Blender Quick Start Guide for Absolute Beginners (Tutorial)

in this blender quick start guide I will show you the very basics of how to use the blender 3D software for absolute beginners so if you've never used blender before this is the video for you

now if you want to get a good understanding of the basic fundamentals of blender then I highly recommend checking out my blender complete beginner tutorial Series where I show you much more in depth the entire basic

fundamentals of blender but if you're completely new to 3D modeling and 3D art and you want just a very quick video to just get you started with the very Basics then this video is for you so when you first open up the blender 3D

software you're going to see this screen here and there's a splash screen with an artwork but you can just click on the splash screen to get rid of it now right down here in the corner of my screen I'm going to have screencast keys so when I

click a button or use my mouse you can see what button I'm pressing now real quick before I show you the 3D modeling Basics I'm going to click here on edit and I'm going to go to the preferences

I'll just click here and drag the window over and I'm going to click here on interface and then I'm going to take this resolution scale and just drag it up just so it's easier for you to see here on YouTube but this is totally

optional you don't have to do this I'm just turning this up so that everything's a bit bigger and easier to see so now I'll just click on the exit here to get rid of the user preferences so first I'll show you how to move

around in the 3D view so if you click and hold down with the middle Mouse wheel this is going to orbit so you can see there is a cube here we call this the default Cube because it's the

default Cube added to blender now if you want to zoom in or zoom out you can just scroll with the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in or to zoom out now there's a really useful tool right up

here and this is called the Gizmo so there is this zooming button right here and if I just left click and drag on the zooming button then you can drag back and forth and you can zoom in and out and then if you want to orbit around instead of clicking with the middle

Mouse wheel you can just click right here in the circle and you can drag around now if I zoom out here let's say that I want to move over to another side to look at something else in my 3D view

well you can hand over by holding down the shift key and then clicking down with the middle Mouse wheel and moving back and forth what you can also do is click on the hand icon and click and

drag and that is going to pan around now on default there are three basic objects there is a cube object and so this is a mesh object which will actually show up in the render then there is a lamp here

and this is actually going to light the 3D scene and then this is the camera and the camera is where it's actually going to render from so basically what view you're going to actually render your 3D

scene now to select objects you can just left click on each different object and if you want to select multiple objects you can hold down the shift key and you can select multiple objects at once so

now what if I want to move these objects well I can select this Cube here by just left clicking and then you can use these tools right up here in this corner so on default we have this select box and so

if I just left click and drag that is going to add a box and then when I let go everything inside the box is going to to select and you can also hit the a key if you want to select all the objects

and then double tap the a key if you want to deselect all the objects so now back to moving objects if I just select this object I can click right here to the move tool so if I click on the Move

tool let me zoom in here now there's going to be these three arrows and so I can click and drag on the arrows and that is going to move the cube around now why the arrows are red green and

blue is because of these axes here so in blender we call this red one the x axis we call the green one the Y AIS and we

call the one going up and down the blue one the Z axis now there's a shortcut key if you want to use it and that is the G key so you can remember G for grab so you're grabbing the objects and then

they're going to follow your mouse now you can also rotate the objects by clicking on this button here and then you can click and drag the circles so you can rotate it on the xais you can r

rotate it on the Y AIS or you can rotate it along the z-axis and then if you just click on the big white circle that's going to rotate it from the direction of your view now if you want to use the

shortcut you can hit the r key and that's going to rotate it so remember R for rotate you can move it over and then just left click to place it now to scale objects you can use the scale tool and

so again you can scale it on the Z AIS you can scale on the Y AIS and also the x-axis and then the shortcut key is easy to remember you can hit the S key because s stands for scale now there's

also this really useful tool here so if I click on this you can move the object you can rotate the object and you can also scale the object all at once so now let's do some very basic 3D modeling and

model a very basic snowman so what I first want to do is delete all the objects so we can start fresh so remember if you hit the a key that's going to select everything you can also click and drag to use the Box select to

select everything and to delete it we can just hit delete so now we want to add some new objects so to add new objects you can click here on the add menu and there's going to be a bunch of objects but don't worry about this most

of these things you won't really use the main things you're going to use are the mesh objects you can see there's the cube and then also you can use the light objects to light your scene and then

finally you can add a camera to actually tell blender where you want it to render let's first go up here to mesh and I'm going to model a very basic snowman so we're going to add this UV sphere here

and that's going to be the base for the Snowman so then if we want to zoom into the sphere again you can hold down the shift key and you can click down with the middle Mouse wheel you can also

click on this button to pan around and then to zoom you can scroll with your mouse wheel or you can click and drag here with that little plus magnifying glass now a really easy way to zoom into

the active object meaning the object which is selected is you can press the period key on the numpad so now we have zoomed into that object and another another way to do this if you don't want

to use the shortcut is to click on view and then frame selected and that will jump to the object now you can see that the sphere doesn't look smooth it looks really sharp and it has all these little

squares here this is because of the shading mode so if you rightclick this will bring up the object context menu and you can see there is shade smooth

shade Auto smooth and shade flat so this is the one we're currently using which is shade flat so it's going to keep the geometry of the mesh really flat however I can rightclick and click on shade

