What’s It like learning 3D Modelling and Animations in Blender? (Spoiler alert: It’s NOT Hard)

Vivasvat Rastogi | July 17, 2022

“ Don’t start your Blender life by watching a modelling tutorial… give a chance to the animation ones. Trust me, you’re gonna be better off. Continue reading to find out why, and to learn some basics of Blender. “

So… my story with Blender is, perhaps, a bit different from that of most other animators. I thought about learning Blender (just for fun) many times, intermittently, starting from around 3-4 years ago. I downloaded the 500MB file, opened it, tried out some stuff (unsuccessfully), and at the end, having deduced the fact “Nah… too complicated,” I deleted it each time. Later, after seeing a couple of cool YouTube videos having 3D stuff (not Blender tutorials ;-) ), and after making some futile attempts at finding an easier 3D animation software that had all functionalities, one fine day, I finally made up my mind: “Ya, I gotta learn this thing… no way around it…” So, I downloaded it again, this time cherishing my resolution, and googled ‘Blender Tutorials’… and no, I did not go to a ‘Modelling video’ (no, I did not click on the ‘Donut Tutorial :-|’); I scrolled right down… and scrolled and scrolled until I found a really basic animation tutorial.

Yes, I know what you guys are thinking, “Animation is, basically, just moving around the modelled objects”. Well, you’re right. I think so too now, but then, I was nothing but a pure 3D noob. So I saw what those panels on the side were, how you moved up or down, scaled in and out, rotated around the 3 axes, and so forth…Basically, I spent some time digesting what a 3D viewport, actually, is (keep in mind the fact that I had, previously, only worked on word, pages, keynotes, and somehow, iMovie). Initially, I made a cube and added some keyframes to move it around and to scale it to a larger size. I was successful! (Huge achievement for me, ‘cause, well, I had ‘created’ something from scratch.) Then I went on to make a really simple satisfying animation.

Now, you might want to move the cube, rotate it, or perhaps scale it. If so, go right to the extreme left, and you’re going to see a dropdown kind of icon column. Now, it’s easy…just hover your cursor over those 5-6 icons, and you’ll know, after clicking, that one is for moving, one for rotation, one for scaling, one for all three, and one for cursor (the cursor one is not important for now, so ignore it). That’s the basics of moving that one cube, but let’s say I want more stuff, like a sphere, or a ring… or a monkey? It’s all there, at the second-from-top bar: the ‘Add’ text. That’s perhaps the only important thing amongst those 4 other texts, for now. Now, you might want to change the shape. For instance, you don’t just want a sphere; you want to make a complete iron man suit. That’s the modelling bit, but before going to that, let’s just add some colours, and begin moving our sphere for animations.

Now, ANIMATIONS!!! In Blender, and pretty much all other softwares, you animate using keyframes. (Theory: you go to 0 seconds, decide a position, scale etc. for an object, add a keyframe, go to, say, 20 seconds, change the position/other factors, and again add a keyframe. What blender will do is, it’ll, on itself, generate a smooth video linking the 2 keyframes.) That’s pretty much it. Click on the object, ‘add keyframe’ and get started with animations.

Back in the ‘object mode’ if you go to that complex bar to the right, you’ll see a tool having the label ‘Modifier’. Click on add and you’ll have in front of you, a variety of options. These, basically, do some cool stuff, for eg. Creating a warped space-time, rippled water, fluidic objects, bevelled edges, carving tools, and much more. Again, more on this in a later blog.