Landmark 2.80 Release of Open Source Blender 3D With Improved UI Now Available (blender.org) 67
"In the 3D content creation space, where are lot of professional 3D software costs anywhere from 2K to 8K Dollars a license, people have always hoped that the free, open source 3D software Blender would some day be up to the job of replacing expensive commercial 3D software packages," writes Slashdot reader dryriver:
This never happened, not because Blender didn't have good 3D features technically, but rather because the Blender Foundation simply did not listen to thousands of 3D artists screaming for a "more standard UI design" in Blender. Blender's eccentric GUI with reversed left-click-right-click conventions, keyboard shortcuts that don't match commercial software and other nastiness just didn't work for a lot of people.
After years of screaming, Blender finally got a much better and more familiar UI design in release 2.80, which can be downloaded here. Version 2.80 has many powerful features, but the standout feature is that after nearly 10 years of asking, 3D artists finally get a better, more standard, more sensible User Interface. This effectively means that for the first time, Blender can compete directly with expensive commercial 3D software made by industry leaders like Autodesk, Maxon, NewTek and SideFX.
Why the Blender Foundation took nearly a decade to revise the software's UI is anybody's guess.
After years of screaming, Blender finally got a much better and more familiar UI design in release 2.80, which can be downloaded here. Version 2.80 has many powerful features, but the standout feature is that after nearly 10 years of asking, 3D artists finally get a better, more standard, more sensible User Interface. This effectively means that for the first time, Blender can compete directly with expensive commercial 3D software made by industry leaders like Autodesk, Maxon, NewTek and SideFX.
Why the Blender Foundation took nearly a decade to revise the software's UI is anybody's guess.
The biggest problem I've had with Blender (Score:5, Interesting)
Is the UI keeps changing ( even slightly ) with every new release. Not all of it, mind you, but just enough to drive you crazy.
On top of this, due to the speed of releases, it can be difficult to find a tutorial / documentation on the CURRENT release of Blender.
Go look for " how to do X in Blender " and you'll find a dozen tutorials on it. Very few of which ( if any ) are relevant to the current version.
( They may still work, they may not depending on what's changed between the release the tutorial was made for and the one you have )
Though, I'm cheering for them because Autodesk and their subscription model bullshit can kiss my ass. ( $1700 / year for Maya )
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This, all the way.
I can't think of another app that's so rapidly and repeatedly entirely changed how you work the bloody thing. And it's made all the worse because there are so many features that you need to know how to control and shortcuts you need to learn in order to do anything at a reasonable pace; 3d design is not well suited to hunt-and-peck searching through menus.
And at the same time, I'm also cheering them on, because for all its flaws, at it's core its an excellent, free product.
(Although I wis
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I believe 2.8 has resolved the issue with subdivision. Something to do with "limit basedf" subdivision I believe although i havent really looked too deep into it.
Re:The biggest problem I've had with Blender (Score:5, Interesting)
There are deep mathematical reasons why subdivision surfaces don't converge to perfect spheres, for all the popular subdivision schemes. However there is a relatively simple fix: generate a perfect sphere by other means, for example by inflating a cube with subdivided faces, then subdivide the resulting mesh. This will give you a miniscule error factor vs a true sphere.
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Why didn't they change? (Score:5, Informative)
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Let me see if I understand this. There were thousands of 3D artists who were paying $2k - $8k per licence for other software because the Blender UI was so awful. So many millions on software licences. But they didn't think to get together and simply pay someone to fix the Blender UI, and instead spent a decade screaming at the people working on it for free in their own time.
Something isn't right about this story.
Re:Why didn't they change? (Score:5, Insightful)
Over 20 years later, I am still right. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the Blender Foundation took nearly a decade to revise the software's UI is anybody's guess.
Fair enough.
The vast majority of artists I've worked with will struggle and complain rather than learning a single fucking thing about how to improve their situation. Also, most of them could never come up with the idea "Hey, we can just pay someone to fix it." as they're usually broke.
You know, the funny thing about people who BUY software is that they usually get heard by the developers. "Sure, we'll tack a McMansion onto this little outhouse called DOS, we know the foundation is shaky and the basement stinks really bad, but we'll call it Windows 10! That'll be $199 for your copy!"
About 20 years ago, I wrote a rant about how Linux isn't ready for the desktop. It still isn't.
The issue is with Open Source development. Somehow, the development model needs to combine the best of unified design from having (ugh...) a CEO with the best of the Open Source model of "I love to optimize the algorithms that render JPEGs, so that's where I VOLUNTEER".
Except for the containment of the Open Source community that Google provides in Android, Linux still isn't ready for general use outside of PVRs and elevator controllers.
It hurts me, as someone who has been a Linux fan and running it for well over 20 years now, that the general desktop user experience remains so fragmented and fraught with frustration. Do I have viruses and ransomware? When I accidentally launch Wine, maybe. Do I have licenses to deal with? No, because AutoCAD doesn't release a Linux version because it can't figure out whether to support Red Hat or SuSE or Debian or Gentoo or Ubuntu, and they know everyone will squawk if they still believe in a proprietary software business model. What I have is 1,500 different distributions out there, each with at least 6 live ISOs to download. The choices alone are death by a million papercuts. And I've been running Linux since 1996!
What would a Newbie feel, who just needs to browse the web? At first it was setting the IRQs on network adapters... which you usually had to do blind because until you got it right, your one and only computer was down. When Knoppix came along with its then-revolutionary hardware detection, you couldn't use it at work for troubleshooting - all the way down to tacky graphics and sound effects, it looked like Klaus was a horny 14-year-old. At the time, I had access to the main computer room at the 5th-biggest airport in the world, I could have used Knoppix, but I couldn't run Knoppix because it truly looked and sounded like it was written by a virgin.
User interface issues persist. I know Blender is not Linux, the user-interface and development assumptions point right back to something about the Open Source model, mindset, and methodology.
It's 2019. Computing is infrastructure, and has been for at least 30 years. It's time we have computers and software with reliability and consistency befitting of electrical, plumbing, and voice telephony. 99.999% uptimes. Consistent, standardized user interfaces. The HOT water is always on the left, the COLD water is always on the right. Mass adoption will follow, so many of the issues with Open Source software are not proprietary features or file formats but are self-inflicted stupid issues like K3B's "Probably a buffer underrun..." error message caused by no volunteer being motivated to fix what is easy to fix. (And don't send me hate telling me to start programming, I'm good at component-level hardware.)
We need to get this right, or it could well be time to enforce a National Computing Code, just like Building Code, Electrical Code, Plumbing Code, etc...
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You're right, but you're looking in the wrong place. People do not use the Windows Kernel, people use Windows.
Don't be concerned whether Linux is ready for the desktop. Ask if Ubuntu is ready for the desktop. Which it is.
When you focus on Ubuntu, there is no more fragmentation, no more fosstards, no more optimizing the JPEG algorithms while mp3 files won't play.
I actually cannot stand Ubuntu, or gnome, but I advocate its use for just this reason.
Linux Format Wars Part II. 20 years after Part I. (Score:2)
You're right, but you're looking in the wrong place. People do not use the Windows Kernel, people use Windows.
I know. People don't use Linux. They use Debian Linux, or Gentoo Linux, or SuSE Linux. For mass adoption, we need to combine the forks, so that AutoCAD and a few other desktop/workstation apps will join us. The brand name is "Linux", and while we've had massive innovation based on the previous fragmentation of the Open Source community but that fragmentation comes with a huge cost in speed of response to the user. Linus may have an ego now, imagine him after he usurps Bill Gates... and places a real Unix-li
Why no one gives a damn. (Score:2)
"Sure, we'll tack a McMansion onto this little outhouse called DOS, we know the foundation is shaky and the basement stinks really bad, but we'll call it Windows 10! That'll be $199 for your copy!"
The geek has been peddling nonsense about Windows since the '90s. Win 10 is not DOS based and almost no one pays retail list.
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Let's see, there's basically only a few choices:
- Spend a lot of money and have someone directly alter the UI for you so that you can be productive with the software.
- Give a bit of money to a small group to change things in the hope that someday things might be different and you might be productive using this software, depending on whether the small group makes the changes you need/desire.
