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Blender Goes Open Source
Christoffer Green writes "
This morning, the NaN shareholders have reached an agreement on the conditions for a new future for Blender.
In general it means that the Blender Foundation can execute it plans, to continue developement as an open source project." Perhaps some ambitious
soul will bolt a reasonable interface onto the 3D app.
Hmm, it seems that the possibility to nan to earn money with blender is finally gone.
I hope the instructions on using it go open source too, man I tried it a few times made some nice images but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to render it... Used a few of the tutorials but they assumed I already knew what I was doing.
They'll open source my toaster, and fridge, oh wait RTFA...Um...nevermind... :)
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
We could only hope for a nice QT interface for this program...... The current UI licks balls when you're learning it, but is ok in the end...
"Perhaps some ambitious soul will bolt a reasonable interface onto the 3D app."
Maybe if you have ever used Blender for any length of time, you would realize that the interface is extremely intuitive and easy to use. In fact, after having learned the full interface, I had a full blown introduction to my home movies completed in three hours.
I would be the first to admit that the learning curve is steep, but once you are there, the program is a breeze to use.
Now that I am off of my soapbox, I am pumped by this announcement. There is a huge community out there that has been gunning for this, and now that it is done, it can only go up!
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
This is pretty good news for me. I started a tutorial for blender a while back. The interface at first looks daunting, but after using it for a few hours you realize that everything makes a lot of sense. It's probably as opposite as you can get to something like Bryce in terms of the interface. Not pretty, but powerful. Though there are many rt apps for Linux, none of the friendliest ones are open.
I was just thinking to myself yesterday how nice it would be if Blender went OSS. We've needed a nice open source 3D editor, and now I don't have to start a project to write one from scratch. Good deal.
Finally we will have a decent opensource 3d modeling software? naah... to good to be true... but if it is, well... great news...
I hope they get agreement on common file format, not saving only memory dumps... well.. maybe i'm wrong, but i havn't used blender for about 2 years.
Heh I thought it said 'Bender has gone Open-Source'. That put a funny image in my mind of making Bender into an 'MS-style Office Assistant' for Linux.
"That's right meatbag, I overwrote your file. If you got a problem with it, you can bite my SHINY METAL ASS!"
Heh.
I've used blender on and off for the past 2 years, I'm not sure how exactly I came across it, but it was after I had gotten the utah-glx to work with my matrox g200 card.
That it has gone open source is a welcome development. The site says that it will be under "GPL (or similar) license" which I think is a very good sign indeed.
As for the interface... It is awesome. There is nothing wrong with the interface, in fact, there are lots of things right with it that other products don't even approach. Yes, it is weird to start with, but if you are prepared to use the keyboard and mouse, and learn a few gestures, you should be all set to go. The window creation and resizing is very well thought out as well.
But hey, if you don't like it, maybe there can be an alternative interface made. All in all, this is really good news.
certron
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
The press release and proposal are both lcated here.
Congratulations Ton and everyone. This will be a great addition to the OSS community. Once the 95k USD is scrapped together.
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
did you perhaps go through the tutorial? the blender interface is amazing for its job, i wouldnt put it on a file manager but for 3d is rocks, oh and by the way, if you use a mouse in blender for more then selecting and move/rotate/transform you are using the interface wrong.
i REALLY REALLY hated the interface when i started but over the span of a week i learned to love it, its great.
sorry for being so defensive but why is an editor for a "news outlet" commenting on the interface? thats like a tour de france winner bashing cars for having a steering wheel instead of handle bars
stick to what you know.
I second this. The interface is absolutely marvelous. It's targeted towards keyboard shortcuts and speeds up work in much the same way the command line does. If 'a reasonable interface' means a candy coated bryce style button set, I'll avoid it like cli elitists shun desktop environments.
In any case, this is great news!
I know there is going to be alot of cracks about it's goofy interface.
But to be honest, it is not all that bad. I went and bought the official blender book to learn how to do everything, and it was pretty straight forward. I was doing some things I never thought I would be able to do in a matter of hours. I still use Blender to do some artwork when I'm kinda bored. More of a part-time hobby then anything else, so Blender being free software was nice.
The Official Blender Guide was a really well written book. Lots of great looking shots showing off what blender can do, and putting alot of what I've seen people do in Maya to shame. I'd reccomend the book to anyone really interested in doing something with Blender. Also has a CD with updated versions of Blender, and all the pictures and animations done in the examples.
Just my two cents, I'm just happy to see that Blender isn't dead quite yet.
Embarassing as it may seem, I'm with Taco. It suxxors.
