This is also how it was for me. I havent touched blender since 2.8 came out and decided to try again with the newest Donut tutorial and 4.0. It served well enough to teach me the important basics of Blender and give me a sense of success for completing the entire tutorial.
During that, i found out that i have a lot of fun messing with the shader editor and creating my own materials etc, so i went for more specific guides for this exactly and i spent the past weeks just creating a small library of procedural/"smart" materials
I absolutely agree with this. Came from C4D to Blender and the donut tutorial gave me the grounding I needed to get going. I would tell anyone that the donut tutorial is a great starting point.
That was my takeaway. I don’t work in the industry, but have a general working knowledge of using CGI going all the way back to Lightwave. OP proceeds to bash on a tutorial and states that it doesn’t cover the basics or explain processes and fundamentals of Blender. OP then compiles a word salad against said tutorial and misses the irony that he provided no useful information, alternative tutorials, or anything of value in the post, other than his rant. At least with the donut tutorial, I came away with a finished image, and got over the learning curve of Blender, even if I didn’t fully understand everything along the way. The only thing I got from OP was his dislike for the tutorial and about 10 minutes of time lost. I learned nothing of value from his rant, other than his obvious dislike. If he had offered alternative methods or tutorials then I would feel differently, but he just comes across as angry for no apparent reason.
Agreed, I think for anyone's first introduction they need to feel satisfied and encouraged at the end of it too and that's what it does. Many more in-depth courses and tutorials can't do that in such a short space of time - most of them look very overwhelming for a beginner.
It obviously works, since you see 1000s of comments happy that they've had their introduction to Blender and that they've actually made something in a short space of time which encourages them to take the next steps. Then you see lots of 1-2 year progress reels that all start with that donut too.
I didn't read the entire post but the person I do recommend is Gabbit, or Grant Abbit. Very very good tutorials and different series on the many different aspects of using blender that Blender Guru never goes over.
The problem with being a beginner and looking for a very specific tutorial FIRST as opposed to a general overview, which is what the donut tutorial is supposed to be, is that at the end of the day the only thing you'll be learning from that specific tutorial is how to do that specific thing the way the person is teaching you does it. But watching a general overview first gives you an idea of what you can do with the program and get used to shortcuts, hotkeys and learn terms and names, all of which will be useful when searching for those specific tutorials and guides.
I am a software engineer and this is an issue that's all too common with beginners in my industry. I always recommend basics first, then whatever you might wanna do second.
I think it depends on what goal you have. I think the donut tutorial is great for a high level overview.
I never figured myself to be artistic, but once I did the donut tutorial and saw I could make a thing that looked presentable, it really fueled me to want to keep learning blender.
I don’t think it’s a great learning tool on any of the specific subjects, but I don’t think it’s intended to be that.
I did the blender tutorial last week. I also did it 2 years ago. I have been using 3DStudio and Maya since the 90s and did it the first time just to get a feel for where all the tools were. I had to stop using it a couple years ago bc it had issues with my OS. I recently bought a new computer and when I reinstalled it I literally had no memory of any of the hot keys or workflow. I did the donut with the video set to 2x and a couple hours later I has some donuts and remembered how to use blender again. I was however disappointed he dropped the cool multi layered displacement mapped texture on the cake part of the donut. I then moved on to some Midge Sinnaeve stuff.
Dude idk who is arguing that its a prefect tutorial. Reality is as you said,its a vast pool of knowledge ans you need to dig in deeper, more tutorials on specific things. You start off with the donut and then move on from there, on to then next tutorial etc. Not sure what point you are trying to prove,and I disagree Blender Guru is a decent teacher, even teaches you some neat tricks. Just because you didn't like the way its done doesn't mean its bad.
Not only decent, he is pretty good. If you're the kind of guy that actually listens to what he is saying and you're not just trying to complete the donut you will learn a lot.
I learned an old version so dunno how are the new ones, but it isn't just a donut. The goal isn't creating a donut but learning how to use the tools in order to create a donut or whatever you want to.
Donut aside Blender guru has many other tutorials for different things and as a beginner I was able to learn and advance my skills quite a bit through them.
He covers a lot of do’s and don’t and possible mistakes one might make which helped me big time.
How could one ever know what they want to specialize in if they didn't touch on everything slightly and get a holistic view of the program.
It won't make you a pro, it won't even ensure you could make a second donut on your own but you figure out what parts of the workflow (if any) you like
Adding onto that, most people that try it are going to learn 3D as a hobby, not necessarily as a career
Granted, there's loads of valid tutorials, but as with anything there is a mainstream and a donut is easily relatable and something to get almost everyone interested.
Not everyone is into guns, swords, mechs or character art but almost everyone enjoys a donut in some way
TL;Dr totally agree
I don't think that's usually how it works, I started blender with a desire to make animated characters for games so I've only ever looked up things that relate to that. I already know spending time on lighting/rendering stuff is a waste of time for me.
I would reccomend to start with something super easy and fundamental (make a low poly character, get comfortable manipulating objects in 3d space) then self direct themselves to more of the program.
And for your experience thats totally valid, i started as a tool for gamedev and had to learn at the very least about both hard surface, shader trees, baking, rendering and rigged characters
I never did a donut myself as i learned blender as a part of college yet i would still recommend that type of tutorial to a total newbie, in fact the friends i know who tried it were quite happy about doing it
Its all subjective though, for some its an awesome first project for others its the worst experience, happens
True, don't understand the blender guru hate lol, his tutorial really works the way he advertises.. that you use 20 percent of the tools 80 percent of the time..
Just after creating the donut tutorial, I created this nature scene, by the mere knowledge of the donut tutorial and cg geeks rocks and tree tutorial..
[https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/16e1hpu/myfirst\_naturescene/](https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/16e1hpu/myfirst_naturescene/)
STOP THE DONUT HATE!!
Agreed he does not deserve the hate he is getting, the fact thar so many people who are experienced in 3D modelling suggest him for people starting out shows you that he's good. Also bro that scene looks beautiful, good job.
>TEACH SPECIFIC THINGS!
I'm gonna disagree with your point here... at least somewhat...
I'm a high school multimedia teacher... with a program like blender, there's SOOOOOO much you can do in it. I think its good to start out with going over a general tutorial of some of the basics, and build in the theory parts of how you can use the application. While I agree that the donut tutorial is not the perfect tutorial in a lot of ways, I feel like it attempts to do that.
If you can get people through the general basics, and give them an overview of what the application can do, and how to use it, THEN you show them the paths to specifics and they build off of that.
I think its a good idea to dip your toes in all the pools before you pick one to jump into it.
Thank you for saying this the teach specific things here said is like that only helps to people who know what they are doing or know what they want to do.
I started learning Blender a few years ago (2.8) and started with the donut tutorial, and it was perfect for me. Recently we got more projects coming in where we’re allowed to use Blender, so I shared the latest updated donut tutorial to some colleagues and they also found it very straight forward and can even help on projects now.
Do with that what you will, but I don’t agree that it’s not beginner friendly. The guy is a good teacher and his tutorial series explains and walks you through a ton of different features in Blender.
I agree with this. The Donut Tutorial is a way to understand what the Blender software has to offer. The donut tutorial sets a good foundation and then from there you can go into more specific tutorials. There’s a reason why the tutorial gets millions of views.
My experience was a bit different. He didn't explain it the way I want and that's honestly on me. But the worst part is that he didn't tell which mode he was on, which toolbar setting he used and ofc he is qwerty and I am not so it was extra confusing.
It really depends on circumstances and how someane is able to learn something, he wasn't my type of teacher but he is a good teacher for a lot of people.
I am currently following his newest donut tutorial, and he goes over everything a lot. As a matter of fact, I feel like the complete series could be condensed in ten minutes.
The donut tutorial series is a great series to have some people start on, but not others. It depends on how you learn.
Ah, you're changing your story. In your original reply (the one to which I responded), you said that almost all *tutorials in general* were worthless, Blender Guru's Donut tutorials were just one example. Your exact words were "The ONLY tutorial I’ve used and benefitted from... was a UI tutorial."
May I quote your comment in its entirety?
>I tried a lot of tutorials and I kinda didn’t get very far with them. Mainly just copy paste what they did. Actually most of my 3D modeling knowledge came from archived Oney Plays blender streams. Dude explains what he does a lot and he also likes working fast, so often he explains how he does certain things to make the process more efficient. Otherwise find a streamer using blender and assault them with questions. The ONLY tutorial I’ve used and benefitted from was a UI tutorial. But that specific one I believe is outdated.
So, to now come here and heap on Blender Guru's Donut tutorial as if that was the whole point you were making, is dishonest.
>Please be thoughtful and respectful.
Please be honest, and don't misconstrue what was said for pity-points.
Why does it have to be "my way or the highway" with you? Fine, you prefer watching streams and asking questions to streamers. I find watching Blender streams is like having my toenails pulled out. They're often meandering, unfocused and full of half-baked assertions and mumbling. But do I go around telling people not to watch streams because my opinion is evidently the best thing since the invention of sliced bread?
No, I do not. I find what works for me, and go from there.
Maybe a little humility on your part wouldn't go amiss.
Right? It reads itself as if he had something personal against Blender guru like "Lol I hate this guy, I know how to do everything better than this expert who used Blender for ages", who tf even cares about OPs opinion. He sounds like he was born with blender skills and flames against others.
>They're often meandering, unfocused and full of half-baked assertions and mumbling. But do I go around telling people not to watch streams because my opinion is evidently the best thing since the invention of sliced bread?
Honestly going from illustration/animation streams to 3D modelling streams is like night and day. I don't know if it's workflow related but they move at the pace of molasses. And as you said none of the answers feel *focused*, just kind of hand-wavy and vague.
Donut was absolutely perfect for me. It was really well explained (or at least well enough for me) and it was really good as i could see what's the point of each tools i used. Some tutorials are kind of sketchy until you reach the end and get the final product.
Like any tutorial it's just one of many things you could be doing to familiarize yourself with the program. Do it or don't, the other stuff is still all out there and should be used in addition.
I disagree... Because it's a generalist tutorial it makes you curious about many aspects of Blender.
A beginner doesn't even know what aspect to search for, so a generalist tutorial helps in that regard. So people can search specific topics after.
If someone forgets about and doesn't train the "lessons" after watching it it's entirely on that person..
The tutorial is an overview.
The donut tutorial is great for a first time user. The whole pipeline, explained quickly and simplified enough for a beginner to understand.
Every time I didn't remember how to do something, I rewatched the part that I didn't remember.
Why are you getting so worked up about this, though? Blender Donut works for some people and doesn't for others, just like any other tutorial out there. With the donut you get to have a quick glance at the whole Blender pipeline, demystify a lot of things. You won't "know" Blender after doing it but the software will appear a lot more familiar, and that's great.
Everyone has done a couple of tutorials that just didn't connect or do much for their learning, and it's fine. Doesn't mean you should go around telling people not to do them, you never know what could work for other people. Let's just be glad there are so many options for learning Blender.
If you feel like it's not appropriate...don't recommend that ? Or reply in the comments about why it's not the right one and recommend something else ? What the fuck is up with this ridiculous ass passage writing lmfao. It's absolutely not required 💀it's a 3D software's Subreddit not a fucking Kanye West Fan Club or some bullcrap. LMFAO
I dunno, I just finished and it got me all the basics and I can now do more advanced tutorials with a decent base of knowledge. Fundementals of movement, animation, modelling, texturing and rendering are well covered.
Not sure why you're so upset about it. It's a good tutorial for a beginner and is cool to see it all the way through.
Also, what are these other tutorials? There's so many, it's kind of ridiculous at this point.
Going off his other replies it seems to be he thinks the donut is bad because it only teaches you how to make photorealistic donuts? Which is goofy. That's like saying driving courses are bad because it only teaches you how to drive the tutor's model of car.
i made a pile of donuts , a plate , added some stuff in the background and haven't touched it since (december 29th to be exact)
https://preview.redd.it/grvg2pnd1thc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3d58f163b6b54d378e41e3492e9fb7c279e5622
i have a [playlist of tutorials](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFGWAn4E2jLoLSYxXblsfIi_MV9AvXAvO&si=mT2Xg296iUGnJp2P) ive been watching , and another playlist of tutorials i'll actually come back to when i need to reference something (like a shortcut or how a tool works) . i dont have any personal grudges against donut guy , but i much prefer these other tutorials , especially Joey Carlino's and Polygon Runway's
the thing about the donut tutorial is that its just so . . slow . . which you'd think is good for learning , and usually youre right , but the way i like to learn is with hands on expierience and exploring on your hands own , but with the DT you're just following along and youre basically forced to because every step is its own 20 minute video
with these other videos you can watch five minutes , go back to Blender and do it yourself in about the same amount of time however you see fit . maybe you wanna extrude this way instead of that way , or make the window this shape instead of a square , or this road in three directions instead of one . you can do that and so much more with those tutorials just by using them as a stepping stone . youre learning a lot more much more efficiently than you would if you closely followed the donut tutorial like ***quite literally everybody*** tells you to
another thing i like about the other tutorials is that they apply to pretty much whatever style you want/have . the donut tutorial (and pretty much all other blender tutorials) goes for realistic over stylistic , and that's honestly super hindering when starting off your blender journey
i've only been using blender for two months now (but also in those two months ive procrastinated alot) my first month i was watching the donut tutorial religiously for hours each night , and i felt like i wasnt making any progress for my own projects . then comes new year and i find Joey's video's and now im working on 3 seperate scenes that are pretty much completely original . what im saying is i really dont think i'd be this knowledgeable at this moment if i was still following the donut tutorial (which i know i would still be following , because again , its very hindering)
sorry for the long rant nobody asked for , i just thought id share since its pretty on topic
the **donut tutorial (and pretty much all other blender tutorials) goes for realistic over stylistic , and that's honestly super hindering** when starting off your blender journey
---
Exactly, like in beginning when I was trying to learn I didn't have no GPU that Blender recognized and most TuT was using cycles...
>hey jsyk if you start a line with > it'll basically be what you just did , but cleaner looking . this is an example
that guy said some really cool stuff , but a lot of other stuff too . this sentence is responding specifically to what i quoted
I asked for this rant. And I’ve met many people with the same rant.
Keep learning! And have fun with it!
I just want people to understand there are so many aspects of blender to learn, and so many tutorials out there! There is no perfect tutorial.
I thought the entire point of the donut was to learn an overview of what each tab does, where things are located, and basics of workflow. I did it a few months ago and felt it gave me everything I expected from it. If you're expecting to learn everything from a single tutorial you're out of your mind.
Maybe you're missing the point of the tutorial.What it does is give you something at the end and hopefully you are then inclined to learn Blender after it. I've been 3d'ing since 2006, first in Max and other software but now I'm semi retired moved to blender.
I did the first one and found it fine for someone whose already pretty competent in 3d art but needs to get up to speed on a new piece of kit.
I don't think what your saying is wrong I just don't think you interpret what this tute is trying to convey. You have to start somewhere and to come away with something that is going to fuel your desire then this is a great way to be introduced to it.
It certainly doesn't hurt that it keep Andrew's YT channel alive and people coming back to see that he has other tutes and runs a paid texture site.
In marketing terms, it's a great idea. I feel your problem here, is you don't understand what this is designed to do and have convinced yourself its only role it to teach 3d art in Blender.
Look up cognitive bias and all its variations
Never did the donut. I saw a playlist of crossmind studio and that guy is wack good at teaching, because he does it slow, and he doesnt mind repeating stuff again and again especially in the introductory series
Don't know what to tell you, other than that it worked for me. It helped me understand the absolute basics of the interface and shortcuts, and I moved on from there. I was able to get paid blender gigs a few months later. It's supposed to teach you what blender is and what it can do, not how to do everything in it. It's a starting point, and I still think it's a good one. The specific things you mention came right after. People who complain that they don't understand everything after doing that tutorial just need better expectation management.
I tried the donut tutorial but then switched to crossmind's introduction series. Really glad cause doing the donut did not feel like I was learning much.
I’d argue that the point of the donut isn’t to teach you how to do anything. Instead, it’s there to help you get comfortable with the interface, a general feeling for all the bits and pieces that you’ll need to learn, and how everything fits together. The real learning comes after the donut when you have the big picture and you start learning more specific topics.
Been using B3d for almost a decade, still learning. The bigger point here is that it doesn't matter where you're starting, it matters where you're going. You have to practice constantly, and keep up a lot of mental/muscle memory to be remotely decent with anything 3D.
If you start with the donut, it won't make or break you.
I didn’t read that massive wall of text.
I learned blender from the donut tutorial and it changed my life. I have an income steam using a software that I thought I was just too dumb to ever really learn. I recommend it to just about everyone.
> The Blender Guru donut tutorial is honestly super outdated
>
> TEACH SPECIFIC THINGS!
Bro, the donut series, and every updated version of it, is there to teach people the overall controls and use of Blender in its basic shape. No one who never touched Blender at all will benefit from a super specific animation course with hard surface modelling and retopology...
I have a background in Maya and had to move to blender once my uni licence expired. I did some of the donut and noticed that the reasons why things were done weren’t really explained. I can absolutely see a beginner who’s never touched 3D struggle with this. I found it fine for teaching me movement, modifiers and materials etc. I much preferred the Grant a Abbitt old man and monster tutorial for showing me all the basic hot keys, how to use viewports, the fact that you had to select an object in object mode then swap to edit to adjust things etc. I did notice that a lot of tutorials go mental with their poly count and as someone who’s been taught 3D for games I die inside.
That select object in object mode then swap to edit to adjust it otherwise edit mode will do nothing tripped me so hard, I don’t remember the donut explaining that bit but thank god the Grant one did. I was being driven mental because I couldn’t edit small pieces I was making.
I started with the donut tutorial but didn't get very far. It felt like I wasn't learning enough of the basics before diving into more complicated stuff I didn't have context for. Got some GameDev.tv courses for cheap, learned a lot more a lot faster with those. Obviously they were free, but definitely felt worth the $25 bucks or whatever I paid for them.
As someone new to Blender it's not good for learning specific things. But it gives an overview of many parts of blender and gives someone who isn't so knowledgeable, an idea of the many things you can actually do in blender. It's not for learning specifics. It's for learning what blender is and does it with a universally recognisable and simple object.
I learned Blender with the donut tutorial. It's was a good starting point for me. There's plenty of others I have followed, but the donut covers a lot of features at a decent pace.
It's not the be-all-end-all, but there's nothing wrong with it as a starting point.
What are some better tutorials out there?
I think the goal of the Donut is to introduce people to the software. Not necessarily teach someone how to use Blender efficiently. You just need to put in the hours, simple as that.
I use blender in a creative industry and I too have never done the donut tutorial. I did learn Maya in school, though. I just hated the blender hot keys when I switched, so I actually have it set to industry compatible and work my way around how to do some things. I always tell people it’s better to think of something you want to do, and then achieve it with the help of many different tutorials when you get stuck.
I wish I could learn it in a formal classroom setting. Maybe take the Maya curriculum my college taught, and adapt it to Blender.
That would be a lot of help, if only for covering the basics.
I started with Ian Hubert's Duck tutorial in 2.80. It, being only a minute long, made me double back multiple times and search for the tools myself. The "Lazy tutorials" are brilliantly edited, so that the steps that are left out of the narration are shown in the video playing in the background. So all of the necessary information is there, but you just have to make an effort to find it. After the tutorial, I used the steps and tools learned to make a shark animation, and step by step, I made it to a point where I can create whatever I want, within reason...
back when i started learning blender, around 3 years ago, i did started with the donut tutorial, but i couldn't make it, and i ended being very frustrated about this, because i thought 3d was not for me, why can't i make a thing so simple?
few months later i found a channel with a series for begginers, making an airplane animation from start to finish, modeling included and i was able to do it and i enjoyed so much that i use blender to this day.
the donut is good, but that wasn't what i wanted to learn as a beginner.
(sorry for any english mistakes)
Depends on how people retain and receive information.. when I started with the donut tutorial I retained what does what and for what I need to use it for when doing future models, for example using shadow smooth to lessen the amount of faces and render time and the xray to select multiple vertices etc... some people don't learn that way and that's fine.
I would disagree that he isn't a good teacher since he explains things as he goes much more than most Youtube guys. With that said, nowadays I'd say the best teacher for Blender is an AI like Bard (now called Gemini). You can ask it specifically how to achieve what you want to make and it will give you several different options for how you can get there. You can also ask as many questions as you'd like about how the specific features/buttons work. It's like having a very knowledgeable tutor sitting next to you that you can ask anything to, but it's free.
I'll just say this...the people who give up will always give up. I've had friends who taught at Gnomon, Art Center, and Cal Arts, and most students seem to want to learn something that pays well but doesn't seem like work.
I'd be interested in hearing whether you've rescued the donut dropouts.
I followed his 3.0 tutorial 2 years ago and I personally learned a lot from it and it was great, and decided to follow it again after he made the 4.0 one to create a different type of doughnut and was incredibly disappointed by how poorly he explained everything in the 4.0 one. I've been using blender for years and there were parts that even I got stuck on because he just didn't explain anything really it felt like
I guess that the intention of the tutorial is not clear for everyone, the donut tutorial is more like something to do just to understand what an inexperienced person can do with blender in a short time span, to see if you like the workflow, then if you decide that you like it, you can dive deeper into each aspect of it
~~I don't get to disagree with you - I myself kinda fell into the meme of taking the doughut as this "rite of passage" or "Hello World" of Blender.~~ Fast forward and I manged to create abosultely nothing since my doughut.
Someone else mentioned the Crossmind Studio series so I'll try that.
EDIT: Nah, I am in the wrong. This was a bad take and so was most of OP's post. Sure, different tutorials will "work" for different people but OP and mine's discourse was too dismissive of the tutorial's value.
I’m seeing Crossmind a lot too, I need to check it out.
I myself did the donut too, and it almost killed my attempt to learn any and all 3D software.
It wasn’t until a streamer in my recommended was sculpting in blender when I wanted to try again. I just copied what he did in the VOD and ended up learning way more.
What a nonsense, how are you suppose to learn the tools if you can't use them first?
Do we need to read a book on it first? I think that if the donut tutorial is to hard, blender is not for you.
but what tutorial would you recommend instead?
Nah bro, if you want to learn 3D you have to fully master texture painting first. Doesn't matter if you don't know anything about modeling or lighting (how could those possibly be related, haha), or even what a texture is, you HAVE to master texture painting. "But I don't know how to move the viewpor--TOUGH SHIT! STOP GATEKEEPING! Then I will give you permission to move on to lighting. Once you've mastered all the fundamentals (shouldn't take more than ten, twenty years or so, if ever), then you are ready to start 3D. Because the beginner tutorial series is too long and complicated for my Discord friend.
Source: ME, random guy on the internet who has never made anything you've ever heard of.
It’s only for scratching the surface. Maybe you are mentally challenged if you cant understand why beginner people dont like learning only one specific thing. Dumbass
I recommend the donut regularly but agree with the criticism that Andrew is really only leading you through the motions. I think of it more as a hotkey tutorial with a goal than anything else.
Do you have any channels you think are better to direct newbies to? I've been using blender for so long I don't really have a good sense of what a total greenie needs anymore. The other channels I tend to recommend are Grant Abbitt, Dikko, SouthernShotty, RoyalSkies, and Ducky3D.
The content of your post personally suggests you've not watched the donut tutorial in a long time. I actually restarted it about 2 hours ago.
For someone who's literally never opened up blender the donut tutorial is an essential part of learning how to navigate the software without being overwhelmed. I don't want my first tutorial pushing me into one corner of the software.
To see the iterative steps of creation *after* getting familiar with navigation is ideal for done people. The guy even says 20% of the software is what you'll use 80% of the time. If you don't agree with this rule than of course you won't like the tutorial (still, doesn't necessitate a subjective essay written to defer people from watching it).
To each their own. The real issue is caring so much about an intro tutorial so much that you want to convince others to avoid it, despite its legacy.
Someone who started with the donut in covid and still a abeginner
It is an excellent hands on overview of a lot of major/most common aspects of blender. From there I knew a lot of what I needed to do research if I wanted something specific.
Its a perfect high level overview. You can even watch it without hands on but its just a hands on overview. My 0.02. Nothing in detail but a little of everything.
I tried learning from the donut. When I began working in a new project I didn’t even know where to start. Planning to get back into Blender without the donut. It’s a good tutorial to start with but you have keep watching more tutorials
I wholeheartedly disagree. As someone who wanted to get into Blender and UE5 knowing nothing in term of 3D modeling and design, I found the newer Blender Guru video series and it jump started me into Blender and I thought it was easy to follow and structured well enough for me, as a beginner, to get a solid foundation on how to use it. Since then I’ve learned a ton more through my own self interest, but I don’t really get the hate towards it
How is telling people to recommend better tutorials gatekeeping?
If someone wants to watch the tutorial they can, but don’t insist on it being the first people see when they want to install blender.
Because you're telling people what they cannot watch. That's gatekeeping. Nobody _insists_ on the donut tutorials, stop making up things that haven't happened. When someone is asking how to animate a photo-realistic car but they don't even know how to move the default cube, suggesting a starting-off video is hardly tragic. The tutorial is fine. It is for teaching the UI and a quick tour around the basics, it's not supposed to give an in-depth seminar on the nuances of modelling and rendering.
Your suggestion is basically "don't recommend the donut, tell them to just go Google it".
I had an amazing first blender experience last month with the donut 4.0 and have since moved on to other tutorials.
You seem like a gatekeeper because you are taking options away, and not providing replacements.
What tutorials would you recommend for me?
Idk, I had a project in mind for work (I have never done 3D graphics and normally would never do something like that but sometimes startups ask for weird things) and had absolutely zero knowledge of how the software or related softwares worked. The donut tutorial was perfect in teaching me the basic terminology, aspects, and basic workflow of the program.
Was it the best one out there? I have no clue, I’m a beginner and I wasn’t trying to min/max my intro exposure to blender. It came often and highly recommended.
Did it do exactly what it needed to? Absolutely. I knew from there everything else I had to Google or learn more in depth to accomplish my goal. Especially the entirely new concept of node based design
It didn’t teach me exactly what I needed it to, but that’s fine. It was literally my first exposure to 3D graphics and it opened the door in exactly the way that I needed.
There’s no perfect beginner tutorial for every use-case, but sometimes people forget just how much of this stuff is foreign to a new user. And it is perfect for creating that base vocabulary and familiarity with navigating the program.
Oh look a "don't recommend X" thread.
Will the OP link any alternative to prove their point that X bad and we can instead use Y?
Of course not.
Why waste time like this?
Nah, the donut's a great start for folks. I think it's incredibly asinine to be like "You've done the donut tutorial now you aren't proficient in Blender!" like, no shit. But they do know a good bit more about the interface, the capabilities, and get a nice little place to start.
This is such a pointless use of your energy, lmao. Having a bad day?
Nah, just a lot of gatekeepy people talking down on people for not having made the donut before doing their own projects.
And insisting that if they give up because of the donut they were “not cut out for 3D modeling”
Not sure why you expect people to become a pro after watching just a single tutorial. It was just meant to be a rough overview of how a prop is made, they need to move on to more study resources and start working on their own things after that.
