Blender and 3D Modelling

I bet you have seen those fancy pictures and movies generateded by computer or maybe you have played computer games before and wondered how can this be done. Well, as a beginner in this domain i have a few things to tell you before trying to make those yourself. I have been using Blender, a free software developed especially for 3D stuff purpose. It is a very good way to start things up and make an idea about the boundaries and content of 3D modelling. But here is my advice:

1. Modelling and animating such scenes is much easier than one would think, yet still very hard;

2. The easiest way to learn is reading and watching tutorials over the internet, while trying to reproduce what they ask you yourself.

3. Find someone to tell you things you don't manage to get from tutorials.

4. Don't expect to get fast results, like making a 1 hour movie by yourself in the first month of learning.

5. Don't expect to get extraordinary results doing all the stuff by yourself. Remember that a movie needs sound, music, storyline, voices, and loads of modelling,

6. Like everything in thins world, you should start this out of personal interest and passion, doing it for pleasure. Learning under pressure is not the easy way to do it.

For you have already started doing stuff, bare in mind these:

1. Keep it simple: don't overdo the details of your models right from the beginning since you might need to modify them later.

2. Always keep a backup of your models.

3. Especially important in Blender: save your model very often and watch where you click. Not once have I ruined a 2-hour-work model by accidentally pressing the close button.

4. Use quads, not triangles since they may return funny results when applying subsurf.

5. Do not rely on subsurf too much. If you plan to sell your model, it has to work in other programmes to and still look good without subsurf.

6. Do not chose the "expensive" way to make things. Try to get the same effect with a less resource-consuming tool. Nobody has an ethernity to render.

7. Do not render directly to .avi or raw. Render a sequence of pictures, far easier to modify, add and remove before merging them into a movie sequence.

8. Show your work to others. Not many people are doing this kind of stuff and it might make you look original and cool ;)

This is all I can say for now, since i have just passed the beginner level. You can now enjoy some of my works :D