I haven't used Blender, but to say the interface is intuitive after using Blender for a length of time makes zero sense. Almost any programs interface is easy if you use it for a long period of time, that doesn't make the interface good, and it certainly doesn't make it intuitive.
It would seem to me that "the learning curve is steep" and "the interface is extremely intuitive" are two very contradictory remarks.
Spencer Ogden
Blender is the vi of 3D modelling applications. Like vi, Blender uses lots of single-keystroke commands. Blender is a modal editor (use TAB to switch modes between object editing and scene editing). The interface is based on the concept of having one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the mouse, with most of the work being done by the keyboard hand.
I just wonder how the open source people are going to be able to come up with the 100000 Euro that the property holders want for the Blender source code.
My other first post is car post.
Not until the foundation can scrape together 100,000 euros. Good luck with the telethon.
Blender is NOT intuitive. It is GREAT to use once you have trained yourself. Pico is intuitive. Vi is great to use once you have trained yourself.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
It may be the greatest interface in the world AFTER you learn to use it, but it seems awfully unreasonable to stray from the commmon interface styles we use today (no matter how terrible usability gurus say they are).
I would almost say that the interface, with it's keyboard centric design, did quite a bit to kill Blender as a commercial product. Art kids want Apple esque menus and widgets...
I think that once learned it is easy, yes. I think there are still points wrong with the interface such as incredibly small widgets (the sliders) and unexplained button coloring.
Also object creation is debatable - I much prefer MAX's method to blender/truespace's create then scale approach.
One of the great things about blender's UI is how small it makes the binary. I highly doubt blender would be so small if native widgets had been used. Then again a native file selector would be far easier and more powerful than Blender's 80sesque implementation.
Yeah, I was about to flame Taco about that, too, but since I've never used Blender I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Silly, I know.
I guess anything more complicated than Minesweeper is "too hard."
Then pick "the learning curve is steep." It's the truer of the two. Once you figgure out what does what, it's smooth sailing.
Blender itself was easy enough to use. Don't let the vast array of buttons get you down. It's really not that hard to learn. It will take you an hour. Two tops.
The real problem arose when I started getting serious about my 3d art. Don't get me wrong, Blender is a nice program for beginners. But for anyone who is serious about 3d art or animation, Blender doesn't cut it by a long shot. Even Bryce 5 produces nicer effects.
I really hope the OSS community can do something for the program. Afterall, look at POVray. That was one sweet program, considering that it too was free.
In the end, though. My employers demand the best. So I'm sitting here hammering out models in Maya 4 with the Renderman plugin, or 3d Studio Max with Cebas Final Render.
Check out the girl on the Final Render site, or the Gallery sections and you'll see what I mean.
Blender was a pretty sweet program(And you can't beat the price), but it still has a long way to go before professionals will even begin to take it seriously.
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple.
$95,000 USD is fairly cheap to move all of Blender's IP into GPL. Ton's proposal for the Foundation didn't explicitly state (unless I missed it) how the group would obtain the starting cash. It outlined a membership for exclusive offers.
We should keep an eye out for the Foundation to be set up and gathering capital. I would also be curious to see any big corporation (Red Hat, IBM, Mandrake, etc.) donate a few thousand each to the cause. It used to be that the best way to support Blender was to buy the manual (which I did, VERY nice looking btw), but now we'll have a non-profit organization handling the continued development and support of Blender. 'Tis a good day.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
The problem is that the documentation never was and still isn't free. How is one supposed to learn this sort of program wihtout the docs?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Easy-to-learn and Easy-to-use are two very different concepts, but they are often confused. Take, for example, the controls of a modern fighter jet - it takes over a year of intensive training, and hundreds upon hundreds of hours of practice to learn to use the system effectively, but once learned using it becomes second nature. It's easy-to-use not easy-to-learn.
Blender is like that too - it's a highly specialized program that requires some intellectual investment from the user, and rewards the user by being functional and flexable.
I disagree with you here. The number of tutorials on the I'net is large and informative. I did pluck down the $20 for the book, but I found it wasn't nearly as useful as the tutorials both on Blender's webpage and also on other support sites.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
'ln -s /var/fag this_thread/'
svscan should pick it up here in a second.
QMAIL (R) the MTA powering fagness.
If I read the quote one more friggin time..
