Mesh Blender Tutorials

[iCade]

I've been googling and using the forum search to find sites with Blender tutorials. The selection is huge, and that's my problem unfortunately.

Because of the sheer amount of tutorials I'm offered on all the sites, including youtube, I am unsure how to proceed now that I have the interface and very basics down. Most of the time when I open up a tutorial it feels like I've missed something in between, or I'm asking myself whether or not that that certain tutorial is even needed for an SL creation.

Could anyone throw me keywords that I can use to find tuts in the order I should learn them? Which tuts are utterly uneeded for SL meshing?

Right now I'm a bit stuck on how to proceed, I still count myself as a beginner and would love to find more beginner exercises, too.

I've seen the Builders Brewery offers a blender teaching course, but it's not a single course but progressive and there's no way I could make it to all the lessons due to time zone differences and my ever changing work schedule or I'd be all over that like hot cakes :(

If perhaps anyone could mentor me in the client as far as linking me to tut's goes, and perhaps being open to questions as they should arise I'd be very thankful! I'm determined to get the hang of this!

[Frawmusl]

Message me in-world and we'll see if we can't get you started on learning blender Think of a poject you would like to start off working on and through making that project we'll get you on the track to learning blender. Anyhow, message me in-world and I'll try to help you get on the right track.

[Gaia Clary]

Hi;

I believe that blender noobs have a somewhat difficult starting position   That is mainly because of 2 reasons (in my opinion):

 

1. Blender is made by real cracks who have a lot of knowledge regarding technologies, but have a very "mathematical" view on the user interface. This often clashes with artists expectations.
2. Blender is developing so fast that what is true today can already be wrong tomorrow

 

Furthermore many tutorials are made without taken the noobie status ("what, where, why") into account. And it is damn complicated to explain every single bit of what is done in a way that is not boring and still keeps the watcher on track.

I believe the golden path is somewhere along this line:

 

1. start with geting acustomed with the Blender user interface and take some very basic blender tutorials at the beginning. I personally like the beginners tutorials from blendercookie: http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/blender-basics-introduction-beginners/
2. Then spot a few tutorials about second Life specifics. I believe that even the Seocnd Life Wiki has something to tell look at: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh
3. Regarding mesh based clothing i believe that the tutorials from Ashasekayi are a good starting position: http://www.youtube.com/user/ashasekayi#g/u
4. Then there are a few blender related chat groups available in second Life. Just search for "blender" and take your choice. sidenote: sadly the primary Secondlife chatgroup "blender" has been closed for public access by one of its owners. I do not know why that happened, but well. He decided so, so there is not much to say.

of course there is a lot more on the web and as you already stated the amount of information is overwhelming. But the starting points above should provide a safe approach to mastering Blender. At least to become able to decide what to do next.

[LepreKhaun]

This one got me started and has helped many as well- http://www.gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Ok let me add my list to it as well:

The possibly best advice is to have a project in mind, begin to model it, and then look up certain steps whenever you
don't know how to achieve something. In my opinion this way you learn best, and step by step.

Blender has on their own homepage many starter tutorials:
http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/
including instroduction to the menues and UI and many more.

For learning Blender in general and how to model, do UVs, LODs, materials and everything else you should have a look
at blendercookie it is one of the best pages you can come across:

- http://cgcookie.com/blender/category/tutorials/modeling/

Next I'd advise to have a visit at Polycount and Polycount forum, here you will learn a lot of the ins and outs of modeling
and optimization as far as limiting your polycount goes as well as learning the raw basics and knowledge behind
everything. modeling, normals, displacement, smoothinggroups, poly- / vertices- and faces- counts, topology, edgeflow
and many more things... 

Because knowing what everything is  /and does and how to achieve certain things- is a good step towards being able to
produce "useable" content. (and there is a lot to know  ^.- )

- http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryTutorials
- http://www.polycount.com/forum/

As Gaia Clary has sent them to you already. The video tutorials on Gaias youtube page are also very helpfull for starters. 

In addition also the video series of ashasekayi for rigged secondlife clothing: 

 

(most of her videos are made for blender 2.49 and if you have a newer version of blender you might first want to be
stable with using your blender interface to know which options are where in the newer versions)

For more usage and knowledge about Blender i can also suggest visiting Blender-Guru. Here you will find also many 
example tutorials that take you through all steps of a certain project:
- http://www.blenderguru.com/

Furthermore for menues, functionalities and Help here is the official Blender-Wiki:
- http://wiki.blender.org/

Generally to avoid the confusion about which tutorials are 'needed' for you and which not:
(as requested in order of what comes first, and what next ...)

- all general 'modeling' tutorials
- UV unwrapping
- Texturing and Materials (baking, light, texture / image creation for the UVs)
- Rigging tutorials based on the Secondlife Skeleton
- Tutorials which explain the limitations regarding polygon count, and texturing etc for game content creation.
  (to know how much polygons something should have, how to achieve certain shapes with as few polygons as
  possible,  and how to achieve certain things with textures, etc)
- Tutorials on Topology (how to structure the geometry of your mesh, edloops, edgeflow)
- for the latter, and once you have a bit understanding you can have a look at my little tutorial series on that 
  Topology Thread (Mesh)
- Tutorials on how to create LOD (levels of detail) for a Model
- Tutorials how to create physic shapes for second life meshes.
- Tutorials which explain how to export into DAE (collada files) from blender.(those are being used for the SL upload)
- Infos about Landimpact in Secondlife (there are many threads about this here on the forum)

One last tip: to test your meshes ( no matter if rigged, physic or static models) use the enable Grid-Login option of your
viewer and log in to the Aditi Grid / also named Beta-Grid. Here you will be able to upload your builds without actually
spending your real SL money on them. And once it is stable and in its final state you can upload it in main secondlife.

(this will save you a lot Linden, especially since mesh uploads - depending on vert/faces count, physics, normals and
LODs can be a lot more expensive then just the usual 10 Linden for an image) (how to get into the testgrid ? - you can
find many helpfull infos about that on this forum and here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid)

Hope this helped you to get started.

Cheers, Code

[Sienia Trevellion]

I so feel your pain. I ran into a lot of brick walls and dead ends when searcing. I also didn't know what the proper pipeline was and not too many people are eager to help, though this forum was awesome. I'm no expert, I'm still asking question on the forums and everywhere else I can to get the information I need. I would have killed for a list of steps with included links at the start of this. I'm glad to send you what I've found and hopefully it will help. Just drop me a notecard in world and I'll respond with all the great stuff I found: 1.2.3 steps, tips, tricks and links.

[iCade]

Thank you all so very much with the overwhelming help to make it easier (as easy as it can get with blender!) to help me move along with learning the program more smoothly. It's really really appreciated!<3

[Cay Trudeau]

I wrote a little shorthand about the Blender keycommands.

 

I made this mainly for myself, as I am still learning too

Please do correct, if there are fact errors TY

 

http://personal.inet.fi/koti/kuutii/hairresort/blendershorthand.html

[Chic Aeon]

So you have a LOT of info there. That's great.

 

One thing I would like to mention that was touched on is to be sure you are watching CURRENTish versions of Blender. If you try and follow OLD tutorials it will be pretty much impossible as the interface changed greatly.

Also many tutorials have NO voice (geez) or it is difficult to understand because of language or recording quality. So those aren't too helpful.

 

The best overall tutorial list came from this professor's Vimeo.

http://gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html

He is slow (too slow once you know what you are doing *wink*) but great for beginners. He also explains VERY THOROUGHLY which I found helpful when starting.

I gave myself a month a year or so ago to "learn blender". Of course I am still learning, BUT after about two 40 hour weeks I felt a bit more competent. It is NOT a fast skill to master; no 3D program is. So be patient, ask lots of questions (I certainly did) and know that you aren't the first one to tackle mesh creation .

 

EDIT: One more thing. You will find some tutorials that while good are not meant for game engines. You want LOW POLY tutorials. Once the video maker start hitting the sub surf modifiers or you see a very SOLID looking mesh on the screen -- not for SL or any similar platform.

[jazsintha]

Appreciate seeing people who answer questions with good solid advice, particulary for difficult subjects like Blender. Kudos to you.  I would like to add a reccommendation  which is BraydonRandt (resident) who does blender basics and a sofa project from cube to SL import. 

[Koronis Phlox]

Hi, I'm also new to Blender, it's my first 40h week

Well, since i've uploaded my first Mesh, I'm searching for an answer how to apply a shadow under it.
I've uploaded my fifth Mesh (and  a lot of Test-Cubes) and didn't find any solution.

So, is anywhere a tutorial how to, or do i have to add a transparent texture with shadow inworld at the plane at the bottom?

In Blender everything looks nice and smooth, in SL my plane is black or white (depends what kind of color ive choose for the new image at uv unwrapping), with baked shadows at it. Thats not what I want

I havent tried it in cycles render or with nodes. Im a Noob!

Sorry for any made mistakes in this post, english is not my first language.
And thanks for help in advance.

Koronis

[Chavez Darrow]

On 4/8/2013 at 10:22 AM, LepreKhaun said:

This one got me started and has helped many as well- http://www.gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html

Dead link

[Pamela Galli]

I bet you can find a lot of those if you go back several years.

[Aquila Kytori]

 

55 minutes ago, Chavez Darrow said:

Dead lin

Blender Video Tutorials - Neal Hirsig

Created by Neal Hirsig Plus
5 years ago

Video Tutorials used for "3D Design - Blender" course (gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html)

             . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .      can be found here :     https://vimeo.com/channels/blendervideotutorials/videos

[Kawaii Spicy]

On 4/8/2013 at 7:38 AM, Frawmusl said:

Message me in-world and we'll see if we can't get you started on learning blender Think of a poject you would like to start off working on and through making that project we'll get you on the track to learning blender. Anyhow, message me in-world and I'll try to help you get on the right track.

Can I message u in world??? I'm new to creating in sl, i know this post is old