How I learned Blender - and 5 Tips for You

Rome was not built in a day, and neither were any of the masterpieces you see posted online today. If you saw their hard drive full of failed attempts you would probably relax a little and realize how much in common you have with them.

One of my favorite quotes is: "The brick walls are there to stop the people who do not want it badly enough." -Randy Pausch

Practice hard and do not expect quick results necessarily. Anything worth achieving takes time.

# 5: Distance yourself from the Blender Crowd
"Whoa whoa, what? Andrew are you mad? Take that heathen attitude elsewhere!"

I realize that this advice sounds like an insult, but it's not. Let me explain.

CG studios and animation houses, generally used paid software like 3ds Max and Maya. Some use Blender, but most do not (sad truth).

That means that most artists who are striving for a career in CG, have paid for formal education and are competing for top positions at Industrial Light and Magic, are not posting their artworks on BlenderArtists.

For example ... if you post a piece of artwork on the BlenderArtist forums and you can showered with compliments. But post the same artwork on CGSociety? You can be flat out rejected:

So what can you gain by joining the mainstream CG community? A dose of reality.
When you apply for a job, enter a CG competition or do some freelance work, you don't get special points for using Blender. You get compared as equally as anyone else. Or to put it into words spoken by someone at the Blender Conference, "Blender shouldn't be treated like the special olympics".
When I first started out, I stuck to BlenderArtists. I posted my work there and enjoyed the compliments.
But it was only when I started posting my work on CGSociety that I got a real kick in the gut, and realized that I have a long way to go.
It's part of the reason that I started my inspiration tumblr blog. Whenever I'm feeling cocky, I go there and reflect on the works of the true masters and acknowledge that I have a long way to go.
If you can take on the position of a humble artist with lots to learn, I can guarantee that you'll never stay stagnant, and grow at a much faster rate :)
So that's all. I'm still learning Blender everyday, just like yourself. I'm having fun creating new projects and teaching others in the process.
If you have a tip for learning blender, post it in the comments below and help another user out!
By the way, my next big training course "The Architecture Academy", is almost here! It's been the labour of love of mine for the last year. Next week I'll be launching the teaser trailer, and then following it with some free tutorials and finally a big launch trailer :) Stay tuned!


Comentários

Postar um comentário

Postagens mais visitadas deste blog

For the first time, I wrote to you because there is something to tell and finally appeared a little bit of time. Leitmotiv today will be a topic like learning 3D animation. The point of no return disappeared behind three years ago. So a small group of dreamers, five years in the animation hobby, decided to make a profession out of it. Today it is almost three years old, and a dozen people produce 3D animation: children's series and advertising for computer games. And then, little understanding how to make cartoons, there were six people. The fact that we've never done 3D animation before, and the fact that no one gets the original composition, is a separate story. And today - about how, almost from scratch, an animation studio was created in Kazan, working entirely on free software.

Imagem
For the first time, I wrote to you because there is something to tell and finally appeared a little bit of time. Leitmotiv today will be a topic like learning 3D animation. The point of no return disappeared behind three years ago. So a small group of dreamers, five years in the animation hobby, decided to make a profession out of it. Today it is almost three years old, and a dozen people produce 3D animation: children's series and advertising for computer games. And then, little understanding how to make cartoons, there were six people. The fact that we've never done 3D animation before, and the fact that no one gets the original composition, is a separate story. And today - about how, almost from scratch, an animation studio was created in Kazan, working entirely on free software. Pipeline The main tool was the Blender program. So literally a month ago came the rendering of Cycles, who we coughed rashly to run for projects. It is now stable and almost all powerful, and t
Leia mais

Tangible and Modular Input Device for Character Articulation

Tangible and Modular Input Device for Character Articulation Articulation of 3D characters requires control over many degrees of freedom: a difficult task with standard 2D interfaces. We present a tangible input device composed of interchangeable, hot-pluggable parts. Embedded sensors measure the device’s pose at rates suitable for real-time editing and animation. Splitter parts allow branching to accommodate any skeletal tree. During assembly, the device recognizes topological changes as individual parts or pre-assembled subtrees are plugged and unplugged. A novel semi-automatic registration approach helps the user quickly map the device’s degrees of freedom to a virtual skeleton inside the character. User studies report favorable comparisons to mouse and keyboard interfaces. Our device provides input for character rigging and automatic weight computation, direct skeletal deformation, interaction with physical simulations, and handle-based variational geometric modeling.
Leia mais