The Donut

The 5 Year Cycle

It all begins in 2019. I have no idea why but I wanted to learn Blender back then and of course, no matter who you are, the Blender Guru Donut tutorial was my first stop.

Back then, I hadn't even considered programming. Out of being scolded for not doing anything, I stumbled onto Blender. Of course, I had no clue what it even was, just something that people said you should learn. I watched the first tutorial, forgot all about it for a whole year. Covid hits and I am back to learning Blender, I start again from the first tutorial video aaaaand leave again.

I just don't think I was nearly ready for what 3d was back then and I hated everything about it. 2021 through to 2025, I focused my efforts on programming solely. But in 2024, I first started learning Game Development and I quickly realized that it's very hard to truly make something good without having good assets. You could buy them but I am broke so that's not happening and the free ones just didn't do it for me.

That's when I decided, it was time to finally dive into Blender again but this time, we actually complete the damn Donut.

And well, you can see the result behind this very text. But there's still a big elephant in the room.

Why Learn 3D?

I know I mentioned Game Development as a primary reason why I dove back into Blender but if you're a 3d artist, you know that's not really a good reason. For one, you don't need good looking models if you're just interested in making game demos. Programming can be done just fine with a cube running around so why bother?

Even with store assets, you can put together a decent looking environment. Take this, for example:

Pretty neat, right?

So then, why learn something that I consider to be probably the toughest field out there right now, it can't be understated how tough it is to make a good 3d model. There's so much that goes into it, I consider it tougher than programming.

There's two big reasons. One, if you've read my post about the making of this website (which you definitely should if you haven't!), you may remember how I really like making designs that have impact. And a good 3d model render, lit well and looking realistic? What's more impactful than that?

Second, it's a nice change of pace. Staring at code all day long, even if I love programming, can get mind numbing after a while of doing it every day. It keeps things fresh for me.

Oh and here's a secret reason, I love a good challenge. I sucked at drawing as a kid completely, I got D's in drawing class for years. Of course, 3d isn't really like hand-drawing but it's somewhat similar and I think everyone to some extent wants to make something they can call their own in any art field.

Because art is reflective of the artist.

How I created the Donuts

Navigation: Delete that Cube

Learning Blender Navigation is really a culture shock even for professional 3d artists migrating from other software like Maya or 3ds Max. The default keybindings are quite strange and the design choices, like needing to press middle mouse button for basically everything, are pretty unusual. I don't think I have seen any other piece of software more in love with this one button than Blender. Even Unreal Engine 5 allows you to hold right click and use WASD to move.

Still, I eventually got used to it and it's not that bad, especially if you're a complete newbie like me. Though I do feel for the laptop users, Blender on a touch pad sounds like a nightmare.

The layout for Blender, as you might have heard already, is convoluted as all hell. It truly feels like a all-in-one software for 3d and I still don't know what 80% of it means.

Then comes the act of deleting this poor cube, what sounds simple is really about taking away the one thing you can make sense of when you first open Blender.

When you delete that cube, you're ready to learn 3d.

Modelling and Sculpting: Making the Donut

You can add a torus shape by just pressing Shift + A on the keyboard and you can select the torus from it. One interesting thing I learnt when doing this was that the number of meshes or 'shapes' is somewhat limited so really, you need to have a basic looking model in your head. Like in programming, instead of thinking of the final product, you have to break it down to it's most fundamental unit. For donuts, it's a torus which makes perfect sense, for a table, it could be a combination of a plane with cylinders for the legs. For a human-like face, it's...

Suzanne The Monkey Head. She is cute.

What I enjoyed the most however was actually the model editing. Editing vertices and edges was actually pretty interesting, on one hand, you don't want too many vertices because that makes editing them a nightmare but on the other hand, having more gives more detail. You have the Sub-Division Modifier in Blender for this but even that has to be timed, if you accidentally hit apply when you shouldn't have, it's an instant Ctrl + Z moment.

But I did enjoy dragging points around, adding just enough vertices for the geometry to make sense and Blender Guru kept the tutorial really fun.

Sculpting was interesting, though I believe with all my being that I have barely touched 10% of it. This is one of the reasons Blender is so tough, the possibilities in every single part of it are endless. I have seen some real Blender Wizards and they just operate on a whole other level, just from watching them, I felt the dedication and effort it takes to get to that level.

Whatever it may be, I enjoyed making the basic model for the Donut and I had quite a bit of fun.

Shading, Texture Painting and Geometry Nodes: The Beauty in the Little Details

Finally, the donut had color. With Materials, which seem like their own beast from my experience working with them in Unreal Engine 5, the donut finally started looking pretty. This is also I realized the nitty-gritty details of the humble donut. I don't particularly like Donuts, but to realize that to make a realistic donut, you have to consider how they're made in real life was quite eye-opening.

I don't know what I expected but really, the best way to learn 3d is to go out there, look at something, do some research and make it. Take a photo of it and make it. Unlike programming which is often highly abstract and sometimes theoretical especially in fields like Data Analytics, you can't rely on theory alone. You have to go out there and properly understand how the object of interest looks, its little details, why those little details exist.

That's the way to make it. It made the simple joy of even going for a run and looking at a tree feel productive for me because I could consider that knowledge in the future. All the technical stuff in this section was quite the doozy and again, I am sure I have yet to explore a vast majority of it. But the simple joy of noticing details for things you never thought much about and then using them made me excited for the future.

Despite the technical mountain ahead of me, I felt even more motivated and excited to trek all the way to its peak. The struggle didn't scare me.

Lighting, Setup and the Final Render: Tricked into Love

Lighting is probably many people's favorite part. Finally seeing your environment lit up and looking beautiful is an awesome feeling. And I loved it too but again, my favorite thing was the setup.

Making the cube to enclose the donuts, creating a 'window' for the light to seep through and then, the trick of controlling exposure by altering the wall to the right of the camera by tweaking its blackness was just so clever.

The lesson of only focusing on what's actually visible in the camera instead of just adding detail no one's gonna see. To the average person, it looks like magic. Making a render that matches your vision but does it efficiently is such a perfect combination of artistic intent and logic.

This combination is the biggest reason why I want to keep learning 3D. Why I fell in love with 3D.

But rendering still sucks, I had to sit there watching my PC fans spin like their life depends on it for 6 whole hours.

Conclusion: Donuts Worth Eating

After 5 whole years of on-and-off tries, I finally completed it. Interesting thing that I, and people in the comments, noticed is how drastically the views fall off in the Blender Guru series.

Each episode gets less and less views until it's a 10th of what the first episode brought in. It made me realize that I wasn't the only one who did this. There's so many people who try and fail to learn 3D.

They give up at some point and I can see why. I didn't talk about technical details much in this post because frankly, although I learnt a lot, I am still very lost. As I stated at the start, I consider this to be harder than programming. And after the tutorial, I can now quantify how tall and treacherous this mountain is. Even now, it's very hard to even see the peak through the fog of unknown's. But still, I feel excited.

When you're appreciating art in a game as a normal person, the novelty quickly wears off and the gameplay is what keeps players. And as someone who aspires to be a game developer, it does feel a bit demotivating.

But that's nothing compared to the motivation you earn back, looking at your creation. Appreciating art as an artist, the novelty doesn't easily wear off. When I look at 3d models in the games I play, I now appreciate them even more. I can see the effort behind each and every single model. The countless hours spent on it. And seeing that, motivates me.

Art doesn't need to be appreciated by the masses in order to be done.

So yeah, I'll continue my 3d art journey for years to come. Because art is reflective of the artist. And I like my reflection.