Your first stop is simply getting set up: downloading Blender 5.2 LTS, long term support, from blender.org, understanding why this course is built around it, and knowing that most of what you learn here will still hold up whether you end up on an older release like 4.5 or a newer one, since the core principles of lighting have barely changed in years.

Key Takeaways

• LTS stands for long term support, meaning this particular release will keep receiving fixes well into the future, which is part of why the course is built around it specifically.
• The fundamentals of lighting have remained largely unchanged since much earlier versions of Blender, so even if you are on a different release, including an Intel Mac stuck on 4.5, you should be able to follow along without much friction.