A Log of the Blender Guru Donut Tutorial
Anyone who has tried to independently learn Blender, a free and open-source 3D creation suite, has likely come across the famous Blender Guru Donut Tutorial. The first video in the tutorial series has over 3.5 million views and there’s even a subreddit dedicated to sharing pictures of your sprinkle-showered progress. The tutorial is concise, down-to-earth, and perfectly friendly for those who have zero experience with 3D modeling (like me).
If you follow along with the videos, you will create a photorealistic cafe scene, complete with a cup of coffee and a donut on a plate. I highly recommend the tutorial if you’re curious to get into 3D art, but don’t want to sink your life savings into ultra-expensive modeling software like Z-Brush or Maya just yet.
I first started the Donut Tutorial in 2018 to learn Blender when creating custom assets for my Magic Leap application: Ghost Runner. Andrew Price, the creator of Blender Guru, has since created a much more comprehensive tutorial for Blender 2.8 (Blender 2.8 has been praised for improving the program's user experience that has been traditionally known for its extremely confusing UI and keyboard shortcuts). Because of the new Blender, the new tutorials, and all the free time I had this summer (thanks COVID-19!), I decided to complete the new tutorial and log my thoughts.
Level 1
The tutorial is separated into 4 distinct levels, each focusing on different tools and capabilities of Blender. Level 1 seemed to be primarily about familiarizing me with Blender’s UI and basic 3D modeling. Since I was already acquainted with most of the principles in this level from my past experiences using Blender, this level was a breeze. I did not previously know about (or at least completely forgot about) the proportional editing tool, which will save me a lot of time modeling in the future. At this level we used it to create the lumps and bumps across the donut, making it less look computerized, and more realistically flawed.
I love the Donut Tutorial because Andrew Price clearly and quickly explains what tools do. Rather than just show you exactly what to do to make a donut, he encourages you to explore Blender and play around with the tools. I love purple, so instead of a pink donut shown in the tutorial, I decided to go with a vibrant, purple donut when messing around with materials. I also decreased the alpha of the icing, making it look more like some kind of jelly or goop than a traditional donut icing (although I learned later that it’s better to accomplish this through different material settings because decreasing the alpha just makes it look more “ghost-like”).
Level 2
Level 2 takes you beyond what’s right in front of you on the screen when you open Blender and dives more deeply into the features. Most of this content was completely new to me but was fascinating to learn about and will be valuable to know in the future.
To create the sprinkles on the donut, Andrew goes through step-by-step how to create particle systems. Instead of modeling and placing each sprinkle, a particle system allows you to multiply and disperse an object over a defined space. This is an absolute time saver when creating CGI, so I’m thankful it was included in this tutorial.
Next, we delve into texture painting and procedural texturing to add more detail to the donut. While texture painting was fairly straightforward, the concept of procedural texturing was a little bit more difficult to grasp as a beginner. Procedural texturing uses a node system and as a result, was more technical and similar to coding than previous steps in this tutorial. I completed these steps twice over to really understand what was going on, but in the end I had a decent enough understanding to inform future investigation.
Level 3
In level 3, you take what you’ve learned from the previous two levels and hit the hyperdrive. This tutorial teaches you how to model a coffee cup (and the coffee inside of it) to go with the donut you modeled in the previous levels. As a coffee cup is a bit more complex than a donut, you really have to apply what you’ve already learned. I found myself referencing the previous tutorials more than a few times to remember how to do a few actions, but it helped reinforce my memory.
I had a lot of difficulty with this particular level, but only because I decided to make a bottle of Ramune instead of a cup of coffee. The bottle needed a lot more vertices than the coffee cup, and the weird shape made modeling the liquid inside the bottle particularly difficult. I wanted to challenge myself, however, and I definitely accomplished that.
Since Ramune is a soft drink, I wanted to create some fizz. I looked at another tutorial by Blender Guru for a glass of beer for inspiration, and then used the particle effects I learned how to do in level 2 of the tutorial (for the sprinkles) to create the fizz bubbles.
Level 4
The focus of this level was setting everything up for a final render. The composition was a key element in this part of the tutorial, and I spent a great deal of time experimenting with lighting, materials, and camera settings. Part 4 also explores Blender’s animation capabilities and teaches you how to do a quick 30 frame animation, but I chose not to follow along with this part as my current hardware was already having a bad time with rendering without a graphics card.
The only modeling done in the part of the tutorial was the plate the donut sits on and the neon sign, both of which were trivial compared to modeling the donut and Ramune bottle. The neon sign was not part of this tutorial, but was completed easily by following one of Ian Hubert’s “lazy tutorials.” These are quick tutorials that are mostly satirical in nature and depend on you already having some experience with Blender. They are great if you’re looking to achieve a specific result.
On ending this log, I’ve found this tutorial to be very helpful for someone like me with very limited 3D art experience. It is by no means a completely comprehensive tutorial on Blender but for a free tutorial, this one excellently goes over the critical concepts just enough that I now have the basis I need to explore without feeling completely overwhelmed. I had a great time making my donut with Blender Guru and highly recommend this tutorial to anyone interested in independently learning how to create 3D art with Blender.
