I thought I’d write a bit about resources and approaches if you are brand new to 3d modeling and want to learn Blender. This is, of course, based on my own path to learning Blender.
I would suggest focusing on modeling and lighting in the beginning. You will learn materials and textures along the way as you model since most tutorials show you how to model something, texture it, light it, and render it. I would hold off on rigging and animation for a while because you have to make a model first and there is a TON to learn about mesh modeling.
There are two general types of modeling – organic and hard body (not sure if these are the exactly appropriate terms, but they get my point across). Organic is for, of course, people, animals, and soft body type objects. Hard body modeling is really more about physical things such as cars, houses, aircraft and other objects like that.
As I think about it, there are actually several other types of modeling. There is environment modeling that consists of the techniques for modeling the ground, backgrounds, sky techniques, etc. Some of this really isn’t modeling per say, but techniques for creating the environments. There is also simulation based modeling using things like the cloth simulator and particle systems. Particle systems can be used to texture object (like creating fur and hair), but it can also be used to create objects (for example, grass).
For myself, I found that modeling hard body objects if easier than organic modeling. It feels like most hard body objects are largely based on squares or circles and consist mostly of just extruding a side to extent the basic shape.
As side note – extruding means selecting an edge and extending it to create a new face(s) on the model.
One of the difficulties with organic modeling (aside from the large amount of time to sculpt and create a human or animal) is that you are mostly dealing with curves and irregular shapes that can be difficult to get right. Since human faces are one of the things we look at the most, our eyes can quickly spot problems in human models. It is also very difficult to get a realistic model because of all of the subtle curves and surfaces on the skin and facial features.
I tried to stay away from really ambitious projects in the beginning. I found it was difficult to stick with it because I’d get frustrated and want to quit. This is especially true when you compare your model to the tutorial’s model. The teacher’s model looks so awesome and mine looks so… not awesome. So, I didn’t try things like human heads, cars, aircraft, etc.
Instead, I tried to do smaller projects with hard body tutorials where I could actually just count the size of the meshes on the grid if I wanted to. I’m not saying to completely avoid organic models. I just found it to be easier to start with some hard body stuff to learn the basics of modeling and using the software.
I want to give you some links to good tutorials to get you going. I’ll start with the free ones and then mention a couple of the paid ones that I have.
To learn the interface and basics of the software, there are two things I would recommend.
http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/ – Getting started with Blender is probably one of the best places you can learn the basics. There is a tutorial on each of the different basic parts of the software and techniques. This was one of the first things I watched.
http://gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html – Blender 3d design course. I didn’t do a whole lot with this, but there are a lot of video tutorials that are broken down into almost every aspect of the interface and a lot of other topics. I mostly used this when I had questions about some specific thing.
I used the two things above to give me the basics of the interface and then moved on to modeling. Most of the tutorials will tell you which keys they used to do different things, but the getting started with Blender series will give you that bigger picture to make it through the tutorials.
The next steps for me were:
http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/create-an-underground-subway-scene-part-1-of-2 – an awesome tutorial on blender guru. It is two parts and takes you through the modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering of what looked (to me) like a very complex scene. Before doing the tutorial I couldn’t even fathom how it was possible to create something that looked so complex. I was amazed that it was actually pretty easy and that there were so many techniques to simplify the process. In addition, you have a really cool scene when you are done.
http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/11/04/creating-a-bunch-of-balloons/ – this is a good little tutorial that has some great stuff on how to texture and light this scene. The objects are not very difficult to model, but the end result is pretty cool.
http://cgcookie.com/blender/2009/05/12/creating-a-burlap-teddy-bear-part-1/ – this is an AWESOME tutorial. It can be a bit challenging to get the shapes right, but it is a good thing to be challenged. The only problem is that the texturing is done with an add-on that it only available in 2.49. It is easy to follow along with the modeling in 2.5 or 2.6, but the add-on for texturing is not available in the higher versions. For me, it was worth it to download 2.49 and the add-on to do this tutorial. One of the good things about the tutorial is that it shows really basic UV unwrapping.
There are some others that I will try to post later. I’ll leave it at this for now. If you are just starting in Blender, these will give you a few weeks worth of learning and some cool finished products. Hope it is helpful.
