Is Blender going good way?

General Forums Blender Development Discussion
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Hello. I’m not expert, but I’m Blender user since 2.76 Windows XP machine (do you believe that my 20 years old PC is still working and still run Blender, version 2.76 of course)

But I have one question about past, present and future.

Do You think Blender development is going good way? I think it’s not.

Ok. I don’t like new interface, I’m fan of 2.79 interface, it was very good and I think the best Blender could be:
Blender from my dream:

  • Blender Eevee
  • old 2.7 UI
  • old keyboards shortcuts
  • old layer system
  • BGE based on Eevee rendering

It’s just my dream but I can adapt to some changes.

I always have shortcut style changed to 2.7 compatible, I use Blender 2.7 theme and for layers there is nice Collection Manager addon, which add panel for switching “layers”.
But I’m using Blender 2.83.
What I don’t like in newer versions like 2.9 or 3?

  • For example broken compatibility with older versions. I know that open new Blender file in old version isn’t good idea, but appending was working. But it’s not working anymore.
    (see here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/244314/blender-3-0-files-dont-open-append-in-2-93)

  • Addons compatibility - if Addon developer stops updating & updating addon the addon will not work in new version. Ok. It’s old problem. Few years ago I was downloading Blender.249 and learning oldest Blender interface just to run old interesting addon. And I read somewhere that it is because new Python devs change something. But why update python version in Blender. Why not stay with older version (for example python2). It’s just scripting language.
    Btw. why Blender even using Python for addons? Why not something different like Lua?
    I don’t know what, but something that is stable and not change so often.
    I’m not programmer, but I when I was trying to learn Python it was very unfriendly experience. Always when I was trying to run some more advanced python scripts from github I was getting errors, and I finished my self-lessons with 5 different pythons version installed, because every example was running only in different Python version. What waste of time.

  • hdd usage - Blender 2.49 size is 32 mb, 2.83 is about 400mb while Blender 3.6 over 1gb - I should buy larger SSD for keep many Blender versions installed :slight_smile:

Generally I think, that changing something that works, is bad idea and changing something that works and works good is very bad idea. It’s way Microsoft is destroying their system, Google destroying their search-engine. And I’m generally disappointed that also open-source developers follow this bad corporational trends.

For example I was trying to move to Linux… Before I discovered that it’s also changes too dynamic to be stable-usable.

I’m sorry, but I think Blender was on good way on version 2.79. And decision to make so drastic changes was bad.

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I anticipate this being a dumpster fire, since threads complaining about Blender development always are, so let me pre-emptively say: be civil, be constructive, and avoid insults. It would be best if this thread wasn’t heavily moderated, but if it has to be, it will be

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Hello,

I’m not that old user when it comes to Blender, I started to learn Blender since the mid 2021, it was 2.93, but at the same time I kinda understand what you’re saying. You’re talking about so-called “skeuomorph” design, where all forms, buttons, inputs etc. were convexed. I love that old design either. It reminds of those old iOS 6 days alogn with Windows 7, oh my!

As for other: I can’t agree or disagree with you because, unlike you, I’m a freshman here. So don’t throw your books at me :stuck_out_tongue:

On the other hand, it somehow reminded me of how WordPress is going nowadays. When I was working with WordPress in my early teenage years (2012), nobody couldn’t mess with it. Looking at WordPress now, seems like its developers doing anything to make WordPress more useful for people who wish to make their websites under 10 minutes. You don’t need to code, you don’t need to do almost everything. Just 5-minute-installation, bunch of mouse clicks and that’s it. Your website is done. AFAIK, they even moved out the Theme Editor menu item to some new location. Personally me, I don’t like that part of it.

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By the way, this isn’t true; Blender 3.6 is 306 MB. Please don’t make things up

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The Blender folder is close to 1 gigabyte when unzipped though. The download is 300 megabytes, but you can’t use Blender yet.

It is not a myth that the size of the app. has ballooned amidst all of the libraries that now come with Blender, but unfortunately there is no easy solution as the BF does not have the resources to roll their own code for everything.

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I love threads like this. Sometimes I wonder if I should type out the most inflammatory Blender opinions I can think of and then post them so that I can warm my hands on the resulting flames.

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Don’t get me wrong, I’m not so old. I started learning Blender about 2016 on this old PC.

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Pardon me then! Seems like I just didn’t get you :slight_smile:

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Is there a way to hide thread on this forum?

