So is it worth me dabbling into Blender if I get some Skillshare access?

I dunno if you need Skillshare TBH, plenty of good video tutorials on youtube etc.
Just grab Blender and get stuck in.

These are probably a good place to start: https://www.blender.org/support/tutorials/

Left click now innit

Yeah, there's a bunch of tweaks that make a lot of sense IMO, more consistent to how most other software works.

Interesting that Gurt, will have a deep dive later tomorrow. Do they mention 4k setups at all? I'm just about done with 3DS Max now, Autodesk's support is a joke and I find it barely usable even with 4k work arounds. C4D is better but not ideal.

Not sure about 4K stuff, there is scaling slider in the options, but I don't know how well it handles high DPI displays. I wouldn't be suprised if it's better than the typical commercial options though. I feel like much of the open source / small developer stuff that's out there now has really started to surpass much of the 'industry standard' software in some ways. Take the DAW Reaper for example, a very lightweight program developed by a few people that has really become one of the most powerful bits of audio software out there, and all without that stupid bloat and DRM. Blender is a bit different but similar in terms of pushing features forward without being limited by the usual upgrade/licence cycles.

I'm pretty much eschewing all the usual paid-for software now, such as the Adobe suite which is a bit of a ripoff for often buggy and un-optimised software. The free/open source/indie stuff out there can usually yield results that are just as good, and any limitations/missing features are kinda fun to try and work around anyway. Like I'm quite looking forward to trying to make use of Blender for video editing, for basic stuff at least.

For learning how to use Blender, as usual the best thing to do is to just set yourself a basic project and dive in. Like I started with messing with materials and lighting after seeing this (found on an image search, in a forum somewhere) -



I've been playing around with making fractal and generative art for a bit, I saw that and it just blew me away. Got me into playing about with with the nodes to create different materials and effects, I really like the node editor actually, pretty easy and fun way to play around with making complex materials and surfaces.

For tutorials; those Blender Guru vids on YT are pretty great to learn about how various parts of Blender work, as well as fundamentals of 3D rendering. Keep in mind that some advice on how to do stuff may have been superseded in newer versions of Blender, such as with the principled shader, and the filmic colourspace thing that solves a bunch of issues. These are all very useful vids -









^this is very very useful once you get into rendering out some scenes at high quality, could save a lot of time. The denoise filter is a pretty big deal, I think it's basically the same kind of thing as what Nvidia is using to make raytracing on the new RTX cards even remotely viable for realtime graphics.

Aye, it's a bit different if you are working professionally with this stuff, for paying clients. I'm just creating for myself at the moment, so don't need to worry about that for now. The bloat in some programs is probably the most egregious thing for me, Ableton Live for example annoys me with it's pricing tiers, in order to get the best features like Max 4 Live for example you need to fork out for the top Suite option, which also comes with vast sample and loop libraries. Nice if you want them, but if you don't then it's a bit irritating paying for a bunch of stuff you don't need.

Nina wrote:

Blender is great, and in the end all things learned are transferable to another software package if you need to. Blender is big in the indie scene too, B wishes he could use it at work but is stuck with bloated Maya that prefers crashing over actually running. I don't know how good the skillshare tutorials are, what kinda things are you looking to build? High poly, low poly, game ready, animating? I mean, you could even use it to edit video or do 2d animation, but I don't think that's what you're looking for.

Blender is sick.
One of my favourite opensource projects.

The modelling tools are great.

It also does most other things than well enough (texturing, animation, event video editing).

Nice one, good start.

For a tenner you may as well go for it. Although I want to kill the guy on their youtube adverts.

Tempy wrote:

alright lads I made a box, where do I sign up for my thousands of money



I also got recommended a course on Udemy. Tenner for a 50+ hour series of video tutorials, seems good value if nothing else.

A fine acorn from which to sprout your immense oak tree of skill.

Saw this and done a think of you temps innit

https://blog.sketchfab.com/sketchfab-3d-sculpting-tutorial-megalist/

Wait... What's 10p doing?

Bit of a work in progress but happy so far.
Not over the moon with the brick colour and it needs breaking up with a something on the front face.
Interior needs populating as well.

LivDiv wrote:

Bit of a work in progress but happy so far. Not over the moon with the brick colour and it needs breaking up with a something on the front face. Interior needs populating as well.

I like the lighting and the composition work... :]

The light filtering through the leaves for example... Did you place an object off camera for that?
And the grass looks partly modelled, but I can't be sure.

@dyna
Yeah, got a couple of trees off camera to get that overhang and some shadowing.

The grass is kinda cool and something I picked up for this. There are two small clumps of grass, a clump of clovers and some Daisy's as separate models. They are then scattered as instances across the ground with some randomised scaling and rotation. Gives the effect of it being fully modeled but without slowing performance.

@rouj
Yeah that's what I was thinking, either a potted plant or a chair. I might put a couple of simple wall sconces either side of the door as well.

Cheers man. Will have a think/play

2.8 is a major upgrade over past versions from recent years, it really is a big deal. Tons of stuff to be excited about and new things to try.