[Feature suggestion - selection, materials] Long time Modo user switching to Blender

General Forums Blender Development Discussion
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Richard, you are totally right and I’m with you man.

My case was simple, Ive seen boxcutter in action and I was sold (doing concept art and low-mid poly for games). But not by plugin itself. I realised that blender is the most future proof software of all on the market and thats becuase it’s free and ppl want to earn money by doing great plugins. Its like with all those ‘free to play games’ where you sell skins and those games earn more money than paid games. You wont see plugins like boxcutter and others great one Ive seen on a blender market in a nearest future for Maya or Modo for example (you got meshfusion in Modo but come on, its more like tractor than porsche). There are many reasons but the very one is, that its free software and ppl want to earn money by selling those plugins. Its easier to sell good plug to popular free software than to which costs 2000$.

About softwares, I will never understand how you can model in Maya these days :slight_smile: But lets leave that subject.
I’ve been working in Maya for some time, and using it only today for rigging and simple animations, but thats all. And besides plugins I’m trying blender becuase Im tired of jumping between softwares. Using 4-5 in a pipeline right now (ZB, MD, SP etc), and after playing with Blender I can see it can be this fundamental software to bind them all and work with the rest alongside.
The only thing Blender is failing for me is this raw modeling ‘tools’, its not even close to Modo (selecting components is a big deal). By meaning tools, I mean that in Modo you dont need those tools/menus to select things you want.
For example if I got simple sphere I can double click LMB on single edge > it selects whole loop and than with arrows I can jump between all loops on the sphere, selecting them together with Shift if I want. 2-3 simple clicks. In blender Ive got couple ways of doing that and menus but, everytime I have idea to select something more I have to open one more tool or menu etc, its like a core of modeling/selecting is far away. Actually tools with selection can be upgraded anytime so future can be bright.
Or another example, can I move all components in Blender to the center of the scene with one key button? Right now Im switching to object mode (in Modo you just moving components if you want), placing origin within geometry, placing cursor in center of scene, snaping geometry to the cursor. 3 steps process. Those kind of things, but maybe I can do it faster? Im sure for those 3 steps there can be script or something, but in Modo you just have ‘center all’. Everything from selecting to moving components around, sticking them together are made by couple clicks. Also selecting vertecies that are backfaced, In blender I have to enter wireframe, in modo Im just selecting with middle mouse instead of left from what I remember.

So overall love Blender for plugins, 2.8 for UI changes, renderer, and of course that its free and actually you can do everything here, its like a hub for importing, fixing stuff, and exporting - its a lot. You said you do retopo in Maya. Well, wait for a plugin for 30 bucks with better retopo tools than Maya in next years made by creative ppl. Blender is like spotify and netflix today in my eyes, they just need to get core of software smooth (materials from beginning of the topic for example).
The biggest downside for me is selecting only from what Im experiencing and unfortunatelly its kind of crucial. Anyway sticking to Blender for now, exciting software.

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Some things will be so much better when this arrives: https://developer.blender.org/T54963 :wink:

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Wow, any ETA for that beauty?

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No ETA unfortunately, but it’s meant to be part of 2.8… So soon enough… :smiley:

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Good approach to an alternate Keymap. I think I am OK as long as the new Default for Blender remains superior to other apps - which it is now, hands down. Superior in that is uses function and ergonomics as the priority. That is exactly what the priority should be. I have seen this change a little bit in the new keymap which I am not crazy about.

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Maya NEX tools for retopo are superior by far - many times over - than anything we have found or tried including Modo. We use Zbrush here and do a lot of retopo for that as well as converting CAD files. Usually artists work back and forth between Maya and Blender for various aspects. We use whatever is faster and gets the best results. There is no point in this case, to stick with only Blender or only Maya just because.

As far as modeling in Maya… I did not see it that much inferior to Blender for most things. And I went directly from Modeling in Blender, professionally, 8 hours a day for years, to Maya, doing the same. I also did the same thing with Softimage. Neither of these apps were inferior to Blender. No way. Just for basic everyday things. In my personal experience and opinion of course.

