Im quite new to Blender and have been trying to learn how to use it but the official tutorials are no good.

Im am looking for Tutorials aimed for beginners that are:-

Productive (Make things along the way, like a chair prop)
Understanding (Something we can all understand)
Educational (Learn something new and productive every 5 mins)
Not Dull (Must be interesting, exciting wanting the reader to read on)

Please send links or what ever you can provide

Any questions?

Also how does the texture/materials work?

Thanks!

Look up at the top of this page under Education & Help. All sorts of tutorials, documentation and a quick start guide.

I've just started using Blender having decided to give up with 3DS. I've struggled to find many good beginner tutorials as they are either out of date and don't work for v2.6 or they are too complicated. It's not that I don't understand them just they often overkill.

I have started to create basic tutorials for techniques it took me a long time to work out because they aren't described anywhere. They really are simple and advanced users will laugh but they are meant for people new to Blender who just want to take it one step at a time.

Blender Text - Create 3D Text
http://www.matthawkins.co.uk/item-111.html

Blender Backgrounds - Easily Add Background Images
http://www.matthawkins.co.uk/item-110.html

Blender Origin - Moving Objects Origin
http://www.matthawkins.co.uk/item-109.html

I'm mainly interested in using Blender to add special effects to video.

Feel free to contribute to this Wikibook:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro