Your First Day in Blender by SouthernShotty3D

Opened Blender once and closed it in panic? This 34-minute starter fixes that. You will learn viewport navigation, basic modeling, and rendering by actually building something — a goofy top hat dropped into a sample scene.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Navigate the Blender viewport with orbit, pan, and zoom
• Move, rotate, and place objects in 3D space
• Switch between object and Edit Mode for modeling
• Use the Toolbar for basic mesh edits
• Apply smooth shading for cleaner models
• Read the Outliner, Layouts, and Properties panels
• Set up render settings and render an image
• Create keyframes on the Timeline for simple animation

✅ Requirements

• Skills: No prior 3D experience needed, just basic computer skills
• Tools: Blender 3D (free to download), 3-button mouse recommended
• Hardware: Standard laptop or desktop capable of running Blender

📝 Description

Blender looks intimidating on day one. Too many panels, too many buttons. This class strips it down to what you actually need: how to move around, how to grab stuff, and how not to get lost. You will get solid reps with the Blender interface, viewport navigation, and Edit Mode so clicking around starts to feel normal.

From there we go piece by piece through the tools you will touch every day. The Toolbar for modeling, smooth shading to fix faceted geometry, the Outliner to keep your scene organized, and render settings to actually output an image. Nothing theoretical — you see it, you click it, you get it.

It ends with a small win on purpose. You take everything you just learned and do a bit of modeling, lighting, and rendering to build a top hat and drop it into a sample scene. Plus a quick taste of keyframe animation on the Timeline. Short, practical, and you walk away with a finished render.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Absolute beginners opening Blender for the very first time
• Illustrators, motion designers, and future game devs who want a quick, hands-on intro to 3D

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

SouthernShotty3D is a motion design art director, animator, and illustrator working in Silicon Valley, and creative director at MoGraph Mentor. As a Skillshare Top Teacher, he focuses on practical character design and animation teaching for beginners breaking into 2D and 3D.

🏁 Final Result

• A modeled top hat placed into a provided sample scene and rendered as a finished image — a perfect first Blender project for your portfolio.