blender

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
21

You can have both. (See Mirai, Wings3d, Cinema4d ect. for reference).

Zarf[/quote]

Well, Cinema4D is easy to use to in some areas while some other areas are not easy to use. To say it more clear: C4D has some areas where it is so hard to use that even the manual can’t help you to get it done. I only say MOCCA! SoftIK in MOCCA is a pain in everything. Animating in Blender is super comfortable and super fast COMPARED to C4D.
I didn’t say that Blender doesn’t need some better animation tools…
Nuff said. :wink:

Oh, BTW: I own a copy of Cinema4D Studio 8.5. If anybody wants it for a cool price just drop me a line!

Best wishes, fritzman

22

Might not be that far away though

http://www.brainfingers.com/cyberlink.htm

23

Thanks guys for all your support and wisdom. Later I will look into my mailbox and hope I havent received too much hate mail over this issue :slight_smile:

Seems, whatever I use in the 3D area, there is a steep learning curve. It shouldnt be like that.

They say that also about Macromedias FlashMX. Thats why I use Swishmax.
Until now I didnt manage to make anything with it because its just extremely confusing and you often dont know what you have just done. Everything is just a mess. In Flash MX you are never just one click away from your desired result.
On the other hand Swishmax is a breeze to use and I wrote a lot of actionscript stuff and animations with it. In terms of animation it can do more than Flash MX in a 90% shorter time. Well, it also has its little shortcomings like you cant export to gif, but for what gif if I can make a swf movie. The biggest drawback in Swishmax I see is that it cant do shape tweening, yet. Thats already on the wishlist.

In general I think: a great program should not mean it is difficult to handle. Blender is probably great if you know how to handle it after years :wink: of study.
I think: a really great program should have loads of possibilities and features, as probably blender has it, but it should also have an interface which makes it a breeze to use it. That could really be a feature which could push ‘difficult to use’ programs out of the market.

Time designing can mean money. If you can design faster and more efficiently that helps a lot.

24

Blender is as complicated to learn, as most of the other 3D apps… The only additional dificulty is that the interface has a somewhat different philosophy, but if you ask me, it certainly didn’t take me more than a few weeks to get familiar with the main ideas behind it…

I think: a really great program should have loads of possibilities and features, as probably blender has it, but it should also have an interface which makes it a breeze to use it. That could really be a feature which could push ‘difficult to use’ programs out of the market.

That is extremely difficult… You can not achieve ease of use, with out sacrificing functionality and performance… Take for example the case ‘Windows vs. Linux’… There is no argument that windows operating systems are characterized by extreme ease of use… Even my 6 year old kid can use them… But in order to achieve this Microsoft sacrificed stabillity and security… Linux on the other hand, is one of the most “stubborn piece of os” I have ever seen, in terms of user friendlyness, but if you take a look at the figures, it is starting winning ground over competition, in the IT market…

Time designing can mean money. If you can design faster and more efficiently that helps a lot.

It is funny, but the philosophy of the interface actually is to speed up things and increase productivity, once you get the hang of it…

Above all, user friendlyness and ease of use, allthough is a desireable feature, it can never substitute talent… If you ask most advanced CG artists, they will all agree that it isn’t the software that makes the artist… That’s why most of them invest time, learning more than one applications…

…

25

Above all, user friendlyness and ease of use, allthough is a desireable feature, it can never substitute talent… If you ask most advanced CG artists, they will all agree that it isn’t the software that makes the artist… That’s why most of them invest time, learning more than one applications…

You see that also with cameras, its not the camera which can take good pictures, its the user.
You can have a cheap camera and get great results with it. While others have Leicas and all pics are miserable and blur.

As I wrote somewhere else, for example the rightclick is not really used to its full extend. You can bring up popup menus which tell you what you can do with the selected vertex, line or face.
What I have seen is that you can select a vertex or an object with rightclick and thats all. Maybe I am still missing out something. Then you can rightclick and move the object immediately. If you leftclick nothing happens, only if you leftclick and drag. Then you unsnap the object and it moves just by moving the mouse. Guess thats a bug.

well, see you around sometime.

