Notes on the future of Blender

Luc Stepniewski writes "Ton Roosendaal has posted on the Blender news site informations of the future of Blender. If you're interested in 3d software for Linux, this is a good one to check out FWIW- mind you the interface is a tad on the odd side. But mainly this article confirms that Blender will stay free, as well as some new feature stuff. "

User Interface isn't *that* odd...

[torpor]

I mean, a lot of 3D/Animation products just don't work well with the standard GUI paradigms that were invented for 2D oriented objects such as word processing, etc.

I found the GUI in Blender quite refreshing, actually... but then, I always thought the GUI in GIG3DGO was cool too...

thats not in stone.

[pixel fairy]

it was his ideas thrown up for our feedback.
there was a lot of disscussion and whats up there
is somewhat far from what is likely to happen.
course its all up to ton...

Figuring out Blender

[MoNsTeR]

ftp://ftp.blender.nl/pub/manual_1.02.tar.gz
http://goethe.bowtie.nl/cgi-bin/web-ssql/news-bl ender/index.ws

the first is a snippet from the printed manual that has just enought info to get you started, the second is the Blender news server, where you can ask for little bits of help while your manual ships :)

those two together should give you enough of a taste of Blender to allow to to decide whether the ~$60 manual is worth it (it is!)

MoNsTeR

Serious inquiry

[scrytch]

How does Blender compare to 3D Studio MAX, Ray Dream Designer, or Lightwave in terms of feature set? I'm not a graphic designer by any stretch of the imagination, but feel free to baffle me with industry-speak, I'll try to grok the context. Mostly I could use something I can quote to a real designer who asks me "Can Linux do X".

Figuring out Blender

[daviddennis]

I downloaded it a few days ago. It looks neat. It looks like it can do cool things. But it's completely inaccessible to the graphics novice.

I can understand that they want to raise money by selling the manual, but I'd love to see just enough of the docs so I know I can actually use the program to do something before springing for $60-odd.

Any recommendations? The tutorials I saw seemed a little too specific; what I need is some kind of overview of the program.

Understand that I'm not opposed to giving the developers money, but I want to make sure I actually can use the program first.

D

Figuring out Blender

[StarFace]

You are correct, this program definatly isn't for the novice, not even the just graphic realm, but you are going to need some general all around expertise on running computers to figure out what Blender is doing. It took me a while to get it going but partially that is because of a bug with my virtual resolution spreading the graphics around and wreaking havok on it.

But really, if you look at any high-end 3-d graphics or CAD program you arn't going to find usability high on the list. Just try to crank up Form-Z and figure it out in an hour and you'll know what I mean.

I really havn't delved into Blender enough to figure out if it is really going to be that usefull to me or not...But on the surface I don't think it looks robust enough to replace anything.

However I do appreciate its interface and small size. This is something that I wish the commercial venders would learn from the majority of freeware out there. Keep things concise. Try new methods, the old interfaces arn't always the best interfaces.

Blender's interface RULES!!!

[Dr.Claw]

I swear, when I first saw the interface I almost lost it, but it actually make A LOT of sense. It just isn't anything like any STANDARD interfaces that you would expect to see. Plus you can arrange where all the menus and windows are on your own, so it really leaves much of the layout up to you. There's a libc6 version out too now which definitely kicks @$$ for anyone running Debian or Redhat.