Blender beginner: Utterly frustrated, Help appreciated.

mikael-aronsson

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

I have to disagree a little bit there, yes there are lots of things that can ONLY be done with the keyboard in Blender, that is not a good thing, neither is when a beginner pressing the DEL key hoping it will delete something but it does not, only backspace works when editing text not DEL, deleting a collection only deletes the collection, not the contents of the collection, the poor first time user has no idea what is going on, vertical tabs with text!!! (yes DS have that also but at least you can disable it) there is NO one that can claim that is good UI design unless you are from Japan or write ancient Chinese, try to use Blender with 15 active plugins in the N panel and find one of them, that is not clever UI/UX design, that is a terrible implementation that comes from a custom inhouse design aimed at users that spend 8 hours a day in front of Blender and that is difficult to make usable now.

nonesuch00

I do not like using the mouse with Blender although I appreaciate the new GUI for allowing me to find something to look up the keyboard shortcut when I don't remember it or have never used it yet.

As to the OP's post, I have had several false starts with Blender. It is hard for me to motivate myself to do activities that aren't so easility corelated to helping another person. Whether it be bussing tables or working as a programmer, if I could see that I had customers and coworkers that need help, then that was very motivating. It's instint, that behaviour. 

With learning Blender no such help relationship exists and it makes motivation very difficult. I have learned more than one would think but have so far to go and my tutorials keep getting ruint by gangs of internet criminals breaking into my local LAN, which also ruins motivation to no one's surprise, certainly not mine. 

That said, I am receiving 2x2TB USB SSDs today for a new computer I'm building, I am adding a Meraki Go Firwall Plus router in January with which to stop the break ins so I can work through tutorials with a bit more confidence than this cheap consumer grade network equipment that is so easily circumvented. That, and I refuse to use WiFi except for Ring & Apple devices with force me to use WiFi. I will be adding a Meraki WiFi device in February. I just unplug the USB SSDs and the ethernet cables to help minimize the chances of my work being stolen. Also another change is essentially I'm turning my Apple Airbook, Windows laptop, and Windows desktop into appliances that I run a weekly clean restore on of a clean image to ruin future successful breakins without spending all my time trolling platform logs for evidence of break ins.

They also keep changing the Blender UI. I am about to do, for the 4th or 5th time, starting St Stephen's Day, the Intro to Blender course at CGCookie.com, this time updated for Blender 4.0.2.0. I have given up trying to keep using the 3.7 Blender UI that I grew used to because no new tutorial content is created using it and Blender has so many new features.

I find doing one 10 - 15 minute Blender tutorial can take me 30 minutes up to even 4 hours. I freeze frame, I scroll back, I scrub in the tutorials; and I often do, undo, repair, and then redo what the tutorial is talking about in Blender itself. Sometimes the tutorial author is wrong (mispeaks/omits) and you are left figuring out what to do on your own. So all told, by the time I get it close enough in Blender for me to be satisfied there is a lopsided ratio of tutorial minutes to work minutes elapsed.

I am looking forward to getting to work on Blender again. I have several animations I've been wanting to try for a laugh and they can't be had with motion capture or buying other's work. I have to learn it myself and do the work. I don't care that it takes a long time. It's a hobby, not a job.

stem_athome

richardandtracy said:

 Blender is uninstalled and that's not going to be reversed.

Hi,

A few years ago I would of agreed, but now, I would say you should have another look.

If you do decide to have another look, I will put together a step by step guide (PDF) on how I would create the table.

 

Regards,

Steve

richardandtracy

Steve, that would be appreciated, but.. I am just so sick & tired of the package at the moment. There are lots of video tutorials, but I do feel watching them is time doubly wasted, the person who created the video & those watching. I learn quickly and easily from written descriptions, but haven't found anything so far. Regards, Richard.

stem_athome

richardandtracy said:

Steve, that would be appreciated, but.. I am just so sick & tired of the package at the moment. .....

 Thats ok.

 

Just a quick note to anyone interested:-

In edit mode, press Ctrl+R to run loopcut once. To extrude faces(polygons), select the face(s) to extrude then press Alt+E

 

Regards,

Steve

 

nonesuch00

richardandtracy said:

Steve, that would be appreciated, but.. I am just so sick & tired of the package at the moment. There are lots of video tutorials, but I do feel watching them is time doubly wasted, the person who created the video & those watching. I learn quickly and easily from written descriptions, but haven't found anything so far. Regards, Richard.

You can turn on the speech captions in YouTube (sometimes they are out in left field though) and use tutorials that show the keyboard shortcuts the tutorial makers are using. Many tutorial makers install that Blender addon specifically to make it easier for tutorial followers to follow.