Blender beginner: Utterly frustrated, Help appreciated.
richardandtracy
Posts: 5,645
I wonder if someone could help me with learning Blender.
I have 16 years experience with SolidWorks, and have my own old copy on an equally old machine. It means I am familiar with one way of modelling 3D items. SolidWorks is great for what it was designed for - precision engineering design of solid items. However, there are limits, and organic/imperfect models are really beyond its scope, and getting stuff into DS from SolidWorks is deeply frustrating, as there are no compatible formats between the version I have and DS, so I have to export via STL, put through a STL->Obj translator I wrote, de-triangulate and create surfaces & groups in a modeller I wrote, apply texture mapping in either my modeller or UV Mapper Classic before importing to DS and starting all the rigging stuff. Basically, I have reached the point where I'd like to try some of the things that are closer to what Blender can do, and also get the models without the additional faff of getting to a compatible format, texture mapping & the like.
So, "What's the problem?" I hear you ask.
Well, it's hard to explain.
I have looked at a large number of Blender 'Beginner's Video Tutorials' on YouTube and have learnt close to nothing from them for a number of reasons that I will try to enumerate below:
- I think I must be going slightly deaf, in particular I'm going high tone deaf. As a result I can't really understand what people say on videos while off camera, especially when they talk fast and with an accent with which I am unfamiliar. Increasing the volume makes the clarity of the speech worse, not better for me and succeeds effortlessly in irritating the rest of my household.
- I have the video on a tablet and am trying to work on the 22" screen of my pc - it's not big enough to sacrifice with the video tutorial because then I wouldn't see either, as opposed to just the low res video. The resolution of YouBend videos is so flipping small that you can't read the text of the menu items they're clicking on even when full screen on the monitor (pixelation kills it), and when the narrator is pressing keyboard shortcuts, you can't even see what part of the screen something is when being pressed. And if you can't understand what they're saying, you have no chance. I spent 5 minutes trying to figure out what the narrator meant when they'd said 'Preh specks', untill eventually I realised it was 'Press X'. Clarity of speech helps, so does clarity of hearing - but I don't have that.
- There was one series of tutorials on making a doughnut (yes, that is the correct way to spell it in this part of the world), where the narrator spent one 20 minute tutorial explaining how to click with a mouse, exhorting you to get a mouse, reminding you that you needed a mouse and mentioned in passing one or to ways to navigate in 3d in Blender, oh, and by the way, you need to get a mouse instead of a trackpad. Then in tutorial 2 (21 minutes about how to make said doughnut look less like a torus), took over a minute to complain why the doughnut shape primitive in Blender was called a 'torus' and 8 seconds to wizz so fast through the actions to make the torus bumpy that the video pixelated and you couldn't see what the heck he was doing. Even on the twentieth run through. It was a recording data rate issue, not a fully buffered playback issue.
- When needing to go over something time & time again, scrolling back through an index free video to find those vital 8 seconds in a 21 minute video is a perfect shortcut to hating life & everyone currently suffering with the affliction.
- The narrator often waffles about nothing much in particular wasting time that could be usefully filled. You'd almost believe they get paid for the amount of time the video is playing for.
- The layout of Blender seems to be thought out by.. someone unfamiliar with any other professional computer program ever created. There are conventions used in other programs designed to reduce learning time & make things rather more intuitive to pick up. Things like 'have a menu command for every action', 'have a single menu command for every action', 'start at the left of the menus, work down each menu as you go and progress to the right as you get closer to task completion'. There are obviously variations in this to suit the needs of the program, but it's not hard to do, really only takes a few moments of thought (been there, done that). When I programmed my own modeller, I wrote it so you'd start with points to create lines, which made patches. The patches were then meshed, and materials applied to the facets. Grouping was the next stage and finally tex mapping. Simple, logical flow through the program, left to right on the menus and top to bottom within each menu. This is largely the case with SolidWorks and 3D AutoCAD. And then, in contrast, we have Blender. Hmm. Hmmmmm. HMMMM. Intuition and basics from other programs can't really cope with an interface like that.
So, here is the nub of my plea for help:
Does anyone know of some PDF tutorials that hold the hand of a total Blender beginner get to the point where they can model something useful (even if very basic)?
