I really can’t see why people at digg starts whining about Blender’s interface.
I came from 3Ds max, which I had played with for ½ year or so I think.
Then I read JoOngle’s danish Blender guide, and played for an evening - learning
Blender’s basic interface in 2-3 hours or so. Really - IS it that difficult? I mean…
When I can - everyone can 
And really, all tools in Blender are max 3-4 clicks away, no irritating dialogs and pop-ups - can it be more simple? 
Martin 
All the time. I love the hotkeys; they allow for a smooth workflow.
And I love the interface as well. If you don’t like it, you can change every bit of it. The colors, the font, the windows’ size, which windows is what… And even if you have 100 windows open, the program doesn’t slow down noticably.
I have already worked with Max (though for only 2 months) and I prefer Blender to be honest.
All Blender needs is the polishing of it’s existing features, and from that moment on I think we can say Blender is as worthy as every other 3D app. It may already be. But let’s face it… a fluid sim? softbodies? sure, they aren’t state of the art but amazing nonetheless.
It’s opensource, it’s great, it’s… it’s… oh you know the rest!
Really though, I liked one thing recognized by most the peoples comments, even if they did not like the interface, not one (I think) doubted blenders capabilities. It is getting a good rep for being usable.
Apart from the interface problems, was the 'Can you get a job with it? ’ comment. Well, that maybe one of the only things holding blender back. It is not lacking anything too much except for production worthy examples.
But Elephants dream has helped in that regard, and once plumiferos is done, I am sure that opinion too may change most peoples minds.
But each person has different prefs. so just let them have their say.
You, sir, are a wordsmith of the highest calibre. Thank you. I honestly could not have said it better. 
I think a lot of those complainers are just trying to validate to themselves why they spent thousands of dollars on their 3d app when now they see a powerful app with the same features that costs $0.00. They’re not willing to lose their investment so they don’t bother giving Blender a chance.
Personally, I’ve tried Maya, and although I first learned Blender, I can’t stand Maya’s interface. Too many option boxes and pull down menus, I could never find what I needed. With Blender, I know most of the keyboard shortcuts by heart, and if I need to find an obscure one, I can still find it in the menus somewhere.
Wow, so many people whining about the interface, all in one place.
Actually, (as messed up as their comments are) I can’t blame them. When I first started using blender I felt the same way.
As, previously stated, we can all agree that blenders GUI design is quite unorthodox (to say the least), and this can bring up a lot of doubt about the software generally.
However, I think all the kiddies that posted that “interface sucks” dribble, could have given blender more than just a few days, before tearing into it as they did.
DIGG +++++++++
havent u guys also notised that blenders requarements and the actual size the softwear takes up takes up like maybe 1/10th + of what the other softwear neads lol
I noticed the reactions there. I can’t understand why people would say the interface of Blender is bad. It’s one of the best of any 3D application, you just gotta know the basics to use it. I might agree the ‘switched’ select mousebutton is a showstopper for many many people trying to play with a 3D tool the first time.
But I also noted many people putting up an argument on wrong information, like ranting about a missing feature that all Blender users know is there.
I would not be suprised if there would be people putting Blender down because they have a professional interest.
Besides, it was posted in Unix_Linux, I wasnt aware Max, Maya and Lightwave were even available for Linux!
PS. I noticed Max and Maya mentioned many times while LightWave was not…
When I saw greybeard’s video tutorial, that did it for me. I was so excited: “Wow! did you see how he did that pawn so nice in like 5 minutes and it’s so smooth cuz of something called a subsurf.” Yeah, I guess whenever you’re new, you’re willing to tollerate anything cuz you don’t know any better. But once you know one, it’s SO HARD to go back to the basics and figure out how to insert a sphere and extrude and render it. I assume that if I had started with max I might make fun of blender. Nah, I’ve used em all, and I still go back to the “ugly baby”
Amen brotha! 
Ya, I don’t mind the interface…my only beef about is that for some reason the letters on the buttons are too small sometimes, and the whole greyness is a tad bit annoying.
An interface like the new Firefox desgin would be awesome…a glassy transparent sort of thing; not as irritating as the grey…
Ya, I don’t mind the interface…my only beef about is that for some reason the letters on the buttons are too small sometimes, and the whole greyness is a tad bit annoying.
Have you tried playing around with the themes? You can change all this, and then press Ctrl-U to save things the way you like them. Whatever wild color scheme you can dream up.
You can find the schemes in the Info/User Preferences window area. Click on themes and go to town. Remember that when you press Ctrl-U, that’s exactly the state you’ll be in whenever you open Blender, so put things the way you like them. (You can go back to normal by deleting your .B.blend file)
There’s a way to adjust the font sizes, also, but I’m spacing out on it right now. I’m sure somebody will write it here soon.
Here’s some readymade themes to play around with if you don’t want to make your own. You download these in the form of Python scripts and run them to get the theme installed, then press Ctrl-U when you like it:
Love it , using it ,join it and improve it, Blender and computer graphcis are part of my life, that’s all.
My only gripe with Blender’s interface is the overlapping headers (they should wrap and MMB drag is no solution). Other than that sometimes things aren’t where you would expect them to be. That however is to be expected as with CG you are bound to end up with some wierd (but useful) functionality that has no obvious place to go.
For someone new to Blender, the UI is indeed daunting. Once you get used to it, you love the way everything is so very accessible. It looks confusing because a lot of functionality is exposed to the user for quick access. That is my take on it.
Due to a technical complication (now sorted) I was forced into trying out a demo of 3Dstudio 9 to create .3ds files. The interface there requires many clicks to get anywhere. And from what I could make out (not much) editing is a modifier - what the hell? Tab is so much quicker and easier.
Koba
I think that I might have to agree with Node ranger… I think that it might be a money issue. Wanting to make sure yours is better because you payed for it. But honestly I payed almost 1700 for a Matrox Rx100 and Premiere 1.5 package. It still does a few things better. But I am looking more and more for blender to take its place and aftereffects.
I think that once people see that Blender has a good work flow for making money they will be more willing to use it and improve it. I think that people just dont see it now… There just isnt that many examples of people making money using blender. I think that it is thought of as a hobby tool. Please dont be offended I dont think that. I am hoping to use it professionaly when I get there as a artist. Blender is not holding me back… My skill is…
I’ve played around with themes, but I have no idea how I would get a semi-transparent glass “colored” theme.
It seems to be mostly solid colors, if you know what I mean…
I think the main issue behind blender (aside from the GUI) and other software out there is whether open-source software (AKA $0) is better than commercial software (AKA >$0). On a side note, the same comparison can be made to Gimp & Photoshop.
maby Blender has a steeper learning curve than commercial software, but once you make the climb, its just as good. Any feature blender lacks can be made up with python scripts.
Or Blender is just as easy to learn as others, and some people are lazy.
The Comparison of 3d software puts blender equel to maya/3dsmax, except in interface custamization.
Blender is just as easy to learn as others, and some people are lazy.
I think all 3D software has a steep learning curve, but most people who are proficient in Maya or 3D Studio Max aren’t self taught, they learned it in classes or through commercially available study packages, so they are surprised how steep the learning curve would be for somebody who just starts pushing buttons. Tweaking the interface might make it easier for a complete noob to rotate a cube the first time, but once you get beyond that there’s a lot to learn in any software.
I did with Maya/3DS what they did with Blender. Toyed around for two hours, gave up because I didn’t create a masterpiece, and declared it trash. Blender, however, struck my interest, because my drafting teacher showed us @ndy’s work, and I was all “whoa. They did that… with a free program?” So I nabbed it, toyed around, found out I kind of liked it. A lot.