He was gracious and we exchanged a number of emails. I contacted Ton Roosendaal, the original creator of Blender, and now the Chairman of the Blender Foundation.

So I finally did something that many of you might not actually do. Hours 10-15: video education, part twoДЄfter viewing YouTube tutorials for a bit, I will admit to a bias against any that begin with 'Yo-yo fellasвЂ¦ wassup?' An experience that can leave you wanting more formally prepared material. Trying to do it all in one day would surely have exploded my tiny head. I spent time finding and then watching many videos, and at this point I had clocked in roughly 10 hours of working on the Blender project, across two or three days. 'Sculpting' a young female head and shoulders I quickly found out there are quite a few learning options out there. So I started to explore what alternative ways I could go about learning it, beyond the button-poking. I began to realize that Blender wasn't quite as intuitive вЂ“ at least for me вЂ“ as I had hoped. But I'll admit that I wasn't too successful. Before looking at any instructions, I felt compelled to muck about with the buttons, doodads and doohickeys, and hoped to find my way around. Understanding these basics makes Blender all the more approachable. You might be familiar with this from programs like After Effects.

(C) is a vertical stacking of many control/preference/properties interfaces, which again, is just like Adobe products you know. (A) in the image above is called the Toolbar, a collection of the most commonly used tools. The default Blender interface is made up of four areas. See the text for a quick explanation of its UI

Control scheme for blender on mac