26

" Seems, whatever I use in the 3D area, there is a steep learning curve. It shouldnt be like that. "

Whatever?
I have the same with airplanes. They are all so damn though to learn. It shouldn’t be like that. Why can’t they just make an airplane that I can fly without any effort. And not a small trip, no; to the moon and back. I don’t wanna learn anything or have to learn anything. Why should I? They should make it so easy that I can do it the moment I step on that plane. And… most important! It should be free! Gratis! I don’t wanna pay 1 single cent for it. And pick me up in a limo, I don’t wanna walk to that plane. Better, I want to drive that limo. But not learn how to. Hee that should not be hard, my tricicle can do it, so why not a limo?Now that I think about it, a helicopter should pick me up. And I can fly that too. free. And I’ll go to pilot conventions telling them they have the worst job ever.

sorry for my english

27

hi Umm,

One of the rules of blender is ‘keep one hand on your keyboard and the other one on your mouse’

Blenders efficiency lies not only in the interface but also in the extensive use of shortcutkeys

to move an object, select it and pick ‘g’
to rotate an object, select it and pick ‘r’
to scale an object, select it and pick ‘s’

you have the spacebar that gives numerous options about the 3d screen with the grid your viewing

and ‘tab’ key will put you in and out of edit mode

btw, the ‘g’, ‘r’ and ‘s’ also work in editmode

anyway, I find it pleasing to have an adult discussion with valuable arguments instead of a flamewar

greets

pinhead_66

28

I have also wanted tools like that…not to avoid me extra leanring (as I feel it like a challenge…I started studing maths career , just for the challenge) , but cause I want , like when painting, the less distractions possible between me and my art.

But in 2d/3d, is a golden rule. To much of a toy, to little usefulness/functionality.

Not always so, though.

For example. I have Amorphium. I can tell u THAT is a toy. Much inspired in bryce imho.

Now, what can u do with it…? extremely well one part of the proccess… imposible to make certain stuff. The keyframer only supports 10 keyframes, lol…no bones, no nothing.

You can’t even BUILD stuff …it’s all based on one object (Amorphium1)

Bryce happens to share more of those limits.Nice, beautiful interface…very good for an specific fucntion (amorphiunm is by all means my favourite to edit little details of a huge high res detailed model.Really sculpting feel…even the tools look like that…)

Recently, the left button have been added to work like in more standard 3d packages. Imho, with facts like this, Blender earn a lot, in flexibility. U can change it in preferences, very easilly.

U can also use g, r and s to do the action in one axe, like gx, or ry. (pressing the 2 keys one after another)
Or constrain to a movement just moving in perspective in a raw direction and pressing middle button during the action… it’ll move now along the axe that predominates in that move u made…

pressing middle again, the constrain will disappear, move free now…any actionis canceled with right mouse…

well, it’s quite functional, only way more hidden to the the very first new comer that does n ot have mabe the time/will to read the doc.
BTW, I almost haven’t , and I can handle more or les Blender :wink:

And I have been watching since…2.28 (well, I already used 2.23 and 2.25 a bit, and used to try to play with 1.8) and seems more and more are going towards a more newbie friendly thing. the difference with some older ones is huge.

The fact is u’ll find sooner or later the limits in other more dedicated applications. I prefer functionality, today.Before I prefered easiness. While I think that there can be a balanced thing. Max, Maya, XSI, or Blender have the aim of making most of what u need to do a 3d project.

BTW, I still use Amorphium and tools like that. In their area they’re excellent :wink: I think I have a full bryce 2 from a magazzine.

My advice…Take a chance…other 3d tools, easier or less complex, or go to blender org doc :

The online comunity made one is really a nice read (sure also the others) I have just read isolated sections, but is really well explained.

start from beguining. My feel is if u have used many 3d tools, is only a matter that u get the grips of it’s philosophy. U may catch it sooner, or later.

29

Whatever wrote:

They should make it so easy that I can do it the moment I step on that plane. And… most important! It should be free! Gratis! I don’t wanna pay 1 single cent for it.
Actually I dont mind paying for a good program, I also paid for my Bryce and Swishmax. Both are easy to handle. Though I agree with Extrudeface, Bryce can do nice stuff but you easily discover the limits.
Re: flying an aeroplane, thats also not soooo difficult.

pinhead66, those are great tips. I think I have to get used to using the keyboard more often. I usually dont touch it except for typing or Ctrl-Z Ctrl-C Ctrl-V. :wink:
Sorry for the flames in the beginning. I though just give it a last shot and i fiddled around for hours and at the end I managed to make a cube :wink:

Extrudeface, I was already considering to get myself a copy of Amorphium. It looks reasonable cheap (99 $) to give it a shot, and if it is junk, then I dont loose soooo much. Did you try Amorphium3 or an earlier version?

Today I made a bunch of cubes, (I know how to make them from the last time I used Blender :wink: ) and then animate the camera to move along the row of cubes. All what I saw was black and in bryce it was a breeze to do the same thing. I to myself:“Dang, stop complaining”
Guess I have to sit down for while and watch some ‘toots’ (which I never did before). Maybe, one day I’ll manage to manage Blender a bit.

Thanks again for all your encouragement. Great to have you all here.

30

I remember my early days of Blender.

The whole “Editmode” thing puzzled me immensely.

I couldn’t work out how to reliably save for an embarrassingly long time.

Luckily I thought “it might be worth getting the manual” and it really is. (Although by then I could actually save . . . )

In all seriousness, now Blender’s and me have clicked I find stuff like Maya really quite distressing to try and use, just in terms of moving the camera around in a viewport . . . what is that key/multiple mouse button combo again? The whole way the keypad is lined up in Blender is tremendous, unless you’re on a laptop that is.

31

Thanks, Kid Tripod, for your comforting comment. I need it right now.

I have just tried to make a glass bottle.
Well, it looked more or ledd like a bottle and I got it transparent, too but then.
First rendering didnt show anything and after hours if fiddling I managed to get the camera in position so that it showed a part of the neck (thats why I knew it was transparent ;)) Guess it need a couple of hours more to finetune the camera position so that it shows the entire bottle straight.
Well, I got something to do for the weekend :slight_smile:

Then I found, I just pressed the X to close blender, but forgot to save my work. There was no message coming up:“You havent saved your stuff stupid! Do you want to save or what?” It just shut down…

Maybe MS Paint is exactly what I need now :wink:

32

“Re: flying an aeroplane, thats also not soooo difficult.”
:smiley: Maybe I should try that then. And maybe read a tuto or 2.

33

Then I found, I just pressed the X to close blender, but forgot to save my work. There was no message coming up:“You havent saved your stuff stupid! Do you want to save or what?” It just shut down…

umm… doesn’t close blender…

but, i see what you are trying to say. Blender has a horrifically steep learning curve, but then, so does most other commercial 3D applications. it really just depends on how determined you are to succeed. blender is difficult, there is no doubt about that. you just have to have the persistence to learn it and practice

~Delta

34

in 2.35, you have lost nothing.

look at file menu, there is an option to retrieve last session

in previous version too, but you had to fetch manually the quit.blend from the temp dir.

35

alright…must remember what its like to hate blender…must not kill noob…

Yes, I remember those days. I hated, hated, HATED blender for the longest time. Took by about 3 trys in 2 years to finally come to grips with it. Of course, that was back in the days of 2.2x. These days, blender is much more tailored to us, the artists, not them, the coders. Blender is packed with features, and teh cvs builds are constantly getting updated with newer and stronger features.

That said, blender DOES leave much to be desired. It’s not always stable, but for a free open-source app written by unpaid devs who just give up their time for the community, I’d have to say its stable just about all the time on my winXP machine. And if your a linux user, that should say a lot ;). Also, blender doesn’t offer everything that commercial apps do. We have hair simulation (kind of), and some forums of cloth simulation, but neither is on the same caliber of commercial apps. Liquid sims, well that almost out of the question at this point (AFAIK). The interface is a bitch to learn at first (DEFINATLY not at bad as it used to be), but I have to say that it can work faster than I can. I find myself trying to use blender hotkeys in flash…(yeah, i learned TWO apps! appluase)

No matter what though, your going to have to sit down and actually LEARN to use Blender (yeah…harsh of those devs, I know). I think the best thing to do is to read through the hot keys list (google “blender hotkeys”) and learn those first. Blender really begins to work for you when you know what buttons to push :slight_smile:

I love you, the devs! (Dof for 2.36 please)

36

Amorphium 3?

yup…

tried the 3 version demo…

heck, didn’t like it as much as I did with 1…hmm…no way. Is a very personal opinion…I prefer the modelling tools of one. You can get that one free, if can order the magazine issue of Digit magazine that gave it free. For the cost of a magazine, a software that costed me 300$, lol.

Anyway, sooner or later you realize that all those tools, amorphium, bryce, are nice toys, or as much quite good in a very speciaized or restricted area.
Blender may be much more complex to learn (if someone has opened once amorphium will know why) but it solves any 3d task, practically. Imho, the “functionaliity over easiness” need comes sooner or later. :wink:
You’ll be back, hehe. :wink:

BTW, the modelling tools in Blender are easy. Is just…the philosophy. Specially windows users we’re quite more used to other UIs, imho that’s the only thing, and is no big thing. It just looks it is.

37

I wonder when Umm will finally make it to Hollywood and get rid of this damn piece of crap called Blender. :wink:

38

Guess that’s a mouse gesture…

And Blender has lots of them…

That’s in order to speed up productivity, once you get familiar with ofcourse…

C.U. 2

39

I remember the first time i tried blender. :o
Yeah, that about sums it up :stuck_out_tongue: It took a while, but eventually i got the hang of the strange UI, and now its very fast :slight_smile:

Oh, and if your confused by the buttons layout (as i’m sure everyone was at first) Just wait for 2.37 (xmas perhaps?). The buttons window is being reorganized (i’m actually helping with it) so things will be much more logical, but still very fast (because we all love blender for its speed :smiley: )

For now, read the online documentation, and be thankful for it. Back in the days of 2.23/2.25 (right after the NaN shutdown) there was NO free documentation online. So, read up!

40

he said THE X.