If we can get a "banner head" in the 3D open source community it will do great things. There is currently the "Wings 3D" project which is a work off of sorts from the Nendo software. -- I believe that given a long enough timeline opensource solutions can surpass the solutions we have today. -- It just becomes a matter of how long that timeline is. -- Anyway... I use Mainly Lightwave 3D.... but if the opensource comunity can create a competitor to even the very largest packages... (Maya, 3DS, XSI, Lightwave)... then it can only do good things to the pricing of these applications as a whole. --- The next few years in 3D animation are going to be exciting even without the opensource trends... but these projects... (blender,Wings...)... I think are going to make things even more interesting to the industry as a whole.
I am Jack's HTTP Server
I think the interface is just fine. It might have a small learning curve at first, but once you understand the layout it is very well designed. Even others that use 3D animation packages professionaly agree.
I would love to see good multi-platform render clients (nodes) for blender.
Also, being able to render to Renderman would be nice...current tools that support this are weak at best.
The interface, although weird at first, is perfectly fine. I have used 3DS Max, Lightwave, Softimage, and Blender and they ALL have different interfaces which take a little getting used to.
"...Beer..."
I said, "Bender?" hehe. Darn my eyes.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
If something is 'intuitive', it means that its purpose and/or function can be easily ascertained from the placement and presentation within the overall interface. Blender's interface is a lot of things, it but it is NOT intuitive.
I've used Blender for about two years, and as far as interfaces goes, it sucks rocks. Admittedly, there are certain aspects that are nice, even brilliant, but there are others that make using it unnecessarily difficult and cumbersome. I am hoping that the open source initiative will lead to cleaning up the interface so that it is more consistent, and functionally better. And for cripes sake - get an UNDO function.
If you think Blender's interface is sub-par, compare it to Lightwave's
interface (a $5,000 app). If you're serious about it, you'll learn the
interface. I personally find it a ray of hope that the interfaces are simular.
In addition, I wonder if the interfaces are simular on purpose, to draw in more
experienced users.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Indeed. You can create a feature limited piece of software with a decent interface, and the worst anyone will say is it's feature limited.
Even a great piece of software(which Blender is) can be ruined by an POS interface(which, arguably, it was). I've used it, briefly, for making models for POV-Ray. There were just too many other apps with good interfaces to justify learning something different.
Perhaps, but what I think the original author meant was "easy to use" not "intuitive." This makes much more sense, since "easy to use" and "hard to learn" are definitely not mutually exclusive, and often go hand-in-hand.
(To prove this to yourself, consider MS Windows Notepad. Very easy to learn, right? Try to use it for something serious: development, complex text transformations, etc. Very hard to use. Consider now vim or emacs. Pretty steep learning curve, but once you're there, it's really easy to do almost anything.)
Now, a case could be made for "intuitive" too, since once you know what you're doing and have some decent familiarity, figuring out how to do something else could be very intuitive. I tend to think this isn't what the original author meant, but a case could be made anyway.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Thank God, I have been hoping and praying for this moment since NaN closed its doors.
And, in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
"Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
First of all, this is awesome news!!!! Blender was the only good 3D tool I could find that works on Solaris. Next, there's nothing wrong at all with the Blender interface. You can have one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse and just go to town. I don't think they should waste their time on the interface. I would like to see more features instead. I had no problem learning the interface. Once you start using it you'll see there's a lot of shortcuts. I've used 3D Max, Raydream, lightwave and Maya and I think Blenders interface is great. Who cares whether it's standardized. If it works for you then use it.
I hate to split hairs...but a full version of Lightwave 7.5 (the newest version) is only $1,595 and NOT $5,000.
That being said, I own and use Lightwave and I agree, the interface takes some getting used to.
"...Beer..."
Who are you? The typical slashdot reader that is. Don't you have a job somewhere or are you all still in school?
The past couple of years almost all IT-related industry have gone through a massive massacre. Lots of people have lost huge investments, not least the public who have invested (often indirectly) in different kinds of tech-companies. Lots of people have lost their jobs and lifesavings.
Every time a company is cut to pieces and gives up like this (you DO understand thats the reason they are doing this, right?) you all chear like it's the best that has ever happened.
Whats wrong with you? Is it really THAT fun that a business fail?
If you indeed are still in school, don't you need a job when you get out? Failing companies are NOT in any way good news!
With Microsoft embedded in your toaster, fridge, et. al., you won't be able to open source any of them. And if your appliances hear you talking about such things, well, I don't even want to THINK about what they might do.
There's nothing really wrong with all the graphic stuff if it's done wisely. In other words, if you can make it look nice without hindering or obscuring the workflow, then go for it.
Thats a pretty clever move. Buy the source of software and distribute the source for free.
I would happily give up 20-50$ to get the quality of blender with aviability of open office or gimp.
