Learn Blender. That's what they say. 100 Days of Blender. Sounds ambitious, right?

I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with the open source 3D software Blender. Over the past 7 years I’ve jumped in, learned a bit, then took a long break. During each of these breaks, I forgot the commands and over the past couple years, the user interface of Blender changed a lot.

Why I'm learning Blender

I’ve used Fusion360 for modeling for the past 7 years and KeyShot for rendering for 10+ years.

• I want to keep learning as I get older
• I want to be able to model more soft and organic forms
• I want to learn blender's animation tools to create more complex animations than I can in KeyShot

And so, now feels like the right time to learn Blender. I've watched it develop a ton over the past few years and with the abundance of tutorials and momentum that software has seen, I can't think of a reason not to learn it.

How I'm learning Blender

So, in order to finally become good friends with Blender, I’ll be working in the open-source application it every day for 100 days. For the accountability aspect, I’ll be documenting my progress with a daily video posted to my Instagram reel feed.
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To get back up to speed with keyboard shortcuts and commands, I’ll be following a bunch of tutorials. I'm focusing on repetition, spotting patterns and learning the underlying logic of the tools I'm using. The goal is not to create amazing art at this stage. The goal is lots of focused learning.

The format

Every day, I'll spend a minimum of 1 hour learning blender. I am using clockify to track my time and my gopro to record each session. Every day, I'll post a video to my Instagram Reels feed and YouTube Shorts feed to prove that I'm doing the work.

Every 10 days, I'm challenging myself to create a self-directed project. The goal of this is to create something beginning-to-end without following any tutorials. I'll be practicing the skills I learned over the previous days. Every 10 days, I plan to update this article to share my progress of the previous 10 days.

And after 100 days, I'll take time to create an in-depth YouTube video. In that video, I'll summarize the project and highlight my findings in an effort to help anyone else who wishes to learn Blender.
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Feel like watching and not reading? Try the above video.

Day 1-10

I want to be clear that day 1 of this challenge was not the first day I've ever opened Blender. However, it's the first day of the 100 days challenge. I have used blender on and off in the past, but never became great with it. So, I did have some previous knowledge of how Blender works at a high level.

Tutorials

By far, the most common question I get every time I post a new reel is, "What tutorial are you following?" The answer is that I'm following along with courses I bought at cgfasttrack.com.

I discovered this free beginner course on YouTube by Robby Branham, who runs CG Fast Track. He's got lots of impressive professional experience working as a technical artist, director and supervisor for many brands, agencies and he even has professional teaching experience. In addition to teaching Blender, he's got a background in using Nuke, Houdini, Maya and other 3D applications. After experiencing his teaching style and researching him on LinkedIn, I felt there was none better to learn from.

The other reason I like using paid courses is because if the same instructor has multiple courses or lessons, you are less likely to miss or skip over any important skills, which is a down side of just relying on free tutorials.

Day 1-9 Results

On days 1-9, I spent a total of 12h 21min learning blender. Below are some images of the things I created in Blender during this period.