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Blender 2.40 Released
LetterRip writes "Googles Summer of Code has born fruit with the Blender 2.40 release. Thanks to their support and the hard work of the coders they supported Blender has fluid dynamics
simulation done by Nils Thuerey, a powerful inverse kinematics system done by Brecht Van Lommel, and much improved boolean tools done by Marc Freixas. Of course Blender has had a huge number of improvements aside from the work supported by Google. The animation system got a complete rewrite by Ton Roosendaal, as well as other major improvements like flive UV unwrapping LSCM, and a Modifier stack system. It also has seen greatly improved ease of use since the last Slashdot announcement addressing all of the complaints raised- things like 3d manipulators, full undo system, etc. There is also a quick start guide for new users, and nice video and written tutorials on new features and a fairly up to date manual."
There is also a way cool zbrush like sculpting available as an add on script, see this post for details.
1
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5610
LetterRip
...does the new Blender come with a kitchen sink?
There were interface improvements, a quickstart guide, and 3d manipulator - so yes interface improvements.
LetterRIp
I simply love this program. It's open source, and it is as versatile as a professional capitalist program like Maya, Lightwave, or 3DS Max. It has a great renderer, with support for external renderers built right in. It's perfect for people who want to express their creativity in modeling but don't want to shovel out the cash to pay for a capitalist program. Though, I prefer Wings 3D for the actual modeling. I use Blender for setting up textures, animations, scenes, and all that kind of stuff mostly. The only real problem with it is that the interface is intimidating to new users of it.
Is it written in Old Fortran beer???
If not, you can bite my shiny a... OH. BLENDER...
Never mind...
While I've never used Maya, I don't think anybody sane characterises Max as easy to pick up sans manual. That app is just mindboggly (justifiably so - it's very powerful).
Anyone interested in Blender should be aware of the Libre Graphic Meeting. The plan is to get developers of Blender in one place, plus get developers of other free software packages like GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus together too.
19 March 2006 in Lyon, France
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
I can also fly a 747, decode Sanskrit, and map the human genome without reading a single manual!
My hat is off to you!
-R
Also forgot to mention the release notes that have some nice pics showing off the new features
l
http://www.blender.org/cms/Blender_2_40.598.0.htm
You can't "pick it up and use it" because the original creators elected to head out in their own direction and explore different interface methods. Part of that involved eschewing more orthodox philosophies.. an act which will always provoke complaints such as yours.
;)
Once you force feed it to yourself, after a while you'll start to enjoy it and even respect it. I wouldn't call it better than 3dmax or any other modeller you can name, but it's definetly a damn good interface.
I've been using the 2.40 release candidates for the past month, and it's a splendid update to an already splendid program. I've watched people produce things equal in quality to the products of extremely expensive modelling programs with it. I've also seen a lot of newbies create complete crap but that's part of the risk of free software.
Naw, not France this time. Cheap Trick!
Rock on.
Shiny metal a!
What Slashdot needs is a way to agree/disagree with a post without having to post.
...
I've had students use 3D Max with not too much difficulty. Blender, on the other hand
Anyway, I don't have any great insight to offer. I just agree.
Browsing through wikibooks, wikipedia's sister project to try to write other books the wiki way, it's generally pretty difficult to find anything good, even though wikibooks is 2.5 years old. I recently did an unscientific study as part of my research for an article on free books, and the Blender books on wikibooks were one of the very few success stories out of the massive piles of junk there. However, a lot of the best content on wikibooks seems to be stuff that was more or less just dumped into wikibooks after having already been written elsewhere, and comparing the wikibooks stuff on Blender with the stuff on the Blender site, it looks like that may actually have been the case here. There's nothing wrong with that per se (WP has a lot of 1911 Britannica articles that were just copied over), but it doesn't exactly help to convince me that the wiki book model has much potential for success outside of WP, which is uniquely well suited to the wiki approach.
Find free books.
No disrespect meant, but your meeting hasn't recieved any exposure at all among Blender developers - I've seen a few posts at GIMP and other mailing lists, but not a single email on any of the Blender lists.
LetterRip
Well, I can use it. I did read the manual, but is it such a horrible thing to trade off a small learning curve for a huge power payoff?
Having experence with 3DS max, Maya, and blender, I prefer the blender UI to the other two. (Note that that is the UI and not the modeler. The modeler still needs some work to be as powerful as the 3DS max one.)
I have been using Blender since version 1.8. And I realize that a lot find the user-interface hard to use when you are a beginner.
...all 3D is hard to learn when youre new to 3d in general.
.3ds if you want to - and now with the new Collada protocol you can import/export even more information so virtually nothing gets lost in the pipeline - of course, theres still some improvements to be made here. But hey - thats what the community is all about - you want it? Participate - and Well come up with something great for us all to use - together!
