Scathing commentary on Blender.

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
21

It’s not just me then :stuck_out_tongue:

Ugghh, there are so many things wrong with this article, that I want to reply but I know I can’t without (like someone earlier said) sounding like a fanboi! The author even pre-empted it by saying

From the article:
Defenders of the software – and this being open source, it has many extremely forthright defenders

I agree that interface interaction is an extremely important issue that faces software developers. I did an entire module on it at university. His general point is that the “standard” interaction paradigms are already widely used and therefore shouldn’t be deviated from. I’m not a fan of this. It makes the assumption that the status quo is already as good as it can get (which is a helluva assumption). However, there has to be a purpose for every choice made in UI design that meets user requirements.

What about other elements of UI design that he didn’t mention. Edge loops for example. As we know in blender ctrl r (scroll for multiple) click - done.

In max, I’ve got to select a ring of edges, then click connect, but wait I want several edge loops so I’ve got to click the little button next to connect (although this is awesome for spacing them out) then move them around with a menu, and click a little tick to confirm - well that doesn’t seem very productive. But wait theres the swift loop function that makes it easier, Yay. To find that, you have to expand the graphite modelling tools ribbon (more screen space gone), then click the button to activate and then place your loop just like blender does it. Great! whats the hotkey - oh it’s not mapped. grrr. And why is connect in the command panel and swift loop in graphite modelling tools? Oh right, cause they were added after but the ui wasn’t redesigned to be unified, probably to keep older users happy I assume.

Ok I’m being overly sarcastic, but my point is these kind of criticisms can be leveled at any piece of software. Spend time in any maya forum, and it won’t be long till you face someone saying maya is useless until you add some scripts etc yada yada.

Not that I’m saying blender is perfect, theres lots that could be improved. The N and T panels could be better, a material browser, fake users and the linux version still not having an warning when closing an unsaved file, to name but a few.

OH - and one last thing - as far as blender having a steep learning curve, I believe this is a myth. When doing my degree, we were free to use any software we wished which, included blender. The blender users work was consistantly better than anyone else’s (I believe that’s because we were more passionate about it). When others seen our work they tried it out, and got better results faster which, I believe is down to our community, and wealth of training resources available online from the likes of our very own blender cookie. Every single person who did this, said blender was easier to learn than other packages.

Sorry for rambling

22

Don’t take it so personally and seriously, it’s an opinion piece. All software, including blender (yes apparently so) are basically designed by coding ninjas to infuriate you and give you high blood pressure because they don’t understand what your mind wants and your hands can’t deliver and never have that one most important feature that [insert whatever software takes your fancy this week] has.

23

Richard, I understand your post is a general post to everyone but, I’m not taking it personally or seriously. My last post was simply to point out that all software suffers UI problems to some extent. I may have gone a little overboard with my ramblings, but I often do.

However, I wouldn’t blame anyone from taking it personally. It may be an opinion piece, but with paragraphs entitled “Wheres the finished work?”, and phrases such as “The actual finished work done in Blender, with the exception of a thousand and one YouTube videos of Jenga towers falling over, is pretty limited” it’s easy to see that why somebody could take it personally. I understand he’s taking about larger productions but at the same time I don’t think it’s wise to denigrate an entire communities efforts.

24

Just came to say…

Having worked professionally on every major program (Max, Maya, XSI, (and Mudbox and Zbrush, but I digress)), imho Blender does have the most comfortable UI and workflow.

Especially since, you only -need- one program to dish out your work.

It can of course, take a while to get into Blender, but what program doesnt?

25

I think the author has a good point. What he’s basically saying is that a programs UI and hotkeys can quickly “make or break it” in the users mind. You get disgusted.

26

now for me, it’s the opposite. Trying to get the hang of 3ds max has proven extremely difficult, because i started in Blender.

27

I’ve been using blender on and off for several years Blender, will do what it says to your mind, but it makes you think. One thing that did bug me today was blender unit size. I find my self switching to imperial units, lol. Often to find my object to be the size of a house. What software package doesn’t ask you what language you want to use now days , but then again it was me that didn’t set blender up correctly. I often find more interest In Blender when buttons are close to each other. Lately i find a lot of buttons that should be close to each other are on other panels. Finally figured out why pictures don’t load in cycles and BI but honestly thats a lot of clicks. I don’t like to use the keyboard i have to setup a lot of extra short cuts because i have carpel tunnel hands. But when i do mesh editing i love it the program is tits.

28

I agree with the OpEd in so far as the spread of tools can be fairly un-intuative. That is it can be difficult to find logically some functions when they appear in the tray or in another side bar or as an unexpected pop up menu that goes away… etc. But I love the dynamic layout and ability to personalise the UI to a greater extent than most other apps.

A UI dev sprint could be cool though, in i’s own branch?

29

It’s the same for me. Having started out with Blender2.48, I’ve been at learning it for a couple years. But I did try Maya and Max for a good 3 months religiously, and I found myself constantly fighting to find tools I knew was there, just hard to find. All those bells and whistles really didn’t help me much at all.

30

Let’s get this out of the way. “Where’s the finished work?”
He doesn’t have any. He’s not a 3D artist.

I mean, blender has some issues. But so does every package. And if you have used something better for the price of Blender, please let me know so I can switch.

31

I wouldn’t worry about that too much.

-LP

32

To me it’s easy, Blender is good, but not really designed.

I always was, and always will be the opportunistic CG artist. Get the hard- and software that gets the job done best for you - and best is subjective based on your needs.

My main issues with Blender are easily listed:

For many tasks, any other tool would be twice as fast, as described in the article. Depending on what you’re working on, it might be cheaper to have bought a tool when looking at the hours worked and the deadline hit - or to buy a 3d model for that matter, to answer the question from some other thread if people really buy 3D models. :wink:

Another issue is that there are no designers in the Blender Institute, none among the contributers or simply no one cares for them.
How often have you heard someone say “Great idea, let’s put money aside to hire an usability expert…?”
I’ve done plenty of heuristic usability testing and know my way around the usability paradigms for software and Blender really fails in a lot of them.
This actually reminds me that there was a practical at university where you had to evaluate a software with testers and it had to be done by hundreds of students. I’ll contact the professor and ask if he’s interested to use Blender for his next practical and share the results with the community.

Anyways. There’s no one designing an UI, laying out clear parameters or caring too much about context. It took the 2.5 redesign to even get context aware, and anyone who is coding in Python for Blender will tell you that the UI redesign wasn’t really so great.

Well that’s what happens when computer science guys and enthusiasts contribute to a software. Technically excellent, interesting projects, but the rest is not so great, including the maintaining of produced code.
Ever wondered why the majority of Linux games have strange UIs, feel rough …? Same people, that’s why. :smiley:

You get strange UI design decisions, wondersome bundling of parameters, factors pulled to the surface of the UI from the deepest bottom of nested loops, because the developer thinks you might need it, while in truth, 90% of the Blender users have not the slightest idea what 50% of the parameters and switches in their tool do, and on top of that, the documentation is so bad you have a hard time finding out, and on top of THAT, unless you wrote the code, or read the source, you’ll never find out, thus being unable to write a documentation unless doing trial and error and make educated guesses what it might be for.

So, the flaws are small with Blender, individually you might say they are not even noteworthy, only a minor hickup, but summing them up, you get a nice junkyard.

Why use Blender at all?
Well, to start out with a bit bitter sarcasm, to be blunt I guess most Blender users don’t give a crap about FOSS, “the spirit”, to them it’s “Yay! free cookies!” and it’s just “en vouge” to be on the free-software-for-free-people-train… those are also the people with no idea how FOSS is developed, demanding and suggesting features XD

To another portion of users, like myself I guess it’s this individualist, freeminded thing. I could just buy Autodesk XY and work with it, but that’s what everyone else does. For some reason I put my pipeline together with FOSS and small company tools which I bought, and I get by. Sometimes I wish I had an Autodesk package, looking at a youtube video how a 10 year old does in 10 minutes with his pirated 3dsmax what will take me or took me hours in Blender… … and then I am proud again to have done it in Blender, stood faithful to Tons ideals… I love Blender and I hate Blender…

Well, I like to prove that Blender can do it… the money I loose? My contribution to show the business: Yes, Blender can.
The result? None, because if you come and raise shortcomings or issues of Blender:

  1. That’s a small issue, you just have to: … 1 hour later
  2. You can work around that, you just have to: … 2 hours later
  3. It’s FOSS software, you can’t expect it to be perfect…
  4. It’s listed in the bugtracker, you have to wait… (to be fair… 3dsmax9 anyone? :smiley: useless for half a year until SP1)
  5. XYZ can’t do that either…
  6. If you really need it, why don’t you contribute and write it… ?
  7. That’s just the way Blender works… contrary to everything else…

In the end you can just wonder what mysterious paths Blender walks.

Has anyone ever asked Ton why you select with the RMB in Blender? I wonder what lead to that decision…
actually I often wonder that with a lot of things in Blender… who decided that and how much coffee did he have when he did? :smiley:

tl;dr;
Blender needs a usability evaluation and a clear design guideline from a professional…

<EOF>

33

I sit next to 3dstudio max users 8hrs per day 5 days a week since more than one year now, using blender. Never had many issues comparing to their program. Sometimes 3d studio would handle something better, sometimes blender would do. Not considering the user ability to take advantage of every feature.

But (I am not ironic, I would really like to see) could you point me to some video where I can see in what and how a program like 3dstudio can be so much faster than blender?

34

The above list, with the generalization of item 6, applies to ANY FOSS project. At least, Blender developers and the overall community are polite and responsive.

With the new UI, Blender is usable, not a UI case study but usable. There are still X-Windows-ism around like the mouse position (and not mouse click) dictating where the input is going and the silly select-with-the-RMB but overall the program can be nowadays classified as nothing worse than quirky.

The review was totally off point, because it ignored the amount of work which is done using Blender and the Blender capabilites (it is the most powerful program below 1000$). Last and not least, the review ignored the rate of improvement of Blender which is nothing short of phenomenal, especially compared to commercial programs: e.g. any commercial application would make a major release of the inclusion of OSL, for Blender it is “just” part of the bimonthly update!

35

That is actually my nr.1 mystery about blender. The 3D cursor thing is useful, but really, I would like to know if anyone is ever moving around the cursor so much that it in anyway makes sense to dedicate the more or less standard, in any kind of software not just 3d programs, LMB to the cursor instead of using it for selecting stuff as in every other piece of software out there. When ever I download a new blender that is the first thing to do, chnage the selection to LMB.

Apart from that I have to say that the “new” blender UI is OK. Having played around in 3ds max first when I first came in contact with blender the UI was god awful. In 3ds max eve if you did not use keyboard short cuts you could find your functions in the menues and stuff. In the old blender UI it was lamost impsible to find anything.

The new UI though I don’t find particularly problematic and working more and more with it, the keyboard shortcuts do become second nature and soon your are fatsre doing thing is blender than 3ds max…

36

Try modelling a car with max spline tools. They are a joy to behold.

I like max. I like blender. I like zbrush, I’m not fussed on Maya. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around houdini. Who does what feature better or faster is not really important, it’s the art that is produced that is.

37

Blender user for 12 years, Interface Designer/Industrial Designer… Part time Blender Trainer, and full time Professional who uses Blender daily in my work…

I must agree Blender is very very unintuitive, but very powerful none the less.

We must listen to the crit, and not be defensive. If i had the chance to work with TON & the team on the interface, I’d be there in a flash. I’ll be honest, it would take someone a full year to two years to tackle the challenge. It is a task that needs a single person to take on, and stick with it through thick and thin until it is done. It is unfortunately not a task that can be done distributed via the internet.

Even large organisations like Adobe are finding it hard to make amazing interfaces with consistency. If you look at things like PS they are getting messier and messier.

I would shut down my design consultancy, get on a plane, and work for accommodation and food if I was invited. Would be fun and meaningful!

38

3dsmax was rather a substitute for “a cg package”, than a particular example and I am standing here pants down, not having a particular example, and by now it’s years I actively used 3dsmax for my job.

And it’s true, sometimes Blender performs better, sometimes 3dsmax. It depends on the task and the job.
I worked in the same office, and also with C4D guys. Same applies. What’s not so great in both cases is collaboration if it’s beyond a gray static mesh…

And I did not recognize it not for one particular task, often it was for a whole project, where I though, I could have realized all this a lot faster in 3dsmax. While often I thought, I couldn’t have done this in 3dsmax at all, without buying expensive plguins.
But like I said, to me it’s also the joy of the challange doing it in Blender.

But things that come to mind although outdated, not applicable anymore today:
Mayas Realflow, before Oceansim came to Blender, or 3dsmax’ FumeFX before Blenders Smoke simulator…
Ever tried to make cool water in Blender with fractal texture displacement only, or good looking fire just with particles?
I spend hours to make a less pleasing result and in the end would have saved more money if I had bought the plugin.
Unfair to compare commercial plugins to onboard features? Yeh most likely. Still, they’re commercially developed, often with no less effort than the package itself, thus not comparable to Blenders free addons besides some exceptions, as usual - IMO.

And the spline example’s a good one too, but my feeling is that Blender’s just no spline guy :smiley:
So yeh, use another tool for it.

Like I said, in the end it comes down to preference and what get’s the job done. There’s always a small patch of greener grass on the other side :smiley:

Yeh, absolutely :smiley:
However, Blender always is “different” why not try to be there? :smiley:

@alltaken: I already mailed the university asking to do the next usability testing practical with Blender and make the results available. I’ll talk to the head of the department how feasable it is anyways to evaluate a highly specialized software by regular users. But if it’s doable, it’ll be a good feedback on points to improve, besides the obvious ones :smiley:

–

All I wish for Blender one day is to be called “easy to access, hard to master” rather than “painful to access, hard to master”

39

Someone buy that man a plane ticket :smiley:

This debate comes around so often, it’s got to be getting close to the time where it actually gets addressed.

40

Forgive me for jumping straight back in but

One thing that I find curious about this debate is that, I’ve been told throughout the years for all programs is “learn the hotkeys - you’ll be way more productive”. Along comes blender with it’s heavy reliance on hotkeys, and people complain it’s hard to use. :confused:

I know that from a usability point of view, you shouldn’t limit the ways a user can interact with a program. There should be multiple entry points for any given process. Blender does have this, all the functions are available through menus. Granted those menus can be confusing, and could do with an overhaul. Maybe it’s a training issue? in tutorials rather than saying press E the extrude, tutors could say, the extrude button is on the tool shelf, or use the hotkey E.

just a thought.