If I Started Blender In 2024, I'd Do This

The first 1,000 people to use the link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/smeaf04231

Embrace being bad. Make comedically horrible renders. Take every shortcut you can. Getting “better” sometimes means getting faster at Blender. Always look back at your old stuff & appreciate how far you’ve progressed. Keep learning

I've had to restart learning blender like 5 times now cause I didn't know what I wanted to do with it and just clicked on every tutorial under the sun. Not the best start to learning something new, but restarting a 6th time finally let me have some goals in mind. Excited to finally see a long term goal.

BLENDER 101 1) Get started - Set up simple goals for you to achive in your first 4 weeks - One major goal for the month (render) - Do it 3 times 2) Get good (enough) - Make one project per week (for at least 3 months) - Orgnising yourself to improve in different sectors of 3D 3) Get serious - Find your niche - Getting clients { 1) Biuld: Create a portfolio that is inside your niche 2) Land: Contact people that may need your services (2/100) 3) Network: "Thanks for working with me! Do you know anyone else needing my services? ..." }

One of the biggest problems with learning 3d on my own has been finding a learning path. There really are no linear paths here and YouTube tutorials often skip the "why" and "how" things work and instead rely on the result to speak for itself. The problem here is that this doesn't teach you anything. It's also frustrating that there is no supplemental documentation to carry away at the end of a tutorial or lesson to study and learn from. Instead, you have to skip through the memes and hope you understand the workflow because these videos aren't geared towards people becoming professionals. It's easy to re-post other people's tutorials (just look at how many copycat videos imitating Ian Hubert's style) or just re-post the skimming of the documentation for another "hey, guys!" video to earn dollars on YouTube. Once you realize this you can easily find the areas you are deficient in and improve those skills specifically.

Remember that for skillshare, the first month might be free, but they charge you after 2 weeks so make sure to cancel it before that, just in case you are only looking to try it out.

Just starting out in Blender after years of having it downloaded, thanks for making this! All of it feels like not just a great guide for starting Blender, but for starting with any other artistic skill!

Smeaf: incredibly important and potential career changed next click: among us twerking.

For me the best way to learn any software, even from scratch. Is to start from choosing whole projects for beginners, after that choosing project for moderates, finally, choosing advanced projects. For me I found this process very effective.

I have tried to learn blender multiple times now and every time I would quit at the very beginning. It was frustrating making a mistake and sometimes having to completely restart. However, there is still this urge to learn blender and have fun with it. Watching this video helped a lot with convincing me to try blender one more time. Thank you.

I'm currently at step 2. Pretty challenging, but pretty fun, as well 👌

Can I just take a moment to appreciate your choice of music ? some of these soundtracks are my favorite from some of the best games out there. great taste man

Thank you for being so transparent and hilarious 😂

Congrats to you, Smeaf, and Kaizen Tutorials for hitting 100k!

I was honestly expecting this video to be more specific, kind of like a "pipeline" for beginners before they reach their "niche", because I'm honestly still experimenting with my pipeline, currently doing Crossmind Studios beginner tutorial after doing 2 donuts and 1 chair tuto by Andrew Price. Been playing around with Blender for almost 1 year and I'm still messing around with beginner tutorials because honestly I think its a struggle for "beginners" like me to kind of figure out my basics although I want to major in Animation as my niche. There's basically too much stuff to take in because everything relates to each other like modelling, texturing, rigging, etc. You can't just expect a chef to just know how to fry an egg and be called a professional. Same thing like blender, that is why I'm still stuck with beginner tutorials and basics, because as long as my basics aren't polish I will not go into Animation. Sorry for the long rant, entertaining video btw.

Hi mate. I started learning Blender about 3 months ago and thank you for the video. Some things are frustrating and other things not so much but an enjoyable journey non the less. Animation gets a little tricky in my opinion1 Thanks for the vid!

You're the best channel that talks about 3d and blender. Your personality amazing, the editing is amazing, everything in your channel is amazing. I've learned so much from you. Thank you, and keep up the good work :)

I am in Highschool and have been learning blender and having lots of fun, while following tutorials and trying to make blends I actually love it. Kind of a replacement for my gaming addiction

Excellent guide video. It can be overwhelming learning any app or software as robust as Blender. Great tips for structuring your own learning path and pace for growth. I'm still learning and growing myself using your ideas for personal development. Although my business is primarily focused on branding and logo design; adding 3D to the visual presentations I share with clients has added a significant amount of value to my work. I can confidently charge more and be content with the rejections because when someone does says "yes," it's almost always much better than trying to work with clients who don't want to invest in the offer presented to them. Continue encouraging others, teaching, and sharing your creative genius wiht the world.

Im in a weird situation, I’m a video game animator for my day job, been using Maya for over a decade. I mentor people on game dev (basically help them along the path of making a game over the course of a year). Maya getting rid of student liscence a makes doing the animation modelling and rigging in Maya prohibitively expensive for students so now I’m learning blender, ironically to teach blender.