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Robert Tamayo

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My Short Time with Blender

Last year I spent a little time learning Blender 3D modeling and animation. Here are my thoughts after using it for a short time.

The Community is Awesome


There is a ton of community support for Blender. There are hundreds of Blender tutorials on YouTube, and a ton of articles everywhere online. Even better, Blender is free. So the community support is likely here to stay.

Modeling is Easier


If you can think about real-world objects spatially, you can make it in Blender. I found it surprisingly easy to do a lot of amazing things in Blender that I had previously thought must have taken someone months to create. Some of those things I thought would have taken forever to make actually took mere seconds in Blender. The trick is getting to that level of familiarity with the software. I haven't gotten anywhere close to proficient in Blender, but once I do, I know I'll creating anything I need much more quickly than if I were to draw it.

Animation is Easier


I thought that making 3D models and animating them would take too long for a solo developer, but I was wrong. Drawing every frame for a 2D game like Bad Blaster is what takes a ton of time to do. 3D animations are in many ways simpler. At the very least, there are 3D animations already available for common actions like running, jumping, crawling, and swimming. They can be adapted to many 3D models, whereas in a 2D hand-drawn game, every frame needs to be drawn again for each new character. Making 3D models does take time, and the animations also take a ton of time. But, the result is something that is much more flexible. 2D animations go frame by frame, but 3D animations go by time between stop points.

3D Models for My Next Game


I'm not using Blender for my current game, but I'm going to use it for my next game. I'm looking forward to creating games in 3D from now on.


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