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Microsoft Reaches Out To Blender
dmbasso writes "Continuing its strategy to support FOSS application on the Windows platform, Microsoft mailed the Blender developers asking how they could help improve the experience of Blender users on Windows. Groklaw puts it in perspective using Steve Ballmer's own words."
I dont know if it is sad or funny that when speaking about open source they were talking about if file systems had any problem.... lets not talk about API or anything trivial like that but hey this file system seems to be really meddling with creating a better UI and experience in Windows.
And OOXML.. seriously! Like how about they just release the stndards of OOXML to begin with!
Ok, you know what. I doubt there is any convincing you because like so many other people, you've already made up your mind based on what you've heard.
So don't use the word intuitive then because its probably the wrong word to use when talking about 3d software. Let's say this instead, once you've really spent some time learning Blender's interface, you will start to think that a lot of other 3d user interfaces have it wrong. At least I did. I used Imagine for years and I thought Imagine made a lot of sense, but after using Blender for 3 months and actually spending time to learn it, I'm so much faster at creating objects in Blender than I ever was in Imagine.
I think what has happened, is that the myth that it is hard to use has preceded the application. Blender is not the only software with this problem.
Based on the snip that Ton posted, I get the impression that MS doesn't comprehend what Blender is, or how it works. File formats? That's low on the list of Blender's issues with Windows. Never mind that OOXML's status as an ISO standard is debatable.
If MS wants to support Blender (and lots of other FOSS software) on Windows, they need to put real effort into supporting OpenGL. FOSS developers don't generally bother with supporting DirectX and OpenGL, and most of the time supporting Windows at all is an afterthought.
But, MS won't do it because that would make it easier for games to be developed for Windows and anything else.
http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03020.pdf
That's MS's philosopy about "open" standards in 1999, and it's their philosphy in 2008.
I have had varying experience with almost every major application released in the past decade and hands down Maya was the quickest to learn and most logically laid out. You just sorta work with it, and the interface is consistent across the board, which makes learning it alot easier. Plus the introduction of QWERT for Select, Transform, Rotate, Scale, Repeat last was simply brilliant and is now being copied by 3DS Max and Softimage. Ditto for the 3d manipulators for transforming/scaling/rotating on a give axis was simply brilliant and again, has been cloned by most other applications. Where it gets truly brilliant though is in having the same controls while in the UI, the timeline, the hypergraph, etc...
Blender is not intuitive, anything but. The iconic interface is confused and the interface is inconsistent. Of the various 3D apps I have had exposure to, only pre-XSI Softimage and Houdini are worse then Blender. Cinema 4D is brilliant for some things, as is Lightwave. Max is a nice app, but getting loaded down with blaot over the years. Again Maya is the best of the best IMHO, while straight modelers like Silo and Modo are pretty nice.
You know what else is intuitive like the Blender UI ?
American English.
It makes perfect sense, once you learn all the double-entendres, transient jargon and collective ignorance that pervades all digital and print media. There really is no other language on the planet that gyrates anywhere near as much as English.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I don't doubt that Blender is a helpful and powerful tool if you use it daily, but the user interface has a learning curve like the cliffs of Dover. As a veteran user of PovRay and a raft of other 3D tools I am more than happy with the array of tools Blender offers to create, bend, sculpt, distort, warp, arrange, and otherwise mangle 3D objects, so at an abstract level it is quite clear what to do to create 3D objects. In that sense I am even willing to grant that Blender is `intuitive'.
However, HOWEVER, the Blender user interface is totally unhelpful in explaining how to use these tools. Blender throws at the user a collection of panels and buttons and windows that is different from what anyone else is doing, and requires you learn a vast number of keystrokes, slang terms, magical pixels to click or drag, and all that with little or no handholding. Where are the tooltips, popup menus, help windows, or even just nods to standard user interfaces? And can you please make some of these magical areas to click or drag a little more obvious and a little larger, please? Optionally then?
You could argue that editors like vi and Emacs do exactly the same: they require you to learn magical keystrokes with little or no handholding. However, there you can get by with a limited set of magic that let you do your thing, although perhaps not in the most efficient way. Precisely because 3D editing is so difficult, that is not possible in Blender. You have to learn quite a lot of the Blender magic to do anything meaningful.
I've tried to learn Blender at least three times, and one time I even bought a book to learn it. Every time I gave up in disgust because I just didn't have the time to learn all that magic and got disgusted by the unhelpful Blender UI that clearly has no time at all for newcomers. Every time I decided that I was better off spending my time writing PovRay code. (And $DEITY knows PovRay has its own interesting collection of quirks, weird limitations, and cranky developers.)
In short: yes, in one sense Blender is intuitive. However, at another level it is just a impenetrable jumble of buttons and dials that is more complicated to use than an airplane.
GPL is a capitalist tool! :-) Sounds funny, but it really is. Hey, it worked for MySQL, they sold their company for 1.1 Billion!
So, please don't tell me that the GPL is anti-profit.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.