Indeed, when I first transitioned to Blender from Lightwave, I was swayed by the “horrible UI” argument and how bad of a learning curve Blender had. After frustrating myself for a while, I made a concious decision to stop trying to treat Blender like LW and come at it “fresh”. I adopted a “new to 3d” attitude and in a very short time, understood where MY problems were affecting my learning Blender. Now, I honestly think it’s easier to get up to speed modelling than using LW, IF you make sure to leave your baggage at the doorstep
Interesting. I had the very same experience pretty much.
Part of it was as you say, so much that was said. And I found myself guilty of echoing what other people said.
And then one day on the forums, Jin Chung (a member of the forums at that time for those not familiar) challenged me on that. He basically said, it is not as bad as people say, if you just learn it. Something like that. I remember thinking, you know, he has a point. I never really tried that hard. And then when everyone was saying it was hard, I just accepted it.
Once I put my mind to it, I found myself navigating around Blender 2.49b in a matter of hours. And after about a month, the same time it took me to learn LightWave the first time with 3.5 and (a bit longer the second time with v8) I was up and running. And of course, years later still learning.
But one thing happened. I got real pissed at all the people who where badmouthing Blender. I feel like they did not gain anything. And they were certainly no help to me as an artist. It was a loose loose. Had I more people encouraging me (or even shutting the F up in the first place) I would have done it sooner.
And to this day I still don’t get it. Why do some people feel the need to make it their business to discourage people from learning new things by saying it is all bad? I don’t care what app that it is.
Since them I have gone on to learn many more apps. And same learning curve with each one. Starting with the interface.
In any case on the LightWave forums because of my experience I became more and more vocal against people trashing Blender. Just from an artist to artist perspective. It is such a bad thing to do. It is such a destructive thing to engage in. And so unfair to another artist. I don’t care what forum it is. If you want to respect that it is a LightWave forum, fine. Keep your trap shut. But if you are going to trash another app, be ready for the rebuttal, was my opinion and MO… lol
It is one thing to be critical and objective. It is quite another thing to go around trying to say something is all bad for one reason or another. It does no one any favors.
Artists should respect other artists and encourage learning of new things. Whatever it is.
And if you had a bad experience fine. Try to be as objective - and thus helpful - as you can. Balance it with some truth.
For example. Zbrush interface is deeply challenged. But you can learn it and the rewards of doing so are amazing.
Blender might a bit different. But explore it and stick with it. And find the gems and workflow enhancements you will get from a little dedication.
From the looks of it. 2.8 is going to give a lot more people incentive to do just that. And even with a few interface improvements to go with it. 
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You see this a lot when people open up Photoshop the first time. There’s a wealth of tools available for practically every use, and people think they have to learn what every single button does. They get intimidated and quit. I’ve very new to Blender (maybe 3-4 weeks in) and it reminds me a lot of the first time I used Photoshop 10 years ago. I thought in Blender I had to know how to model, sculpt, rig, animate, do particle effects, etc. all from the get-go. Now I’m realizing it’s more like Photoshop where you just learn what’s relevant to you as you need it. I’ve been using Photoshop professionally for years and I still have no idea what half of the buttons do. It doesn’t matter. They’re just tools and you just use them as you need them. People need to stop seeing complete mastery as the only form of mastery.
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Oh yes, definitely very similar experience. Jin was definitely a rebel on the forum, lost count of how often Newtek would ban him .
Like you, I don’t understand the bad mouthing, even to this day, LW modeller sadly lacks many features, releies heavily on 3rd party plugins and still Newtek say “we will be looking at modeller updates at some point”. Still folks say what an excellent modeller it is, to be honest, I find Blenders modelling tools far quicker and intuitive but people still deride it, “Ohh, the UI”, without actually investing any time in it, I mean, it took me a couple of afternoons to get that I could achieve more in Blender quicker. Again though, “the ui”, “the shortcuts”, as if you have to memorise thousands of shortcuts to make it work. I maintain, a handful of shortcuts, no more than needed to navigate the LW modeller, and you’re up and running in Blender.
A shame as I do believe many people are not giving themselves the opportunity to expand their pipeline because of prejudice and preconceptions. With FBX and Collada support, there’s no reason you can’t migrate between packages reasonably smoothly.
Yeah Jin could be difficult at times - to be kind. But also remained fairly objective, which when it comes to alternative software choices is necessary. So I at least have that to thank him for.
Not to completely derail the subject -but it is somewhat related - what I think happened with LightWave is…
Pretty simple. NewTek is a video company. Not a 3D company. The history of this has been discussed endlessly but, I think this is all that it boils down to in the end. Because they have not only ignored Modeler, they have ignored the other main elements that are the backbone of any 3D app and that is rigging and character animation. So as cool as LightWave is even now, its rigging modeling and animation pipeline is severely out of date.
Blender on the other hand at least has the advantage of being developed by people who get this technology and understand keeping with modern workflows.
I’m old enough that it still astounds me that all this power comes for free, for those starting out in 3D, to be honest, unless hunting a job in the industry, I can’t imagine why you would consider using anything else to learn.
Young artists are using Blender these days. I see this first hand. I have trained at least a dozen personally. I have also seen them now come to me already knowing Blender. I will have 4-5 more interns this year on an 8 month program. Some of them already know Blender. All of them at least basically familiar. 3 Interns are now here at my studio from last year.'s internship as employees. I employ a total of 8 artists now. They all use Blender in one form or another. We also use Maya LT for some things. But I would say it is 80 to 90 percent Blender and of course Zbrush. Then we have of course Substance. But Blender is starting to factor in as the main app at my studio. It has always been a part of the pipeline. But this has changed over time with development allowing me to push it forward as a main app for animation and rendering as well.
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