i get this question very often. Truly, my advice is to not give up! The only reason you wouldn’t be able to do 3D art is if you gave up on it or disliked doing it. I find it much less skill based than drawing, and more knowledge based! This field requires you to be ok with / enjoy the process of learning and teaching yourself new things. If you get overwhelmed with/dislike having to search out solutions to things on your own, this may not be something that you want to get into.

that being said, you probably want more detail in my response. here’s some stuff i’ve said on tumblr, pasted in here!

Any advice for beginner software or projects?

For beginners, don’t do big projects unless you’re insane like me and you love the challenge. (3D is a special interest of mine)

You want to do small things and get a consistent stream of small wins for motivation! Still challenge yourself, but not so much that learning 3D feels insurmountable. It’s a completely new very complex medium of art to a beginner, it doesn’t make sense to start out creating film quality models. (Although you can if you are determined. I did that LOL)

Basically every person I’ve known that decided to do something huge gave up. But the people I know that actually took my advice of taking it slow are really improving and doing bigger and cooler projects every day :3

Do you need a really good computer?

You only need a good computer if you want to do realistic/film quality stuff! Toony, chibi, and low poly stuff doesn’t need an ultra gaming pc.

[asker asked for resources on how to learn, especially non-video resources]

Written down resources for beginners on how to use blender are scarce, because it’s such a big program with so many things, and you really need visuals to know where things are when you’re learning (Very possible with written guides, but very tedious to put in Enough pictures to show everything) Every time I’ve used a written Blender guide, it was for some really high level niche thing I needed haha

I learned how to make my own models by figuring out projects I wanted to do, then googling/youtubing every step/aspect on how to do them, and repeating! After the first low poly model I made though I just kinda went straight into attempting to make pixar models and they took me FOREVER and looked horrible but I had so much fun in the process of doing and learning I kept throwing myself at these huge projects and got better over time. Then I discovered toony models, and then vrchat, and I was like wow this is way easier and extra fun permanently changes the course of my career and artistic style

What I recommend to everyone who asks me how to learn, is pick a project you want to do (start small! very important so you don’t lose motivation) and google/youtube how to do it

I haven’t kept up to date on newer beginner tutorials, there might be something better that’s more recent than these! But I think they teach you applicable knowledge to making character models (vs the donut..lol)

Froggy | Bunny | My 3D tutorial playlist | Great overview of the pipeline