Try teaching Blender to anyone. Then come back and tell us if it is easy to learn…
I recently introduced and taught Blender to two fine artist friends. They have been using it to create some large scale gallery video instillation projects. Although they have been using it for video editing and compositing only. Not any 3D. Even so I was really surprised how fast they seemed to pick it up.
In fact the person who designed the project says he loves it because he finds it really straight forward and functional. This is from past experiance of doing a similar work in several different apps though. So I think he mainly loves the fact he only needs to worry about the one app now for doing all of it.
Have to say I think the suggestions from Dantus of a close windows button. Possibly even an insert window button sound a really good idea for easing up and speeding some of the workflow. Also simplifying things more for new users. I do like the non overlapping windows though. I’m finding the constant floating windows in Maya a bit annoying these days. But it’s obviously a very personal and subjective thing. Perhaps I’m just turning hard core Blender head now or something. I think very many people are very happy with floating windows.
I did manage to get our local community group for, ahem, people of a certain age, to have a bash at Blender and you’d be amazed how quickly they got the basics. I think it proved to me that if you have no preconceptions, you just get on with it, instead of questioning “why this and not that”, “where’s xyz option”.
I second most of what’s said in the video. The caveat, of course, is that 3D is hard to learn in itself.
But Blender is still hampered by some UI decisions that were made before there were any true standards, and it’s really, really bad that it hasn’t been fundamentally aligned to the way virtually every other program in the world behaves, and that includes all operating systems. Some of Blender’s idiosyncracies are patently absurd: Right-click select and window headers at the bottom, of course, Ctrl-A for “Apply” insted of “Select all”, the lack of automatic box select aso.
The fact that some of these shortcomings can be addressed by diving into User settings is a meagre consolation, and quite a few of the adjustments will often turn out to be kludges, anyway.
Again, most of this stems from a time where most, if not all, UI decisions were hardcoded into the program itself, and it’s a daunting task to rewrite the applcation to “rip out” the UI to give it some true modularity. Given the BF’s resources, it’s also completely unrealistic.
That being said, 2.8 should strive to make at least the most basic accomodations to industry standards. By no means does that imply the Blender would have to conform to Maya of C4D or such, just to common sense.
Add a price tag and people who paid 5k for any software WILL take time to learn it but if it’s free they don’t have the incentive to do so.
Even pirated software will be learned if you know it really costs 5k. Especially for those beginning.
Look at us for example. The beginner friendly stuff would only be in our way when we make stuff. We know Blender and we know it’s crazy fast and crazy overall what you can make with it.
Classic case is Photoshop. They added a crazy price tag to it and made it available(or didn’t mind) on pirate downloads sites. Now it’s industry standard.
I’m over simplifying it but there is some truth to it.
My 2c is that the non-overlapping windows, in combination with the automatic selection of active window via cursor position, are two of Blender’s best features. Not having to hunt for and actually select windows is, IMO, a great idea.
This industry standard thing. I think it often gets lost that Blender actually is a very unique app and plotting its own course in so many ways. There is nothing else out there quite like it.
Just forgeting the open source aspect for a moment. Blender is simply a really great and amazing damned app. And one of its huge appeals is everything under one roof with a unified and fluid workflow. This is a very, very big deal. This single aspect alone should not be underestimated. Not to mention that Blender is no slouch and actually very competative in so many areas as well. Character rigging for one. Poly modeling wise I know nothing else as fast and efficient as Blender and also such a pleasure to use.
Unfortunately, plotting its own course also includes placing window headers at the bottom of of windows and flaunting lots of other user inteface standars that have been established by virtually every other application and desktop environment in the world. In reality, that has nothing to do with being inventive or such. It’s just terrible UI design. It’s not as if all the other software makers on this globe have got the UI wrong, and Blender got it right. It’s not about the overall quality of Blender, the OP asked whether Blender was (unneccessarily) difficult to learn. And these non-standard design and interface decisions make it more difficult to learn than it had to be.
Just forgeting the open source aspect for a moment. Blender is simply a really great and amazing damned app. And one of its huge appeals is everything under one roof with a unified and fluid workflow. This is a very, very big deal. This single aspect alone should not be underestimated. Not to mention that Blender is no slouch and actually very competative in so many areas as well. Character rigging for one. Poly modeling wise I know nothing else as fast and efficient as Blender and also such a pleasure to use.
I would assume everybody here agrees Blender is an excellent app, otherwise we wouldn’t be in this forum. But it’s unrelated to the original question, namely whether Blender is hard to learn.
I think that it’s a exageration… Blender have problems, big problems, bad decisions in the UI… but it’s not terrible. Other programs, famous programs, have worst decisions in the interface and user experience. (Zbrush, Maya, XSI,…)
You could tell that about 2.4, but not 2.7
I’d repeat what I have said on many occasions: It’s very important to differ between graphical user interface and user input mapping. GUI (how buttons, sliders and spinners look and work, how are the panels and windows laid out) in Blender is actually quite fine. It looks good and it works well. The only issue there is that clumsy panel separation and joining workflow, which can be very easily solved by something like UE4 tabbed layout:
I actually highly recommend everyone interested in layout editing improvements to watch it. I believe this is the exact solution that encompasses all the proposed solutions so far in a very clean and straightforward manner.
So if someone says Blender UI is bad, they can be wrong and right at the same time. There are really good parts, like visual design, flexibility, scalability, customization depth, but also really bad parts, like default hotkey mapping, very messy hotkey and theme editor, and outdated way of editing GUI layout.
I have been working in 3D for the past 7 years in animated features and VFX, so when I first started learning blender I had a lot of hard coded ui expectations to overcome. So for me it was extremely difficult to learn at first, with time things became easier and now I use it all the time at home.
