I’d love to get a (non-hostile, considered) opinion on this guys reaction to Blender:
Thats an argument thats come up time and time again.
Reverse the roles, when i see maya or C4D’s interface, i ask myself why do we need so much space for so many things we barely use?
Blender allows us to hide everything we dont need.
Im curious how he’d react to Zbrush’s interface, as it too, is hyper compact.
He (me) couldn’t even work out how to make the workspace tilt or spin using the mouse.
I tried, Alt-, Ctrl-, and shift- as modifiers to all 3 mouse buttons. Nada.
Spent hours (literally 2+) wading through Edit-preferences and found nothing that would allow me to configure the pan/tilt/zoom mouse confguration; nor even identify what the current (default) configuration is.
You think the default Blender interface is “compact” or “minimal”? You are wrong. The screen is littered with stuff I have simple no use for; but working out how to draw a line, box or circle requires hours of clicking on utterly meaningless icons all around the screen.
Sorry pal, but if Zbrush is worse than Blender, I will not be wasting my time and grey cells on it.
try Shift (Numberpad 4/6)
If you preffer a “trackball” camera, then that can be easily enabled in the user prefferences, under Navigation.
If you wish to bind camera tilt, then that too can easily be done in the input section, all though im not sure you can toggle it such that the mouse does the trackball. I may very well be wrong, and i can try to help you find this functionality, if its Specifically what you’re looking for.
May i ask, what setup is it that you prefer? maybe we can help you set it up.
I just took the measurements, blender has a 37% larger 3D viewport han c4d by default for instance, and its among the things that draws me towards blender tbh. There are no needless buttons. Its all hidden away in dropdown menues or side panels that you toggle when needed. There is nothing in the interface thats missing, at least not to me. I can see how the bottom right section of the interface can seem daunting to new users, but you will get used to that fairly quickly.
Zbrush may be one of the most frustrating interfaces for beginners, it is so overwhelmingly different from every other program, by a huge margin.
But i’d also argue that it is by far one of the best in the industry, noone comes close to the level of customizability zbrush offers, allowing artists to tailor their whole interface to their specific needs.
If you are somewhat interested in sculpting, i would suggest checking it out. Its a very fun tool to use, once you get the hang of it.
I always wondered:
- why do some people give advice to use some totally different software (with different goals) to solve problems with one user have difficulties in the original evironment (okay it could be the wrong SW to use anyway)
- why people are argueing about the GUI of any speciallised Software (i know a tinylittle bit about the CAD workflow but never get into it… and every CAD program does it… you guessed it… some kind of different…to me because i’m not used to it anyway… and Max3DStuidio is also different thean Maya…)
- or why complaining about changes… (for example: Do someone wan’t Win 3.0 back ?? And i’m not talking about 3.11 … no no no this wasn’t a question.)
I typed all this. and then realised that you will have no interest and might be offended by it.
Please do not be offended. The bottom line is that I’m not the target audience for this program, and I should not bother you further.
I’ve left it below cos it might give you a laugh 
Thank you for giving me your opinion and for your calm and considered response.
Be well.
What is this; the 80’s? Do I have to support my memory pack with a a pack of frozen peas to stop it from overheating also… {ZX-80 joke}
I don’t know what that phrase means. I haven’t used a trackball since the 80’s; and I have no camera, and no use for one.
I went down this route once before a couple of years ago. spent days back and forth trying different bindings and eventually got the mouse to sort of work; only to find that as soon as I switched from object mode to the ‘other’ mode – which seems to be a requirement for about half of the functionality --( or vice versa), everything came undone.
I only revisited Blender because someone told me it could do something that nothing else I have had a solution for – thicken a complex surface.
I seem to remember that there was talk back then of simplifying the interface; but little seems to have changed.
One that works!
I have this device called a ‘mouse’, you slide it back forth and side to side and it makes it easy to move things on the screen. {Possible unwarranted sarcasm; but that is literally how it feels to me when I load Blender.}
I am obviously not Blender’s target audience, because you keep comparing it to things I’ve never heard of. c4d Zbrush.
From my perspective, before even an artist can animate or render anything, they need to draw something. So why is 90% of the UI that is presented when I load an empty file dedicated to those functions – that I will never have a use for – and 0% to putting something into that big (mostly) empty workspace?
And I guess that is really my only point here. I will never “get used to it”, because I will never use it. The entry level learning curve – the need to dig around in the guts of an overly complicated, vastly overkill configurartion mechanism – in order to enable the simplest and most basic of functionality – scrolling the screen, drawing a line – mean that Blender will forever remain an immensly powerful white elephant that I will only load when I have a task that someone tells me it can do that nothing else I have can. And then only if they give me a comprehensive set of driving instructions in order to make that happen.
Hmm then the question would be “What do you want to do ?” It seems to be (orig. link DesignSpark …?? IDK that one) you are more in CAD then in 3D modelling SW (yes this sounds arkward because CAD is 3D… i know). And then maybe something else is better for your goals… simple as that.
I’m not sure if this is just a trolling attempt or not. It’s the simplest explanation for someone creating an account to join a forum devoted to a piece of software they dislike and say they will never use.
Navigation in the viewport is done by middle mouse button by default. Click and hold and move mouse around to rotate view. Add shift to pan view. Ctrl+MMB allows zooming as an alternative to scroll wheel to zoom. You don’t scroll in the 3D viewport. It’s a 3D space. You move your view around in it.
Not a troll. I have had this account since 21 feb 2020.
I came to see if the UI changes that were being mooted back then had done anything to make configuring this immensely powerful, but for me, unusable, piece of software usable.
It is very apparent from FinalBarrage’s kind responses that the answer to that is: No.
I had hoped that – as someone back then suggested might happen – that there might be some higher level of binding implemented. Say a ‘CAD mode’ (amongst others) that could be selected to configure the interface in a way more familiar to CAD users. Somewhat in the vein of FreeCAD’s “Navigation style” menu/dropdown.
And the point of mentioning that I will probably get very little use of Blender was not to offend anyone, but so as to point out that there are classes of user for whom Blender’s power and freeness are of great attraction, but for whom the default interface is an impenetrable barrier that most will never surmount.
May be that is of no interest to you, but I thought it might be to the developers. (Sorry if you are a developer and I have failed to recognise that.)
So, your main issues with Blender are your frustrations trying to reconfigure it to work like something else in terms of things like viewport navigation?
But then your discussion makes no sense to me:
For using any kind of tool someone have to learn the basics and workflow of that tool. And from time to time there is a game changer who makes something different and may be the next industry leader.
(I hate that word because everybody is talking about industry standard which is changed by the next game changer…) And i’m not only speaking of software.
Hm. Not ‘like something else’; more ‘to work in a similar fashion to any of the dozen other 3D programs – and hundreds of non specifically 3D programs I use (or have used)’.
Just in the last hour whilst trying to get my complex surface (gyroid) back into a form I can manipulate properly with my preferred CAD program, I have loaded the stl output from blender into a dozen different environments.
Some are local programs DSM, freecad, CAD Builder, emachineshop (accidental), lychee, chitubox, voxelprint.
Some are online things cadexchange, simscale, onshape.
Trying to find one that does the best job of converting the mesh back to a solid object.
In all of them, I can rotate and pan the model with the mouse. In some it takes a couple of seconds to work out whether I need to use the RMB or the MMB or ctrl- ot shift- to modify one of those; but in all of them a second or two is all it takes be able to manipulate my model.
In every one except Blender!
Okay. Time for me to take my leave. But I will respond to this.
Tesla cars are a game changer; but the steering is still done with a wheel; and the brake pedal is exactly where you’d expect it to be. He would have sold none if he’d fitted it with a joystick and an ear operated brake
But @JohnMalcolm1970 told you how to do… and in what fashion do you think everbody does it not using themouse …???
What’s that other than …
Anyway: have a nice day.
I think a lot of this is down to mixing up terminology. In Blender you rotate your view… not the model. Rotating the actual model of course can be done but no-one would rotate the actual model normally just to view it from different angles.
Sorry but If I want to look at the back of my monitor I don’t walk around the desk to do so – I’d have to plunge my head through the wall anyway. I simply turn it around.
My view stays static, the model moves.
The UI changes about basics occurred in 2018, 2019.
Since then, there is a Navigation Gizmo displayed by default in 3DViewport.
You can click and drag on the hand to pan the view, click and drag on the magnifying glass to zoom in/out and click and drag on the big ball to rotate.
That is very similar to most of comparable gizmos in other software.
About shortcuts allowing same thing, it is true that middle mouse button is mentioned in Status bar but not the modifier keys.
So, it is indicated by default that middle mouse is used to Rotate View.
User has to press a modifier key to see a change in indicator of Status bar.
If shift is pressed ; it is indicated that pressing middle mouse button , too corresponds to Pan View.
If Ctrl is pressed ; indication changes to Zoom View.
So, to figure out default configuration without using a tutorial about basics or looking at manual, newbie has to lower his eyes to bottom of screen.
But yes, a custom configuration is not obvious.
In User Preferences, mouse configuration and 3D Viewport navigation are dispatched between 3 sections : Input, Navigation and Keymap.
So, what is the difficulty that prevents you to use Rotate tool or browse items of View > Align View menu ?
I’m just about to give up on this but I don’t understand how checking “Orbit Around Selection” in Prefs>Navigation and using the middle mouse button doesn’t solve your “problem”
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