Perhaps a license of Maya, Nuke etcetera should be purchased for the next Blender production, with artists who use those applications brought in to work with them.
This would give the developers a chance to see first hand the issues that arise in a Blender-to-x,y,z pipeline.
Although I could see a lot of opposition to this. Personally I think it would be a good idea.
3 pages discussion pointing out things that have been stated for years, (i don’t get it)
sorry. couldn’t help it.
edit: FOUR!
LetterRip,
For the record, I wasn’t holding up Maya as an example of great UI design. My point was simply the fact that it’s age and the need to keep users happy have pushed the UI design from what it started with (which I expect was as ass-backward to most new users as they think Blender’s was to start with) to something that could be accepted by most users most of the time. That is, the pressures applied to Maya to get it to the “acceptable interface” that it is today have not been applied to Blender at the same level for anywhere near as long.
Whilst I concede the fact Bledner was designed for NaN internal artists, my point about “developer preferences” still stands. Prior to the configurability options of the new Blender, there were a number of quirks that the developers stated they liked and were not interested in changing. Now they will remain “defaults” but can be changed by anyone with some fiddling of the user settings or by loading a key-map.
Example: almost everyone I tried moving from Maya or Max to Blender cursed the interface for putting a “3D Tool” (something they, as professionals, didn’t need nor desire) as the most basic of input options (the left click). I’m not the only one that talked to a developer on this and without naming the one I talked to (this isn’t about the developer), was told that it was not being changed and to deal with it. This is an example of “developer preference” issue that the profit motive crushed out of the Maya interface because they couldn’t afford to dismiss criticism like that.
When you try to save a file, you need to confirm it., but if you try quitting Blender with your changes unsaved, it just cheerfully obliges. Yes, I know about quit.blend, but that’s the opposite how 100% other applications I know work.
I suppose this is another example that has had senior developers state, unequivocally, that they are not interested in changing. Honestly, this one annoys me more than the 3D Tool decision.
For the record, I agree with everything else you said. Maya is not better through dint of better upfront design or better coders. It has simply been under the “profit motivation” pressure for a long time, forcing them to sometimes make decisions they perhaps thought were stupid but made the end-user happier. Their popularity with this community pushed the development of third-party plugins & scripts which makes Maya more useful. This is not the situation with Blender nor has it been since it was open-sourced (i.e. there is no profit motive). In fact, the Open Movie method of raising money has put a different form of pressure onto the development, most of it beneficial in a similar fashion.
The OBJ import/export is what I use alot of (I’m a Wings modeller primarily), so I agree it is very good (then again, it was OK in Maya so long as you didn’t need the vertex indices to stay the same). As you mentioned though, models are not the only feature that need to be moved between applications and Blender does fall down in this area. I am hoping that the flexibility of the next release will bring in more members willing to give Blender a shot and, through that, some more development brain-power onto the subject of animation import/export.
For the record, I’m using Collada for import/export at the moment; which works well when it works and bloody terrible when it doesn’t.
BTolputt,
please do file bugs on the Collada I/O - there is a dev who has been fixing all of the problems reported.
Also (everyone) please anyone file bugs on I/O that doesn’t work properly for the bundled scripts.
LetterRip
Excellent. Will do so over the next couple of days. Will need to grab the offending files again (I had a friend use a licensed SketchUp Pro to convert them into OBJ files).
A thing that could help is the direct support of vertices caching,in 3dsmax/maya format,with a cache modifier,so you can export/import deformation.
I think Broken did a script some times ago for 2.49 for max,it worked well and it’s a way to exchange data between applications.
These things helps Blender to be used in a pipeline…
renderdemon, that’d be the .mdd exporter/importer…
true that it;s be better as a modifier than the current importer’s “shapekeys” and ipos approach…
Michael W,
no he is talking about this
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=105959
LetterRip
Oh right, for export…
max has pointcache, lw has mdd… they’re all basically just vertex locations per frame…
forgetting external compatibility a “modifier” that can stream point data from disk (and cycle or hold at the end and have ± offsets) would be useful to blender users too (it can be used to have a very “light” scene with lots of characters for example…
that could be mdd, pointcache or some “native” format… It’d be trivial to convert between whatever, so that’d be good too!
I must say on the main topic that fbx export is pretty good really… I used it a lot in a blender–> maya pipeline last year.
the weak point in input/output right now is materials and custom attributes… which even if “perfect” will certainly need custom scripting for maya based games pipelines… (where a maya material + custom attributes drives a (usually CG) game material for viewport display)
but then, most large scale games pipelines have a lot of custom tools code, usually refined/hacked and butchered into whatever is needed…
in my experience maya is more of a “platform” for in house tools in video games… I must say that there is little that could not have been written for blender 2.5 … but as LetterRip (and others ) have mentioned you’ve been able to do this in maya for years, and even now with 2.5 the python api isn’t “stable” or “locked”, nor is it ready to be … yet.
btw, mel is evil and maya’s python support is a hideous hack… but the fact that how maya works has stayed largely un-changed for many many years (and that it was flexible from the start) has stood it in good stead.
I’ll be interested to try the new version with the QT interface, but must disagree that the UI has been “honed by user pressure”… rather there is a massive amount of duplicated effort in scripting and customisation done by pretty much every facility to add all the bits that don’t come with it.
What is it about these threads that make you waffle on so much? 
(posts “quick” reply!)
Letterip,
Excellent reply. I believe that the only way that Blender can now be significantly improved is to redesign its user interface, making it as usable and elegant as possible, and also to create extensive and very friendly documentation integrated in and along with it. Are there any plans to learn from modo and xsi (and also photoshop, which although not directly comparable I think always excelled in user interface) in this regard and redesign the user interface so that it can be compared to the best in this industry?
Thanks,
-nautilus
Stupid people compare software , smart people use software they like to use!
Growup kids! Or i say infants?
And smart people write polite messages, others don’t.
+1, I’m enjoying the discussion on this thread, as since blender 2.48 I havent even used Maya. Its a bit reminiscent. I’m lucky my pipelines allow for me to work in mostly all Blender now.
I guess I’m lucky in that I don’t have a pipeline. :U
…-thumbtwiddle-
And smart people write polite messages, others don’t.
My thoughts exactly. Note how detailed polite messages get detailed polite responses from those involved in development? Smart people talk to the community & software developers in a way they can engage in constructively 
Zstar Electronic Co.Ltd, we sell fire cards for DS/NDSL/NDSi, we also have Wii, DSiLL, NDSi, NDSL, PSP2000, PSP3000, PS2, PS3, PSP go, PSP, Xbox360 accessories
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Well see, that’s not entirely true; I can understand that comparing software on the basis of “which is better” can be very silly, but a general comparison can be very useful… For example, I google serched v.s because I am very new to 3D art, and I want to know whether I should learn to use blender, so that I get an overall idea of what the process is like, or put it off until I can get access to a program for which I’d have to pay.
(I’m a highschool student so I don’t make money, and even if I was to do so, it wouldn’t be enough for a program worth the money)
The whole discussion has given me a very good insight, when it isn’t just “this program is teh win!” kind of comment.
So I must disagree.
I think what he should have said was
“It’s stupid to resurrect old threads that are a year old, smart people don’t use internet forums to decide which software is best for them, they use the trial versions and decide for themselves.”
Eireni, please don’t be a grave robber. Let the dead rest in peace.
Old thread closed