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2023-07-18 11_33_07-Is Blender going good way_ - General Forums _ Blender Development Discussion - B
Choose Muted

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You could save about half that space by deleting the blender.pdb and the Cycles’ kernels(3.6/scripts/addons/cycles/lib) for all the other graphics cards you don’t have. Might be able to reduce the size of the .exe by finding a compatible symbol stripper to strip the debug symbols from the binary as well.

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Ok. Thanks good idea.

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Be aware, you won’t be able to report any crash/error messages from Blender once you do that since it won’t produce actionable stack traces for the devs. That’s probably why they distribute Blender this way.

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From the perspective of a newer user:

My first exposure to Blender was around 2008. It was so… unimpressive and in some ways bizarre, that I couldn’t believe anyone would use it. It was free, that was the only thing I could determine was a reason it had any users at all. That impression stuck with me for years, to the point that I didn’t even wonder if it had ever moved much beyond that level of … polish.

Fast-forward to Dec 2022, and on Christmas break I was on some random website and seeing a lot of cool animations and artwork, made in Blender. I then remembered it existed, and decided to glance at their homepage and see where it was. Downloaded the app (still free, ok), opened it up and basically didn’t stop playing around for the next 2 weeks. Was amazed at how different it was.

I’ve since taken a look at the 2.7x era - yeah, I think it’s a lot better now. I think a lot more things would be better, if BF wasn’t often so determined to not upset legacy users. (Especially users who have a “not invented here” mentality, who believe that Maya, Max, C4D, etc can’t possibly have better ways of doing some things.)

Example: Blender has like 457 hotkeys. Does this actually seem reasonable in some way? (Ironically, all those “hide collection” commands don’t even hide the collection. They solo the collection.)

keys
keys1920×1200 467 KB

But such legacy is important to some people, and BF does what it can to respect that.

However, thankfully they also don’t stay completely rooted in the past at the expense of not having ANY new features. Modeling is excellent, nodes are incredible, and Eevee is mind-blowing fast for NPR.

Why Python? Because it’s a good language for add-ons. Other apps use it as well, BF made a good choice there.

Broken compatibility with older versions: welcome to software. Devs shouldn’t refrain from adding “feature X” because the file isn’t going to open in a version released 7 years ago.

“hdd usage - Blender 2.49 size is 32 mb, 2.83 is about 400mb while Blender 3.6 over 1gb - I should buy larger SSD for keep many Blender versions installed”

Blender 3.6 isn’t over a gig. Beyond that - ok, 2.49 was 32 MB, and 3.6 is 10 times larger. So what? I don’t make software choices based on how large the installer is…

I understand that a lot of people love the 2.7x days, but you also need to realize that it’s the fact that Blender moved past those days that many artists now actually use the software.

If you’re happy with 2.79, it still exists and you can use it.

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The key point it looks like is a complaint that the Blender developers are breaking compatibility. The problem though is that to have compatibility to the point where you can open files from the NaN days will mean a lot of bloat with many layers of code, which in turn will dramatically impact performance and maintainability. To this day there is no real good solution to the idea of never breaking files other than having standalone converters which can bring your old files to the newest version.

Blender actually does pretty well at bringing older files up to the latest compared to other apps because of its do_version routines (which can edit older files to make them work).

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I know that open newer files in older version is too much, but what about appending? Appending was always works.

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To put it in different terms:

Photoshop 4.0 added adjustment layers to the PSD format. Photoshop 2.5 didn’t have layers, or any concept of layers. How exactly would you expect 2.5 to “import” (append) a file with features that didn’t even exist?

Same with Blender. The internal architecture of data has changed, because new features required it to be changed.

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This is thing I write about:
Why change architecture of data when old architecture of data was working good?

Sorry for this topic. I had need to share my opinion.

Although I don’t like the way Blender development go, I thing it’s not the worst way it could be.

For example:
Do You hear about spyware in Audacity (open source audio editing program)?
I think Blender devs will not do us something like this.
I stay with older version of Audacity (they also broke compatibility with many old plugins)

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If you have a closer look a the development discussions, one reoccurring point I see all the time is discussions about whether a data change is actually needed or not.
That’s why I am quite confident to say that the vast majority of data changes were actually needed because of new or changed functionality.

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Changing UI and ideology which push blender a bit further to something which can be called an “industry standart” in 2.8 was literally the biggest and best decision maded by blender developers.

My friends who was know what i was trying 2.7 and i was swear a lot about blender once told me:
“Hey, did you know they released new blender? Everything changed, now its like normal software, good UI and its cool, go check it!”.

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