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49 Comments
- 3dprototype, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22Learning the interface is a struggle but this is the best open source 3D around! Kudos to everyone on the development team.
- drizek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Learning how to use blender is a lot easier than learning how to crack Maya.
- templest, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13"I still don't understand why a 3D animation software needs a video editor built in."
You don't understand why a software program that creates *animations* in 3D which are exported to *video* formats, would possibly need an editor, of the video kind? - Hunkadoodle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Yeah, it will take me a day to finish reading all the "much more" added since 2.41! Check out a list of everything here:
http://www.blender.org/cms/Changes_since_last_ver.727.0.html - TheQwe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13And once you've learned the interface it's one of the most efficient workflows out there.
- timxpx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10once you learn the interface, which is all pretty much hot-key based, you can work a heck of a lot faster than say, maya, where everything is a button.
- Craga89, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Great piece of software here, the developers deserve every bit of praise. Some great features were added in this release, and hopefully many more in the upcoming 2.5 release :).
- spyres, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Well just because something is free/opensourced doesn't mean it automatically has to be "dumbed down" for learning by the lowest common denominator simply because they can't get off their ass to learn enough about the programs true value.
True 3d design isn't easy no matter how "baby steps" the interface is. People want instant gratification and I have little patience for that.
Honestly, if folks can't put in even a minimum effort (and the program truly isn't -that- hard) I could care less if they use it or not. Let 'em pirate Maya or whatever they usually do. - spyres, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Very Very true. But you'll get all sorts of folks that think something "sux" if they can't do stuff with it right away without putting any effort to learn it.
To a noob, Autocad, Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark Express, etc. wouldn't be exactly "easy" either. - Vektuz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I really don't understand why people say the interface is "harder".
Its all just hotkey based, really. Its designed for efficient workflows.
Basically, you put one hand on the mouse, the other on wasd as if you're playing a first person shooter. Then every key you need to use often is under your wasd hand.
They designed it differently because of this.
Maya, MAX, etc, are "easier to learn" just like a first person shooter would be 'easier to learn' if to move your guy you had to click buttons on the screen instead of press wasd. Sure, its obvious how to go forward, you click the big button labled 'go forward'. Ok, now you know how to go forward, but you're going to be slow at it forever, since its all locked down in an inefficient interface.
Wheras with blender... as you learn you get faster and faster. Eventually, the interface is so clean and quick and responsive, once you get good at it, going back to a button-toolbar driven interface like Maya or Softimage or Max is painful and slow. Clicking a button to extrude? Rather just press E. Selecting a loop of faces? Alt click. Moving them around? G (for grab, also right by your hand) or use the manipulator widget which is capable of scaling, moving, etc, just by dragging stuff around.
Basically, blender is a little more difficult to get 'used' to the GUI, but once you're there, its a faster workflow for most things, and ends up feeling more natural.
New users might have a little trouble. However, the nice thing is that there seems to be an endless supply of video tutorials to walk you though it step by step. - peregrine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Just tried it and the new features make it feel like a whole new program. They really outdid themselves this time. Cudos to the developers.
~ - knellotron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7quote: "It should do one thing, and do it well. Leave the video editing to another group or take the code that you used for the video editing area of blender and make a stand alone, fully featured editor."
Ironically, the video editor in Blender IS better than any other open-source editor that has come along, with the possible exception of Cinelerra. I'd reccomend Blender for video editors more than I'd reccomend Lives, Kdenlive, Pitivi, Diva, Jahshaka and so many others.
And secondly, the code was forked last year, into Positron, and that was a complete failure. Blender's main branch was improving so fast that the main branch was out-featuring Positron constantly. - spyres, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Direct link to the downloads page.
http://www.blender.org/cms/Blender.31.0.html
All this power in a measly 7.2 mb under windows. Wow. - JasonPrini, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Universal Binary?.... yep!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This looks like another good time to post a link to http://penguinpetes.com/b2evo/index.php?title=stealth_bombers_are_more_difficult_to_op_1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 .
A little lecture I posted out of the goodness of my heart to help people understand *why* program interfaces are "difficult". - Cheeseness, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4From my own experience and the experiences of those I know who've tried Blender, the interface is easy to pick up (with some reference materials of course - maybe that's why people don't like it... it's one of those things that pretty much requires you read some documentation before you can call yourself a guru) if you're not already used to another modeller's way of doing things.