...while in 3dstudio max...you get a lot of "boxes and cylinders" to draw-off straight away ...without learning anything at all...so yeah...3dstudio max is more "pleasing-straight-away". Maya is more professional and can handle bigger more complex jobs but is harder to work on smaller projects. Blender is sort of the "middle way"... I am not saying that Blender is better or worse than 3Dstudio max or Maya...but they all have their advantages - and you will all definetively do yourselves a HUGE FAVOR trying this application. Its a killer app!
The truth is however - even if it is harder to grasp as a beginner, most 3d applications are hard to learn - in fact
Blender isnt that hard compared to 3dstudio Max or Maya because of its better and more efficient workflow. I have bought 3dstudio max (a license) for over 4 years - but switched to Blender because I found that the modeling workflow was faster and more efficient. You can export/import
The main advantage That I think Blender has - in comparison to eg. 3Dstudio max is that once you get started it all becomes easier
It has - fluids (a really good one), Softbody, Some of the best rigging tools around and support that simply cant be beat. What do I mean by that? I mean - when I used 3dstudio max...I was an unsignificant "flea"... and when I complained about bugs in the software...It was always "my-fault" or "Windows fault"...but never Discreets fault.. And months later when the bugs finally got acknowledged and fixed - I had to purchase 1000 dollars in upgrades just to fix the bugs.
When I switched to Blender and had problems - guess what? 2 days after "mentioning" possible bugs - they got fixed. And it kept going that way. Blender rarely chrashes and its a dream to work with the passionate developers.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
major improvements like flive UV unwrapping LSCM, and a Modifier stack system
I tried to get into Blender a few times over the past while and I was always turned off by the lack of an undo system and the weird UI. People who are learning something new, especially something as complicated as Blender, need to be able to erase a mistake easily. I haven't tried it in some time, so maybe I'll give it a whirl again now that I am free to bugger up my work at will.
NeverEndingBillboard.com
NeverEndingBillboard.com
Hmmm, well, compared to say, Blender and KPovModeler, Maya is a cakewalk. Too bad Alias doenn't offer the learning edition for Linux.
:( (and yes I know you're going to say "but you post on ./" and while that's true, I also read several messageboards every day to keep up with tech news, etc.)
I'll have to try out the new Blender. I gave up on the old one because in the few minutes here and there I have time to play with 3D rendering packages, I don't have the hours to RTFM.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It's great to see what's possible given enthusastic volunteers and an added dose of private enterprise funding. Capitalism, at times, is much more progressive than socialism.
If you could spread the word in the forums you know of, that would be helpful. It was a gimp mailing list where I heard about it, so I don't know how well-publicised it is in forums of other projects.
I'm not actually involved in the meeting, I'm just interested because I think the conference is based on a good idea.
(Correction: In my post I said the conference was on the 19th, but it's actually a 3-day event from the 17th to the 19th)
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
After using Lightwave3D for a while moving to blender was difficult. Now that I've spent about 7 months or so playing with blender on my lunch breaks, I don't think I could go back to Lightwave. Unfortunately my Lightwave experience was on a school computer, so I can't take it with me.
I haven't played with Maya, but I've heard good things, and my 3dsmax experience (even after a year of Lightwave use) was horrible, I couldn't get a thing done without at least 10 references to the manual and a few online tutorials.
For me, an open source developer that likes to play with graphics, Blender's interface is a godsend. It makes more sense to me than anything else I've used, and it is highly customizable.
Quick price breakdown:
Maya 7: $2,000/$7,000 (complete/unlimited) OS support: Win NT/2k/XP or OSX
3ds Max 8: $3,500 OS support: Win XP or 2k
Blender 2.40: $Free OS support: Linux, Windows, OSX, Solaris
While the others may be more production quality (so far), blender works great for me and is in my price range.
On top of that, 3ds/Maya won't run on any of my brand-new computers anyway!
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
The Slashdot effect has blended the blender homepage.
You should've used Coral Cache, you insensitive clods!
You have to work to learn how to use it. That makes it lose, in my book.
Of course, 3DsMax and Maya both lose.
If an artist has no prior experience with 3D modelling and picks up Silo3D, runs through a couple tutorials, he'll be a pro. It's not because the interface is dumbed down - the interface is cleaned up and made -intuitive-. Things like soft tweaking work the way you expect them too.
They also have some pretty powerful features that you don't have in Maya - a topology brush for reworking the topology of models, easy manipulation of edge loops and rings via selection hotkeys, it goes on and on.. The only thing lacking is a zbrush-esque depth painting, and uv-mapping.. both of which are coming in 2.0. The developers integrate with their userbase professionally and consistantly. The only thing it doesn't cover in the production line is animation. It's the end all be all of polygonal modelling tools.
www.nevercenter.com
note: i am in no way affiliated with nevercenter or silo. i'm just a very happy user who struggled through the interfaces of maya and 3dsmax.
While some people would point the finger at Apple, I find it highly curious that Blender broke so severely (if you read the thread, lots of other things don't work) and far as I know, nothing else did...