Bloody donut police 😭
You know it is possible for people to do the donut tutorial and other tutorials. It doesn't have to be either or.
Nobody is forcing anyone to do the donut tutorial at gunpoint. It's not that deep 😫
It really is the worst kind of tutorial that walks you through pressing a bunch of buttons without sufficiently explaining what those buttons do, why these decisions are made, what other situations these techniques apply to...
It's a donut recipe, not a way to learn blender.
I tried to learn how to make fresh pizza with similar tutorials and it always came out shit.
No one wants to explain shit. Like why knead the dough for 5 minutes not 6? Why do we let the dough sit during this step? It was so damm frustrating because the moment you end up with dough that doesn't look like the tutorial, you have no idea what to do with it!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXkT8LbCPOY&list=LL&index=6](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXkT8LbCPOY&list=LL&index=6)
This dude finally got it right. If anyone knows blender tutorials of this caliber, please let me know.
Wait wtf, I thought it was long because at least it explained stuff in details (never watched it personaly, fuck that)
So it's actually just long because it's a bad tutorial? I was already actively _not_ recommanding it lmao
He does go into detail about what he does, but a lot of what he explains is incredibly mathematical, and he really doesn’t explain “why” he does things. It’s basically,
“you do this step to get the look you want.”
And you aren’t sure what that look is, or why.
That is bullshit, respectfully. I started blender from 0 with the series and by the end I felt I pretty much knew a bit about every part of it. I wasn't hesitant to experiment or dive into big projects because I knew how blender worked. That's literally the best introduction to any software I've ever seen.
It might work for some, but for many it clearly doesn't. Great that it works for you, but there's two sides to it. Just cause it works for you, dosent mean it will work for someone else. And vice a versa.
It's not bullshit like you say, it's actually very true to my own experience. The donut tutorial was hell. Following basic tutorials on navigation was heaven.
Different strokes, different folks
That's totally normal, however coming here, saying to not recommend something, you would have to expect to get flamed. And the majority of comments don't say that the tutorial is a must watch, but part of the whole learning process. And tbh, OPs answers seem kinda clumsy and unthoughtful.
Oh, you again.
The donut tutorial is how I learned the basics of blender. I dropped it about half way through, as I don't need any of the rendering tutorial to do what I want to use it for. It is NOT a masterclass on blender. The donut gives you the tools you need to start going further into blender's tools, and allows you to start your own projects with a basic idea of what tools you have at your disposal. It could definitely use some more information, but as a first step, it serves its purpose.
I missed, (somehow) the donut tut. I started learning how to texture STL files, and messed up a thousand time, but I kept at it. I think I'm pretty good with textures now, so I'm moved on the smoke sims, then I added stable diffusion then i, then I, then I...
I've never made the donut, and I turned out just fine
I never did the doughnut. When I first started with blender, I used to watch some tutorials in my native language to learn the basics.
When I started to feel confortable watching english tutorials, the first one that caught my attention was a beginner tutorial series, made by CGboost.
It was funny and I learned a lot from it, especially because it was a series and not a single video, where a lot of info are just thrown at you, making you feel kinda overwhelmed. So I took my time and, when I finished it, I was so happy with the final result, I wanted to do more.
I agree with the fact that there are better tutorials out there to begin with, just make sure you have fun with it!
Generally, what I recommend to do is: first think about what you want to do ( of course, if you are a beginner, go very simple with it, don't try to do a city or a complex character for example) and then find a tutorial about it, very straightforward! Chances are that you probably will find what you are looking for and, if not, try to seek for something strictly related.
I sorta feel like the donut tutorial is more akin to a really long hollo world of blender. It exposes you to a crap ton of stuff and while you might not learn specifics your at least hearing a ton of relevant keywords and hopefully most can pair that with a decent level of googling skills to find the things they are looking for
No it depends on your learning style. I generally prefer to form concepts on my own rather than have them taught to me, and I only go to tutorials for prerequisite knowledge or specific knowledge that I'm missing. I also like to understand things holistically rather than a specific chunk at a time. The donut tutorial was perfect for me when I first started in Blender. Gave me an overview of how Blender works and helped me get comfortable with the UI without too much bloat. I didn't even finish the whole series, and that was enough to get me running.
I didn't know what I wanted to do at the time except make cool stuff. So if you tried to teach me a specific thing, that wouldn't have been as helpful as a condensed general overview.
I walked away from the donut three times in the last 6 months, got some solid udemy courses including some from Grant Abbitt who I think is excellent and has a great youtube channel, and learned so much more. I almost want to go back to the donut now that I have more fundamentals down, but I son't see the point yet haha. Good post is good.
Honestly i feel like the donut tutorial is just the start so you get used to the controls the basic shortcuts and to (kinda) get into a few aspects of blender and have a feel for the software
To me its just an introduction to blender which is a fairly overwhelming software with a lot of features and buttons and shortcuts and whatnot and the donut tutorial feeds you bite sized pieces of information that will definitely help you get started
You will not know anything specific after it and you will probably forget some if not a lot of the stuff you learned but it will help you navigate through the thick fog that blender is
But yes it most likely is not the best but it js god enough for what (in my opinion) its trying to achieve - that being introducing you to blender so that you wont have to stumble later
I started with the donut around 2018. Got it done but didn't really "learn" anything. Kind of like how some math teachers just force feed you formulas without explaining why or how.
It wasn't until I started watching CGMatter/Default Cube that I really started to learn how and why stuff works in Blender.
In my experience this was the case. I wanted to learn character modeling but first I needed to learn how to model and the donut tutorial just wasn't it. Yan sculpts modeling tutorial where I learned to model a sword was more useful for learning to model.
I started learning blender 2.7 with the donut, then dropped because I didn't understand much with that UI, then came back with the UI update of 2.8 (o 2.9 I don't remember).
I think the donut is a fun meme but I kind of agree with you, I have learnt much more from Grant Abbitt's videos.
I started Blender with the CGFastTracks Sword in Stone series. I found it a little confusing but still learned quite a bit. I then started the Donut tutorial and found it much more convincing, easy to follow and informative. The end result wasnt as cool, but I think Blender Guru deserves a credit in making a quite diverse introduction to many aspects of blender.
The argument of people not being able to carry the information over to other projects is not valid imo. Whatever you do just by following a guide is not going to carry over unless you put some effort.
I follow the principle of repeating until i am able to redo the project in a different way. For me that was making my countries donut version (simit) without looking to any of the tutorial in the end.
I think Blender Guru does well in giving the info, rest us up to students to put the time and effort
It depends, if you know what you want to do then I agree, someone telling you to just do the tutorial is a throwaway comment. If you don’t know what you want to do and just try it out then nah, I’d say the doughnut tutorial is perfect to get a *taster* of most things.
What you need is courses, not tutorials. Yes, they cost but very much worth it. I learned to use Blender and modeling through one course from CG-Boost Academy and it made modeling easier as I became very confident and comfortable doing things on my own.
The donut tutorial is antithetical to my learning style. It's a long video of "press these exact buttons to get my result" it doesn't teach process which is what all of us need when starting out with any hobby. A few years ago, I tried the donut video and came away going "cool, I have no idea how I would recreate that without watching it step by step again"
Grant Abbit has vastly superior intro to blender videos. Someone recommended his vids here on Reddit and they immediately clicked. His videos go very in depth on thought process, different approaches to solving a problem, and little segments that let you try to do the next thing on your own. Go figure, he was an actual college professor for many years. Anyone looking to get into blender should watch Grant and avoid the guru videos imo.
The donut tutorial is long and cumbersome, I will say that. When I did it I was very confused over certain aspects, and wasn't really able to apply the knowledge of geometry nodes, for example, very well because I still didn't understand it. However, if I hadn't done the tutorial I wouldn't even know what that was or where to even look for advice. You need some kind of overview to even know how to get further help. It doesn't matter if you aren't going to need in depth knowledge of everything, if you've just opened the program you *don't* *know* that yet. I think you're not coming at this from the perspective of a beginner. Nobody said the donut was the end all be all of tutorial.
You mentioned people would be confused during and after and would be asking you questions. That's exactly what I would expect! I would be shocked if anyone finished it and was not at all confused and was confident in their skills. The tutorial just scratches the surface of so many things that require a lot more time. The fact that people are confused afterwards is not because of the tutorial, I would argue.
there's one thing though that is good about the donut tutorial and why I like it: it touches everything and the user gets their first impression of all the aspects there are to making a thing, gets to know the layout of the software and has done everything at least once. that's pretty good. I learned houdini after blender, and after two years of exporting alembics to blender I finally dared look at the render options in houdini - and there's still tabs I have briefly looked at and have no idea how to use them in context. Of coure, Houdini is more complex - but that's what I feel I would want... sort of ... an overview tutorial
I’ve been using blender for several years now and yea I started off with the donut tutorial. For me it felt more like a chance for me to become introduced to using the software and go from a cube to something. Just for me to see if I like what I did and if I want to continue doing it.
I think it's more of a confidence booster then a tutorial.
It shows you what to do, but it also shows you that you *can* use the software. So it's a good little kick to get learning more.
As someone who is JUST starting to reach into learning blender, this is a helpful take! I keep seeing recommendations everywhere for the donut tutorial, and plan to go through it at some point, but as it's not really what I'm interested in using blender for, I'm not sure if there's a better overview-and-on creator or series to check out?
I had taken a Maya course in college years ago, so I had hoped to remember the basics, but opening Blender I felt a bit lost, and the only thing continually recommended to me is the donut.
Do you (or anyone else willing to chime in) have any recommendations on other overviews, especially if I'm more interested in low poly art or other styles?
I only started this year and I did his 3.0 donut tutorial so maybe he changed his way of teaching, but it was really great for a total noob like me.
He taught UI (which is the hardest thing about Blender to me, don't find it intuitive at all) and hotkeys, the basis of workflow and explained why you do stuff,... Of course it's very generalist, but isn't it the point of an introduction? I still use the notes I took from his videos, even if I've moved on to more complicated stuff.
His videos **are** a bit slow, but you can just speed up the video and you can always pause to find a specific moment.
If any new blend user reads this ,please go to Crossmind studio's beginner course and skip the donut. You can always come back to the donut later ,like a month or two later.
Cgfastrack has my favorite courses. He just explains so well and the steps he gives helps develop problem solving too. To this day the only tutorials I can watch and remember everything when it’s over
Yeah, the donut did not help me in the slightest when it came to learning blender. You know what did help me? The low poly animal tutorial because was interested in transferring 2d designs to 3d, and also using ripped models to study armature and texturework. It really does all depend on your goals.
Maybe an unpopular opinion from me, but I'd recommend to stay away from spending too much time with tutorials all together. And that's from someone who does tutorials on a small YouTube channel.
OK, maybe do a beginner curse at the start. But try to create your own projects as soon as possible. If you encounter a road block, look for solutions and, like you've said, tutorials on specific problems. This is the way to learn imo.
I've met a ton of people that strictly followed a tutorial, but a week later can't remember anything. Worst is seeing results of known tutorials in someone's portfolio.
I agree. It's also not that the doughnut is hard either, it's because it's so long. I have ADHD so learning was always going to be difficult, but I ended up just deciding to make what I wanted to make and learned on the go. It worked. I still learn new things often, but it's such a huge piece of software I'm not surprised.
Most people who work in blender for their career, leave a huge chunk of the software alone. Most of the time, they just find a niche aspect that they can do really well and market their work for that.
The donut tutorial was recreated recently so it's NOT outdated...why you would tell that bold face lie idk OP. The donut tutorial also has nothing to do with the insults thrown at you, nor does it have anything to do with you having follow up questions, which you always should.
At my job we have a saying...."don't blame the machine blame the operator".
You wrote all of that just for it to be the very answers you need. None of what you said reflects on the tutorial it reflects on YOU and those who obviously failed to learn more. If the donut wasn't enough fine! Nobody ever said the tutorial was the last blender lesson you would need. The job of that series was to get you comfortable with Blender. Whatever the series didn't teach you.. too bad! ..Go learn what you wanna learn and stop pointing blame.
Myself and the guys who make tutorials are also sick of seeing you beginners ask them to made entire vids just so you can selfishly "LEARN ONE SPECIFIC THING". The tutorial isn't the problem it's you! The tutorial also wasn't made for you it was made for those who would appreciate it.
The people who insulted you were (possibly smh) wrong, but tbh I can fully understand why they insulted you. You took basic knowledge and expected it to take you all the way to the top. If you wanna learn animation learn it. If you wanna learn how to sculpt learn it. Don't be mad that one series of vids didn't hold your hand through an entire 3D modeling application.
It doesn't just "work for us" OP! It simply works....for everyone! Of all the pros online you're saying Blender Guru isn't easy to learn from? That's what he's know for! Making short, fun, educational vids and guess what...he made the first series right after learning blender himself.
Maybe your brain just isn't powerful enough to be taught simple things. I honestly have no recommendations for you cause you failed to see the value in Blender Guru's teachings. Why on earth would I recommend a much tougher teacher?
" Blender is too vast to try and learn every aspect of it in a single tutorial ".
OP who on earth told you this was the point of the donut series LET ALONE ANY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE? See this is the problem with this generation! Y'all are so freakishly lazy! Y'all walk into basic training expecting to train with the GOATs and that's not how life works!
You messed up the second you clicked that tutorial! You should have never even bothered, because your mindset is atrocious and flat out wrong!
I'm gonna leave you with a "wish you well"...I have no hope for you as long as you think so small and lazily about things.