Personally, I think the UIs used by Max and Lightwave aren't as intuitive as Blender's. Sure, Blender could use some more button groups/configuration options/etc for its panels window, but that's not make or break stuff.
Seriously though, if anybody has problems with the way the interface is implemented/organised/executed, they have the option if not the obligation to improve it to meet their needs, or, if inclined, rewrite it from scratch. Do that with Lightwave. - wallclimber, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@spyres: "my analysis of that attitude: they don't have anything invested in the application, so they're not going to work very hard to learn it. What am I going to spend more time on, something I just downloaded on a whim, or something I just spent $6000 on?"
=====================
On the other hand, maybe the appreciation of the major investment of time and talent by those who design and build such free software could be an incentive.
Your software might cost you $6000, but our software is priceless. :o) So, supporting it however we can (if only by investing some time to learn it) is an easy decision.
Plus, any artist/designer/creative person worth their salt will always love having access to new toys...er...tools. But, stick to your $6000 software if it makes you feel loftier. - Klowner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Not to mention actually being able to use 3D Scenes (as in, not rendered yet) as clips in the video editor. Sure as hell beats rendering a whole animation strip and THEN exporting it into av video editing tool, plus it keeps the workflow a lot more fluid and makes compositing multiple things much easier. And now it supports framestore to, so.. all the more better
- sunsetN!nja, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In film school, I learned 3d on Maya. It was just as difficult to get around the UI on that program and in some cases, I felt it was harder. And that was with an experienced instructor helping me out. Granted, I found blender after learning Maya, so I'm not sure how a complete noob would feel about it. Either way, Blender is a great app.
- drag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3""oh that's right. I questioned a feature in an open source project. Damn it, I forgot, open source is the bible here. '''
Noooo.....
You didn't understand why a animation suite needs the ability edit video. People tried to point out the fact that's it's pretty freaking obvious WHY you would want one.
It's like asking why the hell Microsoft Office has a a spreadsheet editor and has database features when it's used for writing word documents. It's pretty obvious when you look at it.
Blender is a full computer animation suite. Full execution from modelling wireframes, skinning, animation, effects, and video compisition. The only thing it realy doesn't do is editing textures. For that you use the same thing they did when they made the 'Shrek' film.. You use Gimp. (no they didn't use photoshop for textures)
Also keep in my its a COMPOSITOR. Not a Non-linear video editor. It's not designed to do the same thing that you do with Cinelerra, Kino, Pitivi, or Diva. (or their propriatory counterparts like Avid). Although Cinelerra certainly can do composition also.
So it's not as alien as you think. - TheQwe, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8@spyres: my analysis of that attitude: they don't have anything invested in the application, so they're not going to work very hard to learn it. What am I going to spend more time on, something I just downloaded on a whim, or something I just spent $6000 on?
- HackWithRamzi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3blender is a flagship open source app. it's great!
- bvsingh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Hoo...hah , what a fantastico release.
I bet, if Blender Foundation were anything like Newtek, Alias, Autodesk..., this would be a 0.5 release atleast if not release++;
By the way, people dont give time to learn the beautiful non-overlapping keyboard-heavy style of Blender UI, but if you give it a serious try, its worth it.
However the documentation and web tutorials dont give this wonderful program a justice.
Anyways, how does all this come under 10mb!
On second thoughts, wont you respect Blender more as a program , if, say, it was a 250mb plus download? - frickindeal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The main drawback of an investment in time learning Blender is that there are really no jobs available animating in it. Until it is used by some major animation shops that actually employ people (and I'm sure there are a few examples, but good luck finding work with a resume that states "Blender Skills" as your primary asset) people aren't going to devote the hours of time needed to learn a complicated, deep app like Blender without the chance that their hard work might be rewarded monetarily.
And don't think "oh, they could put out an independent piece that shows their talent and be rewarded for that by a major employment contract". That happens RARELY.
For now, my time would be better spent learning Maya or XSI or Lightwave. At least there are jobs available.
For the hobby market, it's an entirely different story. Blender is a powerful app and even if you don't care to model in it (and it's modeling tools aren't exactly on the cutting edge, see Wings3D for a nice freeware modeler), it's still an excellent package for the money ($0.00). Yafray has come quite a long way and is a decent renderer, although I've not seen many projects using it yet.