Heres the the problem with that though, pretty much any colleague I suggest Blender too gives me the same story; “I downloaded Blender, installed, had a really horrific experience, and uninstalled.” And that’s a shame because a massive amount of 3D artists are free agents right now, they have no interest in ADSKs subscription plan. But because professional 3d artists don’t need to learn Blender, it is extremely important that their first few hours in the software should make them [I]want to learn blender. And sadly that is where most give up. Zbrush gets away with it, because every studio relies on it, so you have no choice but to except it’s wonky ui.
So why is this even important? Well I think if there were more pro users using Blender than studios would start to take notice and be less afraid of incorporating it into their pipelines. And that kind of wide spread usage can only be a good thing for Blenders development I imagine. So to the original question, yes Blender is initially hard to learn due to the ui and I think it costs them a lot of pro users as a result. Hope this doesn’t sound elitist because all users opinions matter, but just wanted to add my two cents.
Cheers,
Matt[/I]
True that. Teaching Blender to newbies is no fun.
Many apologies. I edited your reply to frame mine.But full post just above.
I think to say Blender has a terrible UI design these days is highly debatable. In my direct experiance it works. Not only does it work it is very fast and easy once grasped. It seems to work well at what it does.
I use Blender alongside the other mainstays all the time. There is probably a discussion to be had around should it follow what have become the more orthodox layouts.
Would this help Blender gain wider acceptance.? Thats a debate.
But to say the layout and UI design is terrible as a blanket statement is quite patently untrue and an overreaction surely ?. Once grasped it works really well. And is very fast and natural to use. Also Blenders remit is very wide. 3D modeling and animation. Compositing. Editing.Colour grading. 2D hand drawn animation. Sculpting. This is always probably going to demand a unique interface and workflow design.
The wide remit is part of the problem for beginners, IMO. Blender is incredibly capable, and can do a whole lot of things, and naturally has an interface designed for all of this. It does stacks of things I’ll probably never want to do (my use of Blender is fairly basic).
It may be useful to consider having an “off switch” for whole chunks of the interface. If there is a whole section of Blender you won’t use, being able to completely disable it and all its shortcuts could make the introductory process far less complex. I can’t remember the number of times I’ve given thanks for the “Q” key simply because it doesn’t do anything. Having a key I can hit by mistake, without it doing something radical that I’d never heard of before and have to look up to figure out what happened, is a bloody handy thing at times.
The Blender 101 project being worked on by Campbell is supposed to take care of the issue of Blender being hard to learn (by way of allowing beginners to start with a stripped down version of Blender with more widgets).
Also, like usual, Bugzilla has posted this on CGTalk as well. What’s amazing is that Blender still has a horrific reputation among some professionals there after 16 years of accelerating development. How bad is it, they argue that the UI alone makes Blender one of the absolute worst creative solutions in the history of software (and we’re talking about a category that goes back 30 years). There’s been no change, it might as well remain seen as that little FOSS app. that doesn’t even have undo :eek:
Hey ! Would that be Blender 101 ?
Hey edit. Ace Dragon got there already
With regards studio use from personal experiance this comes down to pipeline issues I think. But a lot of this is hopefully getting worked on. Lack of clear tech support etc…
Original topic might be getting muddied though. But regards interface. Not sure thats the main issue. Would rather see gradule and careful development of the interface. Than a radical change. I like a lot of what is there already. There is surely a lot that is good there.
Sorry all the edits tonight. Tablet issues tonight mainly. Funny as we discussing interfaces.
All the best.
In my opinion, there are various extensions of the 2.5 UI concept that could be done but were never explored (like allowing the last operator panel and the N-key Transform panel to be torn away and parked as viewport overlays for instance). Others would be toolbar tabs identified as icons and more arrangement options for toolbar operator buttons.
Though that is unlikely to satisfy a number of professional Maya/C4D users who mostly want an open source clone of the commercial app (Blender is not going to get those people anyway, so targeting them would prove quixotic).
I agree there. I cant see how Blender can ever be a Maya, Max 4D clone. Its own thing in so many ways. They are all individual though. And the workflows of each reflect a lot of that.
I remember a lot of this came up before in the last big UI debate. The one that erupted just as I started getting deeply into Blender and posting here. " Hey ! Hi Blender community :o ? " I remember part of what came out was how much a good interface is an expression of the deeper workings and core philosophy of an app. Rather than something that is a seperate bespoke designer surface construct floating on top.
Surely its best to work to improve what is already there ?
No, you edited my text so it lost the main gist, namely that Blender flaunts standard UI conventions that are globally accepted. Ask a thousand PC users what the key combination Ctrl-A does, and at least 999 will answer “Select all”! If you find even one that says otherwise, it’s a Blender user. Ask a thousand PC users where the window header with its menu belongs, and they’ll all say it belongs on the top of the window. That (and a busload of similar idiosyncracies) is why Blender’s UI choices are truly terrible. Ask a thousand users what mouse button you click to select something, and obviously they’ll respond “the left one.” Except for Blender, that is.
And that is one of the reasons that learning a 3D application, which is already daunting, is made even harder by Blender. As far as I understand, that’s what the original poster asked, and nothing else.
In my direct experiance it works. Not only does it work it is very fast and easy once grasped. It seems to work well at what it does.
Good on you and all the other respondents here who defend Blender come hell or high water. But it certainly isn’t good for people who’re trying to teach or learn it. Again, that’s what this thread is about, not your personal experience.
In my personal opinion making left click select and Maya style viewport navigation default in Blender would make it easier to learn, while also using other software packages. Those same keybinds all work in Substance, Unity and Maya.
Also heavy use of the middle mouse button is a ergonomical landmine, in my personal experience. I much prefer mapping it to the right button and 3D cursor to middle mouse button.