blender vs the real players

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
41

Solid modeling is like when you make a sphere, inside it’s solid (duh), but with what blender has right now, it’s hollow. I’m starting to hit this wall too with blender. In my drafting class we are using Inventor 8 and when it comes to workflow, I can make a part in a minute in Inventor instead of 10 in blender.

I agree with Alltaken that it would help with modeling if blender had some of the capibilities of a program say like Inventor. Not a lot features, just some. For me it would be snap and the better boolean thing; dimensioning would be nice also, but thats really all i would want. Any more than that and I would buy myself an actual CAD program.

Now all that’s left is for me to learn Python so I can code this thing myself.

–Dmitriy

42

I’d go with c for this one.
Blender uses vertex points, not a contruction history.
So implementing a solid modeling has to be done from scratch.
And to what purpose? Blender modeling tools are fine, let’s move on to improving the animation tools. It’s suppost to be an animation package.

or whatever.

43

I don’t animate in blender but blender is getting some improvement in animation capabilities in 2.35 with object hooks, plus you should be aware that animation improvements are in the works and that modeling is the bread and butter of any 3D app.

44

I don’t animate in blender but blender is getting some improvement in animation capabilities in 2.35 with object hooks, plus you should be aware that animation improvements are in the works and that modeling is the bread and butter of any 3D app.[/quote]
I’m under the impression that Joeri is much more aware of anything regarding the 3D industry than you are.

Martin

45

One “bright-line rule” that may help give focus to the argument is to zero in on what is the intended output of the package and for what purpose it is to be applied by whom.

For blender: - Blender produces video renderings; - for use in generating videos for DVD and such; - by graphic animators. For CAD: - A package produces 3D models and from this derives industry-accepted blueprints, takeoffs, materials-charts and CAM output-files; - for use in designing buildings and conducting pre-construction stress analyses and budgeting tasks; - by architects, engineers, and many other people.
Clearly, Blender would be fairly worthless to an architect or building-designer; it would be “the wrong tool for the job.” The same could be said for a CAD-package in the hands of a graphic designer.

Said designer might profitably use a solid modeling tool which could then produce Blender-compatible input. This could be based upon CAD-like technology, but probably the best all-around solution to the problem would be really-good importing capability that uses a standard CAD input-file format. A simple solid-modeling package that also produces CAD standard output files, if such a thing does not already exist, would also be useful.

But those tools “aren’t Blender.” I don’t think it’s right to try to make Blender a jack of all trades, because in so doing it would become the master of none. (And then, of course, Microsoft would have to buy it, because all of their products are like that.) :wink:

46

Blender would be fairly worthless to an architect or building-designer

but to an architectural VISUALISER. I.e. the person who creates the art to sell the home, the person who renders out the walkthrough to sell to investors a multi-million dollar bussiness.

your targets IMO are wrong, you definitions of each are correct.

what is blenders target market?
i don’t think its video rendering (i think you said that becasue thats what you do)

it has a game engine, it has a renderer, it has modelling and animating tools, it has a sequence editor…

its far less limited than people like to try and define it as.

Alltaken

47

" what is blenders target market? "

Good question. There is none. or worse, it’s all!

" i don’t think its video rendering "

Blender was developed for video making. Any other use is grown out of this. There are no parts in blender, except the game engine, that where developed for something else but video rendering.
But,… all features are developed in a general way, that’s what a good tool should be, and thus can be used in numerus ways. That’s good news. Let’s keep it that way. Or at least until other parts of blender are as developed as the polygon modeling is now.

Or not? Large part of the (elysiun) community are image creators.
They don’t need animation tools. They don’t need a multi frame render deamon. They want a good (even very good) renderer that can take up to 2 hours per frame. (Animators don’t like that!).

But now we hear that even rendering is not important… “The CAD abilities suck!”. I can’t make mols for my plastic objects. We need even more modeling tools. Forget about the renderings!

…Let’s not go there.

Blender should be a good animation package.
To enable expression of yourself in (moving) image storytelling, realtime or rendered.

or whatever.

48

If you want to animate something or create a still you’ll have to model it first.
If features found in CAD programs make modeling quicker or easier then why not?
I don’t think anybody here is asking for a complete CAD package based on Blender, we just want better modeling.

49

However, when the majority of your animation tools are focused on affecting polygon models, how is being able to model object in a data structure that is fundamentally different than the mesh format going to help your animation? You’d have to either convert to polys (something you can already do in an existing CAD package… and can result in some nastiness either way) or create new animation tools to fit the new modeling format.

I’m with Joeri here. Let’s get one pipeline done well first (that would be polygons). Then we can move to another pipeline (like, oh, maybe NURBS, since our NURBS modeling tools need some maturing before we can really animate with them, too). With those two pipes set, THEN I think it might be a good idea to seriously consider the addition of solid modeling. Granted, there can be some overlap in development as developer interests move from one thing to another, but this is the way I’d like to see things progress.