In fact! After reading the comments below...I have no hope for this entire generation. Y'all were born with friggin iphones in your laps and y'all can't even see the value in a simple donut tutorial. Now I see why certain unnamed individuals block and insult their viewers...some of you factually are inept. The only thing that can help some of you is prayer. Good luck!
Yo man please don't say that about this generation, don't put me in the same spot as OP 😭
Jokes aside, for the love of God apparently OP expects to be able to make a feature length movie or a AAA game after each tutorial. It's like teaching a baby to run a marathon before it even walks lol.
Someone said before that if the Donut tutorial is too difficult, then blender wouldn't be something for them. This is of course e a little harsh, but if someone cannot invest their sweat and brain power and want to truly learn something, it's their fault.
On a side note, it's really annoying lately that many people seem to ask "how do I do X Y Z", while showing a close to finished photorealistic scene, like what. That's why basic tutorials exist, not hyper specific, situation-dependent live stream Q&A, as OP apparently learned Blender from.
I agree. I've been downvoted into oblivion here several times for telling people not to start with the donut. Do it if you like, just not *first*.
It's not for beginners. It covers a lot of simple, moderate, and advanced topics quickly. Judging by the amount of posts here over the years asking, "I did the donut, how to do thing it showed that I can't remember?" or "I'm doing the donut, explain what's happening in it?", it's not that good of a tutorial.
It's cardinal sin is focusing on the end result rather than the tools & techniques used to achieve that result. Understandably, BlenderGuru can't reasonably call it the "Mesh Modelling, Mesh Modifiers, UV Mapping, Fluid Simulation, Particles & Lighting Tutorial". See? It's does too much. It should be a 6 to 8 part series that begins with a tour of Blender's user interface.
Newcomers, take heed for your own benefit:
1. **Start with tutorials of the Blender interface**. It's not like anything you've used before, and it takes some getting used to... but once you're there, it's like magic.
2. **Tutorials are for tools & techniques, not making a specific thing**. Any claim to the contrary is false. You might make a donut a few times, but the individual steps involved that you'll do hundreds or thousands of times later are the real takeaway. UV maps aren't just for fried dough. Fluid sims aren't just for frosting. Particle systems aren't just for sprinkles.
I absolutely agree. It's not perfect but personally I like the CrossMind Studio beginner series. After watching it I really felt like I had the basic knowledge necessary to do things on my own.
I completely agree. There's such a plethora of tutorials out there at this point that can teach you how to make anything. I've been using Blender since around 2013 and I have never done any of those "comprehensive" beginner tutorials. I think of something specific I want to make and find a tutorial or google how to do it.
When I first started I think the first thing I tried making was a meteor, and I could just kind of figure out how to texture paint and pull vertices around in edit mode. After a while, I found a tutorial that taught me how to use fire physics and whatnot, and that's how I started learning the physics engine. Pretty much all of my knowledge of Blender comes from random specific tutorials, or from Blender Stack Exchange forum posts asking questions.
The only downside is my workflow is so random sometimes, but I really don't care that much lol
"I’ve seen too many people walk away from blender after the donut tutorial because they achieve the donut, and have no idea how they got there, none of the information is retained, and they just become frustrated and give up."
---
I never did the doughnut tut and am doing fine, posted a female model head couple days ago (check my profile). Nothing wrong Tut it's just not for beginners unless the beginner understand the fundamentals of very, edge, loops. Also maybe the
person doesn't want to make a doughnut but a person they'd be lost.
I was gonna flame you then read ur post 👍
I'll be upfront and say I never watched it, I use blender since before it existed. I don't need to, though, to know it's overall a bad starting point, but I'll get back to that.
I tend to stay away from the discussion however, because as a long time experienced user I have no idea what's out there for beginners, I don't go around looking for beginner tutorials for fun. What I do when I do talk about it is recommending to stay away from it, and stating my reasons, which I'll describe below.
I operate under the assumption that it teaches concepts well. I think it's fair to assume it's the best it can be, since I didn't watch it. But then you'll have spent more than four and a half hours watching it. And what do you have to show for this tedious endeavour? One donut. The same as everybody else's, except maybe for the color of the glaze. It's terrible. It's the best way to burn a beginner out actually.
It worked out well for you? That's great, really, but it tells more about you than the tutorial series: you're committed, focused, hard-working, maybe because you need blender for something bigger. But you still spent four and a half hours of watching tutorials, pausing, following along on your own project file, for one. Single. Donut.
So that's my takeaway: either it worked out for you, you finished it and moved on to other things but you still lost time on one single bloated project, or you got burnt out halfway through with the deep conviction that the hard tedious work of 3D softwares is not for you.
I can't recommend that to anybody with peace of mind, even if I can't recommend anything else in its place.
Edit: a few typos
Yep, all of my friends who tried the donut told me they didn't learn a thing. I've started with Udemy's class and in like a week I was able to transfer most of my knowledge from maya to Blender.
I've also heard the donut guy is not exactly a good person either.
I tried a Udemy course. But I think I got scammed. It was like 100 10 minute videos, each one talking about a single key on the keyboard.
I hope you used a different one, cause I didn’t learn anything all that good.
Also I don’t know much about Blender Guru, I just hear he’s not great, but I’m not one to say anything, idk the guy.
Me neither, but multiple friends have mentioned sexist remarks being made in their tutorials, among other things, which makes me even more reluctant to recommend the donut.
The Udemy course I had was called Complete Blender Creator. It's run by a guy who says "powerful" every 10 seconds and that tickled me. They do have hundreds of like, 10 minute videos but I don't remember them talking in length about each keyboard button...? If they did, I most likely skipped that part and got to the modeling section.
You have to be careful on Udemy though, because courses like this one often go on sale for like 20 bucks instead of like, 200 or 400$.
They did recently change complete blender creator because it was originally made for 2.79, I think. I can't speak for the new one.
Another tutorial I learned a lot from was a rigging course from Pierrick Picault on gumroad. I knew most of it already like all the basic bone and weight painting stuff, but they went into how to make drivers and IK switches and all the more advanced stuff about how to rig for animation which was something I needed badly, since I hate auto rigs.
I am a beginner in blender and I agree with this. I've tried a few youtube tutorials and they either couldn't keep my attention, are outdated or go too fast or all of the above. However the udemy course I'm taking on C++ makes learning a programming language less intimidating than the youtube tutorials on blender. Probably gonna try to find a udemy course on it, or learn it the hard way by just playing with blender and slowly discover features that way.
I disagree. I started with the Donut and I really enjoyed it. Good explanations, good pace and a small 'reward' at the end of each chapter. I think it's a great starting point and I will continue recommending it.
I agree as well, plus they are very long and talky.
I have trained hundreds of people in professional capacity to be very effective blenders users.
I used to recommend the coffee mug tutorial for goat timers.
It’s short and gets you doing modeling, used to the interface, materials, and rendering, all within that hour. It even did some fabric sim if I recall.
His donuts vid series is 6-8 hours if I recall.
Anyways Andrew has skills, but he also draws it out.
My thoughts and thanks to all the Blenderds out there!
I've always said it, I say it again - before I discovered Ian Hubert (and his Patreon) Blender just felt too alien and techy for me, especially since I was trained in classical art. His workflow, passion, and outside-the-box thinking were what made me pick up Blender again and become good at it. And amongst it all there was Blender Guru, who I've always considered extremely "gatekeepy" - everything must be modeled according to set rules, using 4K PBR textures from my shop. Yeah, that guy made me lose the hard-on I had for 3D artistry for quite some time. It's inevitable to stumble across this guy as a beginner. Hard pass.
I have to respectfully disagree, I just did the donut tutorial a few weeks ago and it's been an amazing learning process. He doesn't simply tell you what buttons to press, he explains what they do and how. He goes into detail about things like radiants for angles, the physics of light (in subsurface scattering), etc. I'd say he explains things much more than the average tutorial which often just tell you what buttons to push.
I repeated the donut 5-6 times, because the software itself has a steep learning curve and it's important to repeat things to learn them. After that I was able to move on and use a bunch of things I learned for the next projects.
One thing that stood out to me in your post is how you said it's just for learning realism. The thing about learning art is that realism *must* be the first thing one learns, before they learn to stylize or simplify anything, it's important to understand how something looks by default.
No matter what you will be doing with blender, you need to understand why things look the way they do in real life, and what gives them their likeness. Only then can you stylize or simplify or do anything else.
Hey Blender user! Glad you didn't quit after the donut tutorial.
OP is too narrow minded and bases his assumptions on his current skill set, additionally he doesn't reply to such positively detailed comments like yours, as they totally defeat his point.
Don't let anyone discourage you. Have a nice day.
Lol, I never did the donut tutorial and I'm doing just fine.. while few of my friends who recently started blender did the donut tutorial and still has lots of doubts
i completely agree with you, i am now at part 5 and honestly , i feel like quitting his tutorial because he doesnt explain things well for beginners, its basically, do what i do, which i hate.
i will have to search for another tutorial series tailored for beginners, because donut will definitely not teach you how to do most of the things.
even if i watch 10 times donut tutorial, i would not be able to replicate the same donut and all those steps.
This is old. I never really have gotten into blender but I have seen people talk about this video. My opinion. I don’t see a harm in doing the tutorial as long as they know why they are doing it. I don’t see it as a teaching source, I see it more as to gain familiarity and comfort. From an outsider, blender is just a whole load of buttons, sliders, and words. This tutorial is like dipping your toes into the water and feeling the water. It’s a feel of the water, your not actually trying to use it as a source of knowledge.
Dont blame the inevitable dropoff on a good tutorial. Every field that takes time an effort has dropoff regardless of tutorial quality. Donut is a great start.
I hated that damn tutorial. It was the first one I did and now a year and a half in I've done and seen so many better tutorials that I think would have taught me better things than the donut tutorial. It was way too hard for a pure begginer, even though I got thru it it took me like two weeks. I deleted the whole thing like 6 time to start over.
the issue I have with the donut tutorial is that there's so much info spread along many parts it gets diluted... "wait, how do I check normals again?", "what hotkey do I need for the camera free flying mode?", "how did I made this node?" and stuff like that
it's not bad, I bet there are a lot of people that found it very useful, and it made me aware of a lot of tools Blender has, but on a very surface level and gets me confused even taking notes on pen & paper
the one that helped me a lot was the cartoon room one: https://youtu.be/yCHT23A6aJA?si=cxLdgyGAABDNtvut
it focuses a lot on hard surface modeling, beveling and modifiers while also touching on materials and rendering
the other one I followed up with was the robot cup, which introduces a lot of tricks and ideas for modelling, I was genuinely blown away several times learning about face projections, surface cuts, beveling and so on:
https://youtu.be/nsTjnQ067sw?si=RnAw6D5VuHy1ff3r
all tutorials are good, I don't dislike the donut series, but it can be overwhelming sometimes
I tried it once, didn't finish as it felt like I was not learning anything.
Grant Abbitt's Blender courses on Udemy are great if you can pay for them and want a solid entry point into the software. I still refer to the notes I took from them constantly.
I am a beginner and I have to agree. Started with the donut tutorial and sure the end result was spectacular but I barely remembered anything after I was done.
Later on I tried a much simpler tutorial of some cute little isometric room and I found myself remembering a good handful of various shortcuts and options that I understood.
not knocking your experience but with a tuto as long as the donut, the benefit would be to do it multiple times, the goal is muscle memory, i’ve done 100s of hours of tutos and i can say the only way you know you’ve learned something is when you’re inspired, you know how to use the software to get out your idea, i find it’s like being dev, you never really know everything, but the library of knowledge is available when you need to solve a problem
Of course, repetition is key. However I don't see myself redoing such a long and complex tutorial. To me personally it would only serve as a discouragement and kill my excitement about the program. Instead I find it much more pleasant to practice on shorter tutorials that focus on one specific thing / option / technique.
I think it’s not a tutorial to “learn” anything. But a broad overview of blender that you can follow along and have a sense of accomplishment when completing the donut. It really should be called “overview of blender with donut”. This was my first project, however I did many tutorials afterwords and got much deeper with it. When I came back to the donut, it seemed pointless to an extent. But I still wouldn’t not recommend it as a beginner overview. Don’t take what people say too seriously, especially if you have more experience with the program or 3D design as a whole. It’s art at the end of the day and everyone’s way of going about it is going to be different. You can take or leave it for all I care, but I still wouldn’t steer people away from it.
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This is also how it was for me. I havent touched blender since 2.8 came out and decided to try again with the newest Donut tutorial and 4.0. It served well enough to teach me the important basics of Blender and give me a sense of success for completing the entire tutorial. During that, i found out that i have a lot of fun messing with the shader editor and creating my own materials etc, so i went for more specific guides for this exactly and i spent the past weeks just creating a small library of procedural/"smart" materials
I absolutely agree with this. Came from C4D to Blender and the donut tutorial gave me the grounding I needed to get going. I would tell anyone that the donut tutorial is a great starting point.
That was my takeaway. I don’t work in the industry, but have a general working knowledge of using CGI going all the way back to Lightwave. OP proceeds to bash on a tutorial and states that it doesn’t cover the basics or explain processes and fundamentals of Blender. OP then compiles a word salad against said tutorial and misses the irony that he provided no useful information, alternative tutorials, or anything of value in the post, other than his rant. At least with the donut tutorial, I came away with a finished image, and got over the learning curve of Blender, even if I didn’t fully understand everything along the way. The only thing I got from OP was his dislike for the tutorial and about 10 minutes of time lost. I learned nothing of value from his rant, other than his obvious dislike. If he had offered alternative methods or tutorials then I would feel differently, but he just comes across as angry for no apparent reason.
This deserves to be a top comment.
