How to learn Blender 2.7 ???

Hi all.

I guess I need to finally come out of denial that Gmax is forever and learn Blender.

I have a book and CD called Gmax bible. it has been a great help, ok not as good and the help of fellow trainzers but good all the same.

is there a book similar to that or better to learn blender 2.7 or such??

I think there are two obstacles to learning 3D modelling: the first is understanding, or getting around in 3D space, and the second is the interface of the 3D tool. You already know the first so you are half way there. Learning the Blender 3D interface can be a challenge since it can be customised so much as to be unrecognisable from one course to another. And by "course" I include the 100's, if not 1000's, of short tutorials on the Web.

Rather than going to 2.7, I suggest leaping straight to 3.0, 3.1, or 3.2 (current). If you want 2.7 because of IM exports then you can do that with Rileyzzz's IM exporter which works a treat in later versions of Blender. See https://github.com/rileyzzz/BlenderIMExporter

There are some online courses that are free (just Google "Blender courses free") but I have no idea of the quality of most of them. However I highly recommend checking out the free CG Cookie Blender 3.0 intro course by Jonathan Lampel. See https://cgcookie.com/courses/blender-3-basics-intro-to-blender. The more in-depth CG Cookie courses require a subscription but armed with that course you can probably find other free tutorials that target your particular need. For example, bevelling, and other slice and dice tools. I admit I have been a CG Cookie member for several years.

If you want to export to FBX with Blender then I'm part way through updating my Trainz WiKi "How to export..." page and hopefully it will be up in a few days. The animation version update will follow.

My experience moving to blender is probably similar to many. I tried it way back in 2.53 era... and went whoa... this is nuts and went back to 3DCANVAS/GMAX. Tried again a while later... 2.7 era. still nuts... a while later, 2.8 came out with a LOT of changes to the UI. To be fair... 2.8 *should* have been called 3.0... it was *that* different. It was NOW, (to me) usable and a lot less frustrating. So feeling like you need to use an OLD version because you need the EXPORTER (or that maybe you keep finding examples in 2.79 era) is not going to serve you much better than hanging on to GMAX. Jump to the 3.0 era of Blender and its much improved User Interface and you can STILL make content the old way provided you use RILYZZZ's exporter.

And if you WANT to do things the NEW way with PBR, you can do that too.

As far as learning... the most I have paid for Blender training was about $9.00 on a website called UDEMY. Worth every penny to have curated general training before you get "started" on your projects.

Try Googling 'blender pdf', 'blender tutorials pdf', and similar for free manual downloads. On the Blender website is a pile of tutorials and there is a Blender channel on YouTube. Peter

There are a few tutorials on Blender 2.7 but realistically I'd start in 3 these days.

Fairly old https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trainz/Tutorial_for_Blender

Cheerio John

Checkout Blender for Trainz tutorials by Cayden http://doug56.net/BlenderForTrainz/

I recommend Cayden's tutorials too. They are focused on making content for Trainz.

Thank you all, Ill take a look. !