What’s It like learning 3D Modelling and Animations in Blender? (Spoiler alert: It’s NOT Hard) - Vivasvat Rastogi | vTech Guild

“ Don’t start your Blender life by watching a modelling tutorial… give a chance to the animation ones. Trust me, you’re gonna be better off. Continue reading to find out why, and to learn some basics of Blender. “

So… my story with Blender is, perhaps, a bit different from that of most other
animators. I thought about learning Blender (just for fun) many times, intermittently, s
tarting from around 3-4 years ago. I downloaded the 500MB file, opened it, tried out some stuff (unsuccessfully), and at the end, having deduced the fact “Nah… too complicated,” I deleted it each time. Later, after seeing a couple of cool YouTube videos having 3D stuff (not Blender tutorials ;-) ), and after making some futile attempts at finding an easier 3D animation software that had all functionalities, one fine day, I finally made up my mind: “Ya, I gotta learn this thing… no way around it…” So, I downloaded it again, this time cherishing my resolution, and googled ‘Blender Tutorials’… and no, I did not go to a ‘Modelling video’ (no, I did not click on the ‘Donut Tutorial :-|’); I scrolled right down… and scrolled and scrolled until I found a really basic animation tutorial. 

Yes, I know what you guys are thinking, “Animation is, basically, just moving around the modelled objects”. Well, you’re right. I think so too now, but then, I was nothing but a pure 3D noob. So I saw what those panels on the side were, how you moved up or down, scaled in and out, rotated around the 3 axes, and so forth…Basically, I spent some time digesting what a 3D viewport, actually, is (keep in mind the fact that I had, previously, only worked on word, pages, keynotes, and somehow, iMovie). Initially, I made a cube and added some keyframes to move it around and to scale it to a larger size. I was successful! (Huge achievement for me, ‘cause, well, I had ‘created’ something from scratch.) Then I went on to make a really simple satisfying animation.

Before I continue my rambling, I would like to devote a section for beginners (as I was) and provide a basic layout of what Blender, actually, is, and what it can help you do. Stay tuned till the end to find out why I think my strategy was a saviour. 

So, let’s dive right in…

Once you’ve downloaded Blender, you’re going to see some grid, some confusing icons and numbers, and a splash screen. Just choose ‘general,’ as I’m assuming you’re here as you want to learn 3D modelling and animation, instead of video editing or sculpting (yeah, Blender is capable of doing a lot of stuff, but we’re gonna stay focused… remember, one step at a time).

Now that you are sitting in front of BLENDER VIEWPORT, let’s see what those things, which might seem like puzzles of calculus and physics, actually are.

First of all, you need to know how to move the cube that’s placed there. For that, check out some blender controls for mouse. I, however, used the standard Mac trackpad, so am going to tell you about that; 2 finger movement is for rotation, pinching in and out is for zooming, and that’s pretty much it. To go sideways, drag the hand icon on the right. 

Now, you might want to move the cube, rotate it, or perhaps scale it. If so, go right to the extreme left, and you’re going to see a dropdown kind of icon column. Now, it’s easy…just hover your cursor over those 5-6 icons, and you’ll know, after clicking, that one is for moving, one for rotation, one for scaling, one for all three, and one for cursor (the cursor one is not important for now, so ignore it). That’s the basics of moving that one cube, but let’s say I want more stuff, like a sphere, or a ring… or a monkey? It’s all there, at the second-from-top bar: the ‘Add’ text. That’s perhaps the only important thing amongst those 4 other texts, for now. Now, you might want to change the shape. For instance, you don’t just want a sphere; you want to make a complete iron man suit. That’s the modelling bit, but before going to that, let’s just add some colours, and begin moving our sphere for animations. For colouring, go to the same bar as before, but now to the right. You’ll see that a circle is filled white; that’s

the mode you currently are at, where you can just model. To see the colours of life, click on the icon r
ight next to it. The sphere now looks more plain and whitish. Go to the seemingly ‘most confusing bar’ to the right, and you’ll see icons of a camera, printer, tool, physics etc. Right at the bottom, there’s an earth like circle icon. Click on that, add colours, and you’re set. 

Now, ANIMATIONS!!! In Blender, and pretty much all other softwares, you animate using keyframes. (Theory: you go to 0 seconds, decide a position, scale etc. for an object, add a keyframe, go to, say, 20 seconds, change the position/other factors, and again add a keyframe. What blender will do is, it’ll, on itself, generate a smooth video linking the 2 keyframes.) That’s pretty much it. Click on the object, ‘add keyframe’ and get started with animations. 

Now, modelling… so if you see that same tab bar, now to the left, you were in the ‘Object View,’ click on that and go to ‘Edit View’ and there you’ll have a variety of tools to chop your model, extend it, bevel it..........

To read the whole article, please go to the official vTech Guild Website ( link: https://vtechguild.vivasvatrastogi.com/blog/whats-it-like-learning-3d-modelling-and-animating-in-blender ). 

VIVASVAT RASTOGI,

Founder, vTech Guild

𝜈Tech Guild is a tech-science club founded by Vivasvat Rastogi and his high school friends in Vasant Valley School, India, with the aim of utilising latest technologies and integrating these with science to help the community out in various ways. We are a group, not of tech-geeks, but of aware tech creators who wish to truly make an impact and to set infinity as their '𝜈' (nu) limit.