My two are:

Making sourdough. I personally always heard like this weird almost mysticism around making it. But I bought a $7 starter from a bakery store, and using just stuff in my kitchen and cheap bread flour I’ve been eating fresh sourdough every day and been super happy with it. Some loafs aren’t super consistent because I don’t have like temperature controlled box or anything. But they’ve all been tasty.

Drawing. I’m by no means an artist, but I always felt like people who were good at drawing were like on a different level. But I buckled down and every day for a month I tried drawing my favorite anime character following an online guide. So just 30 minutes every day. The first one was so bad I almost gave up, but I was in love with the last one and made me realize that like… yeah it really is just practice. Years and years of it to be good at drawing things consistently, quickly, and a variety of things. But I had fun and got something I enjoyed much faster than I expected. So if you want to learn to draw, I would recommend just trying to draw something you really like following a guide and just try it once a day until you are happy with the result.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    4 months ago

    Blender. Not great at it, but there’s so many fantastic tutorials on YouTube. I can use it good enough to design and 3d print simple things. Of course, there’s may aspects / layers to it. It’s both broad and deep. So it’s good to kind of focus on one thing at the time, and then break that down even further.

    • Zonetrooper@lemmy.world
      4·
      4 months ago

      Man, I tried to get into this. Spent months running through the tutorials. I just couldn’t grasp how they design flow of creating a complex shape from scratch. It just didn’t “make sense”.

      I’ve found parametric modeling programs like Solidworks far, far more intuitive to use - it’s easier for me to grasp “okay, this thing is a combination of added shapes, extrusions, negative spaces, revolved outlines, etc” than what Blender wants you to do. Unfortunately, most parametric programs really don’t offer good skinning/texturing and only mediocre rendering options.

      • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        4 months ago

        I totally get that. It’s like finding a programming language or personal information manager app that you like. Have to try a bunch out to find something that works for you.

        A long time ago I dabbled in script-generated ray tracing. That was fun, but I never got great at it.

        I also learned PostScript for a while, because I wanted to create some very intricate printable forms. Using WYSIWG tools was just not cutting it. I ended up with some large 300dpi forms that I liked, whuch were perfect for the assignment.

        Sometimes a different model or approach can make a huge difference to your work flow.

    • LrdThndr@lemmy.world
      3·
      4 months ago

      I’ve been wanting to learn blender for the same reason. Complicated models are an absolutely bitch to work with in parasolid modeling engines.

      However, for simple designs, parasolid modeling is spectacular for designing models for printing. Fusion360 has a free tier for hobbyists (they hide it and you have to go hunting to find it, but it exists), and I’ve done most of my designs there.

      I’ve also used tinkercad for really simple edits. I’ve heard great things about solidworks, but it’s expensive af, even for a hobbyist account.

      • Zonetrooper@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 months ago

        Not sure exactly what you consider ‘expensive’, but there are ways to get a student edition Solidworks account for $100/year. I consider that a pretty reasonable price.

        Personally, I find it infinitely more usable than Blender, but that may just be my personal biases in play. Your mileage may vary.

        • LrdThndr@lemmy.world
          2·
          4 months ago

          That’s absolutely reasonable, but I’m not a student. Is that required by the license agreement?

          • Zonetrooper@lemmy.world
            1·
            4 months ago

            Easily fixable. What you do is go to the Titans of CNC Academy and sign up. Congratulations; you are now technically a student! When purchasing the Student Edition from Dassault, you’ll be asked what your educational institution is; “Titans of CNC Academy” is an accepted answer.

            Then you can head over to Titans’ sales page and pick up an annual student license. (Make sure you’re getting the Student version and not the cruddy “3DExperience for Makers”. That’s Solidworks’ cloud-based software, and is a hot mess.)

            The major downside to this is that files created in the student edition are watermarked as such, and will open with a warning if you try on a professional-licensed version of SW. You should be able to still 3D print for personal hobby purposes, but it is against the license to make money off of it.