FreeGameDev

Hi all.
Despite to the title, this is a PG thread

All blender users (from ALL skill levels) are invited to write how their first experiences have been. The good and the bad sides, and especially what made you getting over the edge from dark to light (read as: from sucking and being frustrated to getting actually something done).

With a nice collection of beginner links, tips etc. the excuses "uhm the UI gives me headache..", "all these buttons..", "I always forget the keybard shortcut for XY..", "so much buttons and I still need to press keys!" shall be history!


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Excuse my english. Its not bad, just funny

Ok, guess I should start that.

First time I opened blender (without reading anything, of course), I wasn't able to do *anything* for half an hour, including moving the view. I quitted and was disappointed. After a few days I got motivation to search the web a little and stumbled over:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

Nothing much more to say about it, this wikibook guided me through the whole beginning time. I even use it now for quick looking up some rarely used modifier.
Just make sure to really start at the beginning, dont be in a rush, reading the concepts (yes, blender UI does have a concept) helps to find the way through the buttons, managing the windows and stuff.

You are more the video tut person? No problem, even better, as there are tons of them. My personal favorites are the ones from Dave Ward. I recommend blendercookie.com in general, as there is some great and useful content there. Maybe start here: http://www.blendercookie.com/getting-st ... h-blender/

The differences between 2.49 and 2.5x are way less bigger than they appear. There are from-to videos as well, and I felt good with 2.5 after half an hour, basically. In general, it is better to use 2.5x of course, just there are no scripts for it at the moment, due to a still changing API, so your favorite exporter scripts may not work with 2.5 yet.

A good news overview about new tutorials from different sites, 2.49 and 2.5 mixed, gives http://www.blendernation.com/

In general, google gives useful links with "blender" + (name of what bothers me)