Overcoming the Top 10 issues when learning Blender (part 2)

Previously, we looked at some of the obstacles that are in the way of beginning 3D artists learning Blender. Today we look at 5 more and how to overcome them.

6) Finding the right tutorial is hard!

Because Blender is free, there are many tutorials for it on YouTube. This tutorial creator community functions as free advertising for Blender and is one of the reasons for its success, in my opinion. But it’s also difficult to see the forest through the trees, if you’re looking for an answer to a specific solution.

Part of it, is knowing the correct word to look for (see the next point for more about that), but part of it is also just knowing how to search on the internet. As well as where to look.

I recommend that when finding answers, you take notes! You can start a simple Google docs document (or even just take notes on paper, that’s what I did in the very beginning) and whenever you learn something, you write it down. You can also paste the URL of the tutorial that has the answer, with the specific time in the video where the answer is given (so you don’t have to rewatch the entire thing).

On YouTube, just like on Google, you can use + and - signs in your search. For example you can type -recipes if you don’t want the results to videos with Blender recipes… or you can type the name of a specific channel, for example “Blender Secrets piston rig” to find a tutorial from my channel about rigging a mechanical piston.

There are other places to look for answers than just Google and YouTube. For Blender, you can go to Blender Stack Exchange, and the BlenderArtists forum

Chances that someone else already encountered your issue and posted about it on Blender Stack Exchange are pretty high. Also, searching on Google and adding “Reddit” to your search can lead you to a post on Reddit that deals with the same issue (though the quality of the answers may not be as high as on Stack Exchange or the BlenderArtists forum).

7) Not knowing the correct technical word 

I’ve noticed this is an issue with beginners, through comments on my YouTube channel. Sometimes, I have a really hard time trying to understand what they’re even asking me. Words are used, that mean something else entirely. For example, the word “Texture” is often used to mean material, or even a viewport matcap.

There’s no quick solution for this - it’s a matter of learning and gaining experience. I’m actually working on a kind of “Blender 3D Vocabulary” to help with this. In the meantime, there’s an official glossary on the Blender docs website. 

Similarly, Flipped Normals has a glossary of 3D terms.

8) Forgetting things you’ve learned

I’ve recommended it before: take notes! Even if you think you’ll remember, it’s really easy to forget really technical things. Taking a note in Google docs only takes seconds. But searching for the answer again takes minutes (and there's the risk, that you can't even find it again!). 

I even take screenshots, crop the relevant part and paste them in my Google docs document.

I do this whenever I’m taking a new training course as well. It’s especially helpful if you took a break for a few weeks, so you don’t have to start from scratch again: you can just take a few minutes to catch up on your notes, and continue where you left off.

9) Geometry Nodes are scary

I did a survey with Blender users a while back and got thousand of responses. It turns out, a lot of people are intimidated by geometry nodes. What’s more, they feel like it’s obligatory to learn it. That’s not the case at all.

While it’s a very interesting and still relatively new part of Blender, as far as I’m concerned, geometry nodes are an “optional” part of your learning trajectory. Just like learning python programming, there are some people who love it and who create assets with it.

The good news is, you get to benefit from the assets made by these geometry nodes wizards, without having to necessarily understand how it all works. 

There are many awesome assets like building generators, raindrop simulators, and many more things to be found - often for free - on websites like Gumroad.

If you just want to model stuff the old-fashioned way instead of with math, that’s totally fine! Just do what you enjoy.

10) Scope Creep

This is an easy trap to fall into. You’re creating a scene, and at some point find yourself modeling every little detail for weeks or months.

Often, beginners feel they have to model everything, and feel like it’s somehow “cheating” to use pre-made assets from libraries. It's not. 

While it’s certainly a good learning exercise to model a specific chair for your interior scene, here’s the thing: Someone else has almost certainly already done it, unless it’s a chair you’ve designed yourself.

But even if you do have to model everything yourself (in a fantasy or sci-fi scene where you’ve designed everything or are basing it on concept art from someone else), you have to really consider how close everything will be to the virtual camera.

Obviously, something closer to the camera will need more detail and a higher texture resolution, than the same object in the far distance. 

Close up, you may even need to do a sculpt pass for that extra surface detail. And 4K or even UDIM textures (several textures that are stitched together for one object). In the far distance, it may simply be a 2D card that’s always facing the camera, to give the illusion of a 3D object.

These are things to consider before just diving into the project. Otherwise, something that should take a reasonable amount of time to complete, may end up taking so long that you just give up.