Blender is an open-source 3D software that has become increasingly unavoidable in the design landscape. A vast number of still and moving images that are created through it imitate the imperfections of real objects as perfectly hyperrealistic counterparts. A tool such as this can be seen as an objective entity, entirely composed of code.
But how is one’s personal ability to master this tool influencing its output?
I followed a popular Blender tutorial and quickly realized that an enormous amount of time is spent on making something small. This led me to more questions:
What can I achieve through this software within a time limit? Can I value its output if it is not hyperrealistic?
Through my iterations, I realized that just as I was trying to fully comprehend the rules and admire the rendered images, the process itself was revealing a lot of the shortcomings. The software was only as good as I could manipulate it to be. Although my iterations looked different from each other, they were bound by a set of movements and materials. When placed side by side, they told the story of someone’s inexpertness and also indicated a uniform level of effort invested. They also started from the same point – the Torus shape, which may have led to similar conclusions. I set myself certain constraints:
- Each iteration would be done under 30 minutes
- I would only use the steps I remembered from the Donut tutorial.
It became important for me to record my screen – almost as a parody of the sea of Youtube tutorials that exist. The iterations became more about which features stuck, which animations were the quickest to do, spontaneous artistic decisions, and becoming more comfortable with the software.