It also seem to be an encouragement - the ability to write source a sell it to the OSS community.
forget it.
What if blender didn't require hours of torturials just to make a simple teapot? It has become one of those examples of potentially market-changing technology that sunk because nobody could figure out how to use it--right up there with voice recognition software and Freenet. If blender was even as easy to use as, say, photoshop or soundforge (which are not as easy as AOL but simple enough to pick up on your own), do you really think Blender AG would have gone broke?
If you've found a useful tutorial, I'd be very appreciative if you would post a link.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Sorry and thanks for the correction. It's been a while since I looked at the /. 8*)
newest version. Heh, time for me to get some sleep before posting to
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Initiating pet peeve mode: Steep learning curves indicate that something IS easy to learn. Plot time on the X-axis and learning on the Y-axis. If the curve is "steep" you are learning a lot in a short period of time. Pet peeve mode off.
I know you didn't use the phrase originally but the setup for my post was better so I chose your post. It irks me. Almost as much as Jeff Goldblum movies.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
I have to agree with this. I found the interface to be fast and easy to work with once you get the hang of it. It just takes some time to read the tutorials and to get to understand how the UI works. It's rather powerful. I for one would hate to see it change.
Umm, if it takes "any length of time" of using an app to realise it's intuitive then surely it is by definition non-intuitive.
I use 3D software professionally and I have to say of all the many packages I've used Lightwave is easily top with regards to intuitive user interface (the function is WRITTEN on the button!)and workflow. Blender comes in way behind Max 2.0, and that isn't a good thing.
Good to see. Now development can continue, and I certainly hope the company can continue development on their web site (which is excellent, especially the tutorials) and generate greater revenue.
Good news all around. Ometedou!!
I agree that the interface at first glance appears to be convuluted. But once you learn it, you'll realize it's one of the most well thought-out gui's out there, period. I'm sure many blender users out there would atest to that.
Don't just download blender and expect to learn the GUI by fiddling around. Chances are you'll only get fustrated after a while. Buy the tutorial, it is *well* worth the ~$35 if you're serious about learning this 3D app. The Official Blender 2.0 Guide.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I agree with Taco, too. The interface of blender, when compared to other modeller's interfaces, sucks donkey balls.
It may be very quick for someone who takes the time to learn it and become one with the app, but as someone who's sat down with several modellers over time, yes, including candy-coated Bryce, it's almost unfathomable. The icons are meaningless, the tools are painful to use, and the vast array of options given to the user make absolutely no sense. It wouldn't be so bad, but understanding of all these is required to do anything at all in the modeller.
I've spent quite a bit of time with different modellers, but when I tried to do something so simple as to create a rendered sphere in Blender, it took me almost two hours to figure out that the reason my image was coming out blank was that Blender does not provide default lighting... like every other modeller out there does.
Blender can and has been used to create some fantastic graphics. I'm so glad that it's been open sourced so that development can continue. As a graphic artist, however, I strongly encourage the design team to *completely* revamp the interface. It may what programmers want, but it's definietely *NOT* what artists want.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
It should say, "Blender May Go Open Source".
Frankly I'm a little dubious about the scheme. Blender hasn't been successful commercially (when it was free-like-beer), so now, the owners are making a last ditch attempt to scrape up some money. Well, I certainly understand why they want the money, but aren't they still selling their books? (Which was the only way they were making money before.) What if they don't get their money, are they going to bury or destroy the source, and cut off their income from selling the book? Isn't that like cutting off their nose to spite their face? What if they only receive 40k euros? What if I'd sent in 10 euro? Do I get a refund? Or will they just keep whatever money they've received and laugh at us? Frankly, while I hope the scheme succeeds ('cause that'll leave everyone happy), it worries me very much.
On the other hand, the comment about the interface was really clueless. Can you imagine the reaction if Taco had said "perhaps, now that vi is open source, some ambitious soul will bolt on a reasonable interface." The vi fans would be burning him in effigy. The cult of easy-to-learn, who-cares-how-easy-it-is-to-actually-use gets rather annoying sometimes. Where are the usability studies on experts?
trueSpace has a very intuitive and powerful interface. You can also scale first like in max. The pricetag for tS is also very reasonable for an application with it's power. tS's interface can also be customized. It's currently at 500 dollars for the boxed copy of tS6.
o chure/modeling.asp?Cate=BModeling
You can find info on the latest version of tS at: http://www.caligari.com/Products/trueSpace/tS6/Br
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
I've (tried) to use Blender before too, having used several entry level apps to some degree of success. I agree, the interface may be good for those that want to learn it entirely, but I couldn't do anything with it. My feeling is, either the interface is similar enough to others that someone who knows what they're doing can pick it up...or if the interface is different, it should be *more* intuitive than the previous interfaces, fixing issues that people may have with them.
