The FASTEST way to Learn Blender

Just to prevent confusion; I love the Donut series and Blenderguru's stuff! I also love tutorials, that's part of why I make them. What I mean by STOP doing tutorials, is stop copying them 1 on 1. This won't help you grow as fast as trying to make it your own. So switch it up, add your own flair and challenge yourself more than the tutorial would and you'll see progress in your Blender skills in no-time! :trophy-yellow-smiling::virtualhug:

This is one of the reasons I've become fond of the Blender Short Tutorials (and photoshop ones too). They show how to do something without context so you gain the knowledge and can apply it to your own work.

I was trying to explain to my coworker why I'm taking so long to do a simple Blender course. It took me around 12-15 hours to do 1.5h of a course. I was explaining that I'm not doing a course to create a object that the course was about, but to learn how to do it and learning concepts. I don't care about the object in question, I care to learn as much as I can from doing it.

I started with a blender donut, I finished and I was proud, but what was missing is I still had no idea how I did it (Like you said), after taking it back and now understanding the base fundamentals. These days I teach myself by setting off to create something (anything I can come up with) and use tutorials when I meet something I don’t know how to do yet. Ever since I started learning this way it feels like tutorials are unlocking skills rather than holding my hand through everything and forgetting it all after. I enjoy watching tutorials that allow me to use the skill for my own purpose, it feels more productive and also allows me to take learning at my own pace :)

To simply sum up this 6 minute long video "don't follow tutorials, but follow tutorials"

This is actually exactly how I learn how to do things in every program, not just blender. I'm so glad I'm not the only one because it seems like everyone else I talk to or who asks me how I learn things so fast thinks it's absurd and entirely a weird process. Thank you for making me feel like i'm not the weird one!

Starting with small adjustments, and combining 2-3 tutorials knowledge into a one big project, was extremely helpful to me. Also, I sometimes treat tutorials as a library of referances. "What was the shortcut key for this one?" "Edit mode is for this one, but pose mode for the other one. Or was it reverse?" Collecting tutorials focusing on these specific and sometimes annoying details, was a lot more helpful to me than following 10 tutorials to make 10 objects and calling it a day. Also, after you get the basics, you can try adding/removing stuff, or just try having fun with it. "What happens if I scale this one?" "Oh, what does this shiny button do?" "What happens if I connect this to that place instead?" Sometimes trying to do the exact same thing in video helps, but you need to continue after the video ends. Maybe that is the most important part.

I've been working with Blender for a week now, and my goal is to watch an entire tutorial, and then apply what I've learned from it. If I encounter any difficulties, I revisit the video to identify any mistakes or missed steps. This method helps me better understand the process and ensures a smoother learning experience.

This is very relatable. Back when I first learned how to draw (mostly anime), I watched a lot of tutorials from YouTubers, so many that I spent most of my time just watching tutorials every day, until when I drew myself, I got bored quickly and ended up not drawing at all. Learning from my mistakes, now im watching blender tutorials less and focusing on doing practice and experimenting with things around me. It's very fun and can always motivate me to do more without being pressured by expectations:)

This advice is largely correct. The key point is that by following this advice, you are more likely to actually learn. I've been doing 3D animation for 29 years - almost exclusively Lightwave 3D. There were magazine articles back then, online forums, usenet groups, and just banging away on the program. Banging away is what makes stuff actually stick. Tutorials are great for many things, including introducing you to better/more efficient ways to do something you can already do. But it is important to cement in some a strong understanding of the fundamentals. Once you have that, you can take info from tutorial and run with it. But you need that core first. And the core is the hardest bit. What I did in the past was to simply invent a project - usually of a type that I imagined a potential client would want. After all, we were starting a business, and not just doing this for fun. That's the motivation part. If you aren't motivated, you'll have a tough time learning. BTW, I don't know Blender, but am planning on diving in. Learning a new paradigm when you are already pretty fluent in and old one is probably going to be frustrating. But I'm pretty sure doing it like I did 29 years ago is still the way to go. If I get stuck somewhere, how wonderful that there are so many tutorials out there to mine for insight.

I started to work in blender for my videos, where I create procedural objects like atoms (atomic number gives that particular atom or visualizing solid angle and so on). I learned blender because at first I used to use houdini, but houdini is not free, so the necessity of creating my own models made me learn blender for my projects. And I did so many projects that I eventually learnt the core fundamentals of blender and some intermediate level on geometry nodes.

Y'all, Start a project—create a marble chessboard, bento box, Minecraft villager—and whenever you can't do something then look up a tutorial. Instead of watching a tutorial to make a chess board you need to make a chess board shape out of your starting square. Don't know how to make the squares then look up how to divide a shape; you will eventually find the slice tool and set the cuts to 7. have an 8x8 board now? Good! let us make it cool, raise the white squares slightly. Want marble? learn how to do the marble material from a few tutorials. I say a few bc 1, the first won't give you the marble you want (probably), and 2, you'll learn how it works with the different peoples angles and will be able to make your own marble afterwards and any color. Apply to squares. Continue and keep adding things. Finished the board? Make it in to a wooden table with the board inset to the tables center... Add drawers for chess pieces (or checkers which would be far easier). Set up the scene and render.