- Spend money on a product that you know works fine and you can be productive on right now as a result.
- Spend many hou
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But they didn't think to get together and simply pay someone to fix the Blender UI
Fix it? The Blender Foundation didn't think it was broken, that's the point. Sure they could have forked the Blender project but that just fragments the development.
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Fix it? The Blender Foundation didn't think it was broken, that's the point. Sure they could have forked the Blender project but that just fragments the development.
There is, in fact, a fork called BforArtists [bforartists.de] that was started a while ago because of the Blender Foundation's unwillingness to change the UI. I did try it out and didn't fancy it but many on the site's forum seem to appreciate it even though it hasn't had much any traction as far as I can tell.
I know they are updating to use the 2.8x series and I may give it another go once they are in beta and see if they make it worth using over Blender.
Re:Why didn't they change? (Score:5, Interesting)
Commercial CG software and Blender are designed for two very different markets.
Commercial software is designed for studios, where dozens to hundreds of CG artists are each working on some small part of the final movie. Look at the several minutes of credits that come after the Hobbs and Shaw movie. A large number of them are not really doing art; the guy whose job is adding rust to the steel girders and the fellow in the cubicle next to him that adds the grime might be wannabe artists, but certainly not at the level of the team that smashes the motorbike into the pavement. Commercial software supports this kind of specialization and is sold to producers and is designed to allow easy compartmentalization of the work. Joe is a mud specialist: his assignments for the week include spattering the hero's tuxedo and face, then doing the same (but with much more difficulty) to the bride's dress and veil.... Perhaps if he does a good enough job and seems like a good team player he'll get to show his portfolio of pimples and black eyes to his manager....
Commercial software makes some of its money by selling directly to the studios, and it makes more money by selling to artists who want to work in a studio and need to develop their portfolios. A third revenue stream is the trade schools that teach CG to students who wanna become CG artists. But the key purchasers are the studios since they drive the other sales, and their interests are in the production values of how to make a profitable movie with minimal expense. That is all about money, not about art. That means supplying the compositors with only the compositing software ---they don't need the rigging package--- and the riggers don't need the compositing package. And the mud slingers don't need either, a texture manipulator is sufficient for them.
In contrast, Blender is written for the individual artist who will be doing the whole thing by himself. He needs it all; Blender provides. If he comes from a rigger's background, he is going to have to learn all the other tools as well, and having to re-learn the small bit of doing rigging in Blender is not that much of an added burden. Much more important is having all kinds of shortcuts available, even those which don't seem to make much sense at first.
I'm not sure that Blender will ever be competitive with commercial CG software. It is already being used by a number of studios in early proof-of-concept and promo work. But since it does not lend itself to firewall compartmentalization I don't see where producers are going to have much interest in it, and as they drive the other markets, Blender seems to offer little.
OTOH, Blender is the basis for a cottage industry of advertising, instruction, and special purpose short videos. Think of the real estate agent who shows a prospect a fly-through video of a house that has not yet been built, complete with views from the windows, a selection of different carpets, etc.
Yeah, I'm simplifying. Blenderistas can and do form teams to complete large projects. But this is already much too long....
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OTOH, Blender is the basis for a cottage industry of advertising, instruction, and special purpose short videos. Think of the real estate agent who shows a prospect a fly-through video of a house that has not yet been built, complete with views from the windows, a selection of different carpets, etc.
I see Unreal and like used for Archviz as well.
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Commercial software is aimed just as much at independent artists and small studios as Blender is. And Blender, from the start, was aimed at studios, seeing as it was developed in-house in a small studio. And that's where the issues with the workflow etc started: It was all started by two programmers, with a very programmer-centric view of workflow.
As for your assertions about the trade school, some of your assertions are either very ignorant or, perhaps, deliberately slanted. What most trade schools teach
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I have audited entry level and second year courses in CG that were taught with Maya, but where I used Blender to do the work, so I know something about what I speak of.
As you say, the basics of CG are the same no matter which toolset you use. I was at a disadvantage compared to the other students as I had to figure out Blender's way of doing things on my own ---the instructor was not going to help and discouraged my classmates from having anything to do with my "toy" Blender stuff since they were there to
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The split approach is better, especially when you start wanting to import or export stuff, even as a hobbyist.
As for your impression about Maya, you either just skimmed it, or ALL the other people used it wrong, which I somehow don't believe, given that Blender wasn't even the first to push the "1 hand on mouse, 1 hand on keyboard" paradigm, with a mix of keybinds, contextual marking menus/teardown menus, Maya's Hot Box etc. In fact, the paradigm was pushed hard by basically all the big or aiming-to-be-big
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Splitting the data over several files had no advantages that I could see. It was certainly slower and more cumbersome to find and link or append old data into a new work than Blender's 'append' and 'import' functions, which let me open any someother.blend file, identify the feature(s) I wanted to re-use in my current.blend work and bingo, there it is (whether an entire object. or just some piece like rigging, mesh, etc).
It could be the first and second year courses I audited taught an icon-heavy baby inter
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Nitpick: Blender was never unique in fostering a 1 hand on mouse, 1 hand on keyboard UI. Pretty much all the packages from the early 90's onwards did that, with keybinds, marking menus/teardown menus etc etc.
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And Epic just invested in Blender. Wonder if they asked for UI changes?
GIMP and change (Score:2)
That's almost exactly how I felt when GIMP started caving in to the "I want it to look like Photoshop on Windows"
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A lot moved to Krita.
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Funny you should mention Krita, since it's more of a painting software, that can do some editing/retouching. But, one of the reasons many switched to Krita is that the Krita team listened more to artists, and implemented a saner workflow, including adopting workflow conventions used in other software, while GIMP held out for a long time with a "programmers always know best" mentality, and kept bringing out that horrible, inconsistent, jumbled mess that's been GIMP(although they have admittedly improved it s
Way past time. (Score:1)
Blender tanked as commercial software because the UI sucked. This should have been the first thing that happened after it went open source.
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Yeah, I remember trying it out when it was first released as freeware on Silicon Graphics back in 1998, after having used or trained on lots of other 3D software like Imagine, Real3D, Lightwave, SoftImage, Alias|Wavefront PowerAnimator, and having gotten the first look of Maya, and what the future would be, and all I could think after the first 5 hours was: "Sure, the viewports render fast, and the renderer is fast too... But the workflow is just too clumsy". Then as I put in more time, the annoyance just g
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The UI was fine (Score:4, Interesting)
The UI was perfectly fine. It was difficult to learn but easy to use. If you value getting work done a little more tine spent learning the interface is better than more time spent doing the work.
The post overview actually makes it seem like they've destroyed the interface, but I doubt the developers would trade ease of use for ease of learning. If they have there's still 2.79b though.
Blender is already wildly successful, unlike what the summary implies.
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No, the UI was not perfectly fine. The workflow was clumsy and disjointed, the devs have frequently ignored artist input over the years, although they've finally relented. Part of the problem is that the project started only from a programmer's point of view, and was then developed as custom in-house software in a very small studio, isolated from the rest of the 3D world, until it was released to the public in 1998.
Re:The UI was fine (Score:4, Insightful)
"It was difficult to learn but easy to use"
That's a very rare thing, if true.
Easy to use interfaces do not require you to "learn" them... they "teach" you how they are used, instead.
I have yet to see a really decent UI - the closest is really as far back as Windows 3.1, to which you could make a couple of tweaks and make a really nice easy to use, easy to learn interface.
Having to learn how to use the tool before you can ever make it do anything useful is pretty much the antithesis of a decent user experience.
You're not alone though - literally no modern software I can think of has a decent, and intuitive, interface... even on mobile, touch, etc. interfaces.
Hell, even Windows 3.1 had to come with a tutorial on how to use the mouse and manipulate windows... we've just all "learned" it ever since, it's certain not intuitive.
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I have yet to see a really decent UI
Interesting comment. It makes me wonder what, if anything, is 'intuitive'. Maybe things like swinging a club or catching a ball, which we may have evolved the ability to do. But, for instance, are automobiles intuitive? I started out in the days of punch cards, and I still use the command line for a lot of things. Often, I can do things faster than people using graphical interfaces (not always, even I will click on a link when using the browser.) But I had to learn the commands of the command line.
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You may find Bret Victor [youtube.com] work interesting. Although he may not directly tackle what makes something intuitive I feel like he's closing in on it but from the opposite direction. He creates tools that allow the user to experiment and play in order to find their desired outcome.
Fostering experimentation feels like the most intuitive way to solve problems. While it might not be the greatest way for an artist to meet a deadline it does seem to produce truly talented artists.
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On the other hand, one might think the "user interface" for a hammer is about as simple and intuitively obvious as it gets, yet you see people holding them by the neck going tap, tap, tap, tap, tap using primarily their wrist all the time.
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The lever being a machine ought to place it squarely out of the expertise of most users.
We should also beware the inclined plane. Let's not even get into the horrors of screws.
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All tools or UI's need training, believing anything else is just an indicator that a person has a tenuous grasp of reality.
As someone else mentioned, a hammer needs training to use properly. A spoon or a fork or a knife needs training to use properly. Chopsticks need training to use properly.
Re:The UI was fine (Score:4, Insightful)
"It was difficult to learn but easy to use"
That's a very rare thing, if true.
No, in fact, it's very common. Although modern UI designers tend to ignore ease-of-use completely in favor of the entirely orthogonal concept of ease-of-learning, which they mistakenly call ease-of-use. Because actual ease-of-use doesn't help sell the product--it only appeals to people who are already experts, and want the program to be...easier to use. :)
In fact, for a program which you use for hours and hours every day, ease of use is all about efficiency of motion! This is why vi continues to be extremely popular, despite violating all the UI designers' theories about what makes a good UI. Vi provides extreme efficiency of motion. And many vi users use Ctrl+[ instead of Esc and Ctrl-I instead of Tab, because that requires less motion. Even though it's something you have to learn about.
Ease of learning is important when you're starting with a program, or when it's a program you use rarely. When it's something you use day in and day out, it's no longer an important factor. Blender, like vi, was designed with efficiency of motion in mind. The devs worked closely with the artists on the UI--but the artists they were working with were using Blender heavily every day, so they wanted more efficiency of motion. Ease of learning is the last thing on an expert's mind.
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Artist workflows are built from many different tools so when you encounter one tool in the pipeline that just fundamentally upsets the status quo it is really very jarring. Blender has been successful but it's a good thing going forward that the community has agreed that its UI paradigm should be more in line not only with competing projects/products but with the variety of other tools in the content creation pipeline.
If the UI indeed was perfectly fine then they wouldn't have changed it.
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For example, in 2.79 I could add a "math function" mesh, with parametric or x-y-z plots of arbitrary expressions, but I am not sure how to get this functionality in 2.80.
It's very simple why: geek arrogance. (Score:3)
Exactly like GIMP that cannot be bothered to have the same shortcuts and conventions as Photoshop. They seem to be afraid to get a lot more users if they ever did that
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Sooo, you're trying to bolster the argument for why Linux will never take the desktop? Not that any of us have forgotten all the years of cheer-leading about Linux being a replacement for commercial software, when it can't even be bothered to meet it's UI standards.
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So you're saying all that rage about systemd was purely from arrogant people who should have stopped whining about what others were doing? Even if you paid somebody to remove systemd I don't think RedHat would accept your PR so sure you've paid to remove systemd but then you're stuck maintaining your own fork.
A lot of people donate to the Blender Foundation and then voice their issues because fundamental changes like this need the buy-in of the project maintainers unless you want to fork the entire project
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Support the next gen CPU, GPU as they are new and save users real time per project?
Do the UI again?
How many hours, days, weeks, months in free?
Well that's great but ... (Score:2)
Great changes but I don't think we will ever see a decent story arc out of RWBY.
Wow! (Score:4, Informative)
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Anyway, the new UI does look nice, and I will install both versions alongside each other, but will stick with 2.79 for the time being and test 2.8 from time to time to see whether my files load proper
Possible Insight to Why They Didn't... (Score:2)
"Why the Blender Foundation took nearly a decade to revise the software's UI is anybody's guess."
