Learning Blender
It’s been far too long since I’ve done any 3D modeling. In fact, when I decided to learn Blender a year or so ago, it took all of a few minutes to close it and let it sink into the dusty corners of my start menu. The interface made absolutely no sense to me, there were no help files, and I could barely see half of the stuff in the toolboxes.
I grew up on 3D Studio Max. Well, I actually learned 3D modeling on a very old freeware program that worked on Windows 95. In fact, it worked on a 200 mhz computer with no graphics card and something like 64 MB of RAM. I don’t remember the name of the program, but I spent a lot of time using it to prepare a 3D castle for my middle school’s medieval fair. It’s amazing how long it took to copy and move a wall on that computer. I’ll get a picture of the finished product sometime - it’s pretty neat (though resurrecting that computer long enough to get anything off of it might be a miracle).
So later I played around with 3D Studio Max for a while, but didn’t get very far. I was in high school by then, and was very busy with life (girls). The next time I touched a 3D modeling program was when I designed my dorm room (and hallway) as a map in Counter Strike. I actually finished most of the map before final projects crept up and took over my time. I’m still pretty happy with what I came up with though.
It’s been a few years since then, and I figured I should once again try out 3D modeling. There are a few concepts I just never picked up on that I’d like to better understand for programming. I also just like adding it to my skill set - I’ve always been an artist at heart. So this week I picked up Blender again.
I’m in the middle of final projects, so it’s probably a bad time to start anything. I’m also in the middle of a cold, so I should really be resting. I had a lot of fun though. I’ve been loosely following the Blender 3D online Wikibook - mostly just to figure out the controls and catch up to where I used to be as far as modeling. I’d say I did pretty good for a couple hours tonight:
I just need a good poster with all of the Blender commands on it. The whole system is shortcut keys, and it’s maddeningly difficult to get used to, but I do agree that it’s a much quicker system once you get used to it.