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Blender Is GPL
BartV writes with a low-key snippet from the new blender.org: ""Today, Sunday oct 13, 2002, we've launched the Blender sources as GNU GPL to the Internet. Blender has become Free Software forever!" This should be a case study for other companies with software no longer profitable as payware; read some of our previous postings about Blender to follow the story from idea to release.
I was reading through some of the previous articles b/c as we all know, the server is /.'ed.
I found a lot of complaints about the UI of the program (see one here)
Any of the hardcore Blender users planning on actually doing some development on the UI (and some features which other programs have, ie default lighting?)
I am really interested in doing some of my own editing soon and I would love to see an easy to use program that isn't referred to as " the vi of 3D modelling "
Just some thoughts until we can see the actual article.
It occurs to me, what with all the debate going on concerning the validity of open source as a business model, that we are missing the bigger lesson from the blender story.
While I know that those 100 k Euros probably did not really cover all the assets of NaN, all the same, it showed it is possible.
What would people say to programming teams picking up desired projects, and then 'holding them ransom' and waiting for some form of corporate sponsorship, perhaps?
Or just doing it the way blender did it, and accepting private donations? That way, the projects that people really deem worthy would be the ones that made it into the open source community. Survival of the most valuable?
Good idea? Bad idea? Comments?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
People who find the UI difficult to use remind me of people who can't read sheet music bitching about how hard it is to play the violin. Perhaps the reason you find blender difficult is you lack a foundation in 3d to base your knowledge upon.
The other camp that complains about the UI is the Lightwave and Max crowd who are comparing this relatively small program to a full featured suite.
Blender is a good tool. It is about to get better. I dig the fact that it will be part of Linux distros from now on.
I believe in Blender so much I gave my fifty and became a member. And yes, I'm very happy right now.
Your statement is true only if your primary concern is making the app easy for new users.
There is always a clear tradeoff between new users and experienced ones. Others have said below something along the lines of: "Just look at all the 3D apps out there now, each one of them focuses on the experienced user..." They are right. Once you understand the workflow, things are generally fast --which is the way all of these users want things to be anyway longer term.
Interestingly, the MCAD market (for Engineers, not entertaiment or styling) is making this mistake. All the major apps are converting their custom U.I. to one that works for new users. Each and every one of them loses their productivity as a result. Each of them are fighting with their user base. Blender will have the same problem.
One solution is to make *good* documentation with lots of use cases. The Blender folks have done a fair job of this.
The bottom line here is that complex tasks are complex. The software can only go so far to make performing the task easier. Any 3D app that has a very easy UI, also suffers from the inability to do the little complex things that make the app worth using anyway.
Why spend time building the perfect UI, when new feature creep from the fast evolving 3D market will slowly erode your interface anyway.
Personally, I feel the Blender UI is a little out there. It could be a little more standard, but that effort is probably not worth the time. Adding good things to Blender will likely motivate new users to make use of the package given its price and capability.
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