Learning Blender

This topic can be used to post everything related to learning Blender.
There is also the Blender page at the OSM wiki.

Blender is a free and open source 3D platform. It supports 3D modeling and rendering as well as many advanced features like animation, simulation, compositing, motion tracking, video editing and game creation.

Here is my way how I learnt Blender.

I studied the the first sections of the wiki-book Blender 3D: Noob to Pro, namely:
Unit 1: Background (all sections)
Unit 2: Basic Modeling and Shading (sections 2A, 2B, 2C)

The book is defenitely worth studying.

Then I studied the tutorial A (first) introduction to architecture modeling with Blender.
And the first 3 chapters of the tutorial Modelling architecture with precision in Blender. In particular, the 3d chapter “Getting used to Blender’s vertex snap” is quite important.

That is pretty much enough to feel yourself comfortably with Blender.

If you are going to write plugins for Blender in the Python programming language, refer again to the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro

Advanced tutorials to improve your Blender skills:
Blender Cookie: lots of top quality tutorials and courses.
There is a membership fee 18$ per month that entitles you to the unlimited number of tutorial downloads.
Some tutorials are free. I definitely recommend the free tutorial Modeling a Building

Thanks for posting! This is very helpful information to get started!

It sound like advertisement of Blender. Unfortunately it is not as beautiful as it sound. Blender has very complex and extremely not intuitive interface. But it is the best of free software. (Free like free beer).

kendzi:
This topic is about how to learn Blender.
Please share your experience of learning Blender or ask a specific question.

I had learnt Blender exactly the way I described in the first message. Now I am totally satisfied with Blender.

The most effective way to model something in Blender is via keyboard shortcuts, not via GUI! I think it was intentional choice of the Blender founder.
It simply takes to much time to point the cursor to something in the GUI.

The right hand is used operate the mouse, the left hand is used to press keyboard shortcuts.

Again, the keyboard shortcuts as well as GUI are described in the wiki-book Blender 3D: Noob to Pro, I mentioned in the first message.

So please study the first 2 units of that book before making the claim that “Blender has very complex and extremely not intuitive interface”.

Oh it is not a claim, it is fact. I had read several tutorial about blender. I’m aware that they made “design” where most of the functionality is accessible by some magic shortcuts. I’m aware that shortcuts are changing depending on current perspective. Moreover I’m aware that most of blender tutorials on net is outdated because that magic shortcuts changes from version to version. So I can say that blender is highly not intuitive. Especially for person who don’t want to memorize all shortcuts and don’t bind their professional career with Blender. For person who would like only made simple model, from time to time, applications like SketchUp are much better choice.

Moreover during my study time i had access to Cinema4D. I made semester project in it and I can say that it is more user friendly and intuitive than Blender. The main difference was that in Cinema4d I was able to create, texture and animate quite complex models for short move without reading any tutorials or learning too much. With Blender after weeks of studying tutorials, I’m not able to create even simple models and i didn’t even come near texturing or animation.

So that are my experiences with Blender…

If you would like to help I have question for you. I would like to import some models from my application into Blender. The main problem is that models have complex materials with multi-layer-textures. How could I load such models into Blender? Which data format could I use? Do you have any working example with such models?

kendzi:
It’s pity that you didn’t try Blender 3D: Noob to Pro. At the same time I’m glad that I didn’t have negative experience like you with the other tutorials.
I confirm that Blender’s functionality described in the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro is up to date.

And again I recommend the wiki-book Blender 3D: Noob to Pro to everyone for the trouble-free start with Blender.

Regarding your question. Is my understanding correct that you have a model in the custom format? Can you export it to a popular 3D format?

I have application which render 3d view using OSM data. I would like to write an exporter to any popular (text-based) data format. I would like to import that file by Blender. The problem is that file should contain multi-layer-textures. Currently I have tested Collada and X3D, both of them support some form of multi-layer-textures but unfortunately Blender importer can’t handle it. Maybe you known some other, supported by Blender, 3d data format which could contain multi-layer-textures?

Are you sure that all your texture layers are exported to COLLADA?

Besides Collada, I can offer two options to try

  1. 3D Studio (.3ds)
  2. write your own importer in Python