The more popular a tool or application is, the more that will be said about it online, both in a positive light and a negative one. Blender is one of the most powerful free applications you can begin using today with hundreds of tools and features. However, some still consider Blender too difficult to learn and give up within the first hour of practice.
Some people consider Blender to be a difficult tool to learn because it is a very different application to software like adobe photoshop and focuses on a skill set that most beginners will not have acquired beforehand. Everything about Blender is a new experience for those new to the concept of 3D modeling, and it’s a lot more difficult to learn something when you truly are starting from scratch.
Learning Blender is not as hard as you might be led to believe, and there are certainly ways to change your mindset when it comes to learning something as different as 3D modeling.
Is Blender Difficult To Learn?
The first thing to note about Blender is that it is a 3D modeling application that uses hundreds if not thousands of different tools and features that allow you to create an infinite number of objects, scenes, and animations.
This incredible library of tools is one of the main reasons Blender is so intimidating to new software users. With so much to learn, it is natural that your impression of the software can be a little overwhelming.
This is coupled with the fact that the Blender UI is very different from more traditional 2D applications like Krita and Photoshop, and there is often a lot going on in the default layout that you may not understand initially.
Most new users know they need to understand everything they see, but that is not the case. If you were planning to learn how to use every tool in Blender, it would not only prove difficult, but it would feel almost impossible.
But you don’t need to learn everything about the software to use it. For example, if you are interested in using Blender to create 3D models, you don’t need to know how to use or even access the video sequences editor.
If you only want to learn how to create 3D animations, you probably won’t need to practice using the grease pencil for 2D drawings.
As with any application, learning Blender is only as difficult as you perceive it to be. However, adopting the correct approach to learning can allow you to improve your Blender modeling skills faster than you can imagine.
So let’s go through some of the tips we recommend for making Blender easier to learn.
Getting Past The First Hour
Most new users of Blender that give up on the software will normally give up within the first hour of using it.
They will download and install the software, try it out, follow a couple of Youtube tutorials to the letter, and then try to make something on their own, unsuccessfully. Then they will give up because they realize after watching several tutorials that they still don’t know what they are doing.
The first key bit of advice then is to get past the first hour, which will always be the most difficult when you don’t know what to do, and you are never going to become an expert at something in such a short amount of time.
Learn From Your Errors
This is one of those tips you will probably have heard while at school: learn from your mistakes.
Even artists who have spent hundreds of hours in Blender regularly make mistakes during their projects.
3D modeling is the type of task where there are an infinite number of ways that it can go wrong. A good way to earn for beginners is to take things slow, and when you make a mistake, try to understand what that mistake is and learn how to solve it.
Avoid The Monkey See Approach To Learning
One of the most common errors that new artists will make right from the beginning is to begin watching videos from a course or a youtube tutorial and try to replicate action by action what the tutor is doing so that they can replicate the result.
However, this is nothing more than copying and is an extremely ineffective means of learning and building your skills. This also plays a huge role in why students quit within their first hour of learning the software, as they create two or three models from youtube tutorials and then try to create something themselves and realize that they have no idea what they are doing.
If you choose to watch youtube tutorials, actually watch the video rather than pausing every few seconds to replicate what you have just seen.
Attempt to understand the tools being used and why tools are chosen and how they are combined to create results.
Another tip here when watching tutorials is NOT to try and create what the instructor has built, but instead, create a variation of it that is your own work.
Create In Your Own Time
Productivity gurus claim you can make the most of your time by adopting the 80/20 rule. Regarding completing projects, 20% of the time spent on the project will yield 80% of the final result. This applies when taking on projects in 3D modeling since you can create the basic shape of your model quickly but will spend far more time on the smaller details.
This 80/20 rule can also have other applications, such as how time is spent learning a new skill. Most Youtube students make the mistake of spending 60% of their time watching video tutorials and the other 40% of the time copying those videos.
A much better approach here is to spend 20% of your time searching for resources to aid learning, such as YouTube tutorials or Blog posts like this one.
That 20% is important because it creates the foundation for the other 80% of your time spent in Blender practicing your skills by creating new models.
Make sure that most of your time learning Blender is spent actually using Blender, and better still create your own designs based on what you have learned, rather than copy the designs of others.
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 about Blender, you can try out some of the articles we have listed below.
