What follows are personal viewpoints, so please don’t be offended.
I’m a mid time Blender user (form 2.28 on) and have used Blender as an invaluable tool to make 3d, illustration, websites, animations, product design and comics (above all).
What I have always loved in Blender was its unicity, its incredible speed in loading itself, as well as the interaction with Python scripts, and the ability to share work with Inkscape, Gimp, Sketchup and so on.
What Blender is becoming since 2.5 lets me really disappointed, for the following reasons:
The new Blender interface makes Blender similar to other 3d apps. I liked Blender also because it was different. Different apps SHOULD have different approaches, so every one can choose the best for himself (i.e. 3DS lovers should use 3DS, and so on).
The new UI needs a tutorial to be used (I’m not so new to the program, beneath I’m not a super expert…). Too bad: IMHO in 2009 we should provide users with something intuitive.
Again on the new UI: it wants to be completely customizable, but if you set an horizontal panel layout you have empty spaces everywhere, and the single panels stay vertical (try the Render Properties Window as an example).
This last point, I think, may be solved in future releases, so I’m not worried about this one.
What worries me is that the road started seems to lead to a loss of originality without giving back that much in terms of user experience.
Last: please, sincerely, I do thanks and really appreciate the work of every single Blender developer, the ones I agree with and the ones I don’t: they are making something fantastic, and I hope that they will go on.
I don’t see that much change actually. Sure a couple of things have been moved to slightly better - and sometimes slightly worse - places, but the workflow is almost unchanged.
I really think you’ll get used to it by a week or two, and never even think of it after that.
(just a guess, of course, i don’t know you )
As far as I can see all the good things you mentioned about blender are all still there, maybe even more now.
But then again, I don’t see any radical game-changing changes to the interface…
And you think the interface in blender 2.49 is intuitive ?
The interface is a mess of evolution, one of the things 2.5 is doing is reorganising tools and settings so that they are more logically laid out so they actually make some sense. All you really need to do is give it half an hour and you should easily pick up these minor changes. I cannot understand why people are getting so confused with the changes.
The new interface is faster to configure and quicker to use. I don’t miss the horizontal layout at all. I find I am using less layout in 2.5 because I can make one layout the serves multiple purposes.
robi : thanks god i’m not alone ! i agree on all the points !
Unfortunately, it is too late, we have to adapt.
(or adapt ourself ? is it more correct ?)
intuitive, intuitive… arrrg… of course it is not ! Like a bike or a violin. There is a learning curve, but once you get it in you hands, what a fantastic tool (it was).
They are not confused, they are worried, surprised, and sad.
as robi said, i think blender on the road to lost its originality.
Blender is 95% the same to the user as far as I can tell, there are a few thinks that don’t quite work, but it is alpha still. The properties panel being reorganized is the only big difference, and the tool bar. I find that any problems I have would be solved by getting another monitor.
So get another monitor
/problem solved
also there are quite a few 2.5 interface tutorials already
I’ve been using blender for a few years now, usually for months on end, all day every day… whilst I’m not quite ready for switching wholesale to 2.5 i’m constantly looking at it…
It still is blender, with all the good stuff kept, but it’s also extremely empowering… a lot of peoples issues seem really superficial to me,
… but then I have enough screen space horizontal/vertical, antialiased vs aliased… all the same to me!
It’s really astounding what is becoming possible, and yet it’s still so obviously blender… I don’t care if blender is totally unique to other apps or just the same, I just want it to be good…
all the little niggles that were holding it back are being removed one by one…
early on in the 2.5 thread… render API , how customisable would mouse input be?, what about custom menus? script integration? piss poor material work flow… all have been addressed …or are being addressed and then some!
not to mention the astounding amount of new features since 2.49 even…
using 2.5, the only criticisms I can possibly level at it are that not everything from 2.49 is back yet… but that’s pre beta software I guess!
I think both parties are right…different software should be different, you can’t conform to other standards if you are creating one…, but I get the same feeling “in general” from 2.5 that I did in 2.49…
The new UI is studied to be more intuitive, therefore new users will have to face a less difficult learning curve. And that’s a really good point to go for a change.
btw, just give it a real try, it is really easy to get comfortable with it, and its fast-workflow-ish
of course we are all different, and my feelings about UIs might not be yours
Actually I don’t think that “originality” should be a target for a UI. The first word that comes to my mind is “efficency”. As you can see here http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5devs know their job. At last, i think that resemblances with other softwares can be reassumed in that fashion dark grey color. Just try to bring back a 2.4x color set and it will look like good old blender again…
Blender never defined itself in comparison to other software. It was (and is) good software for artists. The fact the you perceived previous versions of Blender to be “different” from other software, and that you extracted some kind of value from that comparison is really incidental to what Blender actually is.
As someone who has been using Blender since version 1.8, I can say unequivocally that 2.5 is so far advanced beyond anything that’s happened in Blender before (interface wise) that it’s ridiculous. You’re right that it doesn’t feel like 2.49. Nothing at all like it. In fact, having used 2.49 a couple of times since I started working in 2.5 a few months ago, it gives me pain to even open the old interface. It feels slow clunky and disorganized to me. I know it’s not horrible – I liked it then – but using 2.5 makes 2.49 feel horrible to me.
I use a 4:3 monitor and haven’t experienced the panel gripes that I’ve heard others making. I’m going to be slinging that monitor to the right of a new 16:9 one after Christmas, so much the better, but good old 4:3 hasn’t given me grief. Go figure.
As far as intuitive goes – it’s certainly more logical. And logic, set at a gut level, is the basis of intuition. Tools are with tools. Properties are with properties. When you need something, you have a reasonable shot at finding it if you know the paradigms. And if you can’t, hit the spacebar and start typing. There’s still some work to be done (material/texture props, some bone settings, etc.), but for 95% of the interface, the redesign has succeeded wildly.
Ok, thanks all,
one point I should clear: I have started using 2.5 since the first unofficial builds on graphicall.org and can use it(I can complete tasks with relative ease). It’s not a “I can’t work with it” kind of problem.
I’m only saying that for a milestone, a fundamental step towards future releases, I feel unhappy with the decisions taken. I think that the road was another, but since I’m not developing Blender, maybe devs really know what are doing and I only have to wait for adjustments.
@ scrag_10: not much time ago, MS told to buy new computers to run Vista well… ehm… that wasn’t a hardware problem (I’m obviously not referring to Blender!)
I have a decent monitor, anyway
Last and thanks:
I’m excited by the new features added/perfectioned inside Blender, so I don’t think I will come back to older versions, but read shadowbane:
I set up blender 2.5 to look like 2.49 and it was all very nautral…
The changes took less than 5 minutes.
~SB
If, after a development of months, I have users that go back to the old interface, maybe I have lazy users, or something isn’t going the way it should…
Eh. You’re always going to have some small percentage of people that don’t like a particular change. That’s fine, and you can’t let that fact dictate what you do. In the end, we call those people Amish and hope they realize that cars really ARE better than horses.
I personally think the devs nailed it so far, and users of some other packages have commented that the UI is actually better than other apps, as opposed to being the same. I can’t believe I’m responding to this ridiculous thread.
Better than other apps now too.