PDF tutorials totally eradicate the problems of no index (at least, in an un-indexed pdf, there is a search facility provided by the pdf reader...), not being able to hear and not being able to stop & go back easily. It also does away with the problems of resolution & display size manifested by video tutorials. The final benefit is that you are far less likely to miss a needed nugget of information encapsulated in waffle about the naming of a doughnut because the writer of the PDF will have thought about what they are writing as opposed to flying after an unscripted and vague thought.
That way, having followed a written tutorial and with the simplest of basic basics under my belt, I hope I'll be able to know enough to experiment. At the moment my life is being wrecked by knowing so little that having started a command (like Loop Cut) I can't stop the wretched thing without starting another command (like extrude region) which I can't then stop either. It's even persistent through a save, exit & open saved file, or going to Object mode & returning to Edit mode. It's UTTERLY INFURIATING, and it's one of those simple things ignored by the [self-titled] Blender guru's. I'm sure there is a simple solution, but where in several months worth of un-indexed videos on UBend could I find it?
I do hope someone knows of such a resource & is willing to share,
Regards,
Richard
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Comments
Hi @richardandtracy
I don't know of a specific resource like the one you requested, but if you have a specific doubt, no matter how fundamental, I and I'm sure several others would be more than happy to help create another convert.
And I can only say this: As much as you find Blender idiosyncratic now, understand that Blender's UI designers are smart guys who are not just its developers, but also its users; Blender's UI is different for a reason. And there will come a time, probably pretty soon, where you look up and realize that you just performed a fairly complex operation and didn't have to take your hands off of the keyboard. Just trust me on this... all growth is painful at first. :)
So, what is the absolute first difficulty you are having, and let's talk about that...
I think it is probably a little advanced, but once you get over the hump, definitely invest in Blender Secrets. It is nice because Blender moves fast, and he issues free updates.
The UI of AutoCAD is such that everything can be created from keyboard commands for 'power users' and beginners are not left to sink - because the programmers of AutoCAD did not decide to throw away conventions. My modeller can do the same, 24000 lines of code are dedicated to handling the input commands. In all honesty, in my modeller the menu items just write straight into the input field so as to reduce coding and allow a session file to do the same job too. SolidWorks is similar, the UI of Blender is not unique in its capabilities in that area. Conventions become conventions because on average they allow knowledge gained elsewhere to be leveraged into something useful, which is quicker and more productive right from the get go and does not leave beginners floundering quite so much.
As for what I am stuck with.. I am somewhat reluctant to admit exactly how ignorant I am! Nonetheless, I am trying to model a table starting with a cube. The intention is to make the top the right size, cut it into a quarter and have an auto mirror constraint in two axes. Then cut the surfaces in the correct places to allow the extrusion of one leg be mirrored as four. Finally extrude the table top stiffener skirt and Tex map it. It's simple, would take me under 2 minutes in SolidWorks, so I know it should be easy in Blender. In fact, it was virtually the first model I did in SolidWorks and happened after reading the first tutorial chapter supplied with SolidWorks. (Oh, and that tutorial was on real, honest to goodness, paper, not a video)
Now, where I am is here: I've created the top at the right size and 'apply'd the scale and location of the top to bake them in, I've used 'Loop Cut' to slice the top into two halves along X=0. I now need to delete the -X half of the top. To do this I need to select the four corner vertices on the half I want to delete. The last command, loop cut, is still active, and every time I select a vertex, I get another loop cut but no vertex selection. I cannot turn the wretched loop cut command off. I have even gone to the extent of saving the .blend file, exiting Blender (and again in Bforartists to try to get a different behaviour) and on loading the saved file, the command is still active in both packages. That is how far I have got. Barely off page 1 of the pdf tutorial I hope someone can suggest.
Regards, Richard
You cancel a command with <Esc>. And <Ctrl>Z is undo.
Delete is X.
The easiest way to delete half of the verteces is to set it to ortogonal view, e.g. numpad 1 that is fron view.
Then enable X-ray in upper right (or <Alt> Z) and box select half.
X verteces.