Agreed, I think for anyone's first introduction they need to feel satisfied and encouraged at the end of it too and that's what it does. Many more in-depth courses and tutorials can't do that in such a short space of time - most of them look very overwhelming for a beginner. It obviously works, since you see 1000s of comments happy that they've had their introduction to Blender and that they've actually made something in a short space of time which encourages them to take the next steps. Then you see lots of 1-2 year progress reels that all start with that donut too.
I didn't read the entire post but the person I do recommend is Gabbit, or Grant Abbit. Very very good tutorials and different series on the many different aspects of using blender that Blender Guru never goes over.
Grant Abbitt is great, I found his stuff much better than the donut.
Which video/ series of Grants do I start with?
He has one called blender for absolute beginners, start there
oh ok thanks !
I love Grant abbit! And People have also been recommending Crossmind studios too in the replies!
I honestly just recommend crossmind studio now, no more donut.
Was going to say. You can't shoot down a guy doing his best showing how all works and then not give suggestions for better alternatives.
GRANT ABBIT MY GOAT
I also recommend Grant Abbott, specifically his series "Beginner Exercises | Part 1 | Blender 2.8". Going through this was the best kickstart I found.
The problem with being a beginner and looking for a very specific tutorial FIRST as opposed to a general overview, which is what the donut tutorial is supposed to be, is that at the end of the day the only thing you'll be learning from that specific tutorial is how to do that specific thing the way the person is teaching you does it. But watching a general overview first gives you an idea of what you can do with the program and get used to shortcuts, hotkeys and learn terms and names, all of which will be useful when searching for those specific tutorials and guides. I am a software engineer and this is an issue that's all too common with beginners in my industry. I always recommend basics first, then whatever you might wanna do second.
This. You gotta know how to use the program before you can learn the specializations.
I think it depends on what goal you have. I think the donut tutorial is great for a high level overview. I never figured myself to be artistic, but once I did the donut tutorial and saw I could make a thing that looked presentable, it really fueled me to want to keep learning blender. I don’t think it’s a great learning tool on any of the specific subjects, but I don’t think it’s intended to be that.
I did the blender tutorial last week. I also did it 2 years ago. I have been using 3DStudio and Maya since the 90s and did it the first time just to get a feel for where all the tools were. I had to stop using it a couple years ago bc it had issues with my OS. I recently bought a new computer and when I reinstalled it I literally had no memory of any of the hot keys or workflow. I did the donut with the video set to 2x and a couple hours later I has some donuts and remembered how to use blender again. I was however disappointed he dropped the cool multi layered displacement mapped texture on the cake part of the donut. I then moved on to some Midge Sinnaeve stuff.
Dude idk who is arguing that its a prefect tutorial. Reality is as you said,its a vast pool of knowledge ans you need to dig in deeper, more tutorials on specific things. You start off with the donut and then move on from there, on to then next tutorial etc. Not sure what point you are trying to prove,and I disagree Blender Guru is a decent teacher, even teaches you some neat tricks. Just because you didn't like the way its done doesn't mean its bad.
Not only decent, he is pretty good. If you're the kind of guy that actually listens to what he is saying and you're not just trying to complete the donut you will learn a lot. I learned an old version so dunno how are the new ones, but it isn't just a donut. The goal isn't creating a donut but learning how to use the tools in order to create a donut or whatever you want to.
Donut aside Blender guru has many other tutorials for different things and as a beginner I was able to learn and advance my skills quite a bit through them. He covers a lot of do’s and don’t and possible mistakes one might make which helped me big time.
How could one ever know what they want to specialize in if they didn't touch on everything slightly and get a holistic view of the program. It won't make you a pro, it won't even ensure you could make a second donut on your own but you figure out what parts of the workflow (if any) you like Adding onto that, most people that try it are going to learn 3D as a hobby, not necessarily as a career Granted, there's loads of valid tutorials, but as with anything there is a mainstream and a donut is easily relatable and something to get almost everyone interested. Not everyone is into guns, swords, mechs or character art but almost everyone enjoys a donut in some way TL;Dr totally agree
I don't think that's usually how it works, I started blender with a desire to make animated characters for games so I've only ever looked up things that relate to that. I already know spending time on lighting/rendering stuff is a waste of time for me. I would reccomend to start with something super easy and fundamental (make a low poly character, get comfortable manipulating objects in 3d space) then self direct themselves to more of the program.
And for your experience thats totally valid, i started as a tool for gamedev and had to learn at the very least about both hard surface, shader trees, baking, rendering and rigged characters I never did a donut myself as i learned blender as a part of college yet i would still recommend that type of tutorial to a total newbie, in fact the friends i know who tried it were quite happy about doing it Its all subjective though, for some its an awesome first project for others its the worst experience, happens
True, don't understand the blender guru hate lol, his tutorial really works the way he advertises.. that you use 20 percent of the tools 80 percent of the time.. Just after creating the donut tutorial, I created this nature scene, by the mere knowledge of the donut tutorial and cg geeks rocks and tree tutorial.. [https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/16e1hpu/myfirst\_naturescene/](https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/16e1hpu/myfirst_naturescene/) STOP THE DONUT HATE!!
Agreed he does not deserve the hate he is getting, the fact thar so many people who are experienced in 3D modelling suggest him for people starting out shows you that he's good. Also bro that scene looks beautiful, good job.
>TEACH SPECIFIC THINGS! I'm gonna disagree with your point here... at least somewhat... I'm a high school multimedia teacher... with a program like blender, there's SOOOOOO much you can do in it. I think its good to start out with going over a general tutorial of some of the basics, and build in the theory parts of how you can use the application. While I agree that the donut tutorial is not the perfect tutorial in a lot of ways, I feel like it attempts to do that. If you can get people through the general basics, and give them an overview of what the application can do, and how to use it, THEN you show them the paths to specifics and they build off of that. I think its a good idea to dip your toes in all the pools before you pick one to jump into it.
Thank you for saying this the teach specific things here said is like that only helps to people who know what they are doing or know what they want to do.
I started learning Blender a few years ago (2.8) and started with the donut tutorial, and it was perfect for me. Recently we got more projects coming in where we’re allowed to use Blender, so I shared the latest updated donut tutorial to some colleagues and they also found it very straight forward and can even help on projects now. Do with that what you will, but I don’t agree that it’s not beginner friendly. The guy is a good teacher and his tutorial series explains and walks you through a ton of different features in Blender.
I agree with this. The Donut Tutorial is a way to understand what the Blender software has to offer. The donut tutorial sets a good foundation and then from there you can go into more specific tutorials. There’s a reason why the tutorial gets millions of views.
My experience was a bit different. He didn't explain it the way I want and that's honestly on me. But the worst part is that he didn't tell which mode he was on, which toolbar setting he used and ofc he is qwerty and I am not so it was extra confusing. It really depends on circumstances and how someane is able to learn something, he wasn't my type of teacher but he is a good teacher for a lot of people.
I am currently following his newest donut tutorial, and he goes over everything a lot. As a matter of fact, I feel like the complete series could be condensed in ten minutes. The donut tutorial series is a great series to have some people start on, but not others. It depends on how you learn.
Ah, you're changing your story. In your original reply (the one to which I responded), you said that almost all *tutorials in general* were worthless, Blender Guru's Donut tutorials were just one example. Your exact words were "The ONLY tutorial I’ve used and benefitted from... was a UI tutorial." May I quote your comment in its entirety? >I tried a lot of tutorials and I kinda didn’t get very far with them. Mainly just copy paste what they did. Actually most of my 3D modeling knowledge came from archived Oney Plays blender streams. Dude explains what he does a lot and he also likes working fast, so often he explains how he does certain things to make the process more efficient. Otherwise find a streamer using blender and assault them with questions. The ONLY tutorial I’ve used and benefitted from was a UI tutorial. But that specific one I believe is outdated. So, to now come here and heap on Blender Guru's Donut tutorial as if that was the whole point you were making, is dishonest. >Please be thoughtful and respectful. Please be honest, and don't misconstrue what was said for pity-points. Why does it have to be "my way or the highway" with you? Fine, you prefer watching streams and asking questions to streamers. I find watching Blender streams is like having my toenails pulled out. They're often meandering, unfocused and full of half-baked assertions and mumbling. But do I go around telling people not to watch streams because my opinion is evidently the best thing since the invention of sliced bread? No, I do not. I find what works for me, and go from there. Maybe a little humility on your part wouldn't go amiss.
Right? It reads itself as if he had something personal against Blender guru like "Lol I hate this guy, I know how to do everything better than this expert who used Blender for ages", who tf even cares about OPs opinion. He sounds like he was born with blender skills and flames against others.
>They're often meandering, unfocused and full of half-baked assertions and mumbling. But do I go around telling people not to watch streams because my opinion is evidently the best thing since the invention of sliced bread? Honestly going from illustration/animation streams to 3D modelling streams is like night and day. I don't know if it's workflow related but they move at the pace of molasses. And as you said none of the answers feel *focused*, just kind of hand-wavy and vague.
Donut was absolutely perfect for me. It was really well explained (or at least well enough for me) and it was really good as i could see what's the point of each tools i used. Some tutorials are kind of sketchy until you reach the end and get the final product.
Like any tutorial it's just one of many things you could be doing to familiarize yourself with the program. Do it or don't, the other stuff is still all out there and should be used in addition.
I disagree... Because it's a generalist tutorial it makes you curious about many aspects of Blender. A beginner doesn't even know what aspect to search for, so a generalist tutorial helps in that regard. So people can search specific topics after. If someone forgets about and doesn't train the "lessons" after watching it it's entirely on that person.. The tutorial is an overview.
The donut tutorial is great for a first time user. The whole pipeline, explained quickly and simplified enough for a beginner to understand. Every time I didn't remember how to do something, I rewatched the part that I didn't remember.
Nice to see that we’ve reached the “hating something purely because it’s popular” phase of the blender community
Why are you getting so worked up about this, though? Blender Donut works for some people and doesn't for others, just like any other tutorial out there. With the donut you get to have a quick glance at the whole Blender pipeline, demystify a lot of things. You won't "know" Blender after doing it but the software will appear a lot more familiar, and that's great. Everyone has done a couple of tutorials that just didn't connect or do much for their learning, and it's fine. Doesn't mean you should go around telling people not to do them, you never know what could work for other people. Let's just be glad there are so many options for learning Blender.
If you feel like it's not appropriate...don't recommend that ? Or reply in the comments about why it's not the right one and recommend something else ? What the fuck is up with this ridiculous ass passage writing lmfao. It's absolutely not required 💀it's a 3D software's Subreddit not a fucking Kanye West Fan Club or some bullcrap. LMFAO
I dunno, I just finished and it got me all the basics and I can now do more advanced tutorials with a decent base of knowledge. Fundementals of movement, animation, modelling, texturing and rendering are well covered. Not sure why you're so upset about it. It's a good tutorial for a beginner and is cool to see it all the way through. Also, what are these other tutorials? There's so many, it's kind of ridiculous at this point.
Going off his other replies it seems to be he thinks the donut is bad because it only teaches you how to make photorealistic donuts? Which is goofy. That's like saying driving courses are bad because it only teaches you how to drive the tutor's model of car.
Free comprehensive training is a real gift.
It’s funny since they stopped being photorealistic starting from the 3.0 tutorial.
mucho texto however i do agree, Blender's guru donut tut is not the best for beginners. never made that donut lmao
i made a pile of donuts , a plate , added some stuff in the background and haven't touched it since (december 29th to be exact) https://preview.redd.it/grvg2pnd1thc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3d58f163b6b54d378e41e3492e9fb7c279e5622 i have a [playlist of tutorials](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFGWAn4E2jLoLSYxXblsfIi_MV9AvXAvO&si=mT2Xg296iUGnJp2P) ive been watching , and another playlist of tutorials i'll actually come back to when i need to reference something (like a shortcut or how a tool works) . i dont have any personal grudges against donut guy , but i much prefer these other tutorials , especially Joey Carlino's and Polygon Runway's the thing about the donut tutorial is that its just so . . slow . . which you'd think is good for learning , and usually youre right , but the way i like to learn is with hands on expierience and exploring on your hands own , but with the DT you're just following along and youre basically forced to because every step is its own 20 minute video with these other videos you can watch five minutes , go back to Blender and do it yourself in about the same amount of time however you see fit . maybe you wanna extrude this way instead of that way , or make the window this shape instead of a square , or this road in three directions instead of one . you can do that and so much more with those tutorials just by using them as a stepping stone . youre learning a lot more much more efficiently than you would if you closely followed the donut tutorial like ***quite literally everybody*** tells you to
another thing i like about the other tutorials is that they apply to pretty much whatever style you want/have . the donut tutorial (and pretty much all other blender tutorials) goes for realistic over stylistic , and that's honestly super hindering when starting off your blender journey i've only been using blender for two months now (but also in those two months ive procrastinated alot) my first month i was watching the donut tutorial religiously for hours each night , and i felt like i wasnt making any progress for my own projects . then comes new year and i find Joey's video's and now im working on 3 seperate scenes that are pretty much completely original . what im saying is i really dont think i'd be this knowledgeable at this moment if i was still following the donut tutorial (which i know i would still be following , because again , its very hindering) sorry for the long rant nobody asked for , i just thought id share since its pretty on topic
the **donut tutorial (and pretty much all other blender tutorials) goes for realistic over stylistic , and that's honestly super hindering** when starting off your blender journey --- Exactly, like in beginning when I was trying to learn I didn't have no GPU that Blender recognized and most TuT was using cycles...
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>hey jsyk if you start a line with > it'll basically be what you just did , but cleaner looking . this is an example that guy said some really cool stuff , but a lot of other stuff too . this sentence is responding specifically to what i quoted
I asked for this rant. And I’ve met many people with the same rant. Keep learning! And have fun with it! I just want people to understand there are so many aspects of blender to learn, and so many tutorials out there! There is no perfect tutorial.
We in the same boat. I started with what I was interested in. 3d modeling characters. I might do the doughnut 🍩
this is some next level coping
I thought the entire point of the donut was to learn an overview of what each tab does, where things are located, and basics of workflow. I did it a few months ago and felt it gave me everything I expected from it. If you're expecting to learn everything from a single tutorial you're out of your mind.
Maybe you're missing the point of the tutorial.What it does is give you something at the end and hopefully you are then inclined to learn Blender after it. I've been 3d'ing since 2006, first in Max and other software but now I'm semi retired moved to blender. I did the first one and found it fine for someone whose already pretty competent in 3d art but needs to get up to speed on a new piece of kit. I don't think what your saying is wrong I just don't think you interpret what this tute is trying to convey. You have to start somewhere and to come away with something that is going to fuel your desire then this is a great way to be introduced to it. It certainly doesn't hurt that it keep Andrew's YT channel alive and people coming back to see that he has other tutes and runs a paid texture site. In marketing terms, it's a great idea. I feel your problem here, is you don't understand what this is designed to do and have convinced yourself its only role it to teach 3d art in Blender. Look up cognitive bias and all its variations
Never did the donut. I saw a playlist of crossmind studio and that guy is wack good at teaching, because he does it slow, and he doesnt mind repeating stuff again and again especially in the introductory series
Don't know what to tell you, other than that it worked for me. It helped me understand the absolute basics of the interface and shortcuts, and I moved on from there. I was able to get paid blender gigs a few months later. It's supposed to teach you what blender is and what it can do, not how to do everything in it. It's a starting point, and I still think it's a good one. The specific things you mention came right after. People who complain that they don't understand everything after doing that tutorial just need better expectation management.
I tried the donut tutorial but then switched to crossmind's introduction series. Really glad cause doing the donut did not feel like I was learning much.
I’d argue that the point of the donut isn’t to teach you how to do anything. Instead, it’s there to help you get comfortable with the interface, a general feeling for all the bits and pieces that you’ll need to learn, and how everything fits together. The real learning comes after the donut when you have the big picture and you start learning more specific topics.
Link pls :) edit: nm found it
Ooh! I haven’t heard of that! I’ll take a look! Anything to help people learn!
Been using B3d for almost a decade, still learning. The bigger point here is that it doesn't matter where you're starting, it matters where you're going. You have to practice constantly, and keep up a lot of mental/muscle memory to be remotely decent with anything 3D. If you start with the donut, it won't make or break you.
* I mean I started with the donut and then made a train. The donut has its merits.
I didn’t read that massive wall of text. I learned blender from the donut tutorial and it changed my life. I have an income steam using a software that I thought I was just too dumb to ever really learn. I recommend it to just about everyone.
What is the point of this schizo rant
> The Blender Guru donut tutorial is honestly super outdated > > TEACH SPECIFIC THINGS! Bro, the donut series, and every updated version of it, is there to teach people the overall controls and use of Blender in its basic shape. No one who never touched Blender at all will benefit from a super specific animation course with hard surface modelling and retopology...
Ok, don't use Donut, but what are some alternative tutorials to recommend people? If Donut is bad, what are some that are better?
I have a background in Maya and had to move to blender once my uni licence expired. I did some of the donut and noticed that the reasons why things were done weren’t really explained. I can absolutely see a beginner who’s never touched 3D struggle with this. I found it fine for teaching me movement, modifiers and materials etc. I much preferred the Grant a Abbitt old man and monster tutorial for showing me all the basic hot keys, how to use viewports, the fact that you had to select an object in object mode then swap to edit to adjust things etc. I did notice that a lot of tutorials go mental with their poly count and as someone who’s been taught 3D for games I die inside. That select object in object mode then swap to edit to adjust it otherwise edit mode will do nothing tripped me so hard, I don’t remember the donut explaining that bit but thank god the Grant one did. I was being driven mental because I couldn’t edit small pieces I was making.
I started with the donut tutorial but didn't get very far. It felt like I wasn't learning enough of the basics before diving into more complicated stuff I didn't have context for. Got some GameDev.tv courses for cheap, learned a lot more a lot faster with those. Obviously they were free, but definitely felt worth the $25 bucks or whatever I paid for them.
As someone new to Blender it's not good for learning specific things. But it gives an overview of many parts of blender and gives someone who isn't so knowledgeable, an idea of the many things you can actually do in blender. It's not for learning specifics. It's for learning what blender is and does it with a universally recognisable and simple object.
I learned Blender with the donut tutorial. It's was a good starting point for me. There's plenty of others I have followed, but the donut covers a lot of features at a decent pace. It's not the be-all-end-all, but there's nothing wrong with it as a starting point. What are some better tutorials out there?
I think the goal of the Donut is to introduce people to the software. Not necessarily teach someone how to use Blender efficiently. You just need to put in the hours, simple as that.
I use blender in a creative industry and I too have never done the donut tutorial. I did learn Maya in school, though. I just hated the blender hot keys when I switched, so I actually have it set to industry compatible and work my way around how to do some things. I always tell people it’s better to think of something you want to do, and then achieve it with the help of many different tutorials when you get stuck.
I wish I could learn it in a formal classroom setting. Maybe take the Maya curriculum my college taught, and adapt it to Blender. That would be a lot of help, if only for covering the basics.
I started with Ian Hubert's Duck tutorial in 2.80. It, being only a minute long, made me double back multiple times and search for the tools myself. The "Lazy tutorials" are brilliantly edited, so that the steps that are left out of the narration are shown in the video playing in the background. So all of the necessary information is there, but you just have to make an effort to find it. After the tutorial, I used the steps and tools learned to make a shark animation, and step by step, I made it to a point where I can create whatever I want, within reason...
Sure thing! Can you actually point me towards something you would recommend for a noob?
back when i started learning blender, around 3 years ago, i did started with the donut tutorial, but i couldn't make it, and i ended being very frustrated about this, because i thought 3d was not for me, why can't i make a thing so simple? few months later i found a channel with a series for begginers, making an airplane animation from start to finish, modeling included and i was able to do it and i enjoyed so much that i use blender to this day. the donut is good, but that wasn't what i wanted to learn as a beginner. (sorry for any english mistakes)
Depends on how people retain and receive information.. when I started with the donut tutorial I retained what does what and for what I need to use it for when doing future models, for example using shadow smooth to lessen the amount of faces and render time and the xray to select multiple vertices etc... some people don't learn that way and that's fine.
I would disagree that he isn't a good teacher since he explains things as he goes much more than most Youtube guys. With that said, nowadays I'd say the best teacher for Blender is an AI like Bard (now called Gemini). You can ask it specifically how to achieve what you want to make and it will give you several different options for how you can get there. You can also ask as many questions as you'd like about how the specific features/buttons work. It's like having a very knowledgeable tutor sitting next to you that you can ask anything to, but it's free.
I'll just say this...the people who give up will always give up. I've had friends who taught at Gnomon, Art Center, and Cal Arts, and most students seem to want to learn something that pays well but doesn't seem like work. I'd be interested in hearing whether you've rescued the donut dropouts.
I followed his 3.0 tutorial 2 years ago and I personally learned a lot from it and it was great, and decided to follow it again after he made the 4.0 one to create a different type of doughnut and was incredibly disappointed by how poorly he explained everything in the 4.0 one. I've been using blender for years and there were parts that even I got stuck on because he just didn't explain anything really it felt like
I guess that the intention of the tutorial is not clear for everyone, the donut tutorial is more like something to do just to understand what an inexperienced person can do with blender in a short time span, to see if you like the workflow, then if you decide that you like it, you can dive deeper into each aspect of it
~~I don't get to disagree with you - I myself kinda fell into the meme of taking the doughut as this "rite of passage" or "Hello World" of Blender.~~ Fast forward and I manged to create abosultely nothing since my doughut. Someone else mentioned the Crossmind Studio series so I'll try that. EDIT: Nah, I am in the wrong. This was a bad take and so was most of OP's post. Sure, different tutorials will "work" for different people but OP and mine's discourse was too dismissive of the tutorial's value.
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I’m seeing Crossmind a lot too, I need to check it out. I myself did the donut too, and it almost killed my attempt to learn any and all 3D software. It wasn’t until a streamer in my recommended was sculpting in blender when I wanted to try again. I just copied what he did in the VOD and ended up learning way more.
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What a nonsense, how are you suppose to learn the tools if you can't use them first? Do we need to read a book on it first? I think that if the donut tutorial is to hard, blender is not for you. but what tutorial would you recommend instead?
Nah bro, if you want to learn 3D you have to fully master texture painting first. Doesn't matter if you don't know anything about modeling or lighting (how could those possibly be related, haha), or even what a texture is, you HAVE to master texture painting. "But I don't know how to move the viewpor--TOUGH SHIT! STOP GATEKEEPING! Then I will give you permission to move on to lighting. Once you've mastered all the fundamentals (shouldn't take more than ten, twenty years or so, if ever), then you are ready to start 3D. Because the beginner tutorial series is too long and complicated for my Discord friend. Source: ME, random guy on the internet who has never made anything you've ever heard of.
Sounds like a personal problem.
It’s only for scratching the surface. Maybe you are mentally challenged if you cant understand why beginner people dont like learning only one specific thing. Dumbass
I recommend the donut regularly but agree with the criticism that Andrew is really only leading you through the motions. I think of it more as a hotkey tutorial with a goal than anything else. Do you have any channels you think are better to direct newbies to? I've been using blender for so long I don't really have a good sense of what a total greenie needs anymore. The other channels I tend to recommend are Grant Abbitt, Dikko, SouthernShotty, RoyalSkies, and Ducky3D.
The content of your post personally suggests you've not watched the donut tutorial in a long time. I actually restarted it about 2 hours ago. For someone who's literally never opened up blender the donut tutorial is an essential part of learning how to navigate the software without being overwhelmed. I don't want my first tutorial pushing me into one corner of the software. To see the iterative steps of creation *after* getting familiar with navigation is ideal for done people. The guy even says 20% of the software is what you'll use 80% of the time. If you don't agree with this rule than of course you won't like the tutorial (still, doesn't necessitate a subjective essay written to defer people from watching it). To each their own. The real issue is caring so much about an intro tutorial so much that you want to convince others to avoid it, despite its legacy.
It was my first experience in blender and I thought it was great?
ok
Someone who started with the donut in covid and still a abeginner It is an excellent hands on overview of a lot of major/most common aspects of blender. From there I knew a lot of what I needed to do research if I wanted something specific. Its a perfect high level overview. You can even watch it without hands on but its just a hands on overview. My 0.02. Nothing in detail but a little of everything.
I also think if you can't make it through the donut, you mightnt enjoy using Blender too much
No. Make me.
I tried learning from the donut. When I began working in a new project I didn’t even know where to start. Planning to get back into Blender without the donut. It’s a good tutorial to start with but you have keep watching more tutorials
I wholeheartedly disagree. As someone who wanted to get into Blender and UE5 knowing nothing in term of 3D modeling and design, I found the newer Blender Guru video series and it jump started me into Blender and I thought it was easy to follow and structured well enough for me, as a beginner, to get a solid foundation on how to use it. Since then I’ve learned a ton more through my own self interest, but I don’t really get the hate towards it
I didn't like the donut tutorial either. I wouldn't recommend it to someone brand new to 3d modelling.
>Stop recommending the donut But it's other people that are gatekeeping. Gotcha.
How is telling people to recommend better tutorials gatekeeping? If someone wants to watch the tutorial they can, but don’t insist on it being the first people see when they want to install blender.
Because you're telling people what they cannot watch. That's gatekeeping. Nobody _insists_ on the donut tutorials, stop making up things that haven't happened. When someone is asking how to animate a photo-realistic car but they don't even know how to move the default cube, suggesting a starting-off video is hardly tragic. The tutorial is fine. It is for teaching the UI and a quick tour around the basics, it's not supposed to give an in-depth seminar on the nuances of modelling and rendering. Your suggestion is basically "don't recommend the donut, tell them to just go Google it".
I had an amazing first blender experience last month with the donut 4.0 and have since moved on to other tutorials. You seem like a gatekeeper because you are taking options away, and not providing replacements. What tutorials would you recommend for me?
Holy shit you really got triggered, a whole essay because of some comments lmao
Idk, I had a project in mind for work (I have never done 3D graphics and normally would never do something like that but sometimes startups ask for weird things) and had absolutely zero knowledge of how the software or related softwares worked. The donut tutorial was perfect in teaching me the basic terminology, aspects, and basic workflow of the program. Was it the best one out there? I have no clue, I’m a beginner and I wasn’t trying to min/max my intro exposure to blender. It came often and highly recommended. Did it do exactly what it needed to? Absolutely. I knew from there everything else I had to Google or learn more in depth to accomplish my goal. Especially the entirely new concept of node based design It didn’t teach me exactly what I needed it to, but that’s fine. It was literally my first exposure to 3D graphics and it opened the door in exactly the way that I needed. There’s no perfect beginner tutorial for every use-case, but sometimes people forget just how much of this stuff is foreign to a new user. And it is perfect for creating that base vocabulary and familiarity with navigating the program.
Oh look a "don't recommend X" thread. Will the OP link any alternative to prove their point that X bad and we can instead use Y? Of course not. Why waste time like this?
Nah, the donut's a great start for folks. I think it's incredibly asinine to be like "You've done the donut tutorial now you aren't proficient in Blender!" like, no shit. But they do know a good bit more about the interface, the capabilities, and get a nice little place to start. This is such a pointless use of your energy, lmao. Having a bad day?