Here's my guess: Copyright Infringement of the IT involved in the UI of other (usually commercial) software.
After all, Blender is doing it's best to be non-infringing of existing software design. The easy way to get it to behave more like other software is the customization of the interface.
That said, who is really going to go through all that work?
Exactly.
So, someone else has come up with something that make th
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Until 2.8 the method of simply selecting an object was to RIGHT CLICK on it. The stubborn refusal to adopt even simple UI elements of all major OS platforms is a big part of what has held Blender back for so long.
That's not fear of copyright infringement. That's creating an obstacle course for your (potential) users. The software you're going to spend as much as 12 hours a day in should be comfortable as the Aeron chair you're sitting in. Blender has long failed in that regard.
Now, 16 years (!) after I
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If becoming accustomed to selecting items stopped you in the past I wouldn't bother. If you are unwilling to learn that's fine, but that trait won't bode well for the next item that you aren't already familiar with.
You're all wrong, and here's why: (Score:5, Interesting)
Blender has been competent for the movie industry for YEARS now.
20 years ago, I got an education as a classic 2D animator, and I jumped on the 3D-studio (yes, before Max) bandwagon because it was the commercially used software back then, when 3D studio Max came out - it had some distinct advantages over the fresh new hobbyist software available at the time, it was EASY to use immediately. Blender had an horribly hard learning curve in comparison to 3D studio max. In max, you could literally build a city on the fly, you could learn the basic interface in 5-10 minutes (being any good in any 3d software, takes YEARS to master, but that's another story - that even applies today).
But saying that Blender wasn't ready, or wasn't efficient enough, is just based on lack of knowledge. When I used 3D studio max (and paid for even Animation Studio, which where purchased separately for the Max package back then), it was also full of bug (the infamous freeze bug, where horrible to work with, and workarounds where many), not to mention the crashes, Max had plenty of those - and files often became corrupted so you had to have an extensive backlog of files, and export the assets to NEW files so not to bring along the bugs which most artist had no idea what were the cause of or what caused them.
The biggest disadvantage for me as a Max customer, was that I was a single person company, when I visited the forums back then, the elite Max users already knew of so many modelling techniques that they knew how to work around most bugs, and avoid Max crashing. Even if you documented it thoroughly - the company behind Max would arrogantly blame the user all the time, and me as a user, I had to change operating system 3 times until I finally caved and purchased Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional (which at the time, where the recommended operating system for using Max properly). I even changed my PC 3 times, there was a math error in one of the Intel processors, so I had to use another one. It was not the right ram for your system, that was another excuse, no one of these improvements to my system fixed the constant animation freezes or the Application Error crashes.
However - a paid expensive upgrade to a newer version fixed most of the bugs, and introduced new ones, interestingly - Kinetix never admitted to the bugs, but fixed them in never versions, to endless frustration for us who just wanted to use the software and make our work - WORK.
I finally gave up on 3D, altogether, frustrated 3D artist who simply just hated working with 3D after that, 6 months later (well - you can't keep a true 3D artist away from 3D in the long run), I tried Blender.
Of course, Blender in its infancy came with bugs too, and I wrote to the author and main coder of the software (Ton Roosendaal), and he immediately fixed the bugs, took him like 3 hours to respond and patch the software, and it worked again as it should (at least for me). And that woke me up to a different world I've not known before, coders - and companies - admitting their flaws, and fixing them, taking pride in their software without a huge company to worry about lawsuits and whatnot, they could do that - and I was stumped and amazed at the same time.
They even had coders meetings called Blender Sunday meet (something like that), on IRC, where you and the coders could meet, discuss future features and real life bugs, often these would be fixed the very next day after being reported, coders where enthusiasts users of the software too and had no sign of any arrogance in them, just pride in what they do.
Instead of "you're using it wrong" attitude - they had a different attitude, one that I've come to know from Mr. Roosendaal himself - if you make it crash, then we must have messed up somewhere. He and the coders worked with the users in locating the causes every time, tirelessly.