So for now, it's Maya/XSI/Lightwave, probably in that order, if you want to find a job :-) - Plastic3D, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've been using 3DS MAX since DOS v2... I personally am downloading the app RIGHT NOW, it's looking really good and to the point that it's pretty solid toolset.
The keyboard shortcuts will help us all with speed and relief from Tendonitis. - PoVRAZOR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes, CTRL+Z does undo.
- drizek, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6learning maya/3dsmax is just as difficult. I still havent figured out how to do anything in 3dsmax other than create a cube.
I have some free time over the summer, i think ill spend some of it learning how to use this awesome looking FOSS. - gespertino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1About the drawback of investing time learning Blender:
How do you think you get a CG job? The most frequent practise are the "demo reels" where you can show what you're able to do. Do it with Blender, Maya, whatever... It doesn't matter. If you're great they will call you.
I bet any of the "Elephants Dream" movie artists wouldn't have much troubles getting a CG job. And they used only Blender doing it.
On the other hand: if you actually haven't a job... How will you pay a $6000 software suite?
I tell you what: Donwload Blender, learn how to use it and become a great CG artist. Then you'll have the fame and the money to buy a copy of Maya legally. :-p
But maybe you'll want to stick with Blender, who knows?
The only thing I can tell you is that if you give Blender a chance, you fall in love.
Blender is a great app. Maybe one of the best out there (considering its file size and its features, is a huge programming achievement). When you use it for the first time it feels kinda odd, but when your head gets it, you love it. - drag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"""The main drawback of an investment in time learning Blender is that there are really no jobs available animating in it. Until it is used by some major animation shops that actually employ people (and I'm sure there are a few examples, but good luck finding work with a resume that states "Blender Skills" as your primary asset) people aren't going to devote the hours of time needed to learn a complicated, deep app like Blender without the chance that their hard work might be rewarded monetarily."""
You could always lie a little bit. The trick is simply being talented and being able to make good 3d animation in a reasonable time span. Blender is as fast as anything. If you learn how to do 3d stuff with it there is nothing saying that you can't be familar with Maya or whatnot either.
I once saw a interview on a forums with the guy that did the 'Matrix' stuff in the last movie. He did a 'Killer Bean' short to get notoriaty on which he launched his carreer.
One of the newbies in the forum asked him what apps he used. He basicly said it didn't matter. Once you learn how to animate and build 3d forms then any program doesn't matter so much. Moving from one to another program is simply relearning were the buttons are. - lbrtuk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Really, because most of the needed code was already there. All of the things needed such as compositing chains, timelines, scene sequences and video support are needed for the more advanced blender features. If they didn't fully implement this, you'd just end up with people making orthographic scenes with flat textures fed from a video to 'hack' the same functionality in.
On that note - blender is actually not bad for making 2d animation using that method. - klbclem, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2do they have an undo button yet (Ctrl+Z) they didn't the last time I used it (a long time ago).
- joeedh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"""The main drawback of an investment in time learning Blender is that there are really no jobs available animating in it. Until it is used by some major animation shops that actually employ people (and I'm sure there are a few examples, but good luck finding work with a resume that states "Blender Skills" as your primary asset) people aren't going to devote the hours of time needed to learn a complicated, deep app like Blender without the chance that their hard work might be rewarded monetarily."""
Frankly, just learning Maya or XSI won't land you any good jobs, anyway. Most animation houses are more concerned with talent then skills, anyway. Just look at Shrek 2, where Donkey-as-a-horse was animated (according to the director commentaries) by an experienced paper animator, whose first foray into the world of computer animation was with Shrek 2. Most studios I've heard comment on this, are quite clear in that they have no problem at all providing on-the-job training in whichever software they use.
Sure, if you have the money up-front to spend on Maya (and XSI, unless Maya's modelling interface has gotten any less crappy) then those might be good investments, rather then learning blender. But if you're interested in 3D, but don't want to spend $6000, then blender is for you. :)
Joe - pauldonnelly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I doubt your claims. Maybe Blender is harder to learn than competing programs, although I found it pretty simple to get the hang of when I followed a tutorial (maybe you meant it's hard to guess your way through), but the reality is that *3d modeling* is hard to learn, no matter what the program. No program is going to be easy to learn when you use them to do something hard. Besides, who the ***** cares if a program is hard to learn? You've only got to do it once. I'm more worried about how much effort it takes to get things done once I've learned it, since you've got to deal with that over and over.
