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Blender Compared To the Major 3D Applications
LetterRip writes "Recently TDT 3D published a comparison of the major 3D digital content creation applications such as Maya, 3DS Max, and XSI, and of course Blender. Blender came out surprisingly well, although it definitely still has some weaknesses."
Not exactly.
I work in video games, and ultimately the graphics cards render polygons. There are definitely tools that can down res, but have you ever seen what a 40k poly mesh looks like when you use an auto-down-res to 20k? It gives you a good start, but you still have to remesh it and tweak it by hand.
As for CSG, it's ok for CAD, but not practical at all for games. The realtime stuff is useful when comples models need to be edited in realtime (like for designing car engines), but the approaches like OpenCSG are too slow because each primitive needs to be drawn a bunch of times.
As an example, if you have the expression (A+B+C)*(D+E+F), you have to break the expression into sum-of-terms form which is AD+AE+AF+BC+BE+BF+CD+CE+CF, so that's at least 18 draw calls (acutally more). Alternatively, you could just precompute the CSG model into a triangle mesh. There are other techniques (like Blister) but they're still too slow.
CSG is used in moderation in games for tasks that make sense. For most applications, it doesn't. Imagine trying to model Wolverine with CSG. But even if you use CSG, at the end of the day, you still need an artist to tweak the vertices (which artists can do very quickly).
Not to mention, you also need to be able to lay out UVs.
If you really want your model to look good at higher resolutions, you can always subdivide your triangle meshes, which is robust (unlike triangle reduction). Up-resing meshes is easy. Down-resing takes artist work.
I've used 3DSMax and Blender extensively though learnt to be proficient in Maya.
Blender's interface is difficult at first but once learnt I found it more efficient for many tasks - especially rapid mesh-modeling. Moreso, I found Blender's interface much easier on the hands over long periods of working, namely because it prioritises keyboard useage over mouse, has one-key accessible menus (3DSMax has terrible problems here) and distributes mouse input over all three buttons. RSI is a real problem in 3D modeling/animation related work and it's here I think Blender has the one-up. Blender's many keyboard shortcuts need to be learnt for Blender to realise it's real capacity as a tool.
Uh, I'm using blender on Mac OS X, and it does not use X11. It's implemented using OpenGL, so the interface is completely custom, but no need for that X-server to be open.
blender's user interface is a bit rough to get used to, but once you're used to it, it's very efficient and fast (I once attended a Maya course, and always screamed out in terror when I had to hoover around in 2 levels of menus to access a simple thing like extrude -- in blender you just press 'e').
I'd like to know how many of you complaining are actual 3D artists (of some sort, be it pro/student/hobbyist) of even an intermediate skill level, who actually made an honest effort learning Blender. No, opening it up, finding your left and right mouse buttons swapped, then giving up and going back to your pirated copy of Maya doesn't count.
I _HAD_ to learn Blender for an animated short I worked on over the summer. I had about 9 months of 3ds max experience behind me, and grasping the basics in Blender took me less than a week, using Tony Mullen's book Introducing Character Animation with Blender as well as whatever tutorials could be found online. Yes, the documentation is sometimes lacking (nothing new there, considering it's free software), but that mostly applies to more advanced features (NLA editing, linking animation files together, stuff like that) where you end up having to discover many things by trial and error (which is horrible if you're working to a deadline to be sure). In my experience there's no shortage of resources targetting beginners though. Just don't expect to become a master sitting around reading tutorials -- the reason 3D graphics in general and animation in particular is hard is because IT IS HARD. And it's hard even after you've mastered whatever application you're using. Getting past the user interface is the easy part.
At this point the only thing I could say 3ds max is outright "better" at is pure modelling, since Blender lacks n-gons, and even then I'd rather use Blender because the interface is just that much nicer. I haven't really used hair and fur much in 3ds max, but my understanding is that it's a fair bit more advanced than what's currently in Blender as well, although you can expect that to change soon as the Peach project gets underway. Textures, rigging, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing are all things I find much easier to do in Blender.
Yes, the Blender interface is "unintuitive" in the sense that it doesn't look like anything else, but compared to the hodgepodge that is max it's a shedload more consistent and logical. Once you grasp the basics (A selects/deselects all, B border selects, G moves, R rotates, S scales...) all 3D windows, node views, curve editors and what have you work exactly the same way which is just lovely. Add to that a completely customizable workspace layout and completely zoomable/pannable windows. I cannot tell you what a shock it was to go back to 3ds max and discover that to move and zoom the timeline you had to use combinations of ctrl, alt and mousebuttons, when you're used to doing all of that the same way you zoom and pan 3D windows: scrollwheel and middle mouse button. Or that the damn thing loads for a minute and a half even on a top of the line machine, while Blender takes about 2 seconds to start. :)
That's not to say the Blender interface couldn't be improved. The default keyboard shortcuts are WEIRD -- Ctrl-W to save, anyone? -- and more importantly, not customizable. The default view control options are pretty confusing as well if you're used to basically anything else ever, but these can at least be changed. I think changing the defaults (but making it easy for advanced users to change back) would go a long way towards improving Blender's image at large, but I'm not so arrogant as to assume that the Blender developers (who btw are excellent, pay attention to users needs and release new features at a mindboggling rate) aren't aware of these things.
(Struggling with the formatting here -- first post, sorry.)I've actually seen an interview with a Blender developer (a Linux magazine I flipped through, I can't remember which one) from when Elephant's Dream came out that discussed why they made the interface the way they did. Being the in-house application of NeoGeo, it was geared towards how they worked, and the developers gave the animators what they wanted - maximum productivity after learning the application when used the way that particular group of people liked to use it. The developers came to them and offered them an easier to learn interface - they were told "No, you idiot. We're going out of business and have to try to finish our last few projects. We're not going to hire anyone new. Now add this highly unintuitive key sequence to shortcut this arcane task that no novice has ever heard of." After it was released for widespread consumption, ease of learning became a common request, but there were still people learning the interface it had and wanting to be able to use it the way they had learned to. After almost ten years since its shareware release, and five since its release under GPL, this hypothetical easy-to-use, powerful, intuitive 3d modeling software that someone must have their head up their ass not to have delivered on a silver platter by now would probably have to take the form of a completely separate front-end, a fork, or a complete rewrite with some of the nuts and bolts used over.
And there are people out there who think that Blender "has something" just like it is. If a hobbyist or student wants gratis open-source 3d modeling with an easy to use interface, they should try Art of Illusion. It's nowhere near as powerful, but it's easy and intuitive enough for someone to learn on, and it can export into formats used by the big boys. According to TFA, Blender has the same "Learning path to be productive" as the others, even with the less familiar and intuitive interface. If someone is "getting serious", there isn't really a way around having to invest the time to learn something. And of six packages the article reviewed, only one could be learned in the single month they give you to try modo, and I'm sure those figures are for people who aren't squeezing it in on a part-time basis.
Oh, and there's a few gotchas with modo. They support both platforms - Mac and Windows! Should I download the trial and see if I can get it to work under Wine? Let me click on the "Try Modo" link - "Interested in trying modo? As a result of modo 301 now being available, all of our website bandwidth is being focused on supporting our registered modo customers. Sign up to create an account and you will be informed just as soon as the new evaluation version of modo 301 is available. If you already have an account you're already on the list to be notified." What? If I have an account, I'm on a list to be notified that there's a trial version available? Oh, they want $400 for an upgrade (which they're ready to sell you sight-unseen right now). Okay, let me see if I can figure out if I can use modo to turn blueprints into 3d models the way they do here. Hmm... not too big on the import/export capabilities are they? Looking over the so-called tech specs (looks like they hired some marketing people and got out of the way) I can only find "modo is able to harvest animation data from other 3D applications in order to render it. modo reads .MDD files for this purpose." Maybe it
Finally modding someone offtopic when they rant about what "Begging the Question" means: priceless.
Hello, :-)
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:-)
cheers,
Ben (BSM3D)
I'm the Benoît Saint-Moulin (the badboy) who writed this article
First thanks to all for comments and email, I hope my article goal is reached : discuss about how improving softwares and what's can be offering us for our needs.
I'm CG technical artist and teacher in 3D College (HEAJ-Belgium) and try to stay independant into that's writed article. (sorry for my english...)
To writed this, take a long and painfull 12 months of works, I hope it's well understanded.
I read all comments, so here is few replies
- I'm not Pro Blender or not, I tried to stay indepedant into my article, I'm using Blender because there is powerful tools inside, not because it's free or not. As teacher / trainer I can say today industries interface use ""standard"" shortcut, F1 for help, well organised docs,... in Blender it's a bit uncentralised and new users never done 3D before must probably loosed to found the info when he need...
To Blender be an industries and Film used softwares, replacing maybe some old dinosaurs, he must adapting his interface to be more CG artists friendly and open to artist's today kind of pipeline working, artists say not technical geek like us.
- I'm not anti-Lightwave, I have it (9.2 dvd), used from LW 3.5 and the famous LightRave dongle until today for such task others can do ! I also writed this words on LW with LW-europe dev.support.
- I'm not cons to text interface, I really prefer text interface, that's more faster to work with than vivid Icons as each softwares icons are not the sames ! text stay the sames...like in xsi, lw,...
- This article don't to tried to compare Blender opposed to the world. Blender is include in because to industries can't simply ignore Blender potential and great work who can be done by Opensource software. (no licence troubles, no network installation issues, no per year subscription...)
- Blender have a now a place to be in this kind article and I really don't like work with Nurbs in Blender, so each softwares are good for one tasks, try to do all with one is mayeb not the best to do !
If blender is really good today, he must evolving (as free it's the best) he as somes lacks on somes BIG datas projects. I know just because I'm worked with, why somes highend 3d softwares is again today so highly priced and in somes case that's really justified ! in many not