Blender for Complete and Total Beginners

Haven't downloaded Blender yet? Let me show you where to get it.

If you're brand new to Blender, the interface can seem a little confusing. In this video I'll break down what you're looking at when you open up Blender for the first time.

Becoming comfortable with navigating around Blender's 3D world is incredibly important for having fun and learning with Blender.

We'll customize a few extremely important things in this lecture, and I'll also go over some personal preferences I like to make to help create a smoother workflow.

Let's prime your memory for the rest of the course by testing it with a short quiz on the most important parts of this section.

We'll start off learning about Blender's tool with the most essential tools there are, selection.

Now we'll learn that basics of moving, rotating, and scaling objects.

Learn how to confine transformations in certain directions using Blender's Global Axis.

Every object has its own axis as well, called a Local Axis, and this can be used for transformations just like the Global Axis.

Learn how to transform objects in certain increments for higher precision.

The 3D Cursor is used for a lot of things, like being the position a new object is added in, and as a potential pivot point to rotate objects around. Learn the basics about it in this lecture.

There are different ways Blender can display your objects in the 3D View, learn about the 2 most fundamental shading modes in this lecture.

Some objects should appear smooth, like a sphere, and some objects should appear flat, like a cube. Learn how to make some objects look smooth and some look sharp.

Let's see how much you remember about the most fundamental and important tools in Blender.

We've been working in Object Mode so far, but Edit Mode is how we can actually change the shape of objects and create brand new shapes. In this lecture we'll dive into Edit Mode and begin learning about actual 3D modeling.

Learn the most fundamental and most used tools for 3D modeling.

Let's put what we learned about so far to good use by building a snowman from scratch.

Test your knowledge of the fundamental modeling tools.

Find out what rendering is, and get introduced to Blender's main render engine, Cycles.

In this lecture we'll make sure Blender is set up to use Cycles for rendering, and we'll also make sure it's set up to use our graphics card for rendering.

The World in Blender can be used to add a background to your scene, and this background can emit light into your scene as well.

Now we'll go over a couple different types of lights that we can use in Blender, point lights, and sun lights.

Learn about what materials are and get introduced to the Editor we'll be using to create them.

Now let's build our first material by giving the floor a shiny checkered look to it.

Learn about a new shading mode called Material Preview mode which helps us visualize and create our materials way faster.

Texture Coordinates are the technical way a texture is applied to a surface. It can be a complex topic, but in this lecture we'll learn about just the fundamentals to introduce you to what texture coordinates are.

Now let's move on to learning about how to create metal materials using the Principled shader.

In this lecture we'll use the Principled shader to create a tinted glass material.

Now we'll create a wood material using a new texture called Wave.

In this lecture you'll learn about adding a camera in to frame your final shot before rendering.

Now that our scene is finished, let's learn how to render out the final shot and save the image.

Test your knowledge of Blender's raytracer, Cycles.

Now let's learn about Blender's super fast real-time render engine, Eevee.

To make the shadowing in Eevee more detailed, we can enable Ambient Occlusion.

Learn how to enable reflections in Eevee, and how to make them higher quality than what is default.

Now let's learn how to enable refraction for our transparent glass objects.

Now we'll increase the quality of the scene's shadows and the scene overall.

Although Cycles is superior in many ways, Eevee is an incredible render engine and many times faster at rendering than Cycles.

Put your Eevee knowledge to the test.

We'll start off the pirate raft project by creating the base of the raft, which consists of 4 logs and ropes around them.

Now we'll make the mast which holds the sail.

Using tools like proportional vertex editing we'll create a sail that looks like wind is blowing it.

Now with the raft finished, let's toss it in some water by creating the ocean.

Now we'll create some shark fins circling around the raft. In this lecture we'll use modifiers like Boolean in order to create cartoony cutouts in the fins.

Now let's move on to creating the island in the background.

In this lecture we'll create 3 curvy palm trees to put on the island.

Now we'll create some big boulders to place around the island.

And to finish off the modeling, let's create some clouds in the sky using a new type of object called Metaballs.

With our scene finished, the next step will be to frame the final shot by adding in and positioning a camera.

Now we'll take a few minutes and tweak some things here and there to make sure things look right in camera view.

Let's make sure Cycles is set up for render and that our graphics cards are used for rendering.

Now let's begin prepping the scene for rendering by first adding in a sun light to illuminate the scene.

Now let's create a world shader which will include a sky gradient to make the background more interesting and illuminate the scene with some blue ambient lighting.

We'll begin creating materials by adding multiple materials to the logs. You'll learn how you can assign multiple materials to different parts of the same object in this lecture.

Now let's apply some of the materials we already made to the mast object.

In this lecture we'll create a red and white striped material for the sail.

Now we'll make a blueish and slightly shiny material for the shark fins.

In part 1 of this material we'll create a simplified version of the ocean material. This material can be used on its own without watching the more advanced part 2 of this material, it's up to you.

Now we'll take the ocean material a step further by adding some distortion to the foam pattern as well as some transparency to it.

Now let's created a sand material for the island.

We'll create a simple material for the rocks.

We'll start adding materials to the trees by adding in a simple brown material for the tree trunks.

Now we'll add a material for the tree leaves.

And finally, we'll finish off the materials by creating a simple white material for the clouds.

With our scene totally complete, all we need to do now is render out the final shot. In this lecture I also go over another way you can optimize your render times.

Some advice for people just starting to learn about 3D Modeling based on my own experiences back when I was learning.

Take a tour of Blender's community and learn the different ways you can keep in touch and keep up to date.

Creating an online portfolio is a lot of fun. In this lecture I'll show you my favorite portfolio website where you can create portfolios for free.

What projects should you tackle next after this course?