- hsaito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The problem is that there's not even a vague "standard" of what 3D software interface to be.
Since things projected on the screen is 2D representation of 3D, and most of us has 2D mouse, it's not a easy thing... - vezquex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This is great and all, but just wait and see when the graphics are eventually done in OGRE. Then it'll be ready for prime time.
- xutopia, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3I have trouble with the commercial 3D software out there but Blender makes it extremely hard to learn. Still a very nice and powerful product though.
- CoolGoose, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2You can do with Blender great work ( even better than some commercial products) the condition is to understand it's interface that's hard to learn.
- mludd, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2There are tons of hotkeys in Maya and 3dsmax, you can customize them pretty much as you see fit, not to mention context menus and the like, you can also make some major UI modifications using MEL or MAXScript but like I said, there are lots of hotkeys that you pretty much need to learn, so this is not some "Sup4r-l33t" feature unique to Blender, it's just that with Blender the UI has traditionally been a mess. I haven't tried this latest version but I can tell you I'm getting tired of Blender fanboys telling me to try the latest because it's so much better now only to find out that the UI is still a mess, yes I know the Maya and 3dsmax UIs aren't always consistent and perfect, but at least it didn't take me more than a week to get up to speed with Maya after using 3dsmax for several years, every time I try using Blender I give up because it's either missing something or I feel like the UI is working against me...
Blender isn't bad but I won't be using it as my main program for a long while (right now my main 3d software is Maya, I love the UI, it's fast, efficient and fairly consistent although I'm not too fond of Hypershade for editing materials.) - tobsterius, on 10/12/2007, -9/+5While I think the majority of the features that they added or upgraded are great, I still don't understand why a 3D animation software needs a video editor built in.
- tobsterius, on 10/12/2007, -10/+5oh that's right. I questioned a feature in an open source project. Damn it, I forgot, open source is the bible here.
You can all ignore me now. - schleufer, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2I'm sure you are right. I hate it when developers want to re-invent things just for the sake of reinvention.
When I use a hammer, I expect it to work like any other hammer I've ever used. When I drive a car, I expect it to work in a similar fashion to any other car I have ever driven, with the steering wheel, pedals and shifter in an obvious location.
Blender basically screws up all this by creating a non-intuitive UI. The hotkeys are great, but they shouldn't be the main mechanism in which the program is utilized. The hotkeys become ludicrous when you are trying to find a seldom used feature or tool.
Now that I've said that, I really love Blender. I use it along side 3D Studio (yes I have a legal version) and it has gotten to the point that I *almost* don't have a preference between the two tools.
3D Studio is still my main choice, since it has such an intuitive interface.
The new features of Blender are great, but I wish they'd put a little more effort into the UI. Not for my sake, but for the sake of all the new artists that want to enter into 3D animation and modelling. - Obsidian743, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3If Blender had the interface of Lightwave I think its adoption would be much more wide spread.
- 3dprototype, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3"Site loads painfully slowly."
Getting hit hard right now. Digg effect. - wburglett, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3hear, hear! its a great prog, but the interface is rly hard to learn
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6buttsecksed?
AHHH!H1hHHH you said today's secret word!!!11!!11 ahhh1! - Sukino, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2I read Bender...
- tobsterius, on 10/12/2007, -12/+4don't be cute and make me look like i'm the idiot here. This application does animation and should be focused on that. NLA? Fine. Node base compositer? Fine. Particles, rendering, fluid, dynamics, phyiscs, cloth, modeling, rigs, cameras, lights, textures, array modifier, and EVERYTHING else in this program is geared towards animation. Great, all that stuff should be there. Work on those, improve them, make them better(and blender is pretty damn good where it is currently) While you're at it, fix the UI a bit. But, the NLE simply doesn't belong. Just because an animator needs to piece their final animations together doesn't mean the blender group should create a kitchen sink application. What's next? An image editor built in? It should do one thing, and do it well. Leave the video editing to another group or take the code that you used for the video editing area of blender and make a stand alone, fully featured editor.
- blapbloopblop, on 10/12/2007, -9/+0"don't be cute and make me look like i'm the idiot here."
@tobsterius - you are ready did that yourself.
idiot. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3Site loads painfully slowly.
Verdict: server buttsecksed.
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