I most certainly tried 'Esc'. Probably less than 1000 times, but I suspect the key is close to worn out. No noticable effect, but I will try again.
OK, I have tried again with the saved file & still no noticable effect. Works with every other software package I have.
I have tried to upload an image of the screen, Forum software playing silly beggars again. Time to go to bed for work tomorrow morning. Today has been so amazingly unproductive, have rarely managed that in the last few years, oh what a joyous way to spend the last day of leave.
Regards,
Richard.
For me it is the sheer size of Blender that makes it almost impenetrable. Let me start by saying that there are certain functions within Blender that I have learned to use quite successfully and that if you take the aproach of only attempting to learn what you need (and will continue to need) then Blender is well worth the download. However, if I try to work through a tutorial I often find that I need to go and find another tutorial to explain the things they talk about in the tutorial I started with, and then another to explain ... well, you get the idea. It reminds me of this ...
So if you are about to embark on working through an 1800 page PDF I have nothing but admiration for your tenacity. For myself, I am content, for now, in being able to use the sculpting tools to make morphs despite the fact that I have paid good money for some - I'm sure - excellent tutorials.
Hi,
Leading with the most interesting part: It's a two step process to make a loop cut. You first hit ENTER to confirm the number of cuts, and then again to confirm their position. During the time between hitting ENTER the first and second time, you can slide the edges back and forth. If you want them placed evenly, just hit ESCAPE.
First, to implement your idea for designing only a quarter section of the table, you want the Bisect Tool, not Loop Cut. It's right under the Loop Cut Tool, a subset of the Knife Tool. It will let you discard the outside or the inside. In edit mode, hit 'a' to select all vertices, and then click and drag to draw an arbitray line. It doesn't matter where. Set the Plane Point to [0,0,0], the Plane Normal to [1,0,0], and select Clear Inner (or set the normal to [-1,0,0] and select Clear Outer, it doesn't matter). Then do it again, with a Normal of [0,1,0]. Then, back in object mode, add a Mirror modifier, and select X and Y as the axes. Select both Clipping and Merge.
For now, click on the little monitor icon for both modifiers to disable them while you're working on one quarter.
Now, hit ctrl-R for a Loop Cut, and move the mouse over the top of the table. Gently move the scroll wheel up a smidge so you get two cuts. Hit ENTER to accept the two cuts, and without moving the mouse, next hit Escape because you don't want to slide them. I think the two-step process of ENTER and then ESCAPE might be what you were missing. Now do the same thing to make cuts perpindicular to the first ones. Now, you've got a nice tic-tac-toe board with a face in the center that you'll extrude in just a bit.
But first, hit "2" to select edges, and alt-left click on one of the loop cuts to select it, and hit "gg", so you can slide it back and forth to art direct where the face will be and how it'll be shaped. Once you're happy with it, hit "3" for face selection, select the face, and hit "ezz" to extrude it downwards (just "e" would actually be sufficient, since the normals are pointing along negative Z, but this is generally not the case).
Let me know if this was helpful.
PS - Loop cuts have another cool functionality: It doesn't apply here because I think you're cutting a mesh where both "sides" of the loop cut are parallel to each other, but if they weren't, you can hit E to make the cut be parallel to one of its ends, and F to switch which end.
@marble: My intention at the moment is to start learning how to do simple modelling and texture mapping within Blender if I can. For some reason, I simply can't get on with Hexagon, I hope that I can grasp the bits of Blender I need to. Once I'm happy with it, I'll expand the range of what I do. It will be nice to be free-er to create more organic and less than perfect shapes than with the engineering software I'm used to. In the freebie garden gate model I made shown here https://live.cdn.renderosity.com/fs/items/92809/1950mm-Gate-Promo.jpg the gate, posts, hinges, latch and finials combined took less than half the time to make than the golden plaque in the middle of the gate. I'm really hoping that the sculpting tools will make that sort of thing easier in the long run. It's possible that manufactured stuff may remain easier to model in the engineering software, don't know.
@TheMysteryIsThePoint, Thank you, I will try that this evening. Hope it works.
Regards,
Richard
You got further with the doughnut tutorial than I did. Complete waste of time.
As I'm either on a Mac or Linux with Blender, quite often I have to search UI differences between what some tutorial creator has compared to me. They also tend to assume you have a number pad or they change their UI from the default and I've no way to follow. I've never been able to follow a Blender tutorial from start to finish without having to pause to search how to do multiple things.
I tried the Doughnut tutorial first while using Bforartists and found virtually every keyboard shortcut seems to be different between the two. Annoying, so I then tried to follow it with Blender. Didn't get much further with that either.
Regards,
Richard
Blender for dummies amazon kindle edition. You can search. Amazon has a sample table of contents and a sample chapter to read for free. See if you like the authors style. Reguarless its a written out instruction of the basics of Blender reguarless of Blender version.
Blender 3.2 the beginners guide.
There are a lot of decent books for blender. I agree about the online tuts. You tube advertising incentivized blah. I stick with readable text tutorials on web or books or magazines, I think there is a magazine that puts out a blender tutorials complication for beginners can't remember the name though.
Thanks, I will take a look.
Regards,
Richard
If you are a button pusher instead of keyboard shortcuts I would suggest Blender for Artists. They have a manuel >> https://www.bforartists.de/bforartists-2-reference-manual/
https://www.bforartists.de/
I have Bforartists, and have suceeded equally well with it. In fact, I loaded Bforartists only and only used that for the 30 minutes it took me to get totally stuck & then I added Blender to the list of programs on my machine to get stuck with.
I have a small large project to play with at the moment and am finding that my hair's having time to grow back because I'm using my old combination of SolidWorks and my own modeller (which I wrote to work the way I work, rather than the way someone else thinks is best for me regardless of my opinions on the matter).
Regards,
Richard
I loaded that because I tend to prefer to use the mouse rather than the keyboard (even though I spent years working on computers that only had keyboards). However, I didn't take to bForArtists and, moreover, realised that I can happily use the mouse in the "official" Blender. The menus could be easier to find, however, so the bForArtists do have a point but there's a comfort in sticking with the regular releases of Blender.
Hi Richardandtracy,
I so totally agree with your frustrations as my skills are pretty much similar to yours--I'm a total newbie at this thing! Blender is NOT a userfriendly app, and it can be such a hassle of even looking for decent tutorials one can easily follow. There's almost nothing of PDF or other text, although searching through numerous forums have helped me on occassion.
That said, don't give up. You just have to keep searching for ways to get the info you need. Believe me, I went through (and am still going through) the same hassles with it. But I found ways to get me through much of that, and once I did, I've become to actually LIKE Blender, even when things still aren't going all that well in my learning.
One thing that might be of help to you would be to find a way to save video tutorials on your machine so you're not having to be "plugged into the Internet" to watch them. I had found a few apps that let me download youtube vids in the past, but unfortunately their sites all became infested with viruses. However, I eventually found a workaround for that: OBS Studio, which seems to be one of those apps that many people who do those tutorials use to record what they're doing on their desktop. But it may take you a little out of your way to learn that application, as the window for the OBS app will be on the screen when you start recording until you collapse it, then play the youtube videos, then expand the OBS to stop the recording, so you'll have to figure out how to edit off the beginning and end segments of the recording--otherwise, seeing one's own mouse movements to hide OBS and stop the recording can be annoying as all hell.
So, the best thing to do is keep searching for decent tutorials. I have much the same issues as you do: plenty of tutorials with -- bad audio, non-English speakers, worse accents (especialy if they're Brits or Ozzies--get used to hearing "Zed" a lot, since NONE of them seem to have ever heard of "Ecks, Why, and Zee"!
), blaring music drowning out what the instructor is saying, the mouse jerking about the entire screen while the instructor is talking about tangential matters and giving you almost no time to see WHAT is going to be selected, unexpected changes in Object and Mode settings WHILE that bloody mouse is moving, adverts overlaying the Blender keystroke display, etc....
Now WHY have such tutorials in your Hard Drive? If your work machine has the better monitor, I would suggest you should use the same machine to watch the video as you're using to work on Blender--just flick back and forth between Blender and the tutorial, and follow along with the instuctor with what he's doing as he's doing it. This may involve frequently pausing the video and frequently rewinding the video until you DO figure out what he/she is talking about and doing on screen! Eventually, you'll catch onto what's going on when you're seeing your own results emerge at the same time!
