Blender 101 Project - 3D for Everyone

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
10

To further what Richard Culver was saying, there are a few other well-known (?) challenges you’ll likely face.

If your intentions are that the “Blender Simple” workspace will act as a sort of simplified environment to learn how to use Blender (i.e. “training wheels”), and that users can (and will) then be able to easily switch over to a more fully-featured one later, then AFAIK, the current understanding is that it’s not really going to work like that. Basically, users will get “stuck” in the basic mode, and will not switch to a more advanced mode, even if that means hobbling along with a proverbial sticks-and-stones set of primitive tools. (For more info about this stuff, read up a bit about “Novice to Expert Transition”)

IMO, there are however two alternative ways you can reframe this problem (the distinction here though is probably quite subtle) that might be more successful overall:

  1. Blender Simple = Demo Mode: The main aim of this is to let novices/non-technical users use Blender as a glorified interactive preview tool. For example, this could be used for exploring scenes/models (e.g. architectural visualisations, camera placement for previz), playing back or interacting with rigs/physics models (e.g. demonstrating how mechanical devices function, or for fun toys like Rube Goldberg machines/Jenga games/ragdoll toys, etc.), and maybe for building up simple scenes from a library of assets (e.g. again for archviz stuff, like helping people design their kitchen/landscaping layouts by letting them add prebuilt models to the scene, and adjust basic things about their position/rotation/size and appearance - colour/materials/texture).

In other words, we are harnessing the power of Blender’s 3D tools, but exposing just the barebones stuff that a layperson could use to benefit from 3D tech. We’d be making a Sketchup-like Blender skin, and letting Blender branch out into this entrylevel “3d for everyone” market that’s receving a lot of attention nowadays.

It’s worth noting too that as such, while we may have some of the “core Blender-stuff” coming through in this setup, it’s not a priority. Second, we should not concern ourselves too much (or even to expect) that there is going to be much of an direct upgrade path from this style of working in 3D to being able to function too much in the more advanced modes. There’s still going to need to be a good bulk of deeper training that’ll need to take place in-between.

  1. Blender Simple = Tutorial Mode: A second (or maybe complementary) approach would be to have a tutorial workspace/mode, where we have some automated tutorial system integrated into Blender. Basically, to help onboard users, we would develop a series of tutorials and tutorial projects for new users to work through. The idea is that we augment the UI with guidance tips (i.e. “click this button here” or “press g” -> “move mouse to the right” -> “left click”), and a “Help! I’m lost!” button.

The focus here would be to help guide users towards developing muscle-memory/behavioural patterns for a core set of operations (core skills) for creating 3D in Blender, while helping them gain a basic understanding of where the things they care about can be found in the UI (i.e. material settings are over “there”, while vertex editing operations are over there). An example of the type of tutorial I’m talking about here would be a series of guided modelling challenges, which would help reinforce (via in-context repetition) skills for selecting, manipulating geometry, and navigating the viewport.

For reference about what I’m talking about, K-3D used to have something similar about 10 years ago. A slightly-freaky aspect of their design was that they would take control of your mouse to illustrate what you’d need to do, as they played back how an operation was performed.

Pros/Cons:

  • Pros = If done well, this may prove to be quite effective at instilling the basics in new users, and may act as a useful tool for revision/refresher learning after a break from Blender for a while
  • Pros = The community can step up to provide tutorials for this format. It also opens the way for a new type of training material that commercial activity can revolve around (e.g. CgCookie/BlenderGuru/etc. can offer training materials in this way too)
  • Cons = Requires some technical setup, especially if we go for a fancy version where users can choose their own path/skip ahead of the material, and then expect the system to recognise where they got and continue from there (Note: This is probably getting too far down the path of “Intelligent Tutoring Systems”)

Back to the original point of this thread, a few other modes/configs that could come in handy in future I guess are:

  1. VR Workspace (?) - Workspace optimised for interacting with content (creation/editing/exploration) while wearing a VR headset

  2. Video Editing Workspace - Just stating the obvious, but just mentioning it since it’s not in any of the other lists yet :slight_smile:

  3. Grease Pencil Workspace, Sculpting vs Retopo Workspaces, Texturing Workspace, etc. - Again, most of these should be pretty self explanatory

  4. Rigging vs Animation - There’s probably some value in providing separate workspaces for these. Currently, there are quite a few rigging tools which, if not around, would free up a lot of keyboard space for more useful animation-stuff. And vice-versa. (I should note too though, that there’s still some value in being able to have somewhere where you can just Rig AND Animate, to ensure that we don’t lose the ability to flexibly create stuff as demonstrated by pepeland’s demos)

(Another point I should note here, since it’s been on my general todo list/roadmap is that for rigging, we will be getting some kind of “overview” / “debugging dashboard” editor of sorts that will pool together all the relevant bits and pieces to help debug what’s going on in a rig)

11

Please be careful with that : I’m worried that doing a “different blender” for each part could make the “Native Blender” completely useless.

