Adventures across the 3rd dimension

and back to Blender and Bforartists, I now have them both installed and understand neither. I found a youtube tutorial that did exactly what I wanted: simplified the cylinder to fewer faces. But of course I can't understand how, because they use a "cylinder modal" that I don't seem to have?

It's so frustrating to know I could do it fairly easily by hand (or could, 10 years ago). And sure I could probably fool around and deform shapes and stuff but it wouldn't be as neat, simple or controlled as I'd want.

I can't even tell what those emojis are.

Are you trying to do something specific in Blender or are you still just getting used to the interface? The first thing I always used to do when trying out new 3D software was to build a Starship Enterprise.
There was something about that ship design that somehow helped me to understand how to create and connect basic structures.
The last time I tried anything "serious" in Blender was when I tried to follow one of the Nature Scene Tutorials from the CG Geek Channel .
Unfortunately my grass didn't look like his grass.

wolf tracks. Pretty sure it's just a dog, though.

as for Blender, I want to make a twig! A small, simple crooked blasted twig! And no, I don't want it to be a simple cylinder.

(Basically I want to do something more advanced but if I can't even make a twig I can't really make something built of twigs now, can I? And no, it's neither a tree nor a tree house, though I guess the tree house would give me something (else) to work towards...)

If I was making a twig I'd start with a circle and then repeatedly extrude it and scale it down as I go.
(Edit: Or you could just add a basic cylinder, scale it on one axis to make it narrow and then use Sculpt mode to make it rough and crooked.)

The treehouse challenge did make me think of trying out Blender's Sapling Generator but after watching a few videos I don't understand all the settings.

I haven't figured how to extrude stuff either...
and I used to be called "Queen of Extrusions" too Good ole' days...

I was never King of anything.

Ah, extrusions...

That seemed simple enough. So how to I get a 5 or 6 sided shape to start with? I see no point in having 20 sides on a twig that would never be seen up close.

Maybe try adding a curve at the start instead of a cube?
Blender is even harder to use from memory.

I *think* you should be able to create a flat circle with an arbitrary number of vertices then after selecting them all in edit mode extrude them upwards.

Maybe?

Edit: Or just subdivide then smooth the cube?

I guess I'll have a play around.

I wish I had the patience to watch youtube tutorials but I don't.... And now I have a headache (I've been trying to get hold of my dad for days, but whenever he does get in touch with someone it's his ex-wife. Today he didn't take either of our calls so she called the nurses instead and they gave the phone to dad who admitted to ignoring his own phone.... So all the times I've texted him I just wish he'd send something or told him I'll call at a certain time so he'd be prepared to pick up the phone - he hasn't even seen them! *sigh* I feel sorry for him and I do get that he's in pain but I'm starting to feel pretty damn shitty too from all this waiting for something that never happens...)

EDIT: Maybe that should have gone in my personal rants thread that only Kaz and Banj ever need to see

In Blender, top left of viewport go to add. Select Cylinder. In the bottom left you'll see what looks like a button that says Add Mesh>Cylinder, click it and you can change the parameters of the cylinder. To extrude, enter edit mode (top left again), then enter faces (the 3 icons next to the mode dropdown are verts, edges, and faces). Select a face, then right click* to get a context menu that gives you different editing options, choose to extrude and pull in the direction you want to extrude.

Personally I would start with a cube and work from there rather than use a cylinder.

EDIT - * when you are in edit mode there are also icons on the left toolbar for editing operations like bevel and extrude.