Just keep your eyes peeled for any chages to the selected Objects and Modes, as many functions won't work in the wrong mode, and the instructors frequently WON'T always let you know that there was any selection change was ever made! Also, keep in mind, the folks who wrote those Blender manuals have their own specific terminology. But I thinnk the "official line" is sometimes WRONG! Not to mention, the tutors will frequently repeat the "official line"--such as when instructing you to do things like "Parent Figures to the Armatures" (also known as the Bones in DAZ Studio)--What I found was that it is the Figure is being made a Child of the Armature. It WON'T work if you make the Armature a Child of the Figure!
And just remember TWO important things: <cntrl>-Z Is Your Friend! So is "Save As"--especially THIS one! Frequently saving the same project with numerically-incremented filenames has saved me tons of frustration!
So, who is the best tutor out there? Sorry, I can't answer that, as I'm still looking, myself!! However, I have come across some better than many others.
Sicklyield, who has made quite a few products here at DAZ is prettyg good, although I feel most of her videos are geared for more experienced users. Still, her tutorials are fairly easy to follow along, but DO keep your eyes on the Objects and Modes being selected! She's helped me when I first started dabbling into Cloth Simulations--since I need to learn such an advanced subject when developing a wing for a dragon figure I'm currently working on.
MK Graphics put out a ton of stuff--I don't think this guy is a native English speaker, but at least he uses a voice synthesizer as his videos all have VERY clear, hearable instructions, but there are some limitations due to artificial voice glitching some of the words he uses now and then. Still, his stuff is very easy to follow.
Pixxo 3D also has several good videos, and he doesn't talk to you as though he expects you to be an "EXPERT" or a "Guru"--instead, his instructions seem to be geared more for newbies and novices, like us.
Those tutorials, and several items about Cloth Sims that I found in Bulitin Boards, have helped me while I was working on the wing membrane for my dragon.
Now, I'm sure your time is very valuable, and you need to get the RIGHT info on how to do a specific tast RIGHT AWAY the FIRST TIME! Unfortunately, it's not always possible to get the right info the first time, and all that. But I found the best teacher for learning Blender is yourself! By DOING things with the app, following the tutorials as they are playing, making mistakes, frequently saving the work as a NEW file for even minor changes, but DON'T be afraid or intimidated by the program!!
Be sure to take some time to just play with it, and see for yourself what something does when you make a change to it. Frequent saves under new filenames will give you plenty of good fallback positions when something catastrophic happens--like accidentally selctiong the Loopcut function (which happens to be <cntrl>-R while in "Edit" Mode). And it's easy enough to get out of that mistake--just hit your <Enter> key TWICE without moving or touching your mouse. Then, if you don't want that Loopcut made, just hit <cntrl>-Z to undo it.
FYI, related to that: a single <Enter> after your <cntrl>-R will get you a dialog box where you can instruct Blender as to how many Loopcuts to make on that object--I frequently made use of that fuction while trying to duplicate my efforts to duplicate that Cloth Sim success I had....
Also, FYI, since I'm STILL trying to duplicate that First Successful Cloth Sim, but with a better mesh--not much luck so far, even as I type this! But some of my bad outcomes have resulting in some interesting and hillarious results.
And that brings up one last thing for me to say about this: try not to be frustrated or angry over any setbacks. It took me forever and a year just to build my dragon's body with Blender--
And while it only just took a little over a week to make that first successful Cloth Simulation for his wing--I've NOT been able to repeat that success with a better mesh, with no luck so far.
I'm a computer programmer and technician, by profession, and in my job, we had the term "Steep Learning Curves" when it came to learning new programming languages, systems, and technolodies. Blender has one of the steepest I've ever come across, but the biggest lesson I learned from all my years is learning to not get frustrated with any setbacks.
Good luck, and I hope my comments have helped in some way.
Cheers,
Ryuu
people sure can write a lot
Thank you Ryuu. It's nice to know I'm not the only one.
I do find it virtually impossible to learn from a video. Writing and reading seem to be skills that are sorely under used when it comes to Blender.
As an aside, getting used to 'zed' won't be a problem - coming from the UK myself probably explains why. However, British regional accents can be close to impenetrable to people unused to them.
I am currently on a little project where progress is possible, as I'm not using Blender at the moment. Will get back to it when I have no deadline to miss.
Regards,
Richard
oh.
@richardandtracy
Maybe we, as a community, can help if you voiced a specific difficulty you're having?
As for the GUI, if you're thinking it makes no sense, I suspect that you are fighting the hotkeys instead of mastering them. Blender is well designed, but it does have a certain "mode" to it and you'll have to learn to stop using menus with the mouse, among other things.
As for commonality, yes, Blender is different. But if one commits to using Blender the way it is designed to be used instead of using it the way that other software is designed to be used, it won't be long before one understands that there was actually a lot more thought put into Blender's GUI that other apps, it's consistent across operations, and makes a lot of sense. Again, if you stop expecting it to work a certain way.
As for written docs, I have to disagree. If we disregard for a moment that there just is no "efficient" means at the very beginning when you have to stop and learn even the simplest of things, there's:
Blender Secrets (July 23 update)
497 Essential Tips for Blender
100 Amazing Blender Tips
The choice is yours of course, but I hope you'll reconsider and ask for assistance getting over a specific hump, and then the next one, until you're able to do the things you want to do.
For the reference of, I guess, other potential Blender users reading this thread, from looking back over your posts, it sounds like the problem you were having was not that the knife command wouldn't end, but that you had the knife tool selected. Blender has a tool workflow like Photoshop, not a command workflow like AutoCAD. You can "Esc" out of a knife operation you have begun with the knife tool, but the knife tool will still be selected, and the knife tool can't select geometry. To select geometry, you would have needed to switch to a tool that can do that, such as the select tool or one of the translate tools.
as we get older, brain plasticity is not what it used to be, so may not be inherently the software's fault, all im saying.
People are free to find applications undesirable, without having to defend their choice.
Sadly the most similr modellers to Daz Studio are probably modo, and perhaps in some ways Lightwave, since those are what Daz used to use in-house - though the modo UI has changed over the years, and neither is cheap.
Learning to sculpt in Blender was one of the more difficult learning curves I have ever climbed. I fully understand why some would choose to walk away. richardandtracy's experience with Blender is very similar to my own. That being said I am glad I stuck with it, and kept plugging away at it. I sculpt on G9 almost every day now. My inner sculptor feels like they just got out of prison.
It was a long and very difficult road to get here though.
EDIT: worlds worst typist
Thanks for this thread
Bookmarked.
The blender UI has become so much better, and still it is cryptic to me.
I used to call the UI, "the Sheldon Cooper Interface".
Whew! I was sitting alone with Blender feeling like "It's me, Blender, not you." I poke my nose in from time to time and like a monkey at a keyboard hit a bunch of random keys hoping for something wonderful to happen. I'm just trying to RENDER purchased scenes at this point mind you, and simply moving the camera about is sending me into fits. As a real world photographer and once-upon-a-time super comfortable with VUE 3D, then Poser and eventually DAZ Studio, I know what I want to happen, but in Blender for the life of me can't seem to nail down something as stupidly simple as MOVING THE BLOODY CAMERA! This last attempt resulted in my moving the camera using the XYZ modifications in a side panel - surely it can't be that awful! I watch tutorial videos for "Absolute Beginners" but they whiz all around and move the camera around without even mentioning that it is a THING. And I laugh at myself as much as I gnash my teeth and mutter dark curses (in mostly made up tongues) at my impatience with myself and eagerness to get creating! I asked ChatGPT for a keyboard cheatsheet for Blender and it actually gave me one! Now to see if it was valid.
I managed to bang my simian fists on the keyboard enough to get this out of Blender recently. (Don't ask me to change a material, or modify anything just yet! But I did manage to kludgily move the camera a little and merge the fish figure in to the kelp scene, so, a start. I'm fine in Photoshop and it helped finish off any rough spots in post.)
To navigate the viewport through the camera you check "view tab > camera to view", this is the same as the camera view in daz studio. Apart the camera doesn't have flipping issues as in daz studio.
Thank you!