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Blender 2.57 Released — and It's Easy To Use!
An anonymous reader writes "Past Blender releases, as capable as they were, had learning curves somewhere between straight up and down and 90 degrees. The release of Blender 2.57 changes all that. No longer are simple features 'non discoverable.' It has more or less a completely redesigned user interface that is clean, sensible and newbie friendly (hey, I'm using it!). It has a handy tab interface for Actions/Properties such as Render, Scene, World and Object etc. Plus, it's fast and CPU friendly. I'm running the official Blender standalone binary on Fedora 14, with 2GB RAM , Radeon X1300 (free drivers) and a cheap CPU Intel duel e2200. No more more slow GUI, no more 100% unexplained CPU, just great stuff. Kudos to all who made this possible."
It was not only a re-design of the gui, that's just a sub product. They have redone all the underlying api to improve animation capabilities and facilitate extensions and adding of new features. Check the release log http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-257/
1st of all: Blenders UI has been OpenGL accelerated from day one. It has allways been one of the fastest GUIs in existance. Way faster and more responsive than any other 3D Tool UI anyway. The GP is talking bullshit on this one.
2nd: Blender has never been particularly difficult to use for any 3D Kit with a simular set of features. In fact, it's UI design (non-overlapping, customizable, document/task based configuration, etc.) has served as a benchmark for quite a few recent creative tool UIs in the industry (Modo 3D, latest CS releases by Adobe, etc.)
3rd: The UI has been updated, yes. But it's more an evolution than a complete redo, from a user standpoint anyway imho. Simply because Blenders UI has allready been pretty good for quite some time now. ... Allthough the arcitecture actually is a complete redo. Python driven, new Icons and new panels. However "OMG I'M USING IT! IT FINALLY WORKS!" is way overboard, exaggerated nonsense. Blender has been a kick-ass pro-level 3D Tool for approx. 7 years now. And yes, that also goes for its usability. Anybody not familiar with other professional 3D Toolkits and the learning whoes associated with this field, please stay out of this on this issue. Thanks.
4th: There is no mention of the new tools and features, which are actually worth mentioning. F.E. a particle system that rivals that of Lightwave (the industry leader in this field) with particle path editing and other goodies, Smoke and Volumetrics rendering, NLA with an extra new NLA UI, etc. This has Blender closing in on competing programms even further and will shake up the industry once again. ... Can't wait till they finally get full Renderman compatibility. That will kick some serious shit. ... Anyway, Kudos to the Blender team for this great release.
As for the GP: Mostly Rubbish or stuff that no one wants to hear. "OMG I'm running Blender on XYZ with 2 Gigs of RAM. UNBELIEVALBE!" ... Idiot.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca