I’m very happy with the results of my first project in Blender.
After struggling with Cinema 4D, I decided to use a plugin rather than trying to cludge together some handcrafted fluid simulation. Unfortunately, I ran into a licensing problem with Next Limit’s RealFlow plugin. I’ve been emailing back and forth all week, and they finally got a fix for me — SUCCESS! While I waited to sort that out, I decided to give Blender a try. I began following this tutorial, but quickly found myself getting lost. I needed to become more familiar with the software and interface. I decided to follow a beginner’s tutorial to get my feet wet. I choose this particular video series because it employs procedurally generated elements, and covers all the basic modeling commands, node handling, and the complete stack of scene construction. And also: donuts are delicious. The world is terrifying, and we could all use something sweet.
I am honestly shocked that Blender is a free program. Many 3D programs are horrifically expensive; without student licensing, I could never afford to touch most of the 3D tools I’ve been learning over the years. Yet Blender seems to be very capable as a 3D program. I have only scratched the surface, but it is very impressive. Now that I have familiarized myself with Blender, and have a working fluid simulator plugin for C4D, I am in good shape to begin A/B testing.