Some months ago, I downloaded the ‘Personal Learning Edition’ of Maya, as it was the only free way in to the world of 3D.CG that I knew of. It’s almost fully featured, but adds an intrusive watermark to every rendered scene. Still, I was glad of the opportunity to learn my way around a high end application, and have recently become quite productive with it. Blender only came to my attention a week ago, and I pledged that I would shift allegiance from Maya as soon as was tolerable. I was completely at sea in Blender to begin with, as the non-standard controls seem counter-intuitive to a new user. But there is a consistent internal logic to them which I find very appealing as I get used to it. I am anxious to get going on a project I have in mind just now. In Maya I know exactly how to do everything I need to do, but I expect it will take some 15 hours or so. Time spent in Maya feels like time wasted, and time spent on Blender feels like an investment. I hope I can learn enough about Blender to start work on the project soon.
Wish me luck.
I tried to work with PLE for a time but I kept wanting to do things the “Blender way”. I finally gave up which is fine now that Blender rivals Maya in many more ways than before. After five years of working with Blender, it just keeps getting better.
Yeah i also tried PLE a few times and like you, thats how i made my enterence into the world of 3D graphics. I had heard of Blender around the release of 2.20 but got so mad at the interface that i had given up on it several times. Finally, after having becoming at least slightly fermiliar with PLE, I was able to switch to blender.
After about 2 years of using blender, I tried to learn PLE. No luck. I’ve tried several times but like CurtisS, I just keep wanting to do things the Blender way.
It seems to me that the modeling systems of other apps like 3DS and MPLE are rediculously and needlessly complicated…at least compared to blender.
I don’t think your time has been wasted learning to use Maya, but Blender can do lots of stuff and if it can’t, you can always ask the Blender Community…
Moving from one 3D app to another is often more than a case of learning the interface, but also a paradigm shift.
For example, in some apps the standard way to make a wall with a window would be to make the wall, then cut out the window, with a boolean operation or similar. In blender the standard way would be to build the wall around he window - take the window into account before you start.
It often confuses people, so I’m warning you in advance
I would make the wall, extrude and size it down, then shape it and extrude again for depth, which IMO is a lot quicker.[/quote]
Exactly - you build the wall around the window[/quote]
No, because you build the wall, and then you extrude the vertices and resize them to be smaller (window shaped), therefore, the window was build into the wall. Different method than calculations though.
It should be noted that if you use curves it’s a different story.
Which is what I meant by building the wall around the window…
Initially there was no wall, then wall is created everywhere except where the window is. The wall was built around the window.
This as opposed to creating the entire wall and then cutting out the window with a boolean op, which while possible in blender is not the usual way it’s done - owed in part to the fact that blender’s booleans are not the best…
and welcome