I have recently been doing the Blender 3 To UE5 Dungeon Kitbash tutorial from 3D Tudor, and there have been several times where I've stopped mid-video in anticipation of the next step of the modeling process and worked it out in my own way, then watched to see how close I was to the video. One example was when modeling a curved staircase (that rose to the right), a reversed version (that rose to the left) needed to be made. While the tutorial accomplished this with the Mirror modifier, I used Shift-D, and then scaled along the X-axis by -1. 😄

6:34 This is the method I now use. I WAS trying to follow along in real-time, the first time, and a 15min tutorial turned in to a frustrating 2-3hrs because I hadn't fully had an idea where things were going until I came across it. So if I missed something (or even worse THINK that I missed something) I would have to scan back through to see if I had done something wrong, only to realize that my issue would be resolved later on in the tutorial. WATCH THE WHOLE THING FIRST!!!

my teacher once told me not to follow tutorials but instead first watch video understand what someone is doing close and start doing this thing by your self without open video again and this advice help me to better understand photoshop & illustrator because i did not need to open video every 5 second to check if i am doing something right

For me personally I used tutorials to get me used to the program and to keep me using the program daily. Sure I don't retain all the information from a single tutorial but it starts to build the fundamentals of Blender.

I think i'm going to save this video and watch it a couple of times later. I'm a newbie who started to learn Blender like a 2 weeks ago (with a huge 3-4 days gaps of doing nothing). I knew how to basically operate Blender before thanks for my attempts of doing mods for different games, but i didn't knew how to create something from scratch. And so, after i got really motivated because of Shonzo's videos (He makes 3D models for V-tubers and VR-chat) i realized that drawing my characters for past 13 years wasn't enough, i need to bring them into 3D reality! That's why i decided that i'm gonna learn how to work in Blender. I decided to start with Donut tutorial, because why not? Aaaand i dropped it after 3rd video because my mind went elsewhere. After 5 days i decided to recreate everything from scratch, and i realized i don't remember a single thing Blender Guru said in these 3 videos. That's when it striked me. When i learned how to draw back in 2010 i didn't had a lot of resources available, every piece of information was worth a gold and i practiced and mastered everything i find helpful to me, and that's exactly why i can draw now without a struggle. While now with 3D modeling and internet giving you any information you need, sometimes with precise step-be-step follow ups, i guess i become lazy, why learn something when you just can google it up, follow the instructions and be done? This is kinda sad when you think about it, isn't it? Because no one will do my characters models for me (well they can, for atleast 1000$ lol) or even, do A Tutorial how to make my characters in 3D. This is something only i can do myself, and this is why i need to snap out of that state of lazyness and start to take things atleast semi-seriously. I'm still gonna do the donut. In fact, i think i'll do it first time following the tutorial, and after that 2-3 times without it or taking a sneak-peeks if facing some troubles (i have problems with memorizing stuff in general). And i thing this is a good approach to any tutorial: 1 time with instructions, repeat 2 times or more until it becomes part of your brain. This is how we were taught english in school (i guess successfully, guessing by this wall of text). I hope one day (preferably in this year) i will be able to finally show of the progress i made, and more importantly reach the goal i made for myself - To have my OC in 3D, fully rigged, and looking exactly as i want. I know this is going to be tough, but i think i'm ready to face any troubles among the way :virtualhug:

I'm an animator who only animate, very specialist, but I also want to do personal projects. So I decided to learn other 3D skills so I don't need to depend completely on friends who want to do these projects with me. My method of learning is always be doing small animation projects and learn things I will be using specifically to that projects, but that I can replicate and perfect in future projects. First I learned the basics of shader, lights and rendering so that my animations looked better than my play lasts, applied to 2 little projects, 4 seconds of character animations each, now i will learn hot to paint and apply texture to my next project, all of them I use free rigs and models and making everything oriented to the next project makes the learning process much more organic, fun and efficient. Sometimes I use the same asset as the tutorial guy, or girl, but I always end up using that knowledge in what I actually need to finish my project. It's so rewarding. And I never lose the focus and never get confused about what to learn next.

I skipped most "how to" tutorials, I could never fully do the damn donut. I decided, I wanted to make some specific things, goofed with blender on my own, looked up something when I didnt know hot to do it and follow tutorials that got me through some steps I didn't understand. Works better, still learning.

Really good advice. One of my issues is choosing things to work on my own that aren't too far beyond my current skill level. That's one of the things that sucks about self learning: not having someone tell you what would be a good thing to make given what you already know. I realize that blindly following tutorials isn't really going to teach me much, but the projects that I try on my own end up taking me way longer than intended. I think I'm in the stage where I still don't know what it is that I don't know. So when I think, hey it would probably not be too difficult to modify X to make Y, I end up taking two weeks on Y because there are tons of things I didnt realize I'd need to know before trying Y lol. But it's all been fun. My main job is mathematics research/teaching, which I've been studying for over a decade at this point. Learning something new like this is reminding me what it's like to be a complete noob at something, which is good for me lol.