Of course, I have virtually zero influence over any developers, so it’s really more of a crap-shoot anyway.

50

Or we could let the software mature the way open source software really does: People who do the work get to add what they want to add.

51

I don’t animate in blender but blender is getting some improvement in animation capabilities in 2.35 with object hooks, plus you should be aware that animation improvements are in the works and that modeling is the bread and butter of any 3D app.[/quote]
I’m under the impression that Joeri is much more aware of anything regarding the 3D industry than you are.

Martin[/quote]

Blender especially for that matter.

It must be very frustrating for Joeri, he’s really the only other NeoGeo/Nan person besides Ton who posts on these or Blender.org’s forums, yet Iv’e seen dozens of young newb’s ‘lecturing’ him about blender and 3d in general.

Zarf

52

I don’t animate in blender but blender is getting some improvement in animation capabilities in 2.35 with object hooks, plus you should be aware that animation improvements are in the works and that modeling is the bread and butter of any 3D app.[/quote]

Your right, modelling is the bread and butter of any 3d app, why just the other day I was modelling this really complex form in Motionbuilder.

Wait it couldn’t have been Motionbuilder. Motionbuilder dosn’t have any modelling capabilities…

All right lets see here then, I must have been modelling it in Animanium.

Dang, Animanium dosn’t have any modelling capabilities either…

All right I must have been using project Messiah.

Oh wait a second…

Zarf

53

I like to see suggestions but I agree with this statement completely. We have to let Blender grow into whatever it will eventually become. But it we code features into Blender ourselves more power to us.

Blend on!

54

Or we could let the software mature the way open source software really does: People who do the work get to add what they want to add.

That’s not very realistic. An opensource project does not mean it’s a democratic project. This is also the case with blender. Maybe you’ve noticed only a few have cvs write rights.
Ofcourse any tree could fork.

55

Woul it be plausible for a “brief forking”, where the application of this system is implemented, and then if the main blender developers feel it is worthwhile and compatible with the project, that it be implemented back in again?

56

This makes sense on so many levels for a BF cvs stable version of Blender.

Well as the Blender development moves along some coders may just code a version of Blender outside of the main Blender cvs. Now this version of Blender may have features more like Lightwave , Maya, etc. who knows? This version will be of use to those that download it and use it but it may not please the core Blender users. Who said that all future Blender versions have to please everyone?

57

IMNSHO, implementing a true b-rep, parametric cad system is extremely non trivial :slight_smile:

Take a look at the OpenCascade (OCC) requirements.

http://www.opencascade.org/getocc/require/

What I’d like you to notice is the sheer size of the installation (600+ MB). And yes, I know that the size of a program is not a very good measurement, but there is still an order of magnitude or two between Blender and OCC.

I’ve looked into the source of OCC a little, and it appears to be fairly feature complete from a CAD point of view. When I looked at the sources (about a year ago) there was no real GUI to go along with this… there was only a back-end.

Implementing enough of this type of functionality to be useful would be a major undertaking.

The bottom line is that CAD systems and Blender-like systems are worlds apart. While the output is similar, the focus, methods, techniques, workflow, philosophy, implemetations, etc… are very dissimilar. Think of the differences between bit-map and vector graphics. There is a reason why Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop are different programs. Will you find functionality shared between Photoshop and Illustrator? Yes, and this is a good thing. Should these two programs be merged into one? Probably not.

So, the real question is, what types of CAD functionality should cross over into Blender?

IMO the most useful and productive features (for mesh AND nurbs) would be: booleans (good ones ;)), fillets/chamfers, im/export in CAD format (IGES specifically), and measurments/dimensions, probably in roughly this order.

The time-wasters would be: parametrics, b-reps, drawing-style features such as formats/symbols/blocks, assembly constraints, sketching constraints, datuming schemes, CAM functionality such as toolpaths, blah blah blah, the list goes on and on. Some of these could be supported in a limited form (such as parametrics and constraints) and still be useful in Blender, but I wouldn’t try to make such features complete enough to be useful for a CAD package.

Casey

58

I’d say cmccad has a very correct answer to that.
ofcourse you’d want to import PS files in AI and vice versa, but you don’t want them to be 1 program. At least I don’t.

(Right, and since there is an overload of developers wanting to contribute to the current development,… hmm…)

I’m not sure this is the right aproache of thinking.
I think that the future Blender versions should enable people to tell a (moving) story. And that people who want to make mols for plastic objects should stay away from blender, at least call it different if they mollest the code :wink:

I think Zarf is right (I used to enjoy la linea very much).
Modeling is the dull flower of the bread, move away from it, as soon as possible.

or whatever.