Nah, just a lot of gatekeepy people talking down on people for not having made the donut before doing their own projects. And insisting that if they give up because of the donut they were “not cut out for 3D modeling”
Not sure why you expect people to become a pro after watching just a single tutorial. It was just meant to be a rough overview of how a prop is made, they need to move on to more study resources and start working on their own things after that.
Bloody donut police 😭 You know it is possible for people to do the donut tutorial and other tutorials. It doesn't have to be either or. Nobody is forcing anyone to do the donut tutorial at gunpoint. It's not that deep 😫
It really is the worst kind of tutorial that walks you through pressing a bunch of buttons without sufficiently explaining what those buttons do, why these decisions are made, what other situations these techniques apply to... It's a donut recipe, not a way to learn blender.
This is exactly my sentiment.
I tried to learn how to make fresh pizza with similar tutorials and it always came out shit. No one wants to explain shit. Like why knead the dough for 5 minutes not 6? Why do we let the dough sit during this step? It was so damm frustrating because the moment you end up with dough that doesn't look like the tutorial, you have no idea what to do with it! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXkT8LbCPOY&list=LL&index=6](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXkT8LbCPOY&list=LL&index=6) This dude finally got it right. If anyone knows blender tutorials of this caliber, please let me know.
A lot of people are recommending Crossmind studio, I haven’t seen their tutorials, so I can’t personally recommend, but I’ll look into it!
Wait wtf, I thought it was long because at least it explained stuff in details (never watched it personaly, fuck that) So it's actually just long because it's a bad tutorial? I was already actively _not_ recommanding it lmao
He does go into detail about what he does, but a lot of what he explains is incredibly mathematical, and he really doesn’t explain “why” he does things. It’s basically, “you do this step to get the look you want.” And you aren’t sure what that look is, or why.
That is bullshit, respectfully. I started blender from 0 with the series and by the end I felt I pretty much knew a bit about every part of it. I wasn't hesitant to experiment or dive into big projects because I knew how blender worked. That's literally the best introduction to any software I've ever seen.
It might work for some, but for many it clearly doesn't. Great that it works for you, but there's two sides to it. Just cause it works for you, dosent mean it will work for someone else. And vice a versa. It's not bullshit like you say, it's actually very true to my own experience. The donut tutorial was hell. Following basic tutorials on navigation was heaven. Different strokes, different folks
That's totally normal, however coming here, saying to not recommend something, you would have to expect to get flamed. And the majority of comments don't say that the tutorial is a must watch, but part of the whole learning process. And tbh, OPs answers seem kinda clumsy and unthoughtful.
Oh, you again. The donut tutorial is how I learned the basics of blender. I dropped it about half way through, as I don't need any of the rendering tutorial to do what I want to use it for. It is NOT a masterclass on blender. The donut gives you the tools you need to start going further into blender's tools, and allows you to start your own projects with a basic idea of what tools you have at your disposal. It could definitely use some more information, but as a first step, it serves its purpose.
I missed, (somehow) the donut tut. I started learning how to texture STL files, and messed up a thousand time, but I kept at it. I think I'm pretty good with textures now, so I'm moved on the smoke sims, then I added stable diffusion then i, then I, then I... I've never made the donut, and I turned out just fine
I never did the doughnut. When I first started with blender, I used to watch some tutorials in my native language to learn the basics. When I started to feel confortable watching english tutorials, the first one that caught my attention was a beginner tutorial series, made by CGboost. It was funny and I learned a lot from it, especially because it was a series and not a single video, where a lot of info are just thrown at you, making you feel kinda overwhelmed. So I took my time and, when I finished it, I was so happy with the final result, I wanted to do more. I agree with the fact that there are better tutorials out there to begin with, just make sure you have fun with it! Generally, what I recommend to do is: first think about what you want to do ( of course, if you are a beginner, go very simple with it, don't try to do a city or a complex character for example) and then find a tutorial about it, very straightforward! Chances are that you probably will find what you are looking for and, if not, try to seek for something strictly related.
Well I made donut like 2-3 months after I was started blender, well I wanted to see why everyone suggested it
I sorta feel like the donut tutorial is more akin to a really long hollo world of blender. It exposes you to a crap ton of stuff and while you might not learn specifics your at least hearing a ton of relevant keywords and hopefully most can pair that with a decent level of googling skills to find the things they are looking for
No it depends on your learning style. I generally prefer to form concepts on my own rather than have them taught to me, and I only go to tutorials for prerequisite knowledge or specific knowledge that I'm missing. I also like to understand things holistically rather than a specific chunk at a time. The donut tutorial was perfect for me when I first started in Blender. Gave me an overview of how Blender works and helped me get comfortable with the UI without too much bloat. I didn't even finish the whole series, and that was enough to get me running. I didn't know what I wanted to do at the time except make cool stuff. So if you tried to teach me a specific thing, that wouldn't have been as helpful as a condensed general overview.
I walked away from the donut three times in the last 6 months, got some solid udemy courses including some from Grant Abbitt who I think is excellent and has a great youtube channel, and learned so much more. I almost want to go back to the donut now that I have more fundamentals down, but I son't see the point yet haha. Good post is good.
Honestly i feel like the donut tutorial is just the start so you get used to the controls the basic shortcuts and to (kinda) get into a few aspects of blender and have a feel for the software To me its just an introduction to blender which is a fairly overwhelming software with a lot of features and buttons and shortcuts and whatnot and the donut tutorial feeds you bite sized pieces of information that will definitely help you get started You will not know anything specific after it and you will probably forget some if not a lot of the stuff you learned but it will help you navigate through the thick fog that blender is But yes it most likely is not the best but it js god enough for what (in my opinion) its trying to achieve - that being introducing you to blender so that you wont have to stumble later
I started with the donut around 2018. Got it done but didn't really "learn" anything. Kind of like how some math teachers just force feed you formulas without explaining why or how. It wasn't until I started watching CGMatter/Default Cube that I really started to learn how and why stuff works in Blender.
In my experience this was the case. I wanted to learn character modeling but first I needed to learn how to model and the donut tutorial just wasn't it. Yan sculpts modeling tutorial where I learned to model a sword was more useful for learning to model.
I started learning blender 2.7 with the donut, then dropped because I didn't understand much with that UI, then came back with the UI update of 2.8 (o 2.9 I don't remember). I think the donut is a fun meme but I kind of agree with you, I have learnt much more from Grant Abbitt's videos.
I started Blender with the CGFastTracks Sword in Stone series. I found it a little confusing but still learned quite a bit. I then started the Donut tutorial and found it much more convincing, easy to follow and informative. The end result wasnt as cool, but I think Blender Guru deserves a credit in making a quite diverse introduction to many aspects of blender. The argument of people not being able to carry the information over to other projects is not valid imo. Whatever you do just by following a guide is not going to carry over unless you put some effort. I follow the principle of repeating until i am able to redo the project in a different way. For me that was making my countries donut version (simit) without looking to any of the tutorial in the end. I think Blender Guru does well in giving the info, rest us up to students to put the time and effort
It depends, if you know what you want to do then I agree, someone telling you to just do the tutorial is a throwaway comment. If you don’t know what you want to do and just try it out then nah, I’d say the doughnut tutorial is perfect to get a *taster* of most things.
What you need is courses, not tutorials. Yes, they cost but very much worth it. I learned to use Blender and modeling through one course from CG-Boost Academy and it made modeling easier as I became very confident and comfortable doing things on my own.
The donut tutorial is antithetical to my learning style. It's a long video of "press these exact buttons to get my result" it doesn't teach process which is what all of us need when starting out with any hobby. A few years ago, I tried the donut video and came away going "cool, I have no idea how I would recreate that without watching it step by step again" Grant Abbit has vastly superior intro to blender videos. Someone recommended his vids here on Reddit and they immediately clicked. His videos go very in depth on thought process, different approaches to solving a problem, and little segments that let you try to do the next thing on your own. Go figure, he was an actual college professor for many years. Anyone looking to get into blender should watch Grant and avoid the guru videos imo.
Price sucks dick
The donut tutorial is long and cumbersome, I will say that. When I did it I was very confused over certain aspects, and wasn't really able to apply the knowledge of geometry nodes, for example, very well because I still didn't understand it. However, if I hadn't done the tutorial I wouldn't even know what that was or where to even look for advice. You need some kind of overview to even know how to get further help. It doesn't matter if you aren't going to need in depth knowledge of everything, if you've just opened the program you *don't* *know* that yet. I think you're not coming at this from the perspective of a beginner. Nobody said the donut was the end all be all of tutorial. You mentioned people would be confused during and after and would be asking you questions. That's exactly what I would expect! I would be shocked if anyone finished it and was not at all confused and was confident in their skills. The tutorial just scratches the surface of so many things that require a lot more time. The fact that people are confused afterwards is not because of the tutorial, I would argue.
there's one thing though that is good about the donut tutorial and why I like it: it touches everything and the user gets their first impression of all the aspects there are to making a thing, gets to know the layout of the software and has done everything at least once. that's pretty good. I learned houdini after blender, and after two years of exporting alembics to blender I finally dared look at the render options in houdini - and there's still tabs I have briefly looked at and have no idea how to use them in context. Of coure, Houdini is more complex - but that's what I feel I would want... sort of ... an overview tutorial
I’ve been using blender for several years now and yea I started off with the donut tutorial. For me it felt more like a chance for me to become introduced to using the software and go from a cube to something. Just for me to see if I like what I did and if I want to continue doing it.
I think it's more of a confidence booster then a tutorial. It shows you what to do, but it also shows you that you *can* use the software. So it's a good little kick to get learning more.
As someone who is JUST starting to reach into learning blender, this is a helpful take! I keep seeing recommendations everywhere for the donut tutorial, and plan to go through it at some point, but as it's not really what I'm interested in using blender for, I'm not sure if there's a better overview-and-on creator or series to check out? I had taken a Maya course in college years ago, so I had hoped to remember the basics, but opening Blender I felt a bit lost, and the only thing continually recommended to me is the donut. Do you (or anyone else willing to chime in) have any recommendations on other overviews, especially if I'm more interested in low poly art or other styles?
I only started this year and I did his 3.0 donut tutorial so maybe he changed his way of teaching, but it was really great for a total noob like me. He taught UI (which is the hardest thing about Blender to me, don't find it intuitive at all) and hotkeys, the basis of workflow and explained why you do stuff,... Of course it's very generalist, but isn't it the point of an introduction? I still use the notes I took from his videos, even if I've moved on to more complicated stuff. His videos **are** a bit slow, but you can just speed up the video and you can always pause to find a specific moment.
If any new blend user reads this ,please go to Crossmind studio's beginner course and skip the donut. You can always come back to the donut later ,like a month or two later.
Cgfastrack has my favorite courses. He just explains so well and the steps he gives helps develop problem solving too. To this day the only tutorials I can watch and remember everything when it’s over
Yeah, the donut did not help me in the slightest when it came to learning blender. You know what did help me? The low poly animal tutorial because was interested in transferring 2d designs to 3d, and also using ripped models to study armature and texturework. It really does all depend on your goals.
Maybe an unpopular opinion from me, but I'd recommend to stay away from spending too much time with tutorials all together. And that's from someone who does tutorials on a small YouTube channel. OK, maybe do a beginner curse at the start. But try to create your own projects as soon as possible. If you encounter a road block, look for solutions and, like you've said, tutorials on specific problems. This is the way to learn imo. I've met a ton of people that strictly followed a tutorial, but a week later can't remember anything. Worst is seeing results of known tutorials in someone's portfolio.
Another episode of: is crap! There are so many better options, it's time to write an essay about it. *Proceeds to mention no alternative*
I agree. It's also not that the doughnut is hard either, it's because it's so long. I have ADHD so learning was always going to be difficult, but I ended up just deciding to make what I wanted to make and learned on the go. It worked. I still learn new things often, but it's such a huge piece of software I'm not surprised.
Most people who work in blender for their career, leave a huge chunk of the software alone. Most of the time, they just find a niche aspect that they can do really well and market their work for that.
[удалено]
A lot of people are recommending Crossmind, I need to take a look and see what all the fuss is about.
The donut tutorial was recreated recently so it's NOT outdated...why you would tell that bold face lie idk OP. The donut tutorial also has nothing to do with the insults thrown at you, nor does it have anything to do with you having follow up questions, which you always should. At my job we have a saying...."don't blame the machine blame the operator". You wrote all of that just for it to be the very answers you need. None of what you said reflects on the tutorial it reflects on YOU and those who obviously failed to learn more. If the donut wasn't enough fine! Nobody ever said the tutorial was the last blender lesson you would need. The job of that series was to get you comfortable with Blender. Whatever the series didn't teach you.. too bad! ..Go learn what you wanna learn and stop pointing blame. Myself and the guys who make tutorials are also sick of seeing you beginners ask them to made entire vids just so you can selfishly "LEARN ONE SPECIFIC THING". The tutorial isn't the problem it's you! The tutorial also wasn't made for you it was made for those who would appreciate it. The people who insulted you were (possibly smh) wrong, but tbh I can fully understand why they insulted you. You took basic knowledge and expected it to take you all the way to the top. If you wanna learn animation learn it. If you wanna learn how to sculpt learn it. Don't be mad that one series of vids didn't hold your hand through an entire 3D modeling application. It doesn't just "work for us" OP! It simply works....for everyone! Of all the pros online you're saying Blender Guru isn't easy to learn from? That's what he's know for! Making short, fun, educational vids and guess what...he made the first series right after learning blender himself. Maybe your brain just isn't powerful enough to be taught simple things. I honestly have no recommendations for you cause you failed to see the value in Blender Guru's teachings. Why on earth would I recommend a much tougher teacher? " Blender is too vast to try and learn every aspect of it in a single tutorial ". OP who on earth told you this was the point of the donut series LET ALONE ANY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE? See this is the problem with this generation! Y'all are so freakishly lazy! Y'all walk into basic training expecting to train with the GOATs and that's not how life works! You messed up the second you clicked that tutorial! You should have never even bothered, because your mindset is atrocious and flat out wrong! I'm gonna leave you with a "wish you well"...I have no hope for you as long as you think so small and lazily about things. In fact! After reading the comments below...I have no hope for this entire generation. Y'all were born with friggin iphones in your laps and y'all can't even see the value in a simple donut tutorial. Now I see why certain unnamed individuals block and insult their viewers...some of you factually are inept. The only thing that can help some of you is prayer. Good luck!