DVORAK keyboards may be better than QWERTY for those that take the time to learn them...but put one in front of someone that can already type and they probably won't go for it. Direct mind control would be welcome for either party though.
Youre just plotting the wrong quantities on the axes.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
It might take a bit of learning BUT the power of the program is the you can get for "free". I love the program and I hope that this new journey will prove fruitful for it and the Linux community. I'm sorry NaN had to go out this way but at least the share holders were nice enough to acknowledge it's usefulness in the open-source world.
Yes, Blender has an unintuitive interface, and it took me about 3-4 tries over the years before I started to get the hang of it. But, if it does indeed go GPL, that will probably be the easiest to fix. And behind that interface lies a very fast and powerful modeller that runs on multiple platforms and whose Linux binary zips up to about 1.2Mb.
The only other major weakness I see in Blender is that its output format isn't documented, another problem that goes away as soon as the source is opened.
This is the problem with Linux and the Linux community. You guys no nothing of designing good simple GUIs and you choose to defend the crapy ones. Then you call anybody who cannot figure out how to use those things as stupid.
Why should their interface require the user to invest so much to just to learn what buttons to push to do some silly command.
I am often puzzled by the Linux and the open source movement because they think that their software is so superior to all others esp. MS stuff. If it is so great then why do people still pay lots of money to run windoz stuff?
This reminds me of an old friend of mine. He is a doctor and does not want to waste his time learning to use a computer he just wants to push a few buttons and then not worry about it. He was so excited when windoz 3.sux came out because he could do away with all those dos command that he could never understand.
Programs need to be build for the users not for computer scientist
And your work looked like shit didn't it?
It wasn't even as good as chrome balls floating above checkerboard was it?
...it's also their income!
Wow!
To tell the truth, I really didn't think Blender had any future. But apparently, and joyfully, I was wrong. I'm very happy for the Blender foundation. And also quite happy to see that three years of sticking with this software isn't all down the drain.
Maybe he messed up and put time on the Y-axis and learning on the X-axis in which case a steep curve would be the correct term. Then again, on Slashdot there is no partial credit.
Ton will first have to find 95k. That doesn't seem like a small achievement. He will need the support of the community or a loan, unless he has a stockpile of cash. Do any of you /. folks have a spare Ferrari to donate to fund the Blender foundation?
Many posts regarding the interface describe it as "good once you get to know it." The challenge for any good interface designer isn't to just throw together bunches of related buttons and sliders, but to hopefully make their use, as well as the process required to learn them, as easy as practically possible. There are several instances where Blender could use some real improvement in this regard. Few if any software apps are so good that it cannot be improved, and Blender is no exception.
"Work required" on the y
"Amount learned" on the x
you're thinking
(Amount Learned) = (Learning Slope) x (Time)
but "steep learning curve" is based on
(Work Required) = (Difficulty) x (Amount Learned)
That results in the slope representing the difficulty, not the easiness.
Ok read blender3d.com and there is a 100k price tag is there enough money in the coffers to pay this off? If not, how much is needed?
99% of blenders problems are because there is no undo function ...
Because.
It depends on what you're talking about. The learning curve for the interface of a program could be steep, but then you could still end up with a cumbersome interface once all is said and done. That's really bad, but it happens in some cases.
You're talking about an interface that is easy to learn, but the difficulty is creating an interface that is both easy to learn and efficient for the tasks the user will be performing, whatever those are. This gets really complicated in modeling/rendering apps.
As it stands, his comment was that Blender is difficult to learn, but once learned, at least has an interface that makes things easy to do for many purposes. And an interface that is easy to learn but can't do what you want is useless (e.g. "Wizard" syndrome)
I've got to come down on the "yes, it does need a new interface" side of the argument.
If you want to see my qualifications for making this statement, you can download a game demo I made at www.shizit.net. I also made a tutorial on IKA which NaN published on their site. Perhaps some of you are familiar with it.
It's true that the learning curve is too steep. The interface can be quick for experienced users since most commands are tied to hot keys, BUT, I found this was again a major disadvantage whenever I needed to use the program after a long period of not using it. There are/were only two ways to learn most of the hot keys, the book and the Blenderbase web site. Either way it can take a lot of digging to unearth a forgotten hot key command.
