Instead of your first goal being to model an epic scene with Blender. It should to learn your way around. Knowing how to navigate through the software, and how to use the available tools are a must before you can create anything. Think of carpenter who has no clue what a hammer is for or a photographer who doesn’t know what a shutter is. To master a trade you must first master the tools.
Hardware
The type of computer you have isn’t the most important aspect of using Blender but being able to optimize it for what you have. I know for a fact that performance will vary from machines and operating systems. The key is to make Blender first work well on your machine before investing a chunk of your hard earned money on the newest and latest systems. Here is an example if you can’t model a decent scene on what you have currently why spend 750 dollars on the Nvidia 780 ti. The only thing you’ll accomplish there is bad renders faster and now your poorer.
Now let’s jump into getting better. A good place to start is here Blender Basics – Introduction for Beginners
This six part course covers everything from downloading and installing to rendering with cycles. This series should give you the understanding to go and conquer Blender. Andrew Price of Blenderguru.com gives his take on becoming a better artist in this Blog entry 7 Simple, Practical Tips to Becoming a Better Artist I am working on applying these to my own learning experience.
Imagine, visualize what you want to do,
Learn, get all the tools to bring the scene or project together.
Create, make your project the best you can.
That is my motto for 2014 Learn, Imagine, and Create. Now go arm yourself with knowledge, put it into practice and help someone else.
Photo credit to Nick Ares
newart2000 