The 3D modeling application Blender 3D is a powerful multi-purpose suite that’s versatility and accessibility make it one of the most widely used applications available to the public. This availability also means that many Blender users have turned into educators who offer educational content in various forms, and there is a lot of content to choose from.
Below is a list of online courses we have tried that will allow you to get started in Blender, ranked based on the order we recommend taking them.
- Blender 3.0 Beginner Tutorial (YouTube)
- Blender 3.0 Basics Course (YouTube)
- Your First Day In Blender (Skillshare)
- Blender 3D Your First Animation (Skillshare)
- Complete Blender Creator (Udemy)
- Blender 3D: Deep Dive Into Texturing (Skillshare)
- Character Animation Fundamentals (Skillshare)
- Character Creator For Game Design (Udemy)
- The Ultimate Blender Sculpting Course (Udemy)
With Blender, there are many courses that you can take that will either allow you to learn the software from the ground up or allow you to learn a specific aspect of Blender 3D, like sculpting or animation.
Which Course Should I Start Learning First?
If you are unsure if you will be sticking with Blender, you may want to start with a few Youtube tutorials first, which are 1 and 2 on our list.
But if you want to commit your time to learn a new skill set, you can jump to number 3 on our list to get started.
On Skillshare, there are over 700 courses currently related to the Blender software, and the one that we recommend above all others is Your First Day In Blender by Southern Shorty.
As the name suggests, this will act as an introduction to Blender for new users, and it’s narrated by a very reputable Blender educator in Southern Shorty, who has a strong presence on both Skillshare and YouTube.
Like many of the courses on our list, this is a well-organized course with very clear narration and instruction throughout.
It acts as the perfect course if you are just looking to get started with the blender interface and the basic modeling tools associated with the software.
Once you have completed this course you can expect to be able to create basic objects within Blender and have a fundamental understanding of how the tools are set out.
Because this is one of the courses you can find on Skillshare, you will need to pay a monthly or yearly subscription to access the course on the platform.
However, a big benefit of Skillshare is that the subscription encompasses all of the courses on that website, which means you have access to this one blender course and every blender course.
You can also choose courses that focus on more specific aspects of Blender to move onto. If animation is your goal then you can try Blender 3D Your First Animation.
Alternatively, if you were looking for a course that focused on sculpting workflows, then you would look to try the ultimate sculpting course on Udemy.
Free Vs Paid Courses
Courses will come in a variety of different forms and can be found on multiple platforms. Some of these courses will be free, some will cost a small purchase ($10), and some will cost more to enroll in.
If you are new to the concept of 3D modeling and are not sure if you will commit to Blender in the long term, then trying out some free courses will be beneficial just to get things going.
Free courses for Blender can be found on educational platforms such as Skillshare and Udemy. However, the best place to start learning Blender is YouTube.
You will find thousands of Youtube tutorials on Youtube; in theory, you will find almost everything you need to learn Blender on the platform.
Of course, an expected downside will always be the quality of the videos you come across, as this can range significantly on Youtube since anyone can upload a video.
You may be surprised to know that on YouTube, some of the more established blender educators have playlists of videos that can act as courses for learning Blender.
There are quite a few of these playlists, but for us, there are two that we recommend. The first course that we recommend is the Blender 3.0 course from Blender Guru.
Otherwise known as Andrew Price, the blender guru is one of the premier educators on the YouTube platform and has been for many years. He is also the owner of the Poliigon website, which allows you to access hundreds of PBR textures and materials for use in your projects.
This course is famous because it is referred to as the Donuts tutorial, which has made the rounds throughout the blender community.
In this course, you start by learning the blender interface and how all the different object types work. You then go through a modeling stage where you will create a doughnut and a glass to place in a scene.
You then move on to the material application, learning to assign materials to objects and various parts of your objects.
You work through the traditional modeling process until you reach the end, which involves rendering your scene using one of Blender 2 rendering engines.
We recommend this playlist because it allows you to learn the core tools of Blender, but you also get to experience how a traditional modeling workflow is used to create a scene in Blender.
The alternative on YouTube is to try out the Blender 3.0 beginners course at CG Cookie. Like Blender guru CG, Cookie has been one of the top blender educators on the platform for many years, and they have their own 3.0 beginners course.
This course is a playlist featuring over 20 videos and will allow you to again go through the process of modeling scenes from start to finish. Anything you need to know about Blender will be covered in this course, and it’s highly recommended that you choose either this or Blender Gurus donut tutorial as your starting point if you are learning the software using YouTube.
The Best Complete Guide To Blender
They want some courses we recommend because they are free and easy to access, like the playlists on YouTube. And then others are relatively short but offer a tremendous amount of detail and direction within that short space of time. Examples include your first day in the Blender course by Southern Shorty. But what if you were looking for a more comprehensive option that allows you to learn as much about Blender as possible?
On Skillshare, we mainly find shorter courses that we can take to learn specific aspects of the blender software. For example, we have The Deep Dive Into Texturing from Southern Shorty, which is only about 53 minutes long.
On Udemy, we are more likely to come across more comprehensive courses on the blender software, and the one we recommend is the one that has chopped the list in the search results for half a decade.
The complete blender creator course is a terrific one-stop shop if you are looking for a single course to teach you about the blender software and its associated tools.
Despite the age of the course itself, the lectures are continuously updated based on the more recent versions of the Blender software.
So even though the course has been around for a while, the lectures you will be taking if you enroll today won’t be anywhere near as old as the course and will be updated and relevant to your version.
This blender creative course will take you through all of the key aspects of Blender, ranging from modeling to sculpting, procedural, texturing, material, application as well as animation, and more complex areas like shape keys and compositing.
What makes this course relatively special is that multiple instructors have been involved in teaching this one course.
This means that a great deal of time and resources have gone into making sure that this course not only teaches you about the tools in Blender but also guides you on how these tools are connected with each other and what workflows are required for what tasks.
Thanks For Reading The Article
We appreciate you taking the time to read through the article, and we hope you found the information you were looking for. If you are interested in learning more about Blender, look at some of the articles listed below.