And for those saying that Blender weren't meant for a commercial environment - clearly don't know the history of Blender. Blender was made as an IN-HOUSE 3D tool for t
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but this time we don't cater to existing users
I thought 2.7 ui theme handled most of that? It's all well and good to try to learn a new ui slowly over time, and if you don't like it revert/customize it back as much as possible but all or nothing can be harsh.
otherwise nothing to add other than your story was pleasant to read and I wish you well in your endeavours.
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I admit that was rather harsh, and it wasn't meant that way. If you used Blender from the beginning, you where pretty much used to changes anyway, and we kind of know that seasoned Blender users will become like any other 3D software user, upset - with layout changes, but if anyone are more prone to changes, it's them - remember, they used an interface that had a steeper learning curve than most 3D software out there in the first place.
What we focus on now - is what people actually need when they USE the so
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worth a try (Score:2)
I actually gave Blender another try (the like 5th one, over many years, the first one was long before version 1.0 if I remember correctly). Turns out it is actually useable now without spending a week on tutorials first. Learning curve - fine, you have that with all the tools. But at least you can navigate the viewport without feeling like you're using a computer for the first time in your life.
IMHO it still lacks a lot in the "I can go and produce something" department, the biggest thing being a materials
Re:worth a try (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO it still lacks a lot in the "I can go and produce something" department, the biggest thing being a materials library. Every professional tool comes with a library of a couple hundred materials now. I see there are a couple add-ons for Blender, but no library comes with the default install, and the way to get materials in is less than intuitive.
Well, there are perfectly good reasons for this. The Blender software, albeit used commercially - is not sold commercially. Texture packs are often licensed from stock photography services and serious photographers. It would be fatal for a non-profit organization like Blender, to perhaps later when a certain texture has become popular, to be sued for millions of dollars in unclaimed profits or benefits from using "insert-someone-really-greedy-here" photo or texture as a part of a production somewhere, Blender org. would actually be responsible for that, and it's not worth the hassle or expenses.
Furthermore, adding textures and working with them, has never been easier. Blender has for many years now featured "Drag-and-Drop" support, which means as long as you've prepared your object for texturing, you can literally drag and drop the texture from your own library directly onto the selected polygon or mesh in Blender. Same goes for movies and many other things, drag and drop is now supported.
And we've added a very interesting new shader for your easy texture needs - Principled Shader! Select this texture next time you want to mess around with textures, you'll be amazed to see it has things you before had to (in any 3D software) to mix with glossiness, roughness, skin, SSS and much more, all-in-one shader. No longer any need to mess around with the Node editor to get the material mix you want, you can still do this for crazy advanced texture combos, but we've made it so much easier for the artists now.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree on textures. But what about procedural materials?
Principled Shader seems to be what Unity calls Physically Based Materials. I agree it's cute. But again, without presets...
Nonsense. (Score:3)
Blender has been gradually improving ever since it went FOSS ages ago. And changes and improvements to the UI have happened constantly. This is a larger step with the Evee renderer added as default and the UI improved once again but the improvements have been coming in continuously. Blenders workflow has been one of the fastest since eons, and it's workplace management and gl rendered ui second to none. Everyone who knows blender and other toolkits knows this. Blender needn't stick up to someone used to toolkit x . 3D kits are hard to learn, that's a cold hard fact, and if you're good in one doesn't mean you know the rest. Maya,3ds max and Houdini are deeply entrenched in the industry and many functions of those are way shittier to use than blenders equivalent and have been for quite some time now. The thing still holding blender back ( if you want to call it that) is industry pipeline integration and native renderman support. And that has mattered less and less in recent years as blender already is in use in the industry now.
Bottom line: yes, 2.80 is a huge deal, but so was 2.79 and the ones before. Ragging on about blenders ui fails to see the innovations blender has brought to the field.
My 2 cents.
Improved UI (Score:2)
User hostile (Score:2)
I've always said that Blender is the most user hostile program I've ever worked with - and I'm a former IBM mainframe systems programmer. I hope 2.80 is easier to deal with, and that they quit making the user interface a moving target.
Now if they'd just update the Avastar plugin for Second Life so I could use the new version... Yes, it's being updated, but it's not ready yet.
Re: (Score:2)