smooth and now that looks a lot better it looks like the snowball of a snowman now what if I want to make three of them well instead of clicking here on ADD going to mesh and adding a UV sphere I

can duplicate the object so you can press shift d shift d is the shortcut key to duplicate an object and so now we have another one and you can see it's following our Mouse so now let's just

bring it up here stick it here and then remember the shortcut key you can hit s to scale and I'll just make it a bit smaller and then I will hit G to grab and stick it right up here let's pan by

holding down the shift key and clicking with our middle Mouse wheel and just move up and then again we'll do that one more time so shift d to duplicate bring it up here we will hit s to scale and

then click to confirm and then if I go here to the side I can just move it over and just bring it down and I will double tap the a key to deselect everything and there's the basic snowman now let's

model a basic top P for our snowman so again you can click here on the add menu or if you want to you can use the shortcut key of shift a so I'll hit shift a and that's going to bring up the

same exact menu so I'll go to mesh and let's add a cylinder for the top hat and then I can move the cylinder up here and then we can scale it down so I'll hit s and we'll just make it a bit smaller

like that and then let's maybe click here on this arrow and move it up a bit now if I zoom in here by scrolling my mouse wheel you can see we're having the same problem where there's these Jagged

faces so if I just rightclick right now we're using shade flat if I right click and choose shade smooth it looks smooth but the problem is right here where the top part is it looks really smooth and

that looks a bit weird so if I right click I can use shade Auto smooth this way you can see the edges will be smooth and the top will be smooth but this sharp edge right here is going to look

flat and then I want to make the rim of the top hat so again you you can hit shift d to duplicate let's bring it up here and then I can scale it by clicking here on the blue square and I'll just

make it a bit smaller make it really thin and then you can also hit s to scale the entire thing up let's maybe make it a bit thicker hit s again to scale it down and I can just bring it

right down here now let's say we want to rotate the top hat going back a little bit so to select both objects at once remember you can hold down the shift key and then just left click to select an object and now you can see they're both

selected so now if I just click here on the green circle and rotate it I can rotate both of them and I can move them over and there's the basic top pad so now let's make the face of the Snowman

so I'm just going to left click to select the face and then again you can hit the period to zoom into the snowman's head you can also do this by clicking on view and then frame selected

so now let's go to the ad menu again so if you want to you can click on ADD here or you can use the shortcut of shift a and let's go to and I thought it would be cool to add an ecosphere let's move

it up here by clicking here and dragging let's also click on this arrow and drag it out and then I'll hit s to scale and we'll make it smaller so you can see the icosphere is a sphere but it kind of has

these triangle faces so let's click on the triangle there or the arrow and drag it back move it up here or you can hit G remember G is for grab and we'll stick

it here and then S2 scale and let's duplicate it so again the shortcut key is shift D to duplicate and I can just click there so just left click to place it and maybe I'll move it back a little

bit I could also scale a little bit so one of them is bigger than the other to kind of make it look stylized let's add a carrot nose so again shift a or click up there on the ad menu we'll go to mesh

and I'm going to add a cone let's zoom out here we will bring the cone up let's navigate here to the side by clicking and dragging with your middle Mouse wheel let's bring it over and then I want to scale it up so it's longer so

you can click here and drag this out to scale it up now you can see again if I zoom into it you can see there's those sharp faces so we will rightclick and we're going to use the shade Auto smooth

and then I can rotate it so we'll just rotate that over or hit the r key to rotate we'll click there and then we're just going to scale it way down and then let's move it back here and then we'll

also move it up here so this is really good practice if you're very new to blender just moving objects around and scaling objects once you get better at blender this will be very easy to do but when you're just stting out this is good

practice let's also make some basic arms so again I will go to the ad menu with shift a or just click on the add menu up here we'll go to mesh and I'm going to add a cylinder again let's just right

click and we're going to do the shade Auto smooth and since the cylinder was selected you can see now those faces there are smoothed out so we'll click here on the red circle and we'll just

rotate that over just like that and then I can scale it so we'll click here on the Green square and we're just going to scale that up and then hit s to scale and we'll scale the entire thing way

down and then again scale it up again here like that and scale it way down and then we can move it up by using the blue triangle or the blue arrow we scale the entire thing down again and then we can

again click here and just scale that out so we're done with our modeling so I want to do lighting and materials so we need to light the 3D scene and then we also need to add some colors to the

objects now now right now we are in what's called solid View and how I know I'm in solid view is because if I look right up here you can see that there is these little circles here so this one is

solid view but if I want to go into the rendered view to see what it's actually going to look like when it renders I can click on this little button here so this one here you can see if I hover over it

it says viewport shading rendered so I'll click on this one and so now you can see everything looks really gray but that's because we haven't added any lights to the scene so to add lights you

can go to the add menu and let's go down here to light and let's add the area light there's a few different lights but I'll choose the area light now with the area light I can move it around just

like a normal object so I'm going to hit G for grab and I'm going to move it up here and let's hit s to scale and I'm going to bring it out now what you can also do is you can click right here and then drag and you can pull it out to

