Reply To: Does anyone else get the feeling that they’re reliant on tutorials for everything? Or just not retaining knowledge in general?

[Ronald Vermeij]

I absolutely agreed with your statement ihatelemons!
Here is an overview on how my personal Blender learning curves progresses:

A – I first started out by seeking and watching random Youtubes on various subjects:
Like you I crashed badly, since every teacher is doing it different (and not all of them can really educate).
Personally I only found a handfull of good Youtube video channels.

B – I watched the official Blender tutorial videos at blender.org and their Youtube channel over here:
– https://www.blender.org/support/tutorials/
– https://www.youtube.com/user/BlenderFoundation
First these tutorials were not so good, but fortunately – they got a lot better since end of 2017.
For a first time somebody inside the Blender foundation is:
– starting inside the viewpoint and/or shoes of the absolute Blender beginners.
– taking the time to show and explain all elementary steps hidden inside Blender.
I must say things are getting better – but to my personal opinion – can be greatly improved!

C – Scraped the entire Internet dry, documenting every Blender related website I was able to find:
Downloaded over 10+ GB of free e-book, courses, found over 200-300 website and bookmarked them.

D – Of course I followed the Introduction to Blender course here on CGCookie:
This courses helped me to paint a bigger and more structured picture, but is not complete yet.

E – I also decided – being a good noob – to RTFM = Read The F***** Manual:
This left me with an even emptier feeling, since I encountered the same KNOWLEDGE GAP as you do.

It feels – to me – like the official Blender foundation manual writers – (with all! respect! to! their! current! efforts! and end-results) are good people (for doing this voluntary) job but they are:
– not (cap)able to start from the viewpoint of an absolute beginner.
– not willing/(cap)able to stand in beginners shoes and start from there.
and this is – to my personal – opinion the biggest teaching hazard!

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Final comment on the current level of Blender documentation (online):
From being an experienced programmer and ict-expert myself for over 35+ years, I do SENSE / FEEL the internal raw power which houses inside the awesome Bender package. But I can not (yet) find the ultimate cookbook / tutorial / manual which enable me to help me understand how-stuf-really-works under the hood.

I do not want to just learn .. Blender tricks.. , I want to be able to fully understand what i’m doing an how I can customize Blender to suite my own personal need (and not adapt myself to the current manual content and limitations)

That is why my next step will be: (taking the manual matter into my own hands again)
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F – Learning straight from Blenders own open source code:
I’m now busy learning from the Blender Developer blogs. I want to:
– learning how to read and code in Python,
– understand the Blender internal software architecture,
so that i’m (myself) able to read and fully understand Blender’s own source-code.

This approach will take more time but in the end… it will enable me to step into the mindset from the Blender software development team, and start to fully understand how-Blender-stuff works from there.. and perhaps start to write my own Blender manuals some day.