Solution: expand the menu system to contain ALL of the interface commands and display the hot key shortcut beside it. It would also be great if the hot keys could be reset by the user, ala GIMP.
The other big annoyance I found was tying up the left (for right handed users) mouse button with placement of the creation gizmo. The creation gizmo itself needs to be taken out and the left mouse button reassigned the normal selection duties it has in every other program I've ever used. New objects can either be spawned at coordinates 0 0 0 as in Maya or spawning can wait until the a point is selected with the mouse as in 3DS MAX.
This is great news for all Blender user's though. Good luck raising 90K, Ton!
I think in most cases, a steep learning curve means amount learned vs. effort. Or more verbosely, how much one learns to do vs. the amount of effort put into the learning.
Time is a secondary factor because something that requires more effort often requires more time.
So the term "steep learning curve" is correctly used in the general case.
Van
passetspike!
"You guys no nothing of designing good simple GUIs"
That's the problem with you trolls, you know nothing about spelling...
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
...if they intend to open-source the optional food processor module as well.
Perhaps some ambitious soul will bolt a reasonable interface onto the 3D app.
Or perhaps some ambitious soul will bolt a brain into that head of yours.
The interface is the best for a 3D app I've ever seen, and if they change it, then I'm dropping blender... I get so sick and tired of hearing people whine about an interface that they are not willing to sit down and learn how to use. Patience levels of people are rediculous when it comes to learning how to use something like this. Heaven forbid that it doesn't look like Microsoft Office and you actually have to learn something NEW once in your life.
Mental midgets are such tragedies...
*slight crashing sound*
It's like buying a JCB and complaining that you don't know what all the levers do. It's harder to drive than a car with cruise control and automatic gears, but then again it's designed to do a lot of things. And you need to *work* to learn how to use it.
Not everything in life is just a couple of mouse-clicks away.
I can see gaming companies migrating from 3d max and customizing blender for their needs.
You think JC at i.d. likes this move?
Dennis Powell is the guy who put up an editorial suggesting that the K in KDE stands for a marching Nazi soldier, and has implied repeatedly on his site and on kde-cafe mailing list that KDE developers are Nazis or Nazi sympathizers.
At least, that's what it appears to be from the proposal. Looks like you'd have to pay to get a copy of the sources (but not necessarily binaries). I'm not sure if the GPL will be legal in the case that they're proposing. Nevertheless, it still seems like a great deal to me. I'd love to get my hands on that source code for the cost of a yearly membership.
And I quote:
Blender Foundation activities
To establish a solid revenue model, the Foundation will limit access to free services and free copies of Blender Creator. The web portal will be reorganised to serve this purpose. In general there will be four levels of access (or licenses) people can get.
The licenses can be defined to match standards for 'Free Software' or 'Open Source'. Key isue here is the right for Foundation Members to re-use or re-distribute the source codes, but strictly limited to projects that work within the (same) GPL structure. Challenge for the Foundation then is to establish a good services and management system, to provide a strong incentive for users and coders to regularly visit the web site, and participate in making Blender a better product.
A. Free (gratis) access
Limited parts of general user information (executables, tutorials, help files, discussion forums) will be accessible for free. The Foundation board can decide on the level and quality of free access , related to exploitation requirements.
B. Membership
For a reasonable fee, EUR 50 per year, you get access to the closed Membership area, which includes all user services, all executable versions, all source codes. The license for the executables and codes will be the 'copylefted GNU GPL' license, also known as 'GPL' for short. This allows Members to freely use and redistribute the code, but restricts building new applications with Blender codes to other GPLed software projects. Membership is personal and cannot be transferred. For companies or schools a Bulk Member license (10+ users) can be obtained for EU 495.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Calculations for Revenue expectations are off. In the proposal, we see that membership will cost:
B. Membership
For a reasonable fee, EUR 50 per year, you get access to the closed Membership area, which includes all user services, all executable versions, all source codes.
Later, we see the revenue expectations:
Revenue expectations (July-December 2002)
- Initial funding (community, e-shop, sponsoring): 100.000
- Member License subscriptions: 1000 in 6 months, 50.000
- E-shop revenues general products: 20.000
- Product License subscriptions: 10 x 5k = 50.000
Total: EUR 220.000
Costs:
- Website: 6k
- Webmaster / sysadm: 6k
- Full time operations (wages) 30k
- General costs 10k
- NaN Holding license fee: xxxx
First of all, 50 * 1000 for membership revenue is PER YEAR, not for 6 months. Divide that by two. That knocks about 25k off their revenue.