make it larger and then of course you can use the Gizmo here so you can use the rotate tool to rotate it over but I'm going to just like navigate up here so I'm looking down and then I'm going

to hit R and just rotate that over so wherever the line is that's where the areal light is going to be pointing now it's not very bright right now so what I can do is I can go over here to this

side panel and this has some different options what we want to do is just click here on the light bulb and that is going to go to the light settings so there's a few different settings there's a color

and a power so if I click and drag and drag back and forth on the power I can make it a bigger number so I'm just going to drag this really big maybe to like 700 or 800 something like that and

now you can see that it's actually lighting the object and as I move this around the lighting is going to change now I can also change the color so if I click on this little white option here you can see it's going to give us a

color wheel so I can make it lighter and darker I can change the color if I want to but I'm just going to leave it as this white color so now let's add some colors or materials to our objects so

I'm going to zoom in here and what I'll do is just left click here to select that object the head object and to add materials let's just click here and drag this up so we have more space so just

drag this properties panel bigger so to add materials we can click on this little red circle and this is going to go to the materials so we can add colors or materials to the objects so we're

going to click on new and this is going to add a material to this object now it didn't really look like anything changed but that's because on default all the objects have a white color so now you

can see there is a material name and I can click here and I can type in snow and then hit enter so now it's called snow and then here on the base color I can change this to whatever color I want

but I'm going to leave it as white for snow and I can also turn this up here to make it really bright now I will click on the next object and to add the same exact color we can click on this little

drop down here and this is going to show us all of the colors or materials in our scene so I'm going to choose snow and then we'll click on the last one and then we're going to click on the drop

down and we'll choose snow so let's add some more materials so let's make a black material for the hat so I will select the Hat by left clicking let's click on new and this material here just

to rename it so it's easy to remember what it is I will type in hat now I will click on the base color here and I'm just going to drag this here all the way down so it is black now another cool

thing you can do with this material is you can make it look more shiny to maybe make it look like a shiny plastic or just a shiny top hat so you can see there is this roughness and if I turn this up and down you can see it looks

more reflective so it looks like a really shiny plastic so I'm going to drag this roughness down so it's now a bit more shiny now let's select this object here we will click on the drop

down and let's choose the Hat material so now let's click on the eyes and since the eyes are also going to be black let's click on the drop down and choose the hat and click on the last icosphere

for the eye and click on the drop down and choose the hat so now let's click on the nose here we'll click on new and I can click here to rename it and I can call it carrot or nose and then here on

the base color let's click here and I'll drag this over towards the orange so now we have an orange nose now let's click here on the arms I can click on new I'll click to rename this and I can call it

arms and here in the base color to make it brown I will first drag the color wheel till it's orange and then I'll drag the color wheel down so now it looks Brown now if I zoom in here you can see there are some some Reflections

so if I click on the roughness and drag this roughness value here and drag it up towards one now it's going to be more rough and so that looks better for a stick or a branch which would be used

for the Snowman now it's a really good idea to save your project so for some reason if blender crashes we won't lose our progress so let's click here on file and we can click here on save so this

will bring up a file browser and blender and you can locate to some folder on your computer and then if you click here to rename name it I can call it snowman hit enter and then I can click on Save

blender file and then of course before you close blender click on file and click on Save again to save the file so now we want to add a camera because if we don't add a camera blender won't know

what view to render it has so we'll go to the add menu click here and we will add a camera now to move the camera of course you can move it just like any object but it's more useful to go inside

the camera so we can see what the camera is seeing so if you hit the zero on the numpad that's going to go into the camera view but an easier way to remember this is to just click on this little camera button and now we're going

to be inside the camera's view now I want to move the camera and a really easy way to move the camera is to click on the lock button once you are inside the camera so if I click on lock now if

I scroll out or if I pan around or if I zoom you can see the camera is going to follow our view so this makes it really easy to just place the camera so just click down with your middle Mouse wheel

to orbit so just move to somewhere where you want maybe I'll zoom in a bit so now to render the final image we can click here on render and you can click on render image and this will open up a new

window in blender and there is our finished image so I can zoom into it I can also click with my middle Mouse wheel to move around now to save this as a file on my computer I can click on

image and I can click on save as and this is going to again open up a new window and I can go somewhere on my computer like maybe my desktop and I can click here to rename this and I can call

this Snowman and you can see it's going to save as a PNG file if you want to save it as a different file you can choose the different files here but I'll save it as PNG and I'll click on save as

image let's just click on the x button here to get rid of this now if you want to get out of your camera view again you can click on the lock icon so it's unlocked or you can also just click on the camera icon there and that's going

to go out of the camera view so that's going to wrap it up for this blender quick start guide for absolute beginners now if this is your very first time learning about blender there's so many more things you can learn and so many

more basic fundamentals you can learn to get better at blender so if you want to learn more about blender then I highly recommend checking out my blender complete beginner tutorial Series so in that tutorial series I cover all the

basic fundamentals of blender and I go into so much more detail in that tutorial Series so you can check it out on my YouTube channel it's completely free and I'll have the link in the video description so I hope you found the

video helpful and thank you for watching okay