12

It’s not hard to add a button to a panel/menu. You can not make it much simpler. However most menus/panels use an imperative coding style to draw their content - just a list of draw calls mixed with logic. So its not possible i.e. to rearrange buttons.

Instead a more object oriented approach would probably better suit the requirements. So instead of writing a method to draw the content, the user might add elements to collections and eventually provide an update method, which is called to set properties or make other changes.

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ideasman42/DeclarativeUIExperement

13

DoubleZ_: That’s a good point.

We’ll eventually have to figure out where to strike the balance between optimising for a particular workflow (and providing workspaces that do that), and retaining consistency between workspaces. Well, at least we’ll need to do that for the “official/bundled” workspaces, but hopefully the community at large can (e.g. via BlenderMarket/forums?) be able to push things further as needed :slight_smile:

That said, I think it’s still useful to explore what happens when we take some of these things to their logical extremes, even if it’s just as a thought experiment :slight_smile: I’d also note that judging from a lot of feature requests we get, that a lot of people would really appreciate if there were workspaces out there that could be used to effectively turn Blender into a “a dedicated app optimised for particular tasks”

14

The most effective way that is being done is with Branches. Currently.

I can’t think of any more reasons this is a bad idea other than what I have outlined in my points.

I do think it is a waste of time. And I draw on a lot of experience with this. Also experience teaching Blender to new people.

But I think there are 101 ways to accomplish the goals of this initiative that will be 101 times more effective.

An animated interface run through for example that starts from a splash screen. Unreal Engine has something like this. I have seen it in other apps as well.

Effort only needs to go into simplifying the existing interface - where practical and possible - and introducing people to the basics of Blender right off the bat.

So think about it. You post for feedback, you get feature requests and people telling you not to do it.

That is the feed back.

15

I think that the focus is on making something similar to this:

Are interfaces oriented to children, are interfaces and workflows very easy to use, but, easy to usenot of simple technology.
Ithink that the only hidden strategy is good, but is not enougth. To achieve the necesary easyest you need to to show and automate some features.
one simple example. big icons for changing matcaps on the main screen would be very usefull, and today are very hidden for a child to find.

16

Dont start with silly strawman arguments. Nothing in the proposal indicates that kind of dumming down the interface. Stripping down the interface and pasting big colorful buttons everywhere are two diffeent things. Does that sound compatible with this comment for instance? " they will be able to ‘graduate’ to the full Blender without having to relearn a new interface"

17

Not sure about the project, but I do appreciate it, if, in consequence, we
get more controls / options in the default blender.
(No need to care about beginners beeing overwhelmed by options)

Are there any plans to allow interactive (non-scripted) interface edting ?
so people can setup their workspaces quite quickly ?

This would also allow beginners to gradually expand their workspace set
to their needs. (Adding more options to their “dumb” default workspace while
going through the learning process)

18

So a few thoughts later these things came into mind:

  • you should contact schools and ask them what they want
    (also to get some vital feedback on the pedagogic side of things) as Richard said, asking
    people who do already have their feet wet in blender are definitvely not the persons you should ask.
  • Ask tutorial makers what they think is distracting from the tasks they are teaching, identify
    bottlenecks
  • Presets! presets! presets! (This helps people enormiously getting into it)
  • template based interactive wizards. The quick smoke command is a good start,
    but I do think you could expand on this: For example the whole rigging process could be
    “wizardrified.” / semi-automaticaly done.

the more you think about it, the more ambitious this project gets

19

I have an impression you guys are diverting from the thread point, this initiative has probably been thought through.
As far as i know branches require full-time devotion and a team for merging with master releases. A good started template could have users bringing it a step further along with occasional development maintenance.

I think templates are a good idea, giving freedom and flexibility to customize the app for a specific workflow. And Blender is capable of that, its power is in modularity and extendibility. Someone earlier described it perfectly - using Blender as a platform. If this is done correctly, it is possible there wouldn’t be much need for branching.

Not sure about game development or 3d printing, but CAD setup is definitely complex and coherent enough to form a full-featured template. Personally i’m grateful somebody from the development team finally mentioned CAD officially.

Also - a ‘simple blender’ template could be a life saver for newcomers. Personally i know a few colleagues (full grown-ups) that gave up on blender after not being able to find or select anything.

@RickyBlender - hope you don’t mind, i imported one of your notes to my list - python api is a crucial mention

Also, i added a few important features i remembered in the meantime

20

Nope. Software learning 101 (and use in production). This is just a bad idea. End of story.

Here is the deal. I am all for improvements that help Blender. This idea is innovative at first glance. It appears to be a good idea. All the way up to the point that you actually consider the implications of doing it. Then it is just a bad idea.