Where can I find a webmaster for 12k a year? Or a full-time operations staff for 60k? The site only costing 12k per year? Is bandwidth really that cheap?
I'm not sure, but these numbers aren't sounding that realistic to me. Best of luck to them - I will probably try to support them with my $$, but I sure hope they have a clear idea of where they're going with this.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Whoa, where can I find IIS 5.0 for linux? I wanna spread some trojans too.
I think he meant:
:) But that's my Linux experience and it's difficult to tell....For the sake of it, a final analogy: I think Linux needs to finish the 1-4 elevator for the lazy folks. But they'll still have to take the 1-4 staircaes if they want to access the 5-10 floors.
1) "the learning curve is steep"
2) "the interface is _great and makes sense only when you get to know it_"
Meaning that a flat learning curve thas has a huge cost. You learn it fast, but it limits you in unexpected ways.
Windows is a 4 story building with huge elevators. Linux (and in this case Blender) is a 10 story building with staircases from flor 1 to 4 and a modest elevator for the rest.
So the result is people think building as 4 story tall. Most people still think of Linux (Blender) as a Windows building clone with just starcases.
Sorry for having to resort to analogies
unfinished: (adj.)
I own and use Lightwave and I agree, the interface takes some getting used to.
Interesting, because I've owned and used many rendering programs, including Sculpt-Animate 4D, Caligari, Imagine, C-light, and Lightwave, and I've found that Lightwave's interface was both the easiest to learn, and one of the most powerful.. (and no, Lightwave was not the first one I used.)
I found Caligari (now Truespace) to be the hardest to learn and use, even with the instructional video that came with it.
One word:
TECO
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
When one uses 3D software to create a desired visual result, it is required that they have rational capacities to grasp catrtesian abstractions in a virtual environment. 3D software still has a long way to go. It sounds like your asking someone to Brycitize Blender by adding a "Make Look Cool Button"
Many posts regarding the interface describe it as "good once you get to know it." The challenge for any good interface designer isn't to just throw together bunches of related buttons and sliders, but to hopefully make their use, as well as the process required to learn them, as easy as practically possible.
Not necessarily; EMACS, for example, has a pretty steep learning curve. OTH, it is by far one of the best editors available (depending on who you ask). I've never used Blender, so I can't say much for it, but just saying, that a good interface doesn't need to very intuitive, but should be easy to use *once you've learned to use it*.
I agree. The interface is different and not the same boring shit you see on all other apps these days. As far as I am concerned the interface is very very professional and "EASY" to use if you actually had bothered to buy the product and get the manual to read. Whingers like CmdrTaco always want things for free (which is why the manual isn't supplied) and perhaps this is why so many great companies haven't been able to survive. How about pitching in and putting your hands deep into your pockets for a change and talk positive about a product instead of being negative towards someones work. Your comments CmdrTaco do nothing but hurt the industry. Yes ok maybe thats your view but do you need to publish it on this site where many people (especially kids who are the future of the industry) probably look up to you and probably will never try the product simply because of what you said.
You learn an application once.
You use it for years after that.
I would rather jump 1 learning hill and have a smooth ride afterwards than have my hand held and forever be fucking around trying to get work done whilst the interface tries to doddle me like a small child. Your easy to learn interface is one of the worst hinderances to productivity ever created.
Unfortunately there is a huge number of people who think "easy to use" implies "easy to learn", or worse they think "learn" is all the work they will ever have to do with an interface (which is stupid if you plan to use a program more than once).
There are also lots of examples where interfaces are *both* hard to use and hard to learn. Perhaps this is the majority of interfaces. But this in no way implies that the sets "easy to learn" and "easy to use" are identical, all it implies is that they are small compared to the set of all interfaces. Their intersection may still be quite small compared to their non-intersecting parts (this is what I suspect).
If making things in Blender were so easy that anyone could do it, then we wouldn't be able to give the wizards the awe they so richly deserve.
Think of Scotty in Star Trek. He seems like a "miracle-worker" because he can easily do something that is daunting to others.
John Carmack, Yes, we know you are always buying expensive cars and what not. What is 95k to you, you? Just think -- a program that with some modification could export directly to md3... it works on all platforms that quake3 and hopefully doom3 will run on... with some backward compatability possible for quake2, quake1... an open source 3d modeller would be a great boost not only to the community, but to the mod community for id games. I think it would be a wise investment for you.
Just a thought.
What? That's BLENDER, not BENDER??? Oh, sorry. Nevermind.
Bite my shiny robot ass...
One of the areas that Blender excels is it's integrated game engine. You can create a 3d-world and object in less than 10 minutes and try it out, opening doors or bouncing off walls.
Something that you cannot do with 3ds max or Maya. I think the renderer in max is much better, but you can come up with the same results with some easy fiddling so who's complaining.
The fact of the matter is, if Linux is so unpopular because of the lack of games, the open source community should band together and help support Blender. After all, if you have an app that can help rapidly develop games on your platform, your user base will increase exponentially.
I was a bit flummoxed at first too, but I went to Barnes and Noble and bought the blender book and I was up creating things very quickly afterward.
The interface has a steep learning curve, but I think it's worth it to learn the program.
"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google
You happen to be a complete fucking idiot. You fucking tool. Learn how to read a god damn tutorial you ass monkey.
Christ.
As you have read the news Blender is going open-source. You should also learn in the open-source world, no one will listen to the complain like "the interface sucks". Either you have to live with it or roll up your sleeve and start a CVS tree in sourceforge.net.
Welcome to free-speech society.
Interesting observation about Caligari. I really like the Caligari interface and there used to be an open source modeler with a clone interface and I believe both were based on an old SGI modeler rather than a Caligari innovation.
I always thought the total lack of text --except for the rollover hints-- was very intriguing because it eliminates the need for internationalization, hence the popularity of Truespace in Asia. Indeed an interface like that technically allows a child unable to read to use it although realistically it might be frustrating for most kids, especially slow readers with fetal alcohol syndrome or what have you. But kids and other lingual users aside that graphics only interface with pop-up menus and dialogs that you can easily collapse just looks better and provides better use of the workspace for my tastes. The lack of more shortcuts is the only real downside.
I think an interface like Truespace, with hotkeys enabled and lots more hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts/alternatives added would be a dream. I tried Blender a while back and it seemed like it needed to be split into a few different packages with different viewport configurations like a package specially for modelers ala Lightwatve, an animation package with a layout like Truespace --though with animation controls more like 3DS-- and something else specifically for gaming. When I tried it, it had some stability problems --par for the course in 3D obviously-- but it didn't look too bad.
I wonder what the source looks like in QT3 Designer. I just took a look at that, it's got as many icons as a 3D design package. It looks more like VB or Delphi than C++. They're starting to attract the likes of icon loving weirdos like myself. Things are looking colorful in open source.
Oh! Tab. Damn, I have to confess I never got to that point. So much for my earlier comment about splitting it into two different interfaces for object and scene editing.
You hate the interface for the first 2 weeks to month... at this point you either give up or figure it out.
From this point onwards you love it.
Yup that means you gotta do your time downloading and doing tutorials, searching forum archives and chatting to other users.
Wouldn't "a steep learning curve" mean it'd be a walk in the park learning it? If the learing curve's steep, it rises fast vs your effort, right?
The thing with blender, as I see it, is that since it breaks most conventions regarding user interfaces it can be a bit confusing for beginners. After some time it all becomes clear, but that goes for (almost) any program if you spend enough time with it.
And as little as vi should be changed so should blender. That whould be like putting shit on pizza to make a billion flies like it.
FRA: STFU GTFO
I really like Blender, mainly because of it's completely different user interface. The learning curve is steep, but once you know the most important keys the interface is very cool because you then have one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard, which is very efficient.
Making blender open-source is really nice as it would be a shame to let such a fine product die.
Intuitive from Intuition, (knowledge obtained from) an ability to understand or know something immediately without needing to think about it, learn it or discover it by using reason. [From Cambridge International Dictionary of English]
Twice before I've been involved in discussions on Slashdot about Blender's interface. Twice before have a very strong argument from those who like the interface been that it's incredibly intuitive once you learn it. Two wrongs obviously does not make a right.
Please stop abusing the word "intuitive". Sit down for a moment, using a dictionary if necessary, and think about what "intuitive" means. Then use a better word such as "powerful", or a term like "it's obvious once you've learned it" in these cases.
English is a very rich language, please keep it that way.
Tell that to the people at ILM.
And what does this mean, exactly?
YOU FOOLS!!!
I am all for blender's interface (besides the colour). BTW: You who took 2 hours to figure out how to render a sphere- You must just be stupid. Alot of modellers dont come with light- alot of renderer's as well (If you're the code-type). Blender's interface is the most intuitive on the market. Just newbies who are overconfident or know nothing, are those who have problems. The trouble is that the 3D market is being overtaken by vegetables.... or rather, those with no brains....
For those in the 3D biz who look down on blender, well... that's your loss.