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I had an urge today morning to try my hands at 3D modeling and rediscovered Blender and began using it just today. Quite a coincidence that HN front page has a

I had an urge today morning to try my hands at 3D modeling and rediscovered Blender and began using it just today. Quite a coincidence that HN front page has a post on Blender. I've got a huge learning curve ahead of me, though.

onion2k 11y ago
A word of advice: I found Blender really hard to understand (I think they based it on GIMP :).) Something that helped a lot was figuring out how 3D graphics work first. Specifically vertices, faces, and meshes, then coordinate systems, vectors, and transforms, then lighting and cameras, and lastly textures and UV coordinates. I did that using three.js to display things in a browser with a bit of javascript. Once I'd figured that out and had a much better understanding of what 3D engines actually do I found it a lot easier to work out how Blender lets you control those things in it's interface.
- giftedmunchkin 11y ago
  I'd really love to play around with three.js to pick up some of these ideas. Any suggestions on the best way to approach teaching myself those concepts?
  - onion2k 11y ago
    I tend to learn best by example, so I learnt from; https://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/ https://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/ http://learningthreejs.com/ http://learningthreejs.com/ https://aerotwist.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-three-js/ https://aerotwist.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-three-j... There are a few books about WebGL but the tech moves so fast they're largely out of date already. There's a tutorial series on Youtube too if that's your thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fg93FzfamU&list=PLOGomoq5sDLutXOHLlESKG2j9CCnCwVqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fg93FzfamU&list=PLOGomoq5sD...
melling 11y ago
Here are a couple of great Blender resources. http://www.blenderguru.com http://www.blenderguru.com https://cgcookie.com https://cgcookie.com
taneq 11y ago
I didn't really 'get' the interface until I realised that Blender is to 3D modeling as vim is to text editing.

onion2k 11y ago

A word of advice: I found Blender really hard to understand (I think they based it on GIMP :).) Something that helped a lot was figuring out how 3D graphics work first. Specifically vertices, faces, and meshes, then coordinate systems, vectors, and transforms, then lighting and cameras, and lastly textures and UV coordinates. I did that using three.js to display things in a browser with a bit of javascript. Once I'd figured that out and had a much better understanding of what 3D engines actually do I found it a lot easier to work out how Blender lets you control those things in it's interface.

giftedmunchkin 11y ago
I'd really love to play around with three.js to pick up some of these ideas. Any suggestions on the best way to approach teaching myself those concepts?
- onion2k 11y ago
  I tend to learn best by example, so I learnt from; https://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/ https://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/ http://learningthreejs.com/ http://learningthreejs.com/ https://aerotwist.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-three-js/ https://aerotwist.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-three-j... There are a few books about WebGL but the tech moves so fast they're largely out of date already. There's a tutorial series on Youtube too if that's your thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fg93FzfamU&list=PLOGomoq5sDLutXOHLlESKG2j9CCnCwVqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fg93FzfamU&list=PLOGomoq5sD...

melling 11y ago

Here are a couple of great Blender resources. http://www.blenderguru.com http://www.blenderguru.com https://cgcookie.com https://cgcookie.com

taneq 11y ago

I didn't really 'get' the interface until I realised that Blender is to 3D modeling as vim is to text editing.