Yes, I verified the bug- on my 17" Powerbook (with an NVidia card) none of the menus or popup listboxes appear. If you have a machine with 10.4.3 and an nvidia card, don't bother...yet.
Please help metamoderate.
But it'll go nicely with my new CanOpener.
(Data Recovery Software for the PC & Mac)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
ARE YOU RETARDED? In the 7 minutes since this post was started, you decided not to read the summary and ask a question that was answered in there. No wonder Slashdot is falling apart. Also, fuck you moderators, you don't know how to mod anyway.
You know what would be nice, the submitter including a sentance on what the software did. Even half a sentance. It would help us who have no clue what Blender be interested (and maybe use/contribute to) a software project, instead of quickly skipping it. I will give the submitter credit, he/she included a link to the website. The link directs you to the download site, which also doesn't provide a hint as to what the software does. I am not bashing this post only. Many are like this. Please include a short description when linking to a not-worldly known product, it just might make it more popular.
"I wouldn't call it better than 3dmax"
:)
:)
Ok so it's not better, it's just harder. Not exactly a plus
User friendliness matters a lot. 3D packages have complex interface by their nature - you can't just grab any of them and start making animated furry jungle animals straight out.
But with my few attempts of trying Blender I had tough luck even creating a sphere and moving and rotating it around.
When you're hit with such a steep learning curve, you can either give up a lot of your free time and learn it (which was harder-to-impossible at the time since there was no even a free manual, or good resources, not sure about now), or just give up on the software. Which is what I did.
But it's open source - it's not as if it has to be attractive enough to sustain a business or anything. So I suppose they could also attach fart noises to every button and call it unorthodox look at interface design
Good luck with it, it definitely has the features, maybe one day it'll have the interface.
I can pickup a copy of 3dsmax or Maya and just start working without reading a single manual.
Then you're the next da Vinci.
You heard it here first, folks. I hope he remembers me when he's famous!
There's a couple of errors in the post, but they're not important, except one whose rule many people don't know:
has born fruit with the Blender 2.40 release.
Borne fruit. "Borne" is the past tense of "bear". "Born" is a defective verb that's used as the passive voice of "give birth". Unless they went into labor before releasing their product, I'm pretty sure they meant "borne".
It's a small detail, but is it necessary to call this version 2.40 instead of 2.4? I seen several version naming conventions that include multiple decimal points, letters, abbreviations and descriptions of states of readiness.
Displaying a null and valueless digit with nothing preceeding it seems redundant. If a previous version was 2.39, this version would still be titled 2.4 not 2.40.
I wouldn't call it better than 3dmax or any other modeller you can name,
So essentially it's the worst interface available?
If an artist has no prior experience with 3D modelling and picks up Silo3D, runs through a couple tutorials, he'll be a pro. It's not because the interface is dumbed down - the interface is cleaned up and made -intuitive-.
You might love your easy interface right now but later on think of how much time you'd save if it were less "intuitive" and more efficient. Blender's interface thrives in efficiency, otherwise it would have been ditched a long time ago. It was made as an in-house tool for an animation studio by an animator, that says it all to me.
On a side note, I've heard your same argument for other programs such as 3DS and Maya. What isn't intuitive for you isn't like that for everyone, apparently.
Here are mirrors please use them
e /Blender2.40/
http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/blender/releas
You're right. Blender is too hard for you to use, and you suck. Don't even try. If you can't load it and click a single button and get what you want, it must be the software's fault.
This isn't a troll, it's a serious comment.
I'm guessing the article was submitted by a linux fan. Why? It contains heaps of detail about the new and improved stuff, but misses the big picture: what IS blender? Not even a few words eg "Blender, the popular open source 3D animated software, has...".
Read reviews of shopping cart software
"So I suppose they could also attach fart noises to every button and call it unorthodox look at interface design :)"
I'm pretty sure there's a script for that.
How odd that one graphics card would work while the other wouldn't. Are they drawing their own menus and stuff in OpenGL or something?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Menus are broken.
Way to test a product before release, fools.
Unless they went into labor before releasing their product,...
Yes, writing GPL software is labor and cigars are usually passed out at release parties.
I realize you mitigated your statement through a lot of "kind of goes against"s and "you could look at it as if"s, but the underlying idea is wrong. Google is incapable of behaving in a socialist manner since corporations are inherently capitalist entities. Socialism is, among many things, a unification of the means to produce and the ownership thereof. Just because Google frequently acts in the public good does not mean that the capitalist interest does not exist, but rather that it is allying itself with said good for its own benefit. You could argue that one may transcend capitalism through enlightened awareness of whatever intersection may exist between the public and private goods (and many would say that there is an enormous intersection, if not a total unity), but trying to make a monied interest uninterested in its own monies is like trying to make water not wet.
No, that's not it. Are you intentionally playing stupid or does it come naturally?
Blender had a "liberating" cost associated with it...
There's a couple of errors in the post, but they're not important, except one whose rule many people don't know:
You mean there are a couple of errors in the post. "Couple" is a noun meaning two people usually having a relationship, referred to in the singular, or it describes two of something, but describes a plural. Unless you meant that the errors are a couple who are dating, I'm pretty sure you meant "are".
Please report to grammarstapo HQ and turn in your Grammar Nazi badge forthwith.
You seem to suggest that people can't produce work of equal or better quality - which I'm sure you know is complete bunk.
Did Ansel Adams need the equivalent of a fully-automated camera with a motor drive to produce the work that he did? Not even. His tool of choice, in many ways, reflects Blender's approach to 3D. It's a hands on, nuts-and-bolts approach that keeps the distance between you and your work at a minimum (few interface abstractions to interfere)- much like the potter and his/her potter's wheel. It doesn't work for everyone, but if you're serious about creativity, you shouldn't have any problems after a brief introduction to Blender's methodology.
i realize that the rest of it is important as well, but i wish they would focus more on scripting the api. this would be a huge benefit to what is probably a small segment of the complete blender user group. i guess being open-source is a double-edged sword: you can use it, but it may be useless to you unless you develop it. i may have to refresh my C.
at 6MB isn't blender starting to get bloated?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
You might love your easy interface right now but later on think of how much time you'd save if it were less "intuitive" and more efficient. Blender's interface thrives in efficiency...
And who says these are mutually exclusive goals?
Granted, it does seem to be that interfaces that are easier to learn and a bit slower, but they don't have to be much slower at all. Think if you kept all the keyboard shortcuts in Blender but added a decent intuitive interface. Or even if you added another mode that was easier.
On a side note, I've heard your same argument for other programs such as 3DS and Maya. What isn't intuitive for you isn't like that for everyone, apparently.
OTOH, I doubt you've ever heard anyone say Blender is intuitive.
Well, I can use it. I did read the manual, but is it such a horrible thing to trade off a small learning curve for a huge power payoff?
That depends. If it's something you'll be using fairly frequently, no.
On the other hand, if you want to toy around and try your hand at 3D modeling, or do a quick illustration for a class or something like that, then yes, because the learning curve becomes prohibitive. With Blender it's almost like you have to work through several tutorials before you can even think about doing what you want to do.
I used to have the 3D Studio knowledge to show someone in probably 30 minutes what it took me a few hours to learn to do in Blender. It's been a while since I used Max, so I don't know if I still do.
BTW, there's no reason that the goals have to be mutually exclusive. The Blender crew could add a beginner mode to the UI. Even if they didn't want to do that, they could still make leaps and bounds of improvements without sacrificing your power.
and it is "Their" as in something not "There" as in somewhere, someplace.
GoDS
Granted, it does seem to be that interfaces that are easier to learn and a bit slower, but they don't have to be much slower at all. Think if you kept all the keyboard shortcuts in Blender but added a decent intuitive interface. Or even if you added another mode that was easier.
For example, let's say we make every modelling command accessible from a menu that pops up when you hit, oh, let's say the space bar. Furthermore, let us suppose there is a menu at the bottom of the screen containing more obscure or less used items such as remove doubles, spin/extrude, and etc...
OTOH, I doubt you've ever heard anyone say Blender is intuitive.
Yes I have, and it was intuitive for me as soon as I glanced at a page listing all of the common commands. It was the first 3d app I tried and so I didn't have any pre-conceived notions of how it was supposed to work. S for scale, g for grab, etc. No one has seen it to be so terrible that they created a brand X clone so far, so it must not be that terrible.
http://www.stokeseeds.com/cgi-bin/StokesSeeds.stor efront/43ab84240040e40c2740cf366ce306aa/Product/Vi ew/DR213
Maya 7: $2,000/$7,000 (complete/unlimited) OS support: Win NT/2k/XP or OSX
Maya is available on linux also.
>>OTOH, I doubt you've ever heard anyone say Blender is intuitive.
>Yes I have, and it was intuitive for me as soon as I glanced at a page listing all of the common commands.
>
I've got to agree with you there. I'll be the first to say that I stick to what I like and what I'm used to* - and that's generally keyboard shortcuts. Heck, the way I use windows is most is "windows key (or ctrl+esc)->R->[command]" Blender's interface isn't exactly intuitive, but it's quickly learned with about two minutes of glancing at the shortcut cheat-sheet.
*I've been known to do light designing and modeling in Hammer (Worldcraft) rather than AutoCAD too, because I use AutoCAD only infrequently.
No! You eat ME! the INFINITY of you!
No! You eat ME! the INFINITY+1 of you!
There *is* a lot of work being done on the interface, which will be in the next release. Reorganizing the buttons window is a very big task, and something that can't be rushed... hopefully you'll be pleased with version 2.41 :)
...If you participate in 'Blender Battles', which you should if you're interested in blender.
And don't forget the elysiun forums, which are in invaluable source of blender knowledge, and... Also another place where you can put up your dukes in some friendly blender competition.
While I'm at it, don't forget #smc (stands for "speed modeling competitions") on freenode.
captain, we need an apostrophe on the Googles! She's gonna blow!
Sorry. But I can never get "There are" to sound right in my head - and "there're" is worse. Especially if it's a compound subject: "There are an apple and an orange" just sounds weird.
Some of you may already know but we are aiming to make a new GameEngine for Blender using the Crystal Space 3D Engine (http://www.crystalspace3d.org/). This project is called CrystalBlend (more information on that project here: http://www.crystalspace3d.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index. php?page=CrystalBlend). The idea is (just like with the current game engine) to be able to make full games from inside Blender without the need to program. The current logic system for the game engine is a bit limited so you often have to resort to Python scripts to make the full game but with CrystalBlend we will make a totally new logic system that still allows for this fallback but makes it less needed.
The reason I post here is that I'm looking for developers who want to help me with this project mainly on the Blender side. As the project manager of Crystal Space I will take on the Crystal Space side of CrystalBlend (i.e. 3D engine specifics). I will also work on the logic system itself but I would like some other people to help me with both the integration of Blender and Crystal Space as the development of the new user interfaces for the new logic system.
Give me a mail (jorrit dot tyberghein at gmail dot com) if you are interested!
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
Somebody mod this guy insightful. *cackle* Can I break the Hitler cherry here?
andy
Man, Google appears to be all over the news this week, They bought 5% of AOL Time Warner, The author of python is now on there payroll (as well as firefox, but that happened a while ago), and now there are releasing some blender.
Does any one believe this is a coincidence?
You can't "pick it up and use it" because the original creators elected to head out in their own direction and explore different interface methods. Part of that involved eschewing more orthodox philosophies.. an act which will always provoke complaints such as yours.
I see. So they value being different more than being able to be used.
The thing that irks me is not that they tried something new, but that they tried things which any moron could tell you were a stupid idea. (Is this a button, a checkbox, a radio button, a menu, or a tab? You can't tell by looking -- click it to see what happens, and if it turns out not to do what you expected, see if you can figure out where to click to put it back.) I'm all for being innovative, but things like "let's make every widget look exactly the same: a rectangle" have no possible benefits to the poor sap who has to use it.
Once you force feed it to yourself, after a while you'll start to enjoy it and even respect it. I wouldn't call it better than 3dmax or any other modeller you can name, but it's definetly a damn good interface.
And every time somebody criticizes Blender, somebody says this. So I tried it, 3 months ago: I read all the documentation I could, I watched several long tutorial videos (and played along), and I used it to create something. My experiment lasted 3 or 4 weeks. In the end, it still felt awkward. When I hadn't used it for a couple weeks and went back, I'd forgotten how to do anything.
If you have to "force-feed" a program for more than a month just to "respect it", it's too fucking hard, full stop. When I need to design something in 3D next, I'll shell out for Maya and a new Mac, because it'll be worth the time I'll save, not to mention the sanity.
I've watched people produce things equal in quality to the products of extremely expensive modelling programs with it.
I've seen people write great machine code by toggling it in to the front panel with switches, but that doesn't mean it's a good interface.
quote "OTOH, I doubt you've ever heard anyone say Blender is intuitive."
Well there you have it!
Then youll be happy to know that - not only do we have full undo functionality , but theres even an UNDO-HISTORY function with a menu to go (Alt + U) so you can go anywhere in the history and redo from wherever you wish...heck...you can even browse through the various changes you made and go forward again if you still change your mind :)
:)
Blender even has different undos for different systems. Example: Global Undo and Local Undo - Meaning if you change stuff in you scene...you can just do the normal Ctrl + Z to undo there...or if you where editing your mesh you can undo/redo stuff with U in meshedit mode (Tab).
Blenders all about safety and workflow these days, if all above wasnt enough security for you - you can adjust your preferences to save "xxx-number-of-versions-back". Theres even a separate "Reopen last" and "Recover last session" system so if you for some reason stopped in the middle of it all..can continue your work where you left it - or select the last file you worked on. Hows that for total paranoia?
Want more? I could go on an on...but Ill leave that to you.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Furthermore, in real languages 'there is' would actually be correct. It's only one couple. Is 'there are a couple' actually correct in all variants of english, or is this another difference between english and merkin?
Regards,
Tob
Did Ansel Adams need the equivalent of a fully-automated camera with a motor drive to produce the work that he did? Not even. His tool of choice, in many ways, reflects Blender's approach to 3D. It's a hands on, nuts-and-bolts approach that keeps the distance between you and your work at a minimum (few interface abstractions to interfere)- much like the potter and his/her potter's wheel.
This is exactly backwards. Ansel's camera was a simple physical device: if you turned a knob, you could easily see exactly what it was going to change.
Compare Blender: it's hidden behind a wall of abstractions. Every widget looks the same: a rectangle. You can't tell just by looking what any control will do when you click it.
In terms of interface, Blender is very similar to a modern point-n-shoot digicam. Everything you do by clicking little buttons, and everybody praises its functionality while cursing its interface.
Ansel wouldn't do 3d modeling in Blender, anyway. He'd use a blob of clay. You're high (or in denial) if you think Blender is like a view camera.
And I know I can use Blender.
To sum it up: once again it's all down to how much time you're willing to put in learning how to use the software.
I suspect that this due to your familiarity with and pre-conceived notions of how the interface of a graphics program is supposed to work. For me and others, for whom Blender was our first introduction to these tools, the interface is easy to learn and makes no assumptions about the knowledge or experience of the user.
Be careful what you ask for with open source it just might happen.
Of course Blender's modifier stack could be great (I doubt it), and I guess I'll find out in a few minutes.
As for the interface, Blender's isn't really that bad. If you go through the tutorials on it (which are actually pretty good) it almost starts to make sense.
The Farewell Tour II
Let me say first: I'm not an artist. I can't draw at all, and modeling is hard for me.
Yet, I picked up Blenders interface in less than 15 minutes. How? I went to wikibooks, found a tutorial, quickly went over the first part (all that was written at the time) and that was it. I even made a face that sort-of looked like one, which is a huge success in my case :)
So, excuse me sir, if I can do it, so can you. And considering that modeling takes hours and hours, even for the good modelers, 15 minutes is a drop in the ocean.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Up until I read this article on Slashdot, I had never heard of Blender. /.
Having no prior knowledge of what you're talking about, I couldn't make out what this thing is from the first few lines of the article in
Okay then - I clicked their website. There's nothing on the front page to the extent of:
"Blender is a..."
Just a short paragraph will do - thank you.
If you go to "features" page - there's nothing like that there as well. If you start reading the feature list you can see it's a 3D rendering program - but why can't they just write that?!
I see that on many Open Source projects. "Everyone" already knows what Blender is - so why bother writing a line or two at the top of the main page? Many a good project don't give information and you have to dig deep to find this simple information.
Dan
When I was looking around for a 3d modeler, I tried Blender after I tried Maya PLE. Two big mistakes on my part. With Maya it was hard to do anything meaningful, but with Blender, it was hard to do anything. I even remained confused while following tutorials. If Blender is getting easier to use, maybe I'll try it again, but on my computer it could never replace Wings 3d completely. Never.
I would love to switch from 3DSMax to Blender for my little hobby game, but the lack of smoothing groups in Blender makes this absolutely impossible. Googling for "Blender smoothing groups" didn't give me much hope. Are they even planned for inclusion?
my protein shakes are going to taste so good with this thing. oh wait...
Will I finally be able to model my new house with this version?
I was sad to see the BlenderCAD project die a slow death, as it addressed a lot of the CAD issues that Blender 2.3 was missing.
I'd still like to see persistent units, measurements and materials BOM.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Well, lightwave runs on Video Toaster hardware, and blender has a similar UI :)
You could always model your own toaster or kitchen sync, if you must :)
The Blender UI has been described as "intuitive once you learn how to use it". In my opinion it has been described in a far more eloquent way by a ./ poster whose name I cannot remember: "Blender user interface is made by schizophrenic space monkeys for schizophrenic space monkeys."
I gather from your phrasing (and sentiment) that you used 3DSMax before you tried Blender? Nearly everyone I've talked to who used Maya before found Blender fairly intuitive (aside from the QWE, GRS thing, that was annoying as all hell) and I'd agree. I've heard 'Blender is difficult and wierd' from a lot of 3DSMax users. I've also heard 'Maya is difficult and wierd' from a lot of 3DSMax users. Is it a case of Blender and Maya using a similar base idea for the interface and 3DSMax being the odd one out?
No! You eat ME! the +/- INFINITY of you!
"My only gripe is that I wish I didn't have to use scripts to make a dozen copies of an object and rotate each one successively by a discrete amount..."
But you don't. In fact, there's a bewildering array of methods available to perform such tasks:
* DupliFrames with animation:
* Curve paths
* Ipo animation curves (also accessible as keys)
* Mesh parents with DupliVerts set
* Spin and SpinDup tools
The picture you show uses both duplication and extrusion; the latter could be achieved using curve extrusion (BevOb in curve buttons) or skinning (use a surface curve, duplicate it, and meld with f). I probably missed a method or two, these were just what came to mind.
Olde Fortran.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
but silo's just a modeller - you can compare it with wings3D but not really with blender- maya max and blender all have a lot more capabilities than modelling - in fact, many users of these programs may never model at all - some make games, some do rigging, light setups, or animation.
That being said, the only thing that puts a little step in these apps before modelling is that they have to be modal; you can't just start modeling, you have to be in the right mode to do it. ( In blender, you need to be in edit mode on a mesh object, for instance), In max you need to add an editmesh modifier (as far as I can remember) etc.
My has some more information and also mentions Project Orange:
>>>
Blender 2.4 on par with commercial 3D tools
The developers of the open source 3D package Blender have released Blender Version 2.4. B-Bones, Envelope Skinweighting and Fluid Simulation are just a few of a sheer innumerable amount of features that have been added throughout 2005 in approach of the 2.4 release. It is safe to say that Blender has come to level with current commercial 3D tools, with even a few features unique to Blender. The amount of work that went into this release and the results are just plain amazing.
Meanwhile Team Orange and their open movie Project "Elefants Dream" have moved into final animation stage.
I'm moved to tears to see an open source team achieve such levels of excellence. Awesome work, Blender Team.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Some of you may already know but we are aiming to make a new GameEngine for Blender using the Crystal Space 3D Engine
Ouch, that would appear to be very bad news for many Blender fans.
Crystal Space is in a terrible state in respect of its portability to 64-bit platforms, whereas Blender is clean. Some distributions don't even carry 64-bit CS builds because of the mess (eg. Gentoo), and trying to build it by hand shows exactly why --- it's not just a localized hiccup but a disaster area.
If you base Blender's new engine on CS, please factor out the subset that you need and make it 64-bit clean (or work with CS people to that end), because otherwise those of us with x86_64 machines will be unable to use it without major hacking.
In graphics, performance matters, so any setback to the 64-bit community by adding a dependency on CS until they can make it build without hiccups on x86_64 would be most unfortunate.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
That's absolutely not true! I'm the project manager of Crystal Space and my main computer is a 64-bit AMD on which I run 64-bit Linux. Crystal Space is 100% 64-bit clean (at least the latest CVS, the latest stable 0.98 has problems).
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
The plan is to get developers of Blender in one place, plus get developers of other free software packages like GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus together too.
Then, launch one small cruise missile...
If you're new to Blender, you just may dig this book:
r o
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D/Noob_to_P
Happy Blending!
spiderworm
That's excellent news about the latest CS, Jorrit. Thank you.
However, my post was 100% factual, for the current state of CS in Gentoo and for the source release that I tried to build by hand (a few months old now) in the absence of an ebuild. Here are the details:
Gentoo Portage on Athlon 64 (x86_64 arch), sync'd today (note both ebuilds "Masked", owing to build problems):
* dev-games/crystalspace [ Masked ]
Latest version available: 0.99_pre20050823
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 23,850 kB
Homepage: http://crystal.sourceforge.net/
Description: Portable 3D Game Development Kit written in C++
License: LGPL-2
* dev-games/crystalspace-cvs [ Masked ]
Latest version available: 0.99
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 0 kB
Homepage: http://www.crystalspace3d.org/
Description: portable 3D Game Development Kit written in C++
License: LGPL-2
Source build, July 13, from cs98_004.tar.gz:
grep warning Log.make | wc -l
461
grep 'returned 1 exit status' Log.make | wc -l
121
461 compile-time warnings (almost all pointer/integer size problems) and 121 fatal link errors does qualify as "disaster area" in my book.
I am *very* glad to hear that the build portability problems of 0.98 and 0.99 on x86_64 have now been addressed. I'm looking forward hugely to retrying with new sources.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I recently needed to design some 3D models; I found both Blender and a special architectural program too much hassle to use. The user interface of Sketchup was so easy, though, that I managed to put together the model very quickly, and the UI was intuitive enough that I didn't even have to look at a manual. Sketchup is now being used by a lot of architecture departments, and that kind of quick 3D design might be a better target "market" for Blender than trying to compete with 3D Studio Max or Maya.
My conclusion was that with a carefully designed UI, 3D applications don't have to be hard to use. The Blender developers would do well to have a look at the Sketchup UI and implement some of the good ideas found there. On the other hand, even the Sketchup UI has some annoyances, so Blender could actually do better.
Is Blender going to get an OFFICIAL import/export script .pz2, etc...) ?
to poser (.pz3,
Something really easy to use that could import a fully rigged (mesh, textures, bones and skins) poser model (high quality and cheap) into blender.
By "official", I mean a script that works for at least 80% of models and that is decently updated (I don't want to google through old forgotten web pages to find a script that crashes or only does half the job).
3dsmax has "gestureMax" and I think Maya can use poser models natively (though I might be mistaken).
You're right that FOSS is orthogonal to capitalism, but that statement requires some qualification because many people will misinterpret that statement to mean taht FOSS is not trying to compete in the same way that commercial software is.
Many people use the term "capitalism" almost synonymously with "free market economy", but that's not correct. Capitalism is a mechanism for financing business ventures; free market economies are economies in which goods can be traded freely. Capitalism and free market economies are often associated, because they are synergistic, but they don't have to be. You can have capitalism without a functioning free market, and many of the big players in a capitalist economy are trying to interfere with the functioning of the free market because that is beneficial for their own business.
FOSS is not orthogonal to free market economies; in fact, FOSS is succeeding because it competes very well as a player in a free market economy and because there are economic incentives for creating it. In a centrally planned economy, you wouldn't get a vibrant FOSS culture because there are fewer incentives for creating FOSS.
Every widget looks the same: a rectangle. You can't tell just by looking what any control will do when you click it...Compare Blender: it's hidden behind a wall of abstractions. Every widget looks the same: a rectangle. You can't tell just by looking what any control will do when you click it.
I have to disagree.
Yes, by changing a knob on a view camera, you are aware of EXACTLY what you're changing, As I'm sure you are aware, there are many aspects of 3D modeling, rendering and animation that are variable. Stick that many variables into the process of taking a simple photograph, and you'd have a view camera with several knobs, all of which look the same. Appearance aside, most controls in Blender have labels which tell pretty much exactly what they do. They also have pop-up tooltips which provide more in-depth information, should you need it.
Within the realm that Blender exists (a visual front-end to a very complex process), I'm still arguing that there is far less abstraction between you and you work than with other apps in the same category. If you're referring to the absence of cute little icons, these are no magic bullet either, since quite often, you first have to understand with the image is before you can understand what aspect of functionality it is supposed to represent.
Bottom line, there is no substitute for creative talent, or simply knowing your craft.
georg cantor 0wnzzz
Open-source software is not the opposite of capitalism. It's an orthogonal concept.
It's not orthogonal to capitalism nor to any other politico-economic system, because if it were, it would have no direct effect on their operation, by definition of "orthogonal".
FOSS directly affects centralist socialist systems quite drastically --- it undermines any attempt at centrally managed software development, by its very nature. FOSS would in theory not affect pure distributed communist systems made up of cooperating communes much at all, but no such systems exist in practice. (Israel's farming communes don't really qualify, because they are actually companies and would be affected by FOSS if their product were software.)
In the capitalist world, FOSS directly affects both the market pricing and company control of software products, as we know full well. As an example, the market for C/C++ compilers would be very different today if there were no gcc. The effect is very wide ranging, to the extent of forcing entire business plans to change from product to support, and determining the viability of some types of software products in the market.
So, no, FOSS is not at all orthogonal in this area. And in my view at least, that is a very good thing.
It's one of the few examples of techies directly transforming the politico-economic landscape in ways not planned and indeed strongly resisted at first by the powers that be, on both sides of the (largely false) cap/com divide. The other big example is of course the Internet.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
maybe it is time i got a graphics card.
I just started to suspect that we're about to witness quite a few Blender-rendered hardcore porn movies.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
What about Paint.Net? Sure, it's win32 only, but in its (very) short existance, so far it's almost caught up to the GIMP from a user's perspective.
Granted, it still lacks a number of more advanced features, but at the same time is elegant in its simplicity and power, and is a pleasure to use --- the UI is clean and responsive, and doesn't attempt to do a half-assed job of copying photoshop.
Oh, and it's also Open Source. The executable is tiny, and the program loads in about 5 seoconds on my rather humble computer, and is very conseravitive with RAM usage. I find that I use it more often than photoshop for my a lot of my simpler work. If they can clone photoshop's healing brush, I think I could probably ditch photoshop completely.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Now where on TV did I hear someone going on about "merkins".. Not sure if it was "The Comic Side of 7 Days" on BBC Three --which is quite funny to an ironic degree-- or was it something on ITV..
Merkin should become a real language, saves those Citizens of Freedom from ruining english even more..
Okay, I will, as long as you're a chick. That's a wild shot at \.
No, "their" means "belonging to them". The correct usage (both "there" and "they're") is: "There're [or There are] a couple of errors in the post, but they're not important,". I also would have inserted "for" between "except" and "one", but that's a personal choice. Finally, it's probably more accurate to use "some", rather than "a couple of", because the phrase "they're not important, except [for] one" implies more than two. (Otherwise, it would have made more sense to write "but one's not important, while many people don't know the other one's rule".)
I'm a beginner. I've never used any 3D app other than blender.
What I find difficult, and the reason I'd still like to purchase a commercial app, is that it's often very hard to find blender tutorials on the net that make sense.
I'm not trying to dis the people who take the time to write and put up tutorials, but the problem is that the user interface to Blender seems to continuously be changing.
Not really knowing what I'm doing, but trying to learn, I follow a tutorial, then get stuck when it tells me to "click this, that and that." Well, the version I'm using doesn't have "this, that and that." If the tutorial has a screen shot of the interface, I can't find a panel that resembles it or has the same buttons.
Granted, Blender is a very complex app, and I'm sure they change the UI to make it "simpler" or "more elegant," but given the lack of up-to-date tutorials, changing the UI just makes it harder for newbies to learn.
I'm left-handed, you insensitive clod!