So I had zero expirence in art 2 years ago and I now I spend more time in blender daily now than I sleep. I love blender and will not go back to other cad tools. Because it does everything. Make a mech and bam I can render it in same tool and manifold it for 3d print.

If just trying to 3d model for art and if like me have 0 talent then 3 things I recommend:

1. watch a tutorial video on making a human model. It’s not important you know everything as much as seeing all the methods available and tricks. Took me 2 days following it before I moved on to my own stuff.

2. watch a 15 min video on booleans. Learning to use that was a game changer for me. I use them all the time now in everything I make.

3. now this is the hardest and longest to learn for me; lighting and color. This is the money maker for art. Mastering Shader nodes is currently beyond me but it makes a difference. Don’t forget HDRI and textured materials can go a long way. Blender has a bunch of free ones to play with.

It took about 6 months to get gud. After 2 years, im now going back to projects that I couldn’t handle before and it’s sooo satisfying. Don’t give up! It’s like souls game you just get better.

Make sure whatever tutorial you use is for a recent version (I think 4+) because it changes a lot

I did the donut and it was a lot easier than I expected.

blenders ui sucks ass but it’s super powerful and good

once you’re over the initial “how do i interact with this” it’s easier

The worst thing about learning it is accidentally clicking something before you know how to un-click it. Fucking up a viewport and derailing a fun tutorial sucks ass.

It’s a little tricky but people learn it all the time. The Blender Guru “donut tutorial” is a good starting point.t

As others have said, learning 3d modeling is kind of a pain in the ass in general, but Blender is so incredibly well documented, and there are so many tutorials out there for it, that I would say that it’s incredibly accessible.

jus make sure the lid is locked before you press the button

It’s quite easy to get started (see the generic “donut” tutorial series) but sculpting/modeling is never going to be easy

I casually began looking into 3d sculpting a while ago and ended up listening something a pro artist said on this topic. This was him comparing zbrush and blender, mind you, so he wasn’t talking about the medium in general. But he said that while there are some areas where zbrush might be better, blender is at the least perfectly adequate. Biggest advantage of blender is that by virtue of it being free it has the most community resources (tutorials, documentation, forums, etc.). Moreover, the fundamentals of sculpting translate between different software. So he highly recommended blender for newcomers between the two.

It also seemed like you really need something like a graphic tablet if you wanna do it somewhat seriously.

It’s really not that bad, it used to be worse. There’s plenty of tutorials, and while Blender is a bit complicated, you don’t need to learn all of it to get good at it.

Blender has a reputation for being difficult to learn, but the UI has actually improved a lot these last few years and its much more user friendly.

It’s very fun and rewarding

blender is pretty miserable, maybe working in 3d is just shit no matter what and it’s not blender’s fault, but if 2d art tools were as bad as blender nobody would make digital art.

maybe the process is better in a classroom setting?

If you’re approaching it casually and don’t mind doing everything very slowly in the beginning it should be pretty fun. It gets hard if you’re aiming to do things efficiently because there’s a ton to learn in that case

I think it depends on what / how much you want to do with it.

For me, I consider myself to have no particular artistic talent, but I can still entertain myself by making interesting shapes just with box-modeling and the subdivision-surface modifier. Hell, election night I was trashed and making plaid patterns all night in the procedural texture thing they have. That shit was great.

If you wanted to do something like a fully animated 3d character or something, that will obviously be harder, with 3d sculpting and animation being their own whole skill-sets. Also “re-topology” is a thing (if you make a 3d sculpt it’s a wad of triangles that you can’t really use, so you have to re-create the shape on top of the existing shape, but with good topology), and that shit looks miserable to do.

There are loads of blender tutorials on youtube as well, including short and sweet tutorials on how to achieve specific effects / techniques. Keep in mind some of it is tied to annoying “hustle grindset” kinds of content, so it may stink up the algo a little.

It is complex, but there are more resources and tutorials than ever today.

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