But then qualified of course that I never had Modo to compare to. :slight_smile:

In Maya and in Softimage you have a node system. Softimage ICE modeling is out of control. Actually more user friendly than Houdini.

In Maya there is a node system under the hood that puts Blender’s modifier stack to shame, easy. It is just that few people know it is there or how to use it and it is far more obscure. But powerful. And on a par in some ways to both ICE and Houdini. Though much more limited in capability.

What Blender brings to the table is an ease of use and a logic to Modifiers which is easy to understand. But it also gets very limiting.

Then there is Animation Nodes (Blender Addon) which can also be used to model with, and they add another element of crazy control and nearly unlimited possibility being built on Nodes. But again it takes effort to learn this - much like ICE, Houdini or Maya’s under-the-hood- node system.

I would say though, that 99 percent of the time a new artist is introduced to Blender after using Maya, will almost instantly choose to stay with Blender. This is a realistic, on-the-ground- statistic I have observed here at my studio over the last 4 years working with college grads and interns. I would say I have trained and worked with about 2 dozen so far. Many of them I trained personally. But now Blender has taken a life of its own here. And now I learn new stuff all the time from the artists I trained before in Blender… lol.

I don’t think this is a testimony as to the fact that Blender is better or more capable. But it is definitely easy to use, understand, and powerful. Not to mention easy on the budget for a small studio. :slight_smile:

Then as you say, Addons.

The other two factors for me are Animation and Rendering. Blender finally grew up with the Principled Shader. Very little reason to use any other competing system for this now.

Animation is a tough one. But for hand animation I think, if you are using Maya, you will find the BlenRig system to be very powerful.

For me I am on the fence because I still plan to use Mocap Data. MotionBuilder is king of the hill here. One of the interns is in intense training on this now.

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Gonna put this in a separate post.

I hate to beat a drum on this here. And I hope I am not beating a dead horse… lol

But you really have to embrace the Data Block system. I would really recommend a study of that as the very first thing you understand about Blender.

So… When you center the mesh, that is not the same as centering the object. Moving the mesh is not the same as moving the object. Selecting components is working in the Mesh Data Block, not the Object Data Block.

And another dead horse to beat. With more options on basic things, there is always going to be added some small amount of complexity in operation. Or at least a little more complexity in understanding.

It could also be argued that adding one shortcut for a simple operation - such as putting everything to center - would be unnecessarily complex and confusing, without much of a pay off in speed to make it worth it.

Enter, now center stage, the famous, infamous, loved, hated, mostly misunderstood and underrated feature in Blender, the Cursor.

Added to snapping, you have one of the most powerful and flexible systems in Blender.

I cover most of this in my series:

Just to keep me from typing this stuff over and over again… lol

But…

In the Mesh Data Block (Edit Mode) you can select all, and, put your cursor anywhere, including the center, and then chose “Selection to Cursor Offset” from the Shft S menu.

You can also snap the cursor to any component.

In the Object Data Block (Object Mode) you can choose where the center the object is using the Transform sub-menu in the Object Menu.

Select as many objects as you want and choose “Origin to Geometry” If they are not already set up this way and simply Alt G to clear out the positions and everything will go to the center.

Or you can snap everything or any one thing, or group of things to the cursor wherever you put the cursor using either Data Block System.

I think these are things I cover very fully in my video series.

Back to the original question. Yes and no. Would it be better to be able to just “center selection”? Yes and no. Yes if that is all you ever do. No if it means creating another shorcut for this. When in reality it could be the same shortcut for the other 80 percent of the time when this is not what you want to center the selection to. Considering there are so many times you want to put the selection to the center of something other than the center of world.

What would be useful perhaps is a snapping option - “Selection to Center Offset” in addition to “Selection to Cursor Offset”. It did after all take forever for us to get Cursor to Center. :wink:

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