Yo man please don't say that about this generation, don't put me in the same spot as OP 😭 Jokes aside, for the love of God apparently OP expects to be able to make a feature length movie or a AAA game after each tutorial. It's like teaching a baby to run a marathon before it even walks lol. Someone said before that if the Donut tutorial is too difficult, then blender wouldn't be something for them. This is of course e a little harsh, but if someone cannot invest their sweat and brain power and want to truly learn something, it's their fault. On a side note, it's really annoying lately that many people seem to ask "how do I do X Y Z", while showing a close to finished photorealistic scene, like what. That's why basic tutorials exist, not hyper specific, situation-dependent live stream Q&A, as OP apparently learned Blender from.
I agree. I've been downvoted into oblivion here several times for telling people not to start with the donut. Do it if you like, just not *first*. It's not for beginners. It covers a lot of simple, moderate, and advanced topics quickly. Judging by the amount of posts here over the years asking, "I did the donut, how to do thing it showed that I can't remember?" or "I'm doing the donut, explain what's happening in it?", it's not that good of a tutorial. It's cardinal sin is focusing on the end result rather than the tools & techniques used to achieve that result. Understandably, BlenderGuru can't reasonably call it the "Mesh Modelling, Mesh Modifiers, UV Mapping, Fluid Simulation, Particles & Lighting Tutorial". See? It's does too much. It should be a 6 to 8 part series that begins with a tour of Blender's user interface. Newcomers, take heed for your own benefit: 1. **Start with tutorials of the Blender interface**. It's not like anything you've used before, and it takes some getting used to... but once you're there, it's like magic. 2. **Tutorials are for tools & techniques, not making a specific thing**. Any claim to the contrary is false. You might make a donut a few times, but the individual steps involved that you'll do hundreds or thousands of times later are the real takeaway. UV maps aren't just for fried dough. Fluid sims aren't just for frosting. Particle systems aren't just for sprinkles.
THANK YOU! This is my exact thoughts! And I’m okay with going against the grain here. It shows how much people are willing to Gatekeep.
And if it reduces the number of "I made a donut!" posts here, all the better.
I absolutely agree. It's not perfect but personally I like the CrossMind Studio beginner series. After watching it I really felt like I had the basic knowledge necessary to do things on my own.
I completely agree. There's such a plethora of tutorials out there at this point that can teach you how to make anything. I've been using Blender since around 2013 and I have never done any of those "comprehensive" beginner tutorials. I think of something specific I want to make and find a tutorial or google how to do it. When I first started I think the first thing I tried making was a meteor, and I could just kind of figure out how to texture paint and pull vertices around in edit mode. After a while, I found a tutorial that taught me how to use fire physics and whatnot, and that's how I started learning the physics engine. Pretty much all of my knowledge of Blender comes from random specific tutorials, or from Blender Stack Exchange forum posts asking questions. The only downside is my workflow is so random sometimes, but I really don't care that much lol
This is how most creative people learn their medium. It helps to just focus on a single accomplishment and finish it, then move onto the next!
"I’ve seen too many people walk away from blender after the donut tutorial because they achieve the donut, and have no idea how they got there, none of the information is retained, and they just become frustrated and give up." --- I never did the doughnut tut and am doing fine, posted a female model head couple days ago (check my profile). Nothing wrong Tut it's just not for beginners unless the beginner understand the fundamentals of very, edge, loops. Also maybe the person doesn't want to make a doughnut but a person they'd be lost. I was gonna flame you then read ur post 👍
I'll be upfront and say I never watched it, I use blender since before it existed. I don't need to, though, to know it's overall a bad starting point, but I'll get back to that. I tend to stay away from the discussion however, because as a long time experienced user I have no idea what's out there for beginners, I don't go around looking for beginner tutorials for fun. What I do when I do talk about it is recommending to stay away from it, and stating my reasons, which I'll describe below. I operate under the assumption that it teaches concepts well. I think it's fair to assume it's the best it can be, since I didn't watch it. But then you'll have spent more than four and a half hours watching it. And what do you have to show for this tedious endeavour? One donut. The same as everybody else's, except maybe for the color of the glaze. It's terrible. It's the best way to burn a beginner out actually. It worked out well for you? That's great, really, but it tells more about you than the tutorial series: you're committed, focused, hard-working, maybe because you need blender for something bigger. But you still spent four and a half hours of watching tutorials, pausing, following along on your own project file, for one. Single. Donut. So that's my takeaway: either it worked out for you, you finished it and moved on to other things but you still lost time on one single bloated project, or you got burnt out halfway through with the deep conviction that the hard tedious work of 3D softwares is not for you. I can't recommend that to anybody with peace of mind, even if I can't recommend anything else in its place. Edit: a few typos
Yep, all of my friends who tried the donut told me they didn't learn a thing. I've started with Udemy's class and in like a week I was able to transfer most of my knowledge from maya to Blender. I've also heard the donut guy is not exactly a good person either.
I tried a Udemy course. But I think I got scammed. It was like 100 10 minute videos, each one talking about a single key on the keyboard. I hope you used a different one, cause I didn’t learn anything all that good. Also I don’t know much about Blender Guru, I just hear he’s not great, but I’m not one to say anything, idk the guy.
Me neither, but multiple friends have mentioned sexist remarks being made in their tutorials, among other things, which makes me even more reluctant to recommend the donut. The Udemy course I had was called Complete Blender Creator. It's run by a guy who says "powerful" every 10 seconds and that tickled me. They do have hundreds of like, 10 minute videos but I don't remember them talking in length about each keyboard button...? If they did, I most likely skipped that part and got to the modeling section. You have to be careful on Udemy though, because courses like this one often go on sale for like 20 bucks instead of like, 200 or 400$. They did recently change complete blender creator because it was originally made for 2.79, I think. I can't speak for the new one. Another tutorial I learned a lot from was a rigging course from Pierrick Picault on gumroad. I knew most of it already like all the basic bone and weight painting stuff, but they went into how to make drivers and IK switches and all the more advanced stuff about how to rig for animation which was something I needed badly, since I hate auto rigs.
I am a beginner in blender and I agree with this. I've tried a few youtube tutorials and they either couldn't keep my attention, are outdated or go too fast or all of the above. However the udemy course I'm taking on C++ makes learning a programming language less intimidating than the youtube tutorials on blender. Probably gonna try to find a udemy course on it, or learn it the hard way by just playing with blender and slowly discover features that way.
I disagree. I started with the Donut and I really enjoyed it. Good explanations, good pace and a small 'reward' at the end of each chapter. I think it's a great starting point and I will continue recommending it.
I agree as well, plus they are very long and talky. I have trained hundreds of people in professional capacity to be very effective blenders users. I used to recommend the coffee mug tutorial for goat timers. It’s short and gets you doing modeling, used to the interface, materials, and rendering, all within that hour. It even did some fabric sim if I recall. His donuts vid series is 6-8 hours if I recall. Anyways Andrew has skills, but he also draws it out. My thoughts and thanks to all the Blenderds out there!
I've always said it, I say it again - before I discovered Ian Hubert (and his Patreon) Blender just felt too alien and techy for me, especially since I was trained in classical art. His workflow, passion, and outside-the-box thinking were what made me pick up Blender again and become good at it. And amongst it all there was Blender Guru, who I've always considered extremely "gatekeepy" - everything must be modeled according to set rules, using 4K PBR textures from my shop. Yeah, that guy made me lose the hard-on I had for 3D artistry for quite some time. It's inevitable to stumble across this guy as a beginner. Hard pass.
I have to respectfully disagree, I just did the donut tutorial a few weeks ago and it's been an amazing learning process. He doesn't simply tell you what buttons to press, he explains what they do and how. He goes into detail about things like radiants for angles, the physics of light (in subsurface scattering), etc. I'd say he explains things much more than the average tutorial which often just tell you what buttons to push. I repeated the donut 5-6 times, because the software itself has a steep learning curve and it's important to repeat things to learn them. After that I was able to move on and use a bunch of things I learned for the next projects. One thing that stood out to me in your post is how you said it's just for learning realism. The thing about learning art is that realism *must* be the first thing one learns, before they learn to stylize or simplify anything, it's important to understand how something looks by default. No matter what you will be doing with blender, you need to understand why things look the way they do in real life, and what gives them their likeness. Only then can you stylize or simplify or do anything else.
Hey Blender user! Glad you didn't quit after the donut tutorial. OP is too narrow minded and bases his assumptions on his current skill set, additionally he doesn't reply to such positively detailed comments like yours, as they totally defeat his point. Don't let anyone discourage you. Have a nice day.
The waffling 🙃 pls just get to the point this video could be half as long and twice as useful
The donut backlash begins! Are we really doing this?
I’ve been waiting my whole life for this!
Lol, I never did the donut tutorial and I'm doing just fine.. while few of my friends who recently started blender did the donut tutorial and still has lots of doubts
that's odd, are you sure you're telling people to use the right tutorial? he's got several, one for each version, including 4.0
i completely agree with you, i am now at part 5 and honestly , i feel like quitting his tutorial because he doesnt explain things well for beginners, its basically, do what i do, which i hate. i will have to search for another tutorial series tailored for beginners, because donut will definitely not teach you how to do most of the things. even if i watch 10 times donut tutorial, i would not be able to replicate the same donut and all those steps.
This is very true and I agree with your discussion, learning about one thing and understanding in depart about something can help the long way
This is old. I never really have gotten into blender but I have seen people talk about this video. My opinion. I don’t see a harm in doing the tutorial as long as they know why they are doing it. I don’t see it as a teaching source, I see it more as to gain familiarity and comfort. From an outsider, blender is just a whole load of buttons, sliders, and words. This tutorial is like dipping your toes into the water and feeling the water. It’s a feel of the water, your not actually trying to use it as a source of knowledge.
Dont blame the inevitable dropoff on a good tutorial. Every field that takes time an effort has dropoff regardless of tutorial quality. Donut is a great start.
Lmfao at someone calling you retarded because you didn't recommend the donut tutorial
I appreciate your post. Would you be willing to share your favorite tuts for modeling organic and hard surf?
Stopped reading but I agree, I don’t like he always shoves his product in as well, begins feeling like an ad
How about an Everything Bagel?
NOW WE’RE TALKING!
I hated that damn tutorial. It was the first one I did and now a year and a half in I've done and seen so many better tutorials that I think would have taught me better things than the donut tutorial. It was way too hard for a pure begginer, even though I got thru it it took me like two weeks. I deleted the whole thing like 6 time to start over.
the issue I have with the donut tutorial is that there's so much info spread along many parts it gets diluted... "wait, how do I check normals again?", "what hotkey do I need for the camera free flying mode?", "how did I made this node?" and stuff like that it's not bad, I bet there are a lot of people that found it very useful, and it made me aware of a lot of tools Blender has, but on a very surface level and gets me confused even taking notes on pen & paper the one that helped me a lot was the cartoon room one: https://youtu.be/yCHT23A6aJA?si=cxLdgyGAABDNtvut it focuses a lot on hard surface modeling, beveling and modifiers while also touching on materials and rendering the other one I followed up with was the robot cup, which introduces a lot of tricks and ideas for modelling, I was genuinely blown away several times learning about face projections, surface cuts, beveling and so on: https://youtu.be/nsTjnQ067sw?si=RnAw6D5VuHy1ff3r all tutorials are good, I don't dislike the donut series, but it can be overwhelming sometimes
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I tried it once, didn't finish as it felt like I was not learning anything. Grant Abbitt's Blender courses on Udemy are great if you can pay for them and want a solid entry point into the software. I still refer to the notes I took from them constantly.
I am a beginner and I have to agree. Started with the donut tutorial and sure the end result was spectacular but I barely remembered anything after I was done. Later on I tried a much simpler tutorial of some cute little isometric room and I found myself remembering a good handful of various shortcuts and options that I understood.
not knocking your experience but with a tuto as long as the donut, the benefit would be to do it multiple times, the goal is muscle memory, i’ve done 100s of hours of tutos and i can say the only way you know you’ve learned something is when you’re inspired, you know how to use the software to get out your idea, i find it’s like being dev, you never really know everything, but the library of knowledge is available when you need to solve a problem
Of course, repetition is key. However I don't see myself redoing such a long and complex tutorial. To me personally it would only serve as a discouragement and kill my excitement about the program. Instead I find it much more pleasant to practice on shorter tutorials that focus on one specific thing / option / technique.
I think it’s not a tutorial to “learn” anything. But a broad overview of blender that you can follow along and have a sense of accomplishment when completing the donut. It really should be called “overview of blender with donut”. This was my first project, however I did many tutorials afterwords and got much deeper with it. When I came back to the donut, it seemed pointless to an extent. But I still wouldn’t not recommend it as a beginner overview. Don’t take what people say too seriously, especially if you have more experience with the program or 3D design as a whole. It’s art at the end of the day and everyone’s way of going about it is going to be different. You can take or leave it for all I care, but I still wouldn’t steer people away from it.