Go from a blank screen to a fully lit, coloured and rendered 3D scene together! No 3D experience needed. Every step is explained simply. 🚀
Blender is like a magical toy studio where you can build anything in 3D characters, buildings, spaceships, whole worlds! The stuff you see in animated films? Built in programs just like this. We're going to learn it together, step by step.
Blender is a free, professional-grade 3D creation suite used in film, games and animation. This workshop covers the core pipeline: interface → modelling → materials → lighting → rendering. No prior 3D experience needed by either of you!
Open Blender, get comfortable with the interface, and be able to move the view around and select and move the default cube.
Can you make the cube as tall as the screen by pressing S then Z and moving the mouse up? That locks scaling to the Z axis only — try X and Y too!
Press S then Z and drag the mouse upward can you make the cube stretch as tall as the screen? Then try S then X to make it flat like a pancake. Undo with Ctrl+Z when you're done!
Enter Edit Mode, select vertices/edges/faces, warp the cube's shape, and use Extrude and Loop Cut.
Use Loop Cut (Ctrl+R) three times to slice the cube into a grid. Then in Vertex mode, drag individual corners into wild shapes. Can you make something that looks like a monster's head?
Add spheres, cones and cylinders to the scene, arrange them using G/R/S, name them in the Outliner, and duplicate objects.
Build a tiny tree! Add a Cylinder for the trunk, then a Cone on top for the leaves. Press G → Z to slide the cone straight up until it sits on the trunk. Then duplicate the whole tree (click each part, Shift+D) and make a forest!
Switch to Material Preview mode and give each object in your scene a colour and material.
Make a gold ball: yellow colour, Metallic = 1, Roughness = 0.1. Then make a mirror cube: white, Metallic = 1, Roughness = 0. Which looks coolest?
Make a disco ball — add a UV Sphere, give it a bright colour, set Metallic to 1 and Roughness to 0. It should look like a perfect mirror. Now try the same with gold: yellow colour, Metallic 1, Roughness 0.15.
Select the light, change it to a Sun light, adjust its colour and strength, and position the camera to frame your scene.
Add a second light (Shift+A → Light → Point). Set it to a different colour try deep blue and move it to the opposite side of your scene. Notice how two lights together create softer, more interesting shadows than just one!
Set up EEVEE, hit F12 to render your scene, and save the image as a PNG.
In Render Properties → Output, change the resolution to 1920 × 1080 (full HD). Render again with F12 the image is now much bigger and sharper. Compare the two files side-by-side on your Desktop!
Build a complete snowman from scratch body, face, hat and arms then colour, light and render it into a finished image.
Add a scarf! Add a Torus (Shift+A → Mesh → Torus), scale it to fit around the snowman's neck, squash it flat (S → Z), and give it a bright red material. You could also add a Plane scaled big as a snowy ground white material!
Use the Mirror modifier to build half a shape and auto-mirror it, use Array for repeating patterns, and Subdivision Surface to smooth shapes.
Stack Array + Mirror on the same object Array it 4 times along X, then Mirror it on Y. You get an instant 4×2 grid of copies! Try this with a fence post shape to make a fence that goes in both directions at once.
Set keyframes at frame 1 and frame 60 to animate an object moving across the scene, then animate a 360° spin.
Animate both position and rotation at the same time! At frame 1, insert a keyframe for Location & Rotation. At frame 60, move the object AND rotate it 360°, then insert another. The result? A bouncing, spinning object. Real cartoon physics!
