Hi :) I registered for around 6 months now, and have sometime hard time to maintain a good training tempo. Some weeks go really well and I can complete several exercises or course, and then it also happens that there's couple of weeks where nothing really happens.
Of course there's always moment where one does actually not have time, but I would be interested to know what are the community's routines and learning process. Do you have any tricks or technique to get yourself started? Do you allocate a certain moment of the day to practice ? If CG is a hobby or a side-job (that's my case, I have a "regular" employee job AND work as a freelancer in CG), how do you find a good balance ?
The motivations is almost always there, but I find the hardest to both get started and to go eventually complete a given course, without being distracted by other tutorials.
Please share your experience!
Cheers,
Thibaut.
I've been trying to make it a habit to do Blender stuff between 10:00 and 11:00 pm.
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Analogy: 3D Art
Illiterate: You don't know the difference between a vertex and an armature.
"
That's Brilliant (very funny :) )! I like you're analogy. For learning i'd say, don't forget to experiment! Experimenting with various features you can learn and improve your understanding of they're usage. And just be amazed what Blender can do. That's also part of the learning process, not "just" watching the video's. From experience, i've found various fancy things in modelling, texturing and shading that are worth remembering. If i get this "wow"-moment, i just take a screenshot of the settings so i will not forget it later. Because there are so many things to learn and combine, making a kind of library of (digital)notes and images may help you in the future and possibly re-understand things you've forgot.
In the matter of shading, its particulary useful to make a central Blenderfile with interesting materials. Like wierd texture combinations, glowing or transparent Fresnell and radomized circlepatterns.
You've stated that you're not sure what direction you would want to go (maybe modelling) and you're time is very valuable from what i understand. Perhaps its helpful for you to formulate a goal for the long run and make a checklist of the courses and learning flows wich help you to achieve it. It helps you to guide you to what you want. Atleast that's what im doing, as the're are so many things to see. Plus i also keep track of all previous activities to atleast be able to reflect back. Otherwise i'll just wonder what the heck im doing these 2.5 years. Maybe that also works for you.
Also want to quit my job and go deeper into CG. My main problem is that I get stuck sometimes because there seems to be so much to know that I had to start splitting everything into pieces.(like "sekodilemo" mentioned) A day Lightning, then modelling, Animation, texturing... Tried always everything at the same time wich I found useless because a week later, things just got forgotten.
So let's move on, let's do some modelling, wish you all the best in your progress
I started learning Blender late last December with Andrew Price's donut and coffee cup tutorial. After I was done, I felt like I could do anything, so I went online and looked up what else I could do with this newfound power. A friend suggested cgcookie so I can get a handle on Blender tools. (I watch other youtube blender channels as well.)
I practice pretty much every day, probably hours. I have time for it because I work short hours at a warehouse, and I think I'm only decent at modeling because I've drawn in 2d before starting in 3d modeling.
I made my first basic human mesh about two weeks ago! And that's great.
I guess my goal is all over the place but mainly I want to start rigging and modeling characters for avatars and 3d printing.
My personal "secret" is to not overstress ist.
I dont say that i need to work for a certain amopunt of time on this or that.
My Goal is it to open up Blender and to Modify one thing.
Fact is if you do this you will not stop after that one thing but its very easy achievable. So you feel not guilty if you dont have much time today and get your little bit of achievement every Day.
From my experience it is far more important to do it regulary than to spend a large amount of time at once.
Im doing this for Drawing since a few years. Goal of the Day is to Draw one single line, there was not a single Day where i stopped after this one Line.
Dont forget that you have a Life too and you really need it to fuel up and not burn out in a short amount of time.
I totally agree with you. It is hard to prioritize where to start first. I wish there was a perfect scheduled lesson calendar that would tell you what to work on next. I keep trying different tutorials but they all seem to have an aspect from other tutorials that I haven't gotten to yet. For example I was doing the treasure chest and going along well until the UV editing which I had no knowledge base for and I hit a road block. Is there a place on CG that has all of the tutorials in order? So I don't have to spend so much time finding the next lesson? I love it though, don't get me wrong, great resources.