You may have heard of it, or seen someone’s video results
from this software on youtube, but for those of you that don’t know, well, you
should.
Blender is open-source 3D modeling, rendering, and animation
software.
Developed by the Blender Foundation, it is fully equipped
with an almost limitless powerhouse of tools to create anything, from cool
little 3D intros to Fully Animated masterpieces.
The first time I opened up Blender was few years back. I
pulled it up for a few seconds and said, “No way, Oh no no no.” “Way to many
buttons and switches and settings and check boxes, and selection menus." *Click the close button*
Yeah, wow. It scared me away. There was just too much. Too much to learn. It was one of those programs that you have to know how to do something before you can do anything.
But later on, i asked myself. "With that kind of interface, amazing things must be reality"
So over a few years (yes years of on and off free time and youtube bandwidth) i came to love the program. I remember the first little animation i made with it. It was a set of a few simple shapes; a few pyramids and cubes. The animated part of it was a little double-jointed cylinder doing acrobatic jumps and flips over the cubes and pyramids. It was pretty pitiful now that i look back, but as soon and the rendering progress bar for the full 11 second feature film was at the end, it made my day.
So yes, it does have a steep learning curve, but thats nothing a few youtube tutorials cant fix. :p
Its worth it in the end. but thats the point there is no end to this amazing program.
If you use it as nothing but a video editor (which it also does impressively) i will be proud.
So where do you start learning how to use this program? Well, youtube work fine for me for the first year or so. But, if you top that and are ready to move on to some really impressive stuff that you can do with blender, this guy's site is not even funny. BlenderGuru is probably the best site out there for top quality, and i mean top quality blender tutorials. His tutorials are medium to advanced, they are in the form of videos, and he does all the talking so you won't get lost, explaining every step from scratch.
Note: If you go straight to Blenderguru.com to start your blender journey, you will be COMPLETELY LOST if you are new to blender. They are very tempting i know, but unfortunately you will have to stick to the easy stuff on youtube until you are ready for that. :)
But still take a look to whet you appetite (In other words, make creating those awesome things your first desire in life.)
Here is what i could do with the help of Blender and blenderguru.com:
