New Blender Released

An anonymous reader writes "Blender, the cross-platform, open source 3d suite, has released version 2.43 along with a website redesign. This version brings powerful new features within reach of every person. These features include sculpt modeling, retopologizing tools, render passes, render baking, support for multi-uvs, enhanced fluid simulator with particles, new rigid body engine, numerous new compositing modes including defocus (DOF) node and much more. Feature videos are also available."

Comments

Re:Mod parent up. Blenders UI sucks balls.

[deathguppie]

I use both Blender and Maya and I can't help but laugh about what people like you say. By the time you have actually learned all of the concepts and methods the UI is about the last thing you'll be concerned with. No matter how good a UI is it cannot teach you how to use 3d modeling software.

Besides Blender is built around hot key usage which makes it much faster to model in, IMHO than Maya, but yes you have to learn how to use it.

I still dont..

[nrgy]

like the ui and a whole bunch of other things. Granted I will never say they haven't put together alot more then any other open source project out their when it comes to a 3d package. That being said I find that they do certain things assbackwards compared to whats been done over the years with 3d packages. On top of this they've implemented object D while completely leaving out A,B,and C which is why you'd even put feature D in. Every new release I still find myself messing around with it and all the while still not understanding how or why people likes its work flow.

Creating an object while having it placed where some 3d cursor is without having a option to tell it "No create it a the center of the scene like every other peice of 3d software known to man" is just crazy to me. Even more crazy then that is not being able to select an object and have a window show its properties. When I say that please don't point me to the crude layouts to see a objects properties all over the place, instead go use Autodesks Maya, Softimage XSI, or 3DS Max and thats what I'm looking for. On top of that the floating property windows which are in blender have very small text and the input values are a pain in the ass to edit. Most of all though they way you select objects, polygons, vertices etc are just wtf. I don't know how many times I have accidentaly hit a mouse button on a high res mesh which moved a vertex without me even knowing it.

These are just personal opinions and obviously some people like it the way its currently done, why though I have no damn clue. Blenders a piece of software I'd truely like to see go far, hell it already has in many aspects. Mabye this is why I tend to bitch so much, because I'd realy like to see them succeed. I just don't like how many of the open source projects that end up geting past the crash every 2 mins phase, always end up reinventing the wheel when it comes to how things are done and have been done. Why can't they see "Hey every other 3d app has done it this way since the beginning of time. Maybe theirs something good about that method" instead of saying "No this is open source freedom of choice roxors so lets do it the opposite regardless if it helps you with work or not". It's sad they do things so far from the norm with certain interactions and presenting data to the user, because all it means to me is Softimage and Autodesk will continue to get my money next year and the year after and etc etc.

Re:I still dont..

[Anonymous Coward]

SHIFT+CKEY sends the cursor to the center. You can then add anything you like. I actually happen to like the fact that you're not restricted to adding new objects at the center. In any case, I agree, Blender is not the kind of software you can just play with and understand how to work with it. However, once you spend some time with the tutorials and the manual, you begin to understand how things really make sense.

I find that for some reason, commercial packages insist on being idiot-proof. This, however, usually hinders usability. I'd rather spend more time learning the software and then be able to use it much more efficiently than being able to use it from the first moment I put my hands on it but never being able to advance to a level beyond that.

In any case, the commercial equivalent is about $3500, so I think Blender is doing a pretty damn good job.

Re:Eclipse

[Chandon Seldon]

I can generate hundreds of setters and getters via Eclipse in a matter of seconds.

I consider this a failure of the programming language you're working in, rather than a beneficial feature of your IDE.

Languages like Java (the other offender being C#) *do* punish the programmer for working without a complex IDE. They require like a million lines of code before you can even start programming. They require method autocomplete because they have methods like "my_array.sortThisArrayInDescendingAlphabeticalOrd erUsingHeapSort()". They require that your editor supports having multiple files open because no non-trivial functionality can be implemented in a single file.

If you're working in C, or Perl, or Ruby, or Python, or Haskel, or even C++ then vi works really well. Sure, it's possible to argue that a programming language should be more verbose than Perl, but getting much more unnecessarily verbose and strict about form than Python is probably a bad idea.