So I am not in favor of encouraging a bad idea. Something I can say for almost an absolute fact, will do the opposite of the intended goal.

So no. Sorry this thread is right on track. They should have thought about these things much more clearly. Sometimes the best thing to do is scrap a bad idea. Not just keep going because it was approved.

There are a number of things that could bring about this change that do not sacrifice the integrity of using the application.

It needs to go back to the drawing board. I have given a good starting place for improvements to the interface, splash screen, that would solve this in a much more intelligent way. Other improvements could come to the interface that would also help.

And it is probably time to ask for more input of that nature before moving ahead with this so blindly.

Please devs, read and consider my bullet points. They are clearly written and I hope they illustrate a practical view of the implications of this. Coming from a 20+ year professional and someone with experience in the field dealing with many Blender small start ups (that you are trying to target here) and teaching young people one on one, to use Blender in my small studio.

I do not speak from lack of experience here.

21

in my opinion, blender 101 should be files you can download that are paired with documentation and tutorials.

We an have features till we are blue in the face,
what we need are workflows.

game terrain- specifically desiged to walk around in 3d and place instances of game objects and manipulate terrain maps (many channel splat)

asset creation mode- edit sculpt dynotopo retopot etc

materials creation mode (pbvhtree accelerated pbr painting on multiple channels and offset/displacement based pbvh sculpting) (sculpt and paint in 1 stroke)

start to finish pipeline that ends with super high quality realtime assets with no other tool than blender.

As for cad snap features and precision I would love this,
those same tools are very handy when building in 3d.
I wonder if that precision comes at the cost of speed?

if not then they would be handy in modeling.

*grabbing two points in space and doing move cursor to selected gives you a midpoint

grabbing a vertex and duplicating it on a mesh and moving it to a point in space is handy as well (to make points you know you will need later)

22

Might it not be wiser to see a ‘101’ mode not as a ‘dumbed down mode’ but more a distraction free mode(like how sketchbook and mypaint have a reduced UI)? Often when I look at people who have trouble with software, it’s the amount of things that show up on the screen at once that confuses them, so reducing the number of advanced knobs on screen so that people can take their time to familiarise themselves with the most important knobs before their go onto the complicated parts.

23

I think that templates should be relative to what will be produced.

I am not sure one global CAD or one Game Creation template will make sense.
You will not use same units or addons for a mechanical robot or architecture renders.
You will probably not need same starting point for a VR walkthrough or a 2D platformer or a 3D sound performance.

If the goal of a template is to go further than workspace, they can not be more global.

All templates cannot be made by Blender Institute. The interest for user is to create its own corresponding to his workflow and specialities.

I agree with Richard Culver about same unofficial branches that are good templates like BlenderCAM.
But an official branch like fracture modifier or mantaflow has no special User Preferences and are feature-centered.
They can not help for a physics template. Anyways, I don’t think such a thing will make sense.
But many people are always complaining that they don’t need or use physics.

BlenderVelvets addons were made for people that are only using Blender for its VSE.
So, I agree that Blender 101 and templates idea is valid.

To know what is needed in Blender Simple, we have to define what will be the goal to achieve before exiting this sandbox template.
A sculpted/vertex painted/lightened/rendered 3D model ? A bouncing ball ?

3D printing is probably the easiest template to define because we are focusing on an output.
3D printing toolbox, mm as units, a grid that correspond to most used dimensions for printers plate, tools to measure, to verify if mesh is manifold, if it stands.

We can try a 2D animation template. But what is fun in blender is to use its 3D abilities to create 2.5D animations.
IMHO, any template example should have a precise case as goal.
Anyways, at some point, a template will always be a sandbox that evacuates what is not needed in theory but can be cool in practice.

But if we have a starting point of discussion like : << _ What I need for this rig !
We can start to argue :
_I would add this for this case .
_Add it to template it is really common task or Skip it is really rare to use it.>>
Things can go on more smoothly.

I suggest to precise a case and create a thread by template to handle these discussions more easily.

24

Remember that the project 101 is not for any new user (not for the 28 years old graphic dessigner experienced in Ligtwave, for example).
Is specifically a interface for children that dont have contact whith 3d creation at all.

Might it not be wiser to see a ‘101’ mode not as a ‘dumbed down mode’ but more a distraction free mode(like how sketchbook and mypaint have a reduced UI)? Often when I look at people who have trouble with software, it’s the amount of things that show up on the screen at once that confuses them, so reducing the number of advanced knobs on screen so that people can take their time to familiarise themselves with the most important knobs before their go onto the complicated parts.

The reduced UI strategy, (hidde not basic options) is good but is not enougth. Have to be the more realtime as possible, and oriented for a easy and quick targets for example sculpting and painting the model.

25

Nope:

Some use Blender just for 3D printing, some to make models for games, and some just want to teach their young kids the basics of 3D.

But you would think it was intended only for children. Like a harness and leash for children. For parents too lazy to keep an eye on them.

And as equally a bad idea as harness and leashes are in the long run. Can’t imagine the emotional impact of being on a leash like a dog when you are growing up.

We don’t give kids enough credit for one. People have forgotten how much kids want to feel grown up. The age group usually targeted is the range of 12-16. Basically young near adults. These are not infants. And people who have already been using computers for years and typically far more tech savvy than their parents and teachers even.

The idea for this is a great one. That should not be lost here. It is the implementation proposed that is not nearly ideal or well thought-out with too many negative results.

And it completely disconnected from reality on many levels.

26

The age group usually targeted is the range of 12-16

Is an autocomplished prediction. Efectively if you use adult interfaces for teaching 3d to children you will only will teach for a brillant 16 ones. if you want to teach to 7 or 10 years ones you will need something less complex. But is exactly the same whith any other discipline, you would give a Kant phylosofical text for children about 7?. I dont know the real experiences of anyone here but my experiences tell me that things dont work that way in real world.

27

Nope. Wrong again.

If you are going to make an argument. At least have your facts straight.

Blender Simple

An ideal candidate for template is a massively simplified Blender. This template will strip down the interface to the bare minimum, encouraging inexperienced users to explore a 3D program without worrying about the consequences of making a mistake. The target audience for this are kids under 16 years old, or people who has absolutely no experience with computer graphics. The expectation is that one day, they will be able to ‘graduate’ to the full Blender without having to relearn a new interface.

The rest of the target groups are:

3D Printing
Games

So you have kids under 16 and and people totally new to 3D.

I know the age group expected is 12-16 in school because I have talked to people who’s profession is teaching Blender to these kids. These are articulate and intelligent beings who’s brains and motor functions have matured to the point that they can take on a skill. That is why this age group is the target group. Actually some kids can grasp these things earlier than that. But 12-16 is the safe target group.

So what you have is young pre-adults, learning a skill that will be either a hobby or a profession. Either way they are not toddlers or children 7-11. This is not the target age group here.

And if it was that would be an extreme case. And something that you’d really have to work on. And that would be out of the scope of any program like Blender, or even Blender 101 no matter how you strip it down.

And this…

“encouraging inexperienced users to explore a 3D program without worrying about the consequences of making a mistake.”

… is B.S.

You want to have them not worry about making a mistake? Tell them not to worry about making a mistake and get on with it. That is the job of a teacher. You don’t have to build a play pen to keep them in the yard and out of harms way of traffic. This is only software. No harm comes from mistakes and it is the best way to learn.

The other half of that is giving them good enough training not to screw up. And even if they do it ain’t that big of a deal.

It is paranoid thinking.

Now that we have established the age group 12-16, and the fact we are talking about professionals, then the rest of the points I already made come into play.

28

I wrote paragraphs of reasons why I think this would be a great idea, but Firefox crashed hard so I will sum up what I wrote;

  1. This is a great idea, Blender is fairly called “a jack of all trades and master of none”, having optimized built in templates will help with this (also flipping the order of layers to match up with literally every other software in the world that uses layers would be greatly appreciated)

  2. A “simple UI” OPTION, will not destroy blender, but will in all likelihood help it, the number 1 complaint I hear is how unnecessarily complex Blender can be, a simple UI (and it bears repeating for those who did not read the original link) OPTION would help people who want to do some basic 3d (who may not necessarily want to learn all of Blender).

And my suggestions for templates:

  1. A usable Tablet UI (much like what Krita is doing with Gemini or with autodesks sketchbook); Microsoft is starting to focus and put more effort in it’s pen-enabled surface devices, Wacom is making absurdly powerful mobile tablets, it would be a good idea to have an optional tablet oriented design (and I am not just saying this because I just bought a windows tablet :P), one of my formerly favorite apps on my old Android tablet was 123sculpt (formerly because it crashed constantly, like most Autodesk software ;P) and that had a brilliant and simple design.

So that’s my two scents on this, great idea, curious to see how it works out and good luck.

29

On the arguments saying Blender 101 is a bad idea, I don’t really think the entire premise is a mode for children specifically. The bits about an optimized Blender workflow for 3D printing and game development should emphasize that (not everyone in those markets may be entirely new to 3D). Besides that, we have Autodesk now targeting children with their 123D apps (as alluded to in the post above), so it would be in the BF’s interest to get them locked in as Blender users rather than Autodesk customers.

The concerns should also be diminished somewhat if the plan involves being able to change templates mid-project like you could with workspaces, it’d be even better if the user can also create his